What Does the Nayuki Rebrand Change About Coffee Knowledge?

Nayuki Tea has changed its store signage from the Japanese-styled name to the Chinese form, and its English logo from NAYUKI to the pinyin NAIXUE. The Shenzhen-based tea brand, founded in 2015 and listed in Hong Kong in 2021, calls it a seventh-anniversary brand upgrade that will roll out across roughly a thousand directly operated stores.

The parent company has filed for multiple NAIXUE trademarks since June. The new wordmark uses straighter, cleaner lines, and customer service confirmed the visual identity work is ongoing. The shift tracks broader consumer interest in domestic brands, though it sits in the drinks sector rather than in coffee knowledge or the question of when did coffee come to Europe.

Nayuki Tea recently quietly changed its store signage at a new outlet in Nanning, Guangxi, with the original "奈雪の茶" becoming "奈雪的茶" and the English logo changing from NAYUKI to the pinyin NAIXUE. The company responded officially that this is a brand upgrade action for its seventh anniversary and will be rolled out gradually nationwide. This new tea beverage brand, founded in Shenzhen in 2015 and listed in Hong Kong in 2021, is opening a new chapter in its eight-year brand history through a de-Japanized visual rebranding. Since June this year, its parent company has intensively applied for multiple NAIXUE trademarks, and the signage replacement work at nearly a thousand directly operated stores nationwide has already begun.

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Jiemian News reports that a Xiaohongshu user from Nanning, Guangxi, recently posted that the signage of a newly opened Nayuki store locally had changed, with the Japanese element "奈雪の茶" in the original logo replaced by the purely Chinese "奈雪的茶."

The English part was adjusted as well. The original NAYUKI was abandoned in favor of the brand's full pinyin NAIXUE, while the font design was also updated to a style with straighter, cleaner lines.

As the signage change sparked discussion online, according to Boss Live, a relevant person in charge at Nayuki responded: "This is a brand upgrade action for Nayuki's seventh anniversary, and it will be replaced nationwide afterward."

In the comments section of the user's post, Nayuki's official Xiaohongshu customer service also left a message: "Thank you all for your attention. The brand is currently gradually carrying out VI upgrades and iterations. We will stay true to our original aspiration and continue to bring you good quality and service."

Public information shows that Nayuki Tea was founded in 2015, headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, and is a tea beverage brand under Shenzhen Pindao Catering Management Co., Ltd. For a long time, Nayuki stores have adopted a business model combining tea beverages with soft European bread, integrating the retail and catering formats, targeting young women aged 20 to 35 as its core consumer group, and always implementing the standards of changing the tea base every four hours and not keeping soft European bread overnight. On July 2, 2019, Nayuki Tea ranked among the "Top Ten Chinese Tea Beverage Brands."

On June 30, 2021, Nayuki Tea successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. As of September 30, 2022, the brand operated a total of 973 tea beverage stores, including 819 first-category and 154 second-category tea beverage stores, all under a directly operated model with no franchising.

As for the origin of the name Nayuki, founder Peng Xin has previously shared on many public occasions that the brand name comes from her personal online handle "Nayuki." When the brand was first founded in 2014, the influence of Japanese and Korean culture on young Chinese people had already penetrated every aspect of daily life and also dominated the consumer trends of the time.

From the perspective of brand operations, registering in Hong Kong or Japan and South Korea, or even deliberately creating the impression of an overseas brand in naming, was a marketing tactic commonly adopted by early Chinese consumer brands. However, times have changed, and the Japanese label has now instead become a potential risk for these brands.

Although Nayuki Tea never deliberately cultivated a "Japanese brand" image, and most consumers would not associate it with Japanese tea beverage brands, for the only listed company currently in the new tea beverage track, a large number of cautionary examples show that having Japanese elements in a brand name is ultimately a hidden danger. For Nayuki, which has gone through eight years, abandoning the old name in a sense also marks that the brand is moving toward maturity.

In fact, there were early signs of Nayuki's intention to change its logo. Information from the Tianyancha app shows that in June this year, Shenzhen Pindao Catering Management Co., Ltd., the company to which Nayuki Tea belongs, had already intensively submitted a batch of "NAIXUE" trademark applications. These trademarks are currently all awaiting substantive examination, covering categories including convenience foods, beer and beverages, and others.

At present, the renaming work is still in its initial stage, and Nayuki Tea is still using the old logo as its avatar on social platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and Dianping. Removing the Japanese elements from the brand name may also be intended to build a more comprehensive protective barrier for the offline brand. With such careful consideration, Nayuki will also have broader room for development on its business path.

Nayuki Tea has always had its own distinctive business approach. While continuously enriching its product line, it is committed to promoting standardization, automation, and digitalization in the industry. Against the backdrop of an overall sluggish consumer environment and many brands slowing their pace of store openings, Nayuki Tea has still maintained its pace of expansion. At this rate, it will soon welcome its 1,000th directly operated store.

Image source: Internet

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.