Screening Rules:
Brands with sales exceeding 2 million yuan in the insulated cup category on Taotian platform in October 2023, with year-on-year growth exceeding 30%. (In October 2023, brands with insulated cup category sales exceeding 2 million yuan on Taobao and Tmall platforms, with year-on-year growth exceeding 30%.)
The High-Growth Brands Attribution:
1. Focus on original design, providing consumers with a personalized new experience
2. Catering to current trends, developing large-capacity products with design features
3. Focus on product use scenarios, solving user pain points
The sudden change in temperature signifies the arrival of winter. Milk tea awakens autumn, while insulated cups embrace winter. As a winter essential, the insulated cup market is highly competitive, with established overseas brands like Thermos and Zojirushi, as well as emerging brands like TOMIC.
Traditionally, insulated cup products have competed on performance and materials, emphasizing their functionality. In recent years, styles, colors, and application scenarios of insulated cups have also begun to become more competitive led by overseas brands and new domestic brands, leading to significant changes in all aspects of the products and offering more choices to consumers.
According to Moojing Market Intelligence+ data, approximately 693 million yuan sales and roughly 9.722 million units were sold in the insulated cup category on Taobao and Tmall platforms in October 2023, with an average product price of around 71.3 yuan.
People are no longer blindly pursuing low prices but now have more personalized choices. What brands have captured the current trends and achieved higher growth in the insulated cup market? Today, the Moojing Emerging Leaderboard will list for everyone the high-growth brands with sales exceeding 2 million yuan in the insulated cup category on Taobao and Tmall platforms in October 2023, with year-on-year growth exceeding 30%.
Uooha is a rising original trendy designer brand that focuses on design. The brand creates exclusive IPs like Ugo, OO, Helen, infusing visual appeal throughout the brand identity and capturing customers’ attention with unique designs to enhance its brand characteristics.
Uooha offers a range of products including insulated cups for children and couples. Based on Moojing Market Intelligence+, the brand had a sales revenue of 7.006 million in October 2023 on mainstream e-commerce platforms, with a year-on-year growth of 30.8%, making it stand out among insulated cup brands. In terms of pricing, Uooha's products had an average price of about 264.5 yuan in October 2023, higher than the average price of 71.3 yuan for insulated cups on Taobao and Tmall platforms.
Innovation + design sense is the characteristic of Uooha. The brand has a unique "Pocket Insulated Cup" with an overall visual design that adopts the image of the brand's original IPs. It is bright and eye-catching. Most notably, the insulated cup’s cover features 4 detachable pockets that can hold items like lipstick or car keys, offering storage space and enhancing aesthetics while also increasing playability. This product had a sales revenue of 1.257 million yuan on Taobao and Tmall platforms in October 2023.
At the same time, the brand also focuses on the individualized needs of contemporary young people by adding accessories like blind boxes and button-energy hats to the water bottles, making the insulated cups a form of personal customization reflecting unique individuality. The button-energy hats can be attached to the top of the insulated cup, with styles including a variety of cartoon shapes and holiday event versions, sparking users' interest in collecting them. In addition, the blind box accessories are sold separately, bringing novelty to consumers and increasing the product’s profit margin.
The Stanley brand originates from the United States, and its founder invented the first all-steel double-wall vacuum flask in human history. The brand's insulated cups often appear in movies like "Modern Family" and "Interstellar," enjoying relatively high popularity.
According to Moojing Market Intelligence+ data, the brand's sales on Taobao and Tmall platforms reached 3.917 million yuan in October 2023, with a year-on-year increase of 114.7%. Its product line includes the recent popular high-capacity fashion straw cups, portable trendy lift cups, and classic thermoses.
Stanley focuses on functionality with excellent insulation performance. Its products use a double-layer vacuum long-lasting insulation technology that reportedly can keep warm for about 37 hours. The 1.4L green hammered texture insulated cup is a classic product adopting this technology, which also features a stable leak-proof design, reputed to prevent any leaks whether placed horizontally or inverted. Due to its convenient, non-leak feature, it is often used by consumers in camping scenarios.
In terms of product design, Stanley continues its minimalist style and follows the trend, designing the popular big-head cup, with a wider upper part and a narrower lower part; a unique shape that attracts many consumers. In terms of color, the big-head cup features vibrant colors, such as mint green and Klein blue, to further meet the aesthetics of trend-conscious consumers.
Stanley has also released a 1.8L colossal straw insulated cup aimed at meeting consumers' water needs throughout the day. This cup features a folding straw design that effectively prevents splashing from the cup, and its large capacity caters to the current trend of larger cups being more popular. In October 2023, the sales revenue for this product reached 799,300 yuan on Taobao and Tmall platforms, with monthly sales exceeding 6,000 units.
TOMIC is a local brand from Hangzhou with sales of about 2.731 million yuan on Taobao and Tmall platforms in October 2023, growing by 36.6% year-on-year.
TOMIC's hot-selling insulated cups are primarily designed for tea-drinking scenarios. Products include ceramic inner wall braised cups, pure titanium tea pots, and the popular tea-water separation insulated cups. This product addresses the issue in the tea-drinking scene where tea leaves are difficult to separate from the tea water. The cup body includes a specialized tea compartment for storing tea leaves; inverting the cup allows hot water to enter the compartment with the tea leaves for brewing. Once ready, the tea can be transferred into the main compartment by pressing a button on the cup, accommodating multiple types of tea leaves, making it more convenient for daily tea brewing.
One of the brand's models, a unisex ceramic tea-water separation cup, had a sales revenue of about 408,000 yuan on Taobao and Tmall platforms in October 2023 alone, with a year-on-year growth of 52.7%.
In the scene of braised tea brewing, TOMIC introduces more suitable products like ceramic inner wall braised tea pots and cups. Reportedly, these products can make the tea taste fresher and better. In addition, the products are equipped with a hidden tea strainer that allows the flow of tea without the leaves, further enhancing the consumer tea drinking experience.
To further solidify the brand's presence in the tea-drinking scene, TOMIC regularly organizes tea culture salons and launches joint cultural and creative products to add a cultural foundation to the products and shape their image.
The insulated cup market is constantly introducing new products. Large-capacity and personalized products are leading the market trend. What will be the next breakout product in the industry and what changes will it bring to the market are things both consumers and brands are looking forward to.
