This was the first time that the brand disclosed its performance data
Chinese sugar-free beverage brand Chi Forest, also known as Yuanqi Senlin, achieved 50% year-on-year revenue growth in Q1, 2022. The whole year revenue of 2021 was 2.6 times that of 2020.
In the past year, the number of Chi Forest's own factories has increased rapidly from 2 to 6, and its suppliers' pool has also enlarged to 370. “We are basically no longer subject to constraints from supply chain and production capacity,” said the vice president of Chi Forest, Li Guoxun.
This spring, in addition to Chi Forest's core products - sparkling water, a number of other new products also presented outstanding performance. Meanwhile, the brand continued to expand its product metrics and upgrade the quality to further lead the market.
Chi Forest specializes in bottled beverages ranging from milk tea to sparkling water, with “zero sugar, zero fat and zero calories” being its major selling point.
During the online shopping festival of 2020, the brand overtook Coca-Cola and Pepsi to top the carbonated drink sales list of popular e-commerce platforms Tmall and JD.com. In the past December, Chi Forest made it to the Top 10 of Amazon's bestselling sparkling water list in the US market, a lead manager of Chi Forest told EqualOcean.
Chi Forest has also been working on the traditional offline channel since 2021. It owned over 1,000 offline distributors and more than 1 million offline terminals in over 800 cities domestically, which marked its completion of a nationwide offline channel system.
In terms of overseas business, Chi Forest officially launched its overseas strategy in 2019 and has now supplied in more than 40 countries. It has successfully entered the mainstream e-commerce channels in the United States and launched localised products in Southeast Asia.
The person in charge of related business also told EqualOcean that the company will keep positively responding to China’s 2035 carbon neutrality target by applying greener packaging and cleaner energy in factories. “We hope to see Chi Forest's products in more places around the world,” he added.
The Beijing-based company, established in 2016, bagged another USD 200 million in November 2021 at a valuation of USD 15 billion, up from USD 6 billion in the previous round in April of the same year.
Investors including Sequoia Capital China, Temasek Holdings and Warburg Pincus participated in the new round. Coatue Management and IDG Capital also invested, sources said.