As the "first listed tea beverage stock," NAYUKI has endured a "painful" half month.

Recently, four major listed new tea beverage companies - Mixue Group, GuMing, ChaBaiDao, and NAYUKI - successively disclosed their first-half 2025 performance results. Among them, the first three companies achieved revenue growth of 39.3%, 41.2%, and 4% year-over-year respectively, while only NAYUKI saw a 14.4% decline.

Almost simultaneously, NAYUKI launched a collaboration with the popular game "If Yuan," which also drew widespread consumer complaints. The issue was that many customers visited offline stores only to find severely insufficient merchandise inventory, while scalpers had stock available at premium prices. Although NAYUKI issued an apology and promised to increase production and restock, the fact that exchanges were limited to theme stores - with only 15% of Beijing stores eligible for exchanges - was criticized as showing "insufficient sincerity."

Collaboration Launch Receives Poor Reviews, Merchandise All in Scalpers' Hands

Recently, NAYUKI announced a limited-time collaboration with the popular otome mobile game "If Yuan." During the pre-launch phase, NAYUKI released extensive promotional content and simultaneously launched two bakery products and collaboration merchandise, including limited edition tea cups, paper bags, water-sensitive cards, acrylic light-up standees, and stress toys.

However, just one day after the activity launched, widespread negative reviews emerged. Numerous IP fans reported that merchandise and collaboration meal sets sold out rapidly, leaving many consumers who had been waiting in advance with no opportunity to purchase their desired products.

According to reports, NAYUKI's collaboration adopted a pre-sale voucher redemption format, selling collaboration meal vouchers on multiple platforms including Dianping, Meituan, and Douyin. After purchasing, consumers could redeem them online or at stores.

Since vouchers were heavily promoted officially, many consumers believed that "buying vouchers meant being able to get merchandise," only to discover severe inventory shortages when they arrived at stores.

While offline stores faced shortages, opening Xianyu (second-hand marketplace) revealed that "scalpers" had stocked up early, even posting photos of piled-up merchandise. It was learned that merchandise originally bundled in meal sets was being sold separately by scalpers at premium prices, with stress toys, light-up standees, and theme store mirror standees reaching 29.9 yuan - more expensive than the total meal set price.

This sparked consumer complaints: "All merchandise went to scalpers, real fans can't buy anything?" "Never seen such a terrible collaboration, everything dumped to scalpers for high-price resale."

Additionally, online system crashes were particularly severe. On social media platforms, many consumers reported that NAYUKI's mini-program experienced problems including inability to access normally, slow loading, and failed order submissions shortly after the activity began.

Subsequently, NAYUKI issued an apology and stated it would increase production and restock through pre-sale channels, but limiting exchanges to theme stores was criticized as showing "insufficient sincerity." Taking Beijing as an example, NAYUKI has 66 stores in Beijing, but only 10 theme stores, representing just 15%.

Industry analyst Zhang Shule noted that collaborations between new tea beverages and anime, gaming, and other 2D IPs are commonplace. Such collaborations are based on highly overlapping target audiences, making collaboration products a form of "fan service" that, even if unable to truly drive consumption, can create goodwill among target audiences. For 2D IPs, collaborating with physical products breaks dimensional barriers, serving as another form of presence marketing. Most such collaborations rarely achieve breakthrough beyond 2D fan circles.

Multiple IP Collaborations for "Momentum," Half-Year Report Most Disappointing

NAYUKI has always been a major player in collaborations. According to public data, NAYUKI had over 20 collaborations last year alone. So far this year, NAYUKI has conducted 8 activities with IPs including Hatsune Miku, Shang Ning's Story, Wuthering Waves, Chow Sang Sang, Love Nikki, Back to the Future, and QQ Speed Mobile.

However, this hasn't translated into obvious performance improvements. In the first half of 2025, NAYUKI achieved revenue of 2.18 billion yuan, down 14.4% year-over-year, with an adjusted net loss of 118 million yuan. As the earliest new tea beverage brand to enter the secondary market, NAYUKI remains the only one still posting losses among all new tea beverage companies.

Looking at specific business segments, NAYUKI operates four main pillars: fresh tea beverages, bakery products, bottled drinks, and other products, all of which declined compared to last year. Among these, other products - including merchandise, retail, and gift items - saw the most significant decline, dropping to 146 million yuan, a 4.1% year-over-year decrease.

In comparison, Mixue Ice City, GuMing, and ChaBaiDao achieved revenues of 14.88 billion yuan, 5.663 billion yuan, and 2.5 billion yuan respectively in the first half. NAYUKI's revenue scale represents only about 14.7% of Mixue Ice City's and about 38.5% of GuMing's. In terms of profit, Mixue Ice City, GuMing, and ChaBaiDao achieved net profits of 2.72 billion yuan, 1.625 billion yuan, and 333 million yuan respectively, clearly demonstrating NAYUKI's significant gap with competitors in operational efficiency and profitability.

From a growth trend perspective, NAYUKI's first-half 2025 revenue declined 14.4% year-over-year, while Mixue Ice City, GuMing, and ChaBaiDao saw revenue growth of 39.3%, 41.2%, and 4% respectively. As of June 30, 2025, NAYUKI operated 1,638 stores, while Mixue Ice City, GuMing, and ChaBaiDao had 53,014, 11,179, and 8,444 stores respectively. NAYUKI's store count represents only about 3.1% of Mixue Ice City's.

While new tea beverage chains rapidly expand their store networks, NAYUKI saw a net decrease of 132 directly-operated stores to 1,321 and a net decrease of 28 franchise stores to 317 in the first half, resulting in a total net decrease of 160 stores to 1,638. With continuous negative publicity, when will NAYUKI finally turn profitable?