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27 years later: 36,000 stores across 35 countries, RMB 15 ($2+) billion revenue. The genius? While Starbucks charges $5+ for drinks, Mixue sells them for under $1. 98% of revenue comes from selling supplies to franchisees, not the drinks themselves.

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Did you know there's a Chinese beverage chain with more outlets than McDonald’s? 🍟 Meet Mixue—a brand you probably never heard of, but Zhang Hongchao's story is incredible: - Failed motorcycle repair - Failed fish farming - Ice cart demolished 4 times - Kept selling RMB 1 ($0.4) ice cream anyway

The Mixue Story: From shaved ice to sugar empire

11/ The lesson? Failed fish farmer → Global beverage king 4 demolitions → 36,000 stores RMB 1 ice cream → RMB 15 billion empire Sometimes the best business advice is the simplest: Never give up. Charge less. Build better systems. Full story: jenxi.com/mixue-story-... /end 🧊

jenxi.com

How a Chinese entrepreneur transformed a ¥1 ice cream cone into a ¥15 billion empire that operates more stores than McDonald's. Inside Mixue's radical affordability strategy and its journey from unive...

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10/ Zhang's insight: In a world where everything gets more expensive, radical affordability becomes luxury. The most disruptive strategy isn't always innovation. Sometimes it's charging less than anyone thinks possible while building superior economics. Persistence + cheapness = empire.

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9/ The numbers today: - 36,000+ stores (vs McDonald's ~42,000) - 35 countries - RMB 15 billion ($2+ billion) revenue - 4,000+ international locations While Starbucks charges $5+ for drinks, Mixue sells quality beverages for under $1. Mass market > premium market.

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8/ 2018: Enter Snow King 雪王 ⛄️ A cheerful mascot + viral jingle "Mixue Bingcheng Tianmimi" Then Zhang spent RMB 10M+ on animated series. 9.9/10 rating on Bilibili. He's building Disney, but with lemonade. Cultural strategy > traditional advertising.

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7/ The "shovel seller" strategy: During gold rushes, who made reliable money? - Gold miners? (risky) - Shovel sellers? (guaranteed) Zhang chose shovels. Whether franchises thrive or struggle, they still need supplies. Predictable revenue > volatile revenue.

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6/ Plot twist: Mixue isn't really a beverage company. It's a supply chain company. 98% of revenue comes from selling ingredients + equipment to franchisees. They profit twice: 1. When franchisees buy supplies 2. When franchisees sell to customers Pure genius. 💡

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5/ 2013: Zhang launches RMB 3 lemonade. Competitors struggle with inconsistent suppliers. Zhang's move? Build his own supply chain. - Lemon farms in Sichuan - New Zealand dairy - Vietnamese passion fruit - Brazilian coffee Result: 1 billion cups sold annually. 🍋

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4/ But here's the genius part: That RMB 1 ice cream wasn't really a product. It was customer acquisition. Each cone created a loyal customer who'd buy other items + spread word-of-mouth. Nearly 20 years later, it's still their bestseller (now RMB 2-3). Great strategies become institutions.

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3/ The breakthrough: 2006 While competitors sold ice cream for RMB 20 ($3), Zhang priced his at RMB 1 (14 cents). Not as a promotion. Permanently. Students who treated ice cream as occasional luxury suddenly bought it daily. He'd transformed discretionary spending into habitual consumption.

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2/ Picture this: 1997, a finance student in Henan province watching city officials demolish his shaved ice cart. Again. For the 4th time. Most people would update their CVs. Zhang Hongchao went back to selling ice cream. Sometimes the best business strategy is pure stubbornness.

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 14/03/2025

Did you know a Chinese ice cream chain has more outlets than McDonald's? 🤯 You probably never heard of Mixue, but Zhang Hongchao's story is wild: ❌ Failed motorcycle repair ❌ Failed fish farming ❌ Ice cart demolished 4 times ✅ Never gave up on ¥1 ice cream Today: 36,000 stores, RMB 15B revenue

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It’s not that you decide to form bad habits; it’s that you never made a conscious decision at all. And therein lies the problem. Once you understand that your current behaviours—good and bad—are largely the result of established neural pathways, you can begin the process of redirection.

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 14/03/2025

A HBR study found that 67% of professionals admit their daily habits are holding them back from success. But what if I told you the answer isn’t working harder—it’s working smarter? When you don’t deliberately cultivate good habits, nature abhors a vacuum—bad ones rush in to fill the space.

The question isn't whether other countries will follow China's AI adoption curve, but how soon—and whether OpenAI, Anthropic, Google can match the breathtaking pace of innovation happening here.

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As Tencent leverages its gaming empire (including global hits like League of Legends) and messaging dominance, Yuanbao could become the template for AI expansion worldwide.

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While you might open separate apps for weather, news, and shopping, Chinese users are increasingly turning to AI chatbots as their primary digital interface. This consolidation has profound implications for how we'll all interact with tech in the coming years.

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The result is an AI that feels native to how Chinese users already interact online, rather than requiring them to learn new behaviours. As 3 AI chatbots now dominate China's top 5 most downloaded apps, we're witnessing a fundamental shift in how tech is consumed.

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Tencent's secret weapon isn't just AI—it's the company's ubiquitous WeChat platform with over 1 bil active users. By integrating Yuanbao with WeChat's ecosystem of public accounts and video platforms, Tencent created an AI assistant with unprecedented access to China's digital information landscape.

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While AI tools often update quarterly, Yuanbao did it weekly: - Feb 13: Added Tencent's Hunyuan model AND DeepSeek-R1 for free - Feb 17: Introduced advanced Thinker (T1) model for deeper reasoning - Feb 21: Added image comprehension across all models - Mar 1: Added Windows & macOS desktop versions

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For Tencent, it's a staggering RMB 2.81 bil (~USD 390 mil) ad blitz in 27 days. "Tencent's approach has been unlike anything we've seen before. They’re not just competing on technology; they're leveraging their entire ecosystem to ensure Yuanbao becomes the default AI assistant for Chinese users."

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But the story behind this meteoric rise goes beyond app store rankings—it's a glimpse into China's AI revolution that's unfolding at breathtaking speed. What does it take to dominate the world's largest mobile market?

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In just 10 days, an AI chatbot most Westerners have never heard of has done something remarkable: dominance of China's digital landscape. Tencent's Yuanbao has claimed the throne as the #1 most downloaded free app in Apple's App Store in China, pushing DeepSeek to #2 and ByteDance's Doubao to #4.

Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 17/01/2025

I planned for a long-overdue overhaul and hunkered down to get it across the line before the year ended as promised. This is just a start. Diving into my trove of draft articles and putting them out as-is without worrying about polishing the content.

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 17/01/2025

What a year for Astro! 2024 convinced me to start moving projects to Astro. Excited to 2025.

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 16/01/2025

Great way to kick off the year!

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 16/01/2025

Data collection actually protects users from scammers etc.

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 16/01/2025

There’s been improvements to both WeChat and Alipay to make it easier to add international cards in the past couple of years, and there are some ewallets that partner with the local apps. For example, Malaysia’s TnG ewallet generates an Alipay code for payment.

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 06/12/2024

What they say about the Sith: “Always two there are.”

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 05/12/2024

How AI became my dev partner. I shared about how Cursor AI supercharged my site migration. Here’s a deep dive into my experiment with what is probably the biggest thing in the developer industry this year.

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Reposted by Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙

Astro @astro.build · 02/12/2024

Meet the new astro.new. Powered by IDX ✨

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 21/11/2024

AI had more common sense to question my decision-making and made me rethink my thought process after I asked, “What other questions should I be asking?"

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 21/11/2024

Cursor AI delivered 99% of my vision - that last 1% was just me learning that some of my dream features were about as practical as a chocolate teapot. Turns out even AI knows better than to implement all my ambitious design whims. 😅

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Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 @jenxi.com · 21/11/2024

Just migrated my entire website to Astro with Cursor AI as my co-pilot. Was it reckless to let AI work on a key digital property? Probably, especially when it actually involved merging three WordPress sites on the domain into one. Was it worth it? Without a doubt.