1 billion yuan in 3 years: A last-ditch battle for a small tomato.

"When I first joined the company last year, the pressure was extremely high."

Recalling her experience of joining the Tomato brand in April 2024, Yang Zeli, the head of the marketing department of Yi Ke Da, still remembers it clearly. At that time, she was faced with an almost impossible task: a brand - new brand with a non - cheap unit price while ensuring quality. 85% of fresh produce sales relied on offline channels. To build the brand, it was necessary to enter well - known retail venues such as Hema, Metro, and Baiguoyuan.

If they could succeed, they could establish their own brand and find a growth model for good tomatoes. If they failed, the brand might silently sink into the vast market. This was not just a challenge but an invisible battle of survival.

However, why did tomatoes need a brand? What could an unknown product rely on to enter these venues? Two years ago, Yi Ke Da was repeatedly rejected offline. But two years later, Yi Ke Da became the top - ranked brand in the tomato category on Xiaohongshu, a recommended product in celebrity live - streaming rooms, and an outstanding product in more than 50 high - end offline retail stores. It went from zero to selling one billion yuan worth of products.

On August 7, 2025, Yi Ke Da won the grand prize at the second - session Xiaohongshu Grass - Planting Awards with its remarkable comeback. How did it achieve this?

How can you sell expensive tomatoes?

After five rounds of negotiations with the purchasing staff of Hema, Yang Zeli, the head of the marketing department of Yi Ke Da, was almost in despair.

As an agricultural brand, Yi Ke Da's products are grown in a 3400 - mu smart glass greenhouse. Every step, from seed selection, cultivation, processing to transportation, is carried out to the highest standard. To recreate the taste of childhood tomatoes, they even screened thousands of seeds and finally retained only one optimal variety, truly "selecting the best from a thousand".

However, the real market is no easier than growing tomatoes.

In 2024, although Yi Ke Da had achieved some success on e - commerce platforms, it failed to break into offline channels for a long time. The reason was simple: the high pricing. A 198 - gram pack cost more than ten yuan, about 30 yuan per catty. "How can tomatoes be so expensive?" Yang Zeli said that this was the first reaction of most purchasers. The high price and the low brand awareness became a constraint for Yi Ke Da to break through.

Zhao Yi, the CEO of Yinxiang Media, the agency of Yi Ke Da, was impressed by the brand when she first contacted it. But when she asked a group of friends around her who had extremely high requirements for diet and health, most of them had never even heard of this brand. To truly open up the market and break through the "offline" barrier, Yi Ke Da clearly needed a sharper weapon.

It's not about spending money to sell products, but about carefully selecting products and targeting the right people

Yi Ke Da has a rich variety of products, including tomato juice, tomato skewers, large tomatoes, cherry tomatoes... If they tried to sell all of them with equal effort, it would mean an average distribution of the marketing budget, which would be ineffective. Concentrating the budget on creating a blockbuster product could not only guarantee sales volume but also have a scale and word - of - mouth effect, stimulating the incremental market.

But how to create a blockbuster product? Yi Ke Da and Yinxiang didn't make a decision based on intuition. The Lingxi system provided by Xiaohongshu has accumulated emotional words and word - of - mouth evaluations behind hundreds of thousands of products. With the addition of large - model and algorithm capabilities, it can help brands understand the competition intensity, user search popularity, and trend direction of a certain type of product. After some calculations, Lingxi found that the "cluster - harvested tomatoes" category had high user demand but low supply and low competition. The "cluster - harvested tomatoes" were selected, but who were the target customers?

"The most important thing for a brand is to find its origin group." Yang Zeli said. In the early stage, relying on the user profiles of e - commerce platforms, Yi Ke Da could only vaguely identify general groups such as "middle - class white - collar workers", "Generation Z", and "refined mothers". This was a very broad concept, and all high - end food brands were targeting them.

Taking "refined mothers" as an example, it was a large and complex group. On Xiaohongshu alone, the scale of the relevant population was in the tens of millions. For a new brand like Yi Ke Da with a limited budget, trying to make precise advertisements in such a large user pool was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

When the strategy was at a stalemate, the Yi Ke Da team turned to Lingxi again. Yi Ke Da vividly compared the Lingxi system to a scout: "It can not only help you select products but also help you figure out what kind of people are most suitable for your brand, what kind of paths are feasible, and where you should focus on based on your current budget and stage."

A breakthrough emerged

Through the in - depth analysis of the market population by the "Insight" module of the Lingxi system, the team quickly found that the seemingly large group of "mothers" actually had significant internal differences. New mothers were concerned about parenting skills, while those with older children were anxious about education issues, and their consumption demands were completely different.

After layers of screening, they focused on pregnant mothers among the "mothers" group.

"Pregnant women have different needs from what we imagined. They are more interested in nail art, dressing up, and all kinds of healthy and delicious food. They even search for A - 2 milk. At this stage, they are very willing to treat themselves better." Therefore, they were more likely to be impressed by Yi Ke Da's product concept of "hormone - free and pollution - free".

It's not about having a large number of people but about having a precise target group. The same logic was applied to more population labels: among fitness enthusiasts, they targeted the "refined and self - disciplined type"; among foodies, they selected the "picky and geeky type".

With a good report card, she finally opened the door

After identifying the specific target group, Yi Ke Da quickly formulated a more targeted communication strategy and advertising content around the "cluster - harvested tomatoes". Soon, this product became a hit on Xiaohongshu. Through word - of - mouth, it gradually spread among the most precise target group, forming a ripple effect. It quickly topped the SPU category list, and a note tracing the origin of Yi Ke Da tomatoes was bookmarked 120,000 times by Xiaohongshu users. With the real - consumer word - of - mouth, Yi Ke Da was introduced into many popular live - streaming fields such as "Li Dan's Grocery Store" and "Yi Nengjing's Shopping Corner".

The hit product on Xiaohongshu became the key to enter offline channels.

Yang Zeli knocked on the door of the Hema purchasing department again with a good report card. She sent a message to persuade the Hema purchasing staff: "Give me one more chance. If my proposal fails this time, you can reject me, and we can still be friends. If it succeeds, we'll be better friends." Perhaps moved by her perseverance, the other party agreed to the meeting.

Yang Zeli didn't come empty - handed. She brought the achievements shown by the Lingxi system, as well as the real content and user resonance created around the precise target group. She firmly told the other party that the users of Yi Ke Da were exactly the quality - conscious group that Hema was currently targeting.

This time, Hema finally agreed. But this was just the beginning of the battle.

It will be removed from the shelves if it doesn't perform well in three months

Hema adopts a last - place elimination system for its products. Once a new product is put on the shelves, it only has a three - month protection period. If it fails to achieve remarkable sales during this period, it will be mercilessly removed from the shelves. For fresh produce, the real battlefield is offline. If it fails, Yi Ke Da might completely lose the trust of the channel partners and find it even more difficult to enter other offline channels.

In the cruel business competition, sales volume is the only way to prove oneself.

To win this offline battle, Yi Ke Da closely monitored the sales performance of Hema stores in different regions and input the offline store sales data into Lingxi. Using scientific algorithms, they tried to understand what people in each city really wanted and then adjusted their strategies accordingly.

The user demands vary in different cities, and the sales volume of offline stores largely depends on whether the brand can understand the customer needs.

For example, consumers in Shanghai prefer the combination of "whole - wheat bagels + cluster - harvested tomatoes", which precisely meets their expectation of "low - calorie and high - value" food. In Hangzhou, people like to make homemade fruit wine with tomatoes as the base, focusing on the emotional need for self - relaxation. In Chengdu, consumers prefer local snacks. So the team used local snacks like "plum - flavored chilled tomatoes" as an entry point, emphasizing the resonance of flavor and memory. "What we didn't expect is that the iced tomato juice sells better in the north in winter because they have heating in winter." Yang Zeli said.

With the location - specific strategy of Lingxi, Yi Ke Da quickly established a foothold on Hema. It not only occupied a larger market share in fresh tomatoes but also opened the doors to more offline channels, gradually entering many leading supermarkets. This was a crucial step for Yi Ke Da to expand into a larger market. As Yang Zeli put it, after April 2024, with the good report card from Xiaohongshu, the sales volume has been soaring.

"Lingxi really helped us connect the offline channels, and the month - on - month growth in business volume is nearly 60%." From online insight to offline verification and then back to online feedback, Lingxi has always been like a clear coordinate, guiding Yi Ke Da to find the real direction among the complex population.

Lingxi is the strongest external brain for 'Yi Ke Da'

In fact, the role of the Xiaohongshu Lingxi system for small and medium - sized businesses is more like a long - term partner for intelligent decision - making. "At the beginning, we provided our e - commerce sales data to the platform team and our user profiles. Otherwise, creating content and formulating strategies would easily go astray." Yang Zeli admitted that this was an absolute trust in Xiaohongshu.

In the practice of Yi Ke Da, Yang Zeli deeply felt that to make good use of Lingxi, the first step is not to rush into advertising but to observe. Starting from real - behavior data, Lingxi helps brands skip the traditional and vague advertising methods and directly focus on the 'origin group', and then dig deeper and break through. This approach from point to area is exactly the 'anti - funnel model' advocated by Lingxi - first target the right people and then increase the brand awareness.

With this highly granular insight, the operable population assets of Yi Ke Da quickly expanded from hundreds of thousands to over 15 million, laying a foundation for subsequent sales growth.

Yang Zeli called Lingxi the "strongest external brain": "Once you use it correctly and effectively, it's not about how many products it can help you sell on Xiaohongshu, but it can become an intelligent advisor guiding our overall business."

In this process, she also internalized the thinking of Lingxi into her own methodology - the interaction of products, content, and data drives real growth, which has become the key for more and more emerging brands to stand out.

Ultimately, the reason why the Lingxi system can understand and identify people is not just about technology but the unique platform gene of Xiaohongshu - the records and sharing from real life. Every content trace left by users voluntarily is the fertile soil for Lingxi to grow.

"The most valuable thing about Lingxi is not its function as a tool but the platform's gene." Yang Zeli mentioned. Because Xiaohongshu is a community that emphasizes user interests and "human - touch content", Lingxi has more vitality in understanding people and matching interests, rather than just focusing on click - through rates and ROI. Brands and the platform form a positive cycle, creating a more sustainable growth path.

One billion yuan in sales is not the end but just a chapter in many stories

This is not the unique experience of Yi Ke Da. At the site of the "Second - session Xiaohongshu Grass - Planting Awards", a group of once - unknown small and medium - sized brands are gradually coming into the public eye with the empowerment of Lingxi.

Xiaohongshu also announced on - site that from now on, the Lingxi system will be officially open to all merchants and brands. Any brand that has registered a "Enterprise Professional Account" on Xiaohongshu can directly log in and use Lingxi. At the same time, the mini - program "Grass - Planting AID" built on Lingxi data has also been fully launched. Brand managers can keep an eye on the changes of their potential products, industry popularity, and relevant trends on their mobile phones at any time.

From content creation to the product shelf, from online grass - planting to offline growth, the support of Lingxi is not a one - time tool empowerment but a long - term accompanying and continuously evolving ability system, which is helping more and more brands overcome the anxiety about traffic and accumulate their own population assets.

For many small and medium - sized brands with similar experiences, the story of Yi Ke Da is not the end but a new map to growth.

It shows that in an era of "human - touch", good products are not created by heavy investment but are understood, trusted, and naturally recommended.

For small and medium - sized brands still struggling to find a way out of the dilemma, perhaps they can start from here, take more precise steps, and go further.