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Three Squirrels' 'master' persona turns snack-buying into roleplay — 7 Singles' Day wins
A pure e-commerce nut brand turns every touchpoint into roleplay — squirrels serving their 'master', love notes on packs — 7 Singles' Day wins
Three Squirrels (三只松鼠)
What it had to solve
Founded in 2012 as a pure e-commerce snack brand, Three Squirrels had no stores and no heritage; selling commodity nuts online, it needed a reason for strangers to pick it over supermarket staples.
How it works
In May 2012 Zhang Liaoyuan built a small factory in Wuhu, Anhui, and launched online sales a month later with a five-person team. With no stores and no heritage, he bet on e-commerce as the brand's only channel — a risky stance in 2012 — and on brand-building rather than price, using OEM production to keep capital for marketing.
The brand idea was roleplay: three animated squirrels as mascots; Zhang himself went by 'Papa Squirrel' and employees took nicknames starting with the character for 'mouse'; customer service addressed every buyer as 'master' (主人), the way pets talk to owners. Packaging copy spoke in the squirrels' voice — 'we easily opened each other's heart the way we open macadamias' — and boxes arrived with wet wipes and shell bags so the unboxing felt serviced, not shipped. The persona later expanded into a 52-episode cartoon and a theme park in Anhui.
The consistency paid off in numbers: 9 minutes and 26 seconds to RMB 100 million of Singles' Day sales in 2018; the No. 1 slot in Tmall's snack category for seven consecutive Singles' Days; annual sales of RMB 326 million in 2013, USD 370 million in 2015, and past RMB 10 billion in 2019 — the first Chinese snack maker to break the double-digit-billion mark, with over 38 million followers on its flagship Tmall store.
Why it lands
- Roleplay reframes the transaction: being called 'master' by an adorable mascot turns a commodity purchase into a relationship, so the service itself becomes the marketing.
- The persona lives in every layer — box inserts, package copy, replies, video — so no single ad has to carry the brand; the whole experience repeats it.
- Meng (cute) culture gave an e-commerce nobody a memorable, shareable identity at a moment when online snack rivals competed mainly on discount.
What it did
Its Tmall store passed 38 million followers; it topped Singles' Day snacks seven years running, and in 2019 annual revenue crossed RMB 10 billion — China's first snack maker past that mark.
What you can take
If you cannot outspend incumbents, out-act them: one consistent roleplay across service, packaging and content turns buying into an experience people repeat, share and defend.
Since then
The playbook was widely copied and the edge dulled: profit basically flat from RMB 260 million in 2016 to RMB 240 million in 2019, heavy marketing spend squeezing margins, and a 2017 food-safety finding (pistachios with mold above the standard) denting trust. After a July 2019 IPO on the Shenzhen exchange, Three Squirrels pushed offline — roughly 164 own stores and 785 franchise stores by late 2020 — carrying the internet persona back toward physical retail.
Sources
- How the Chinese brand 'Three Squirrels' uses Meng Culture to become No. 1
- Three Squirrels' continued growth is a hard nut to crack
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