It’s no secret that breaking through in China’s fiercely competitive dairy industry is no easy feat. While sales in the chilled yogurt category have sharply declined, Simple Love Yogurt has defied the odds, achieving remarkable growth and becoming the fastest-growing brand in the category. Why?Over the past two decades, only a handful of chilled yogurt brands in China have secured top-tier funding. Yet for Simple Love Yogurt, it took only six years to move from its first product launch to achieving Series B financing. Why?

Simple Love’s Three Pillars:

Big Trends, Grand Vision, and Extreme Innovation.
“And nothing else.”

What does “extreme innovation” mean for Simple Love?
In a product-first world, why has Simple Love Yogurt chosen to embrace service design?

Simple Love’s co-founder Liu Ruizhi joined mid-to-senior managers from R&D, offline sales, supply chain, branding, product development, and online operations at CBi China Bridge. Together, they applied service design methodologies to co-create and unlock valuable results.

Service design is a systematic approach born for the post-product era. It helps businesses holistically re-examine their products, brands, business models, and operational processes, leading to enhanced or redefined user experiences.

01 What Is Service Design?

  • How do we create a seamless, rhythmic purchasing experience?
  • How do we educate users while selling products?
  • How do we establish emotional connections between products and users?
  • How do we integrate products into the various scenarios of our target users’ lives?

CBi China Bridge’s unique service design model combines its proprietary CBI framework with a signature “learn-and-do” training approach, integrating systematic methodologies with real-world challenges. This process uses projects to drive learning and learning to promote practical implementation.

02 What We Think vs. What Users Think

“If we don’t know how our online UV (unique visitors) is generated, who our users are, or what they need, it only proves we don’t truly understand them.”

The Customer Insights Module employs methods such as user diaries and immersive observations to develop user personas. This helps the team identify and align on user needs, delight points, and pain points, transforming “what we think” into “what users think.”

(Simple Love team members simulate the experience of buying yogurt as users in a supermarket.)

03 Selling Products vs. Selling Experiences

A great product is not just about its physical appearance—it’s about the emotional experience users have when interacting with it.The Brand Value Module uses tools like user journey maps and experience drivers to guide the team in reflecting on the entire user experience, from the product on the shelf to the post-purchase phase. The goal: to ensure that Simple Love’s brand values resonate deeply with users throughout this journey.Ten innovative methods for enhancing user experience sparked fresh thinking and uncovered new opportunities.

(From tangible to intangible.)

 

04 A One-Time Boost vs. A Growth Engine

In the Internal Process Module, the focus shifts to ensuring the designed front-end experience is scalable.The goal isn’t just a one-time boost in user experience—it’s about creating a cycle of continuous prototyping and iteration, establishing backend operational mechanisms, fostering a cohesive team, and building a sustainable growth engine.

(Photo: Co-creation in action.)

When asked to describe their two-day experience in one word, team members responded:
“Exciting!” “Worth it!”
“Eye-opening.” “Enlightening.”
“Unforgettable.” “Beyond expectations!”Liu Ruizhi, Simple Love’s co-founder and General Manager of the Marketing Center, shared:
“Over these two days, I’ve seen at least five concepts that we can immediately implement when we return. At the same time, I’ve been reflecting: with the same people and the same challenges, why couldn’t we solve these problems in the office after so long, yet here, we solved them today? Why?”

This is the magic of co-creation.