Source: 36 krypton
writing ｜ Li Hanzhang
edit ｜ Jewel
Source | Salt Finance (ID: nfc-yancaijing ）
Cover Source ｜ Enterprise official website
For Jiang Yu, a mental worker, it is normal for him to lose sleep until two or three o'clock in the morning after working at high saturation in the daytime.
After staying in the hotel for a week on business, she bought the pillow and mattress back home.
The pillow bought by Jiangyu is the self operated memory pillow of Yaduo Hotel. From the perspective of business data, selling pillows has become one of Yaduo's main businesses.
The financial report shows that in 2023, the retail business revenue of Yaduo will grow to 972 million yuan, accounting for 20.81% of the total revenue, which exceeds the revenue share of Yaduo's self operated hotels.
Memory pillow "deep sleep pillow pro" is a popular item in Yaduo retail. Public data shows that the cumulative sales of "deep sleep pillow pro" will exceed 1.2 million in 2023. If the retail price of the product is 309 yuan, Yaduo's revenue from selling pillows alone will exceed 365 million yuan.
The front desk staff of Yaduo said that when a guest left the hotel, "he ordered 12 pillows at one time".
It is better to sell pillows than to open a hotel. Yaduo, who is "neglectful", is going to become the "first pillow"?
Sell pillows for the whole hotel
In order to sell pillows, Yaduo can be regarded as a force of the whole hotel.
The most prominent thing in the lobby of other hotels is the art installation. The pillow occupies position C in the lobby of Yaduo Hotel.
In the most prominent position in the lobby of Yaduo Hotel, Yaduo's own brand pillows/image source: Photographed by reporter of Yanjing Finance The reporter from Yanjing Finance and Economics noticed that pillows of different specifications were displayed in the core area of the lobby in a Yaduo hotel in Beijing. Customers who need to take the elevator will pass this area.
The "bedding" of pillow sales starts from check-in.
As long as you are a member of Yaduo, the reception desk will present a "deep sleep pillow pro" to customers to experience during their stay.
When checking in at Yaduo, the front desk will present a "deep sleep pillow pro" to customers for experience/source: Photographed by reporter from Yanjing Finance Apart from Yaduo, no hotel pillow has such a strong sense of existence that the front desk needs to make a solemn recommendation to customers.
In Yaduo, from the front desk to the cleaning room, it seems that every clerk can incarnate into pillow sales at any time. Occasionally, when asked about the functional differences between different pillows, the other party can also talk about them in detail. They even mentioned that Yaduo's pillows will change their hardness according to the temperature. They will be harder in winter and softer in summer.
The service experience of free trial sleeping pillow products accurately sniped everyone's "taking advantage" mentality. After receiving the free experience of "deep sleep pillow pro", many members will take it away when they leave the store.
However, the "deep sleep pillow pro" promoted by Yaduo is not cheap. Through comparison of Yaduo app, Tmall flagship store and JD proprietary flagship store, the reporter from Yanjing Finance found that even if discount is included, The average price of this product is also above 300 yuan.
On Yaduo app, the most expensive pillow is the "Sleeping Composite Down Pillow", which starts from 599 yuan.
This is more than twice as expensive as the pillows of home textile giants such as Fuanna (002327. SZ) and Luolai Life (002293. SZ). Some brands of pillows on the market can buy a pair for 70 yuan.
Li Hang, a fan of Yaduo Hotel, has been slow to start because of the slightly high price of Yaduo pillows. The nature of Li Hang's work requires frequent business trips, and the pillow has become an important reason why he chose to stay in Yaduo Hotel.
Once, he looked at the pillows on display in the lobby of Yaduo Hotel in Zhongshan City, and a clerk enthusiastically introduced relevant products to him.
A pair of pillows cost six or seven hundred yuan, which was not cheap for Li Hang, who had just entered the workplace at that time. He added pillows to the shopping cart, and Li Hangcai bought them after six months of promotional activities.
Li Hang compared the "deep sleep pillow pro" with the ordinary pillow in Yaduo Hotel room, "it seems more supportive, I can't describe it, but it's very comfortable".
In "Double 11" in 2023, Yaduo pillow brand's GMV on third-party e-commerce platform will exceed 250 million yuan, which is 6 times the turnover of "Double 11" in 2022. Its star product, "Deep Sleeping Pillow PRO", claims to have "topped the sales of pillow categories on various e-commerce platforms" on JD, Tmall and other platforms.
Hotel is also a retail scene
Yaduo, who runs a hotel, why did he suddenly start the pillow business?
Hotel accommodation is divided into off season and peak season, but household products can be sold at any time. The Yan Finance reporter found that the gross profit rate of the hotel industry is less than 20%, and the gross profit rate of the household retail industry can reach 40% - 60%.
Retail is a good business. Wang Haijun, the founder of Yaduo, discovered this. He said in an interview with the media that the hotel is not only a scene of accommodation, but also a scene of sleep.
In other words, in the hotel scene, Pillows, mattresses, towels, bath towels, hand sanitizer and other products that can be stuffed in the scene are potential business opportunities.
Yaduo currently owns three original lifestyle brands, dormant scene brand, odor aesthetic brand, and all-round travel brand/image source: Yaduo official website Yaduo calls its retail business "scene retail", and has created three consumer brands - dormant scene brand "Yaduo Planet", odor aesthetic brand "Sahe", and all-round on the road travel brand "Z2GO&CO.".
All three brands are related to hotels. The main products of Yaduo Planet are pillows, four piece sets and mattresses, Sahe's main body wash shampoo and fragrance, and Z2GO&CO. deals in water cups, trolley boxes and other products.
In this sense, Yaduo is not only a hotel, but also a new consumer. According to the 2023 financial report, Yaduo currently has 63 million members, all of whom are potential targets of Yaduo retail, while those consumers who have not lived in Yaduo but have purchased its peripheral products have fed back and cultivated future guests of Yaduo Hotel.
According to Yaduo's prospectus, in 2022, the repurchase rate of Yaduo members will be 52.8%.
However, Yaduo is not without worries when the pillows are selling like hot cakes.
The retail market is more intense. In terms of pillows, Yaduo needs to face not only the old home textile brands, but also the supermarkets that will become their own brands, as well as Internet giants such as NetEase and Made in Tokyo.
The technical barrier of pillows is not high, not to mention that Yaduo does not build its own factory, but chooses Dream Lily as the OEM.
For products without technical barriers, Yaduo has to be alert to the imitators swarming in the market after a brand succeeds.
Aside from pillows, Yaduo has not found the second best selling item for a long time. With more competitors and slower market growth, Yaduo, which only relies on pillows to squeeze into the retail market, may still need to maintain a sense of crisis.
Light assets, heavy liabilities
Back to Yaduo's main business, hotel.
Under the tide of cost reduction and efficiency increase in the global tourism industry, the competition in the hotel industry has become increasingly fierce. Compared with Huazhu, Jinjiang and Shoulv, Yaduo is far from its competitors in terms of revenue and scale.
The financial report shows that in 2023, Yaduo Group will achieve a revenue of 4.666 billion yuan and a net profit of 739 million yuan. Both revenue and net profit are less than a quarter of Huazhu.
Performance comparison of four hotel groups in 2023
In the hotel industry, which is a long slope and thick snow track, the focus of enterprise competition is not only the quality of products and services, but also the scale advantage.
According to the China Hotel Association, Yaduo ranked seventh among the top ten hotel brands in 2023 with a market share of 1.84%. The top five hotel brands with a market share of more than 60% are Jinjiang, Huazhu, Shoulv, Green and Dongcheng.
The market is increasingly focused on leading hotel brands. At the same time, many leading hotel brands are still running around and opening stores against the trend.
Yaduo is also one of them. In 2023, Yaduo will open nearly 300 new stores. By the end of 2023, Yaduo has opened more than 1200 hotels, and 617 hotels are to be built or to be developed.
At the financial report conference call, Yaduo's management said that it planned to expand to 2000 stores by the end of 2025, doubling the number of stores on the basis of the current number.
However, Yaduo still has a certain gap compared with its competitors.
In 2023, Huazhu Group will open 1641 new stores in China, 3061 hotels to be opened, and 9263 hotels in operation in China; Jinjiang Hotel has a net increase of 828 hotels in China, with a total of 12448 hotels in operation.
According to relevant data, among more than 1200 stores in Yaduo, Direct stores account for about 3% and franchise stores account for 97%.
The expansion of the number of franchise stores means that Yaduo also needs to invest more funds to support the operation of these stores, including but not limited to advertising, market operation, brand promotion and other aspects.
This is also reflected in the financial report. In 2023, the total operating costs and expenses of Yaduo will reach 3.8 billion yuan, still accounting for more than 80% of the total revenue, higher than the industry average.
Although the number of franchise stores accounts for a large proportion, and Yaduo is also more "light on assets", the high debt ratio of Yaduo Hotel has been questioned in the capital market.
In 2023, Yaduo's debt ratio will be 68.72%, although it will decrease by 6.35% compared with the previous year. However, in terms of the amount of liabilities, the total amount of liabilities of Yaduo will increase from 1.681 billion yuan in 2021 to 4.527 billion yuan in 2023.
In this regard, Zhao Huanyan, a senior economist in the tourism hotel industry, believes that Yaduo Hotel is a self-made enterprise listed in the epidemic, which is different from the enterprises that were on track before the epidemic. "High debt ratio and high operating costs are understandable".
He told Yan Finance that the average RevPAR of Yaduo Hotel was nearly 400 yuan, which exceeded the average level of five-star hotels.
The average room price of Yaduo Hotel in different cities is around 400 yuan/source: screenshot of Autoctrip Another hotel industry analyst, who did not want to be named, told Yancai that under the condition of stable cash flow and strong solvency, the impact of appropriate liabilities on enterprises was relatively limited. He believes that under the environment of weak demand side, Yaduo will achieve 77.8% OCC (occupancy rate) and 464 yuan ADR (average room price) in 2023, which is already a very good level in the hotel industry.
In horizontal comparison with the first echelon of domestic hotel groups, Yaduo, with a net profit of 739 million yuan in 2023, is home to the first hotel group with a net profit of 795 million yuan.
In general, Yaduo is a rapidly developing hotel brand with the high-end boutique positioning and retail business. Zhu Xinjiang, a well-known hotel investor and founder of Zhonghui Jingyu Hotel Group, believes that the first domestic hotel group, Home Inn, has a tendency to fall behind in the first echelon, and "Yaduo is expected to enter the first echelon in the future".
