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Wen/Liang Xiao
Source/Zero state LT (ID: LingTai_LT)
Luo Min, a fan of tuyere, has started chasing tuyere again.
On July 17, Luo Min, the founder and CEO of Qudian, Fu Seoul, the star, and Jia Nailiang worked together in the Diaoyin studio to bring food, broadcast and goods. According to the cicada mother, the number of viewers of this live broadcast exceeded 95 million, and the cumulative sales of a single show reached 250 million yuan. On July 18, at the brand strategy conference of "Qudian Prefabricated Dishes", Luo Min announced the introduction of prefabricated dishes and said that he would support 100000 users to start businesses and open offline stores in the next three years.
Live broadcast rooms and prefabricated dishes are still in the forefront of the industry. From 2017, they led Qudian to go public, with a market value of more than $10 billion to today's $300 million. Because the stock price has been less than $1 for a long time, Qudian even received a delisting letter from the New York Stock Exchange. Luo Min, who has experienced ups and downs, claims that prefabricated dishes will be his second venture.
But there is no denying the fact that most of the stories about the transformation of Qudian ended in failure, such as campus loans, luxury e-commerce, high-end housekeeping, bus cars, etc. Luo Minhao gambled on prefabricated dishes this time, and the industry was mixed. Some people think that as an entrepreneur, Luo Min seldom went deep into an industry, and the success of New Oriental made him join in this industry quickly, even if he was blackmailed by Dong Yuhui, I will still talk about it calmly.
But can Luo Min's transformation save the rickety interesting store?
01
Why the transformation project has failed repeatedly
According to the financial report, the total revenue of Qudian in the first quarter was 201.8 million yuan, down 60.9% year on year; The net loss attributable to shareholders of Qudian was 142.8 million yuan, down more than 120% year on year. Qudian, which was widely questioned, did make a series of efforts to transform after its listing, but none of the projects survived for more than two years:
At the end of 2017, Dabai Auto was launched, and the main car was purchased by renting. In September 2018, it was revealed that Dabai Automobile was closing its stores on a large scale, closing 179 stores nationwide to 48. In May 2019, Qudian Group announced in its financial report that the sale of new cars would be suspended, marking its official closure. Industry insiders believe that Dabai Auto's rental purchase business is seriously lack of market awareness, and the rapid expansion has led to the rupture of the capital chain.
Three years later, in March 2020, Qudian launched the cross-border luxury e-commerce platform Wanlimu. When Wanlimu was launched, it invited many stars as its platform and used 10 billion yuan of subsidies to enter the luxury e-commerce market. In June 2020, Qudian invested 100 million dollars in Siku, becoming the largest shareholder of the latter. The two sides will carry out comprehensive strategic cooperation in the field of global luxury e-commerce. Siku soon ran into difficulties due to arrears with suppliers and repeated complaints from users. In addition, due to the lack of cross-border luxury e-commerce experience, Wanlimu still has the problem of fake luxury goods. In April 2021, Wanlimu will open its inventory and clear its warehouse, and the project will enter the closing stage.
However, Luo Min seems to have not yet summed up the experience of failure, and the new project started again. Ten months after the establishment of the Wanlimu project, Luo Min followed the Wanlimu brand to create a children's education brand - Wanlimu Children. This children's education project was once the hope of Qudian, which resulted in a huge financial burden. In the first quarter of operation, Qudian's revenue fell 46% in the current quarter and 59.1% in the subsequent quarter.
▲ Picture: Luo Min Farewells to Children's Miles on Social Platform Results In March 2022, Luo Min announced the farewell of Wanlimu Children's Project in the circle of friends.
Try not only this, but also the "Vipshop" and "Fun Learning" projects. "Vipshop" focuses on the business of "all-round homemaker". "Interesting learning" is an extension of the previous project, focusing on quality education for children aged 0~9 years. Of course, they have disappeared now.
It can be seen that Qudian was eager to transform. The real reason is that its main financial lending business is too negative. Later, the state strengthened the supervision of consumer finance, and the normal revenue of Qudian was greatly reduced, so a successful transformation was urgently needed to get out of the predicament.
However, as the insiders said, "almost all the transformation projects launched by Qudian after its listing are speculative and hot", and "come fast and go fast". In the eyes of many Internet practitioners, the successive failures in the transformation of Qudian are closely related to Luo Min's lack of clear strategic planning and awareness of himself. "Luo Min's idea has always been to cut leeks. He has never really done anything. For him, there is only one logic: whether there are enough leeks and whether the sickle is fast enough." Lian Qingchuan, a media person and writer, said on the social platform.
What does Luo Min think about the high-profile participation of Qudian in the prefabricated vegetable track this time?
02
Prefabricated dishes
True east wind or false tuyere
According to the Diaoyin Food and Beverage Industry Report released in June, compared with the same period in 2021, the sales volume of prepared dishes increased by 1503% from January to April 2022, and the prepared dishes became increasingly popular.
Why can prefabricated dishes be hot? The author believes that it is mainly the impact of the epidemic on offline restaurants. Prefabricated dishes have good convenience, and fast food attracts young consumers. Maybe Luo Min is also interested in this outlet, and once again paid a lot of money. On July 17, Luo Min's Tiao Yin account broadcast a total of 19 hours, breaking the record of Tiao Yin live broadcast with goods.
▲ Picture: Luo Min and Jia Nailiang are working hard to promote The cost of this live broadcast also includes: 1500 iPhones are used for lottery, and the cost reaches 10 million; At least 1000 carnivals will be painted on the day of live broadcast at a cost of 3 million yuan; Jia Nailiang's appearance fee is one million; The goods behind the 0.01 yuan prefabricated dishes are replenished, with a level of 1 million, worth more than 5 million yuan.
According to the rough calculation of analysts in the live broadcast industry, the live broadcast activity of Luo Min, a funny shop, cost more than 100 million yuan on July 17 and produced several hot searches. The following day, the stock price of Qudian soared 40.3%. As of the trading day on July 19, the total market value of Qudian had risen from $300 million to $422 million, equivalent to nearly 1 billion yuan.
▲ Figure: Share price of Qudian It seems that it is worthwhile to spend one billion yuan to gain one billion yuan, but the industry also has different views.
Feng Tao, an Internet researcher, said to Zero State LT (ID: LiingTai_LT) that the problem of campus usury at Qudian has not been solved, and the response given has not convinced the market, which has led to the continuous shrinking of its main business. After its listing, various kinds of catching up with the capital outlets. How much pressure can prefabricated dishes put on Qudian? From past experience, it is not optimistic. "
After the NYSE delisting warning, Qudian didn't respond. When talking about prepared dishes, Luo Min said that she expected to provide convenient, delicious and clean food for hundreds of millions of consumers around the world, and also hoped to bring some small and beautiful changes to people's lives through efforts.
But for now, it seems that this is just talk.
As we all know, the main problem of the prefabricated vegetable industry is the high degree of industrial dispersion. The overall scale of domestic enterprises related to prefabricated dishes is not large, and the standardization system of the whole industrial process has not yet formed. Due to the structural problems of domestic cold chain transportation, regional eating habits and other structural problems, the market also lacks benchmark enterprises.
Another problem with prepared dishes is the taste. A catering practitioner told Zero State LT (ID: LingTai_LT) that it is difficult to limit Chinese food with a unified standard. Good dishes must be cooked by a chef to form the characteristics of the restaurant. "If you change it to a cooking package, the taste experienced by customers is still far from that made by the chef." Therefore, the substitution of prepared dishes for chefs is limited. ”
The catering person added that as early as 2015, many start-ups had been working on the business model of prefabricated dishes, and brands such as My Kitchen and Young Dishes King had also been born, but they did not develop for various reasons.
For consumers, the most important thing to prepare prepared dishes is commodities, but the catering staff think that the core of preparing prepared dishes is commodity planning. The commodity planning determines what special products to sell at the right time to obtain the opportunity of selling. For example, it is obviously difficult to successfully launch the baked whole goat prepared dishes in midsummer. Prefabricated dishes are not only for catering products, but also more importantly for understanding consumers so as to go further.
On this basis, there is still a long way to go for the pre prepared dishes in Qudian. Only clear commodity planning and efficient operation can make the pre prepared dishes better.
03
Little connection with main business
How to compete
Since 2022, prefabricated dishes have become a hot target area in the investment community, including some local governments, retail enterprises, and innovative enterprises that have transformed around prefabricated dishes. The main business of Qudian is to build a staging mall. The layout of prefabricated dishes seems to have nothing to do with the main business of staging,
Luo Min claims that Qudian has a book value of 12 billion yuan, and the budget for prefabricated dishes is not capped. In the future, he hopes to open 200000 offline chain stores and become the leader of prefabricated dishes. In this way, the prepared dishes are not related to the original main business of Qudian, but the financial foundation that has been laid before can help the development of the prepared dishes business.
According to the data of iMedia Consulting, more than 10000 enterprises related to prefabricated dishes will be registered in 2021. The rapid development of the market has brought considerable challenges to a number of prefabricated vegetable enterprises, especially to Qudian.
The following five abilities are particularly critical for the prefabricated dishes of Qudian to achieve the top position in the industry:
First, we should have good product capability. If there is no good product, don't talk about anything else. This is the core;
Second, we should have channel capability. Good products need to be sold to consumers through appropriate channels;
Third point: brand ability, improve your own brand power, and do a good job in marketing;
Fourth point: supply chain capability. With a supply chain of sufficient scale, you will have bargaining power and control costs;
The fifth point: organizational ability, develop each region of the country, each branch organization, unity and cooperation can be good.
A small and beautiful consumer goods company cannot be a leader. With so much investment, Qudian can take the initiative in the fierce competition only when the cost is optimal and the channel network is fully covered.
During the Double 11 last year, the sales of prefabricated dishes on Tmall and JD platforms grew by more than 50%. Therefore, the final channel for the C end to win should be the Internet platform.
At present, the domestic prefabricated vegetable market is still in the initial stage of development and the industry competition is decentralized. There are many challenges in the future market competition pattern. There are still variables about which enterprise can stand out.
Consumers' eating habits, health concepts, food safety hazards, industry supervision and other issues will not disappear with the growth of the future demand for prefabricated dishes, which is also a direct challenge for Qudian.
There is still a long time to run the prefabricated vegetable track, and Qudian also needs to meet various challenges in the future. When doing transformation projects, prefabricated dishes may be a good way. But with 12 billion yuan in cash, can the investment in prefabricated dishes last until Luo Min turns over? Can only expect.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
