Zheng Yaonan returns, when will the urban beauty become sexy ?

Visual China.

Wen Xiangshan Finance.

As of December 25th, the ** price of urban beauty is 0236 yuan shares. And this stock price state of less than 1 yuan has also lasted for nearly three years.

Looking back on the past, since its listing in 2014, the revenue has reached a maximum of 509.6 billion yuan, with a market value of more than 20 billion Hong Kong dollars, and now (at the end of 2022), the revenue has fallen to 300.9 billion yuan, and the market value shrank to less than 600 million yuan.

We can't help but ask, what happened to the urban beauties in the past?Now the founder Zheng Yaonan's second venture after his return, can this former "No. 1 Chinese underwear stock" stand up again?When will we see again the urban beauty that has been sought after by thousands of women?

Unlike most brand companies that fail to gain insight into the changes in the trend of the times in advance and decline, Urban Beauty has failed to find the right person at the right time to lead the company to correctly undertake the market dividends brought by the change in the trend of women's underwear consumption.

The key point is the "right people", that is, management.

You must know that in 2016, Urban Beauty experienced a decline in revenue and net profit for the first time since its listing, and the inventory reached a record of 11After the scale of 5.1 billion yuan, the founder team represented by Zheng Yaonan has a keen insight into the problem, that is, "customers have changed".

There are two main points: one is the diversification of purchase channels, compared with traditional street stores, consumers have also begun to buy in shopping malls and other emerging channels;The second is the diversification of the purchase of underwear, compared with the mainstream "** bra" in the past, a new generation of young women began to favor comfortable underwear without underwires or size.

In this regard, the founder team of Urban Beauty has also tried a series of reform measures, such as increasing the research and development of innovative products, increasing the development of e-commerce channels, and so on. But perhaps these measures solve short-term problems, or lack of confidence in their own management level, Urban Beauty then hired Victoria's Secret executive Ms. ST as the chief strategy officer (American) in 2017 and ushered in the former executive of Adi in 2019, and thus opened the reverse pit road of Urban Beauty in the era of comfortable underwear growth.

On the one hand, in the "Victoria's Secret era" of urban beauty, Ms. ST first hired French designers to improve design, American fashion trend experts to improve products, Japanese technical experts to improve technology, and German "Roland Berger" consulting ** chain and strategy, etc. Later, the 6th generation image was launched, and the pedestrian street store was renovated, and the English logo "cosmo lady" was further strengthened while weakening the Chinese logo "Urban Beauty".

It's clear,At that time, Ms. ST's transformation focus seemed to be still the traditional route, and the only innovation was to add Victoria's Secret's unique high-end model to the urban beauty, and the target market and people also changed to more open and diverse first- and second-tier cities and consumer groups.

Objectively speaking, under the wave of consumption upgrading in 2017, the high-end transformation idea of urban beauty seems to be logical at first glance, but why did it later cause a huge loss of nearly 1.3 billion yuan in 2019?

The answer lies in the fact that the drastic change in the market positioning of the urban beauty brand has not only affected the original market consumer group, but also destroyed the profit logic of the normal channel structure.

For a long time in the past, one of the major characteristics of China's trend trend was that the first and second-tier cities were the first to explode, and then slowly spread to the third- and fourth-tier markets and lower. Since Urban Beauty itself is a brand that relies on the third- and fourth-tier mass market to generate revenue, the Victoria's Secret style led by Ms. ST and the bells and whistles may indeed be in line with the aesthetics of first- and second-tier cities, but consumers in the third- and fourth-tier markets may not be able to "get", so the franchisees, the revenue pillars of Urban Beauty at that time, are naturally unwilling to pay.

Of course, on the other hand, the reluctance of franchisees is that due to the higher economic income level of first- and second-tier cities and the fact that international brands are more clustered, domestic apparel brands have now tacitly formed a model of "first- and second-tier brands, and third- and fourth-tier revenue and profit scale", such as the rise of Anta and Bosideng. So, nowThe impact of urban beauties on the high-end and first- and second-tier markets is undoubtedly unprofitable and unacceptable for franchisees, so it has become inevitable to look at each other.

Tianyancha APP shows that at the end of 2018, Urban Beauty had 7,305 stores, of which 1,406 were self-operated stores and 5,899 franchised stores. By the end of 2019, Urban Beauty had 5,970 stores, including 1,269 self-operated stores, 4,701 franchised stores, and 1,198 franchised stores closed within a year.

Correspondingly, in 2018, the revenue of urban beauty's "sales to franchises" was 2.8 billion yuan, but in 2019, it fell sharply to 19500 million yuan, and only 4 in the first half of this year4.7 billion yuan ......

On the other hand, let's look at the "Adi era" of urban beauty, in August 2019, the former executive of Adi took office and hired Boston Consulting Group to formulate business strategies and strategy implementation, that is, product transformation - return to focus on practical, functional and cost-effective products, focusing on technology, health, comfort, and good looks.

Objectively speaking, the strategy of urban beauty in this period is actually quite similar to the positioning of current brand products, but unfortunately,Urban Beauty's original "fast fashion" and "** product positioning, the main focus is on the social scene of YueheThe core customer group is mainly young girls in the third and fourth tier markets;WhileNow the simple comfort category that Adi executives are aiming at is mainly a non-social casual and self-pleasing scene, which belongs to what they wear when they are resting and wandering without seeing people.

Although the target groups of the two overlap, in essence, one belongs to Zara and the other belongs to the Uniqlo type, and the style focus is obviously different.

As a result, Urban Beauty seems to have once again appeared in the contradiction between product positioning and the target group of the brand market, which also makes it possible to reduce social demand sharply due to the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020 and 2021, and in the context of the growth of the comfort product market, Urban Beauty has handed over two unqualified report cards one after another.

In 2020, Urban Beauty will achieve a revenue of 305.7 billion yuan, up from 40.0 billion in 20198.2 billion yuan, down 2.5 billion1%；Net profit attributable to the parent company was -1$1.8 billion. In 2021, Urban Beauty will have a revenue of 335.5 billion yuan, and the net profit attributable to the parent company fell by 318 percent year-on-year3% to -49.4 billion yuan ......

The failure of two key turning points made the urban beauty wake up: foreign monks may not necessarily chant scriptures.

So, at the end of 2021, the company's founder, Zheng Yaonan, returned to management and started the second entrepreneurial plan of Urban Beauty.

In terms of brand positioning, Zheng Yaonan chose to adjust the urban beauty to "the leading professional underwear in the country", and the focus shifted to "sales".In terms of products, focusing on popular models, streamlining product lines, and creating "good but inexpensive underwear products" have become the core competitiveness of urban beauty. To this end, Urban Beauty has successively launched a series of new products such as soft core cups and dust-free cotton.

In terms of store operation strategy, Urban Beauty divides offline stores into three categories, ** the main brand potential energy, N store is mainly profitable, and the special store is to clean up the goods out of season and reduce inventory. At the same time, at the end of 2022, Urban Beauty launched the "100 Cities and 1000 Stores" campaign, wanting to increase channel expansion efforts in nearly 3,000 counties and cities in China......

can be found,Now Zheng Yaonan and Urban Beauty's second venture is actually filling the "hole" dug in the past Victoria's Secret era and Adi era, that is, a "rectification of chaos" for offline channel franchisees and consumers, as well as brand market positioning.

Judging from the results, Zheng Yaonan's strategic adjustment is indeed effective.

For example, in 2022, although Urban Beauty's revenue has hit the lowest record since its listing, it will be 300.9 billion yuan, down 10 percent year-on-year33%, but in the context of the decline in revenue in the "retail" and "e-commerce" segments, the revenue of "sales to franchisees" increased by 49% year-on-year to 93.6 billion yuan, there are signs of significant improvement in relations with franchisees.

In addition, sales and marketing expenses decreased by 210%, a decrease of 18On the basis of 8% "throttling", the net profit attributable to the parent company of Urban Beauty in 2022 will increase by 106 compared with the same period in 202169% to $33.02 million. And in the first half of this year, Urban Beauty's revenue fell by 15On the basis of 49%, its net profit also appeared again 15812% growth performance.

At the same time, compared to 2021, Urban Beauty 9The inventory scale of 6.4 billion yuan is high, and after Zheng Yaonan takes over, the inventory scale of Urban Beauty will drop to 7 in 20220.3 billion yuan, 5500 million yuan ......

As a result, the biggest problem left by Urban Beauty is the lack of investment growth in the decline in market revenue.

In fact, if you look at it from the perspective of an ideal market, Xiangshan Finance believes that the future of urban beauty has the imagination to grow into cigarette butt stocks.

There are two main points: one is the new market trend of further equality and omni-channel integration of women's underwear consumption choices.

In the era of Victoria's Secret and Adi, why did Urban Beauty fail?The reason is that the brand and product positioning are changing too quickly, and the corresponding customer group structure cannot keep up. But now, with the continuous development of the Internet and e-commerce channels, as well as the full awakening of female consumers, the sizeless Internet celebrity underwear that exploded in first- and second-tier cities will soon spread to the lower-tier market, and the choice of underwear consumption will get a new equal.

As for the weakness of the poor performance of the online channels of urban beauty, in the previously released "China Women's Underwear Industry Research Report", iResearch pointed out that "online underwear brands and e-commerce channels achieve each other, and with the weakening of traffic dividends and the highlighting of the value of online experience, the current and future underwear retail channels will show an omni-channel integration trend."

So in this case, the urban beauties who have performed poorly in online channels and the ubras who have lagged behind in the construction of offline channels are actually in the stage of ...... in terms of market competition

The second is the reverse pursuit of underwear dividends brought about by women's age and body anxiety.

From underwired bras to sizeless underwear, modern young women pursue a healthy, comfortable and pleasing wearing experience, and do not need to rely on the eyes of others to determine their charm value.

ButFor most young and middle-aged women with stable families, age and body anxiety are topics that can never be avoided. Therefore, under this potential anxiety, simple, solid colors and no fancy sizeless underwear will be considered by many consumers to be old-fashioned and not uprightTherefore, this huge consumer group may prefer traditional underwear, especially in the third and fourth tier and below markets.

That isIn the pursuit of pleasing others at the same time, to achieve self-please, the main focus is social attributes.

However, from the perspective of urban beauty, although ** and comfort experience are not opposites, it may be that the market failures in the past have made the current urban beauty a little less attached to the brand label, but more focused on health and comfort. So when it comes to **, if consumers can't think of the urban beauty brand for the first time, Zheng Yaonan's second entrepreneurial road may add a lot of uncertainty.

After all, now Urban Beauty's "national best-selling professional underwear" is a correct but broad positioning and cognitive point, and it is difficult to anchor consumers with a label-style brand memory ......