Text: Xiangshan Finance.
Known as the "Honey Snow Ice City" in the hot pot industry, the pot circle food exchange has really risen recently.
First of all, it successfully landed in the Hong Kong stock capital market and attracted countless investors. Then he returned to his hometown and opened the first pot ring black pearl direct store in his hometown of Zhengzhou, positioning the high-end route.
How "high" is this high-end?What top ingredients such as king crab and caviar can no longer fully reflect the "luxury" of the pot ring black pearl store, so the store has added hot pot and teppanyaki dine-in services, **The price is 298-798 yuan per person, directly from the beginning to the end of the ......
And what is even more "proud" is that, according to the information previously disclosed by Guoquan, the black pearl store of Guoquan will not only exist in Zhengzhou in the future, but also in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, and even some selected Southeast Asian cities.
Obviously, the upgrade from the "Cinderella" of street civilians to the positioning of celebrities and nobles seems to have been determined to be the focus of the next stage of transformation of the pot circle.
This made many Henan financial and senior leeks, including me, surprised and delighted.
Happily, the once little-known Henan hot pot ingredient shop has grown to a height that needs to be looked up to in a blink of an eye;But what is surprising is that out of professional sensitivity to the capital market, under the current general trend of low-price consumption, will it be a bit of a deviation for the pot circle to go high-end at this time?
High-end layout of the pot ring: a small thing to make a profit, a stinky chess move of strategy
Why should the pot ring be high-end?
In this regard, Jiang Han, a senior researcher at Pangu Think Tank, believes that the opening of the Black Pearl Store in Guoquan Food Exchange can be seen as a strategic adjustment made by it in order to increase revenue and improve the current model.
To put it bluntly, the pot ring black pearl store was born to a large extent in order to improve profitability and improve the ability to resist risks.
After all, judging from the previous prospectus, the gross profit margin and net profit margin performance of the pot ring in the past three years are indeed extremely average, respectively. 41% and. 36%。
In this regard, if the Zhengzhou Guoquan Black Pearl Store is taken as the benchmark, the future profitability of the Guoquan high-end direct-operated store model does exist.
First of all, the location is goodIn the same way that the real estate industry attaches importance to location, the premise of the success of high-end catering is also the ability to select a location. At present, the location of the pot ring black pearl store is in Beilonghu, Zhengzhou, which is known as Lujiazui in Zhengzhou and even Henan.
Secondly,The main focus of the pot ring black pearl is also a scene-based shopping experienceYou can not only buy high-end ingredients in the store, but also roast or eat them directly in the store, which is a bit like the gameplay of Hema but more focused on catering, and the overall innovation and service highlights are quite high.
Therefore, if the pot ring can standardize and replicate the Beilonghu Black Pearl restaurant model across the country in the future, then it may not be possible to achieve the "fame and fortune" of high-end brand and profitability at the same time.
It's just like "the honey of the other, the arsenic of you", when I put aside my personal selfishness of firm support for the "hometown enterprise" pot circle, purely from the perspective of a ** investor,Although taking the high-end route can indeed help the pot ring to achieve profitability, in fact, this is a small thing, a strategically stinky move, and even low emotional intelligence, there is a sense of déjà vu with a "golden bowl" to "ask for food".
Why?It is related to the current consumption trend and the clear investment tendency of the capital market
On December 9, the National Bureau of Statistics released the latest data showing that in November 2023, the national household consumption** decreased by 05%, also down 05%。The CPI (Consumer Consumption ** Index) fell by 0 year-on-year last time5% occurred in November 2020. This also means that the CPI in November 2023 recorded the largest decline in three years.
Obviously, the macro economy is under pressure, and it is an indisputable fact that consumption is sinking and differentiating.
So we see that Ali and JD.com have begun to turn to the low-price route, and BESTORE, which has always prided itself as a high-end snack brand, has also chosen to cut prices, and even Hema is abandoning the label of the middle class and gradually transforming into a discount store.
You know, for BESTORE, the brand positioning is now in the high-end, and it is easier to go even if it is low-end in the future, but now if the low-end brand recognition is set, it will be difficult to go to the high-end market in the future.
But even so, BESTORE still chose to transform and take the route of parity, which shows thatLow price or cost performance is in line with the current consumption trend, and it is also in line with the logic of the capital market's consumption investment.
The most direct manifestation is that the market value of Pinduoduo has recently surpassed Alibaba, directly creating a milestone in the history of e-commerce. However, after the official announcement of the price cut, the stock price of BESTORE increased instead of falling, ushering in a wave of sharp rise. Even after Zhang Liaoyuan, the founder of the "friend business" Three Squirrels, shouted "high-end cost performance" in the circle of friends, the stock price also rose ......
So it seems,Previously, the "people-friendly" label and the "Honey Snow Bingcheng in the hot pot industry" label of Guoquan Food Exchange were exactly the minds of users that other consumer brands could not want, and even would rather sacrifice profits. And looking back, from the listing in November this year to the present, the share price of the pot ring has almost doubled, which may be behind the current low-price consumption outlet.
But now, the pot circle has to take the initiative to give up its biggest brand advantage and stock price rising prospects, and go to the high-end route against the wind, which naturally cannot but be said to be a strategically stinky move.
Of course, some people may say that the high-end transformation of the current pot ring seems to be able to anchor and drive the original food store business. Just like BYD launched a million-level luxury car, the essence is not for the volume of million-level luxury cars, but for the high-end cars of about 300,000 to be more marketable, and to go high-end in order to improve brand bargaining.
But the problem is that compared with BYD, which has a multi-grade series of carsWhere is the anchoring effect of the pot ring?Hardly.
BecauseFor mass consumers, if you dare to raise the price, I will dare to abandon you, even if you have the halo of a high-end brand, it is difficult to earn a brand recognition premium from most consumers.
Besides, I went to buy a pot ring, which is essentially a replacement for a hot pot restaurant, and many people, including myself, choose the pot ring for cheapness.
In fact, from this point of view,Compared with the management of BESTORE who dared to change their formations and adjust their strategic direction in a timely manner, it is not difficult for us to see that the management of the pot circle has a lack of awareness of their own enterprises and a slow adaptation to the change of identity and status, that is, they are still dominated by the operation and management thinking of traditional enterprises in the past, and do not carry out macro strategic layout from the perspective of a listed company in the ever-changing consumer environment.
To put it bluntly, it fails to grasp the main contradiction and core, and the management is not mature enough.
Although this is not difficult to understand, after all, from its birth in 2017 to the current growth of a behemoth with a market value of more than 20 billion, the growth rate of the pot circle is too fast, and it is understandable that the internal strategic management cannot keep up. It's just that even so, in the most fundamental strategic direction choice, the pot circle should still slow down and think more about ......
Let the franchisee make money, and let the real "thigh" of the pot ring be strong
In the official website, the positioning of the pot ring is a "hot pot barbecue ingredients supermarket". In the prospectus, Guoquan is also China's leading one-stop eat-at-home meal product brand, and in terms of retail sales, Guoquan ranked first among all retailers in China in 2022.
Literally, pot rings seem to be a 2C retailer.
However, from the perspective of revenue** and channels, Tianyancha APP shows that the vast majority of the revenue of the pot ring since 2020 has come from selling products to franchise stores, accounting for the proportions respectively. 2% and 903%。Correspondingly, by the end of 2022, there are 9,216 franchised stores in the pot ring, while there are only 5 self-operated stores.
It's clear,The real positioning of the pot ring is not a retailer, but more like an intermediary business maintained by brand franchise
Correspondingly, the main revenue and profit of the pot ring also come from selling ingredients or others to franchiseesTherefore, the more franchisees, the more sales of pot rings, the higher the bargaining power of the upstream, and the higher the gross profit, while continuing to reduce the sales to the franchisee and maintaining the brand image of low price and people.
Therefore,Allowing franchisees to make money and open more franchise stores is the key to further thickening their imagination.
But now, the launch of the Black Pearl direct store of the main high-end route and the high-end layout of the follow-up series seem to mean that the pot ring wants to break away from the shackles of franchisees and achieve profitability in advance.
Objectively speaking, if the market fundamentals of the pot ring are stable enough, then jump out of the opening of direct stores to improve profitability, although at first glance it seems a bit of a sense of "the same hardship, not the same wealth", but in fact, if the pot circle can rely on the direct store model to increase profits, then it is not impossible to give franchisees the initiative to release more profit margins, that is, "curve to save the country".
But the problem is that the high-end market that Black Pearl is aiming at is not as big as imagined, and more importantly, the basic plate of the pot ring composed of franchisees does not seem to be stable.
On the one hand, the number of franchisees in the pot ring increased by 2,568 in 2021 and another 2,352 in 2022. As of September 26 this year, the number of franchise stores in the pot ring has increased by 762 compared with the end of last year, although it still maintains a growth trend, but it is undoubtedly extremely difficult to reproduce the expansion speed of the franchise stores in the remaining two months, so the slowdown in store growth is an indisputable fact in the pot circle.
On the other hand, in the first four months of this year, the number of stores in the pot circle increased by 754, but the number of franchise stores closed at the same time reached 132. And this data is only 279 stores closed in 2022.
From the slowdown in the expansion of franchised stores to the increase in the number of store closures, all of them have released a signal from the side: pot ring franchisees may not be able to make money
There are many reasons behind this, such as the disappearance of the epidemic traffic and the full resumption of dine-in on the impact and impact of eating at home consumption scenarios. Another example is the intensification of competition in the prefabricated food market, especially this year, the capital heat of prefabricated dishes is unprecedentedly strong, which directly brings real market competition pressure to the pot ring.
But in any case, in the case of the impact on the basic plate, the pot circle wants to rush alone for the sake of limited profit improvement, which undoubtedly once again confirms the immaturity of the strategy at the management level.
In fact, after integrating the current innovative model of the black pearl store in the pot ring and allowing franchisees to make money steadily, as well as the current cost-effective consumption trend, Xiangshan Finance can't help but askWhy didn't the pot circle choose to further implement the "Honey Snow Ice City" in the hot pot industry, so as to enter the mass civilian hot pot catering industry?
To know,In many lower-tier cities, pot ring franchisees have explored a set of business models of "opening a food store on the first floor and a pot barbecue restaurant on the second floor", which can not only sell raw materials separately, but also use the pot rings downstairs to retail ingredients to anchor the hot pot catering upstairs.
After all, in the past, my ** pot shop sold you three slices of potatoes for five yuan, and you felt that I was selling it expensive, and I was cheating you, but now if you still don't believe it, go downstairs to buy ingredients and compare them.
As long as the price is set upstairs and downstairs, and the amount of hot pot ingredients is not too outrageous, then consumers have nothing to say, and they may also feel that the hot pot restaurant is high-quality and affordable, after all, the pot ring is also a real big brand.
In this way, the profitability of franchisees seems to be raised, and if the pot ring can standardize and replicate this model, then its revenue fundamentals and future growth will undoubtedly be further improved, which may be the correct way to open the pot ring in ......the future
In fact, objectively speaking, as a financial self-leader located in Zhengzhou, and also a small shareholder of the pot circle, I deeply hope that the pot circle can do better and better, and at the same time adapt to the changes of the times and business trends more quickly, as much as possible to avoid losing watermelons and picking sesame seeds because of small losses.
Especially for the pot circle that has just been listed for less than two months, it may be more likely to harvest greater growth ...... in the future by slowing down now and sorting out its own strength advantages and strategic deficiencies
Disclaimer of WarrantiesThis article is based on the company's statutory disclosures and public information, but the author does not guarantee the completeness and timeliness of the information. Another: **There are risks, and you need to be cautious when entering the market. The article does not constitute investment advice, and whether to invest or not should be determined by yourself.