Produced by Flower Finance Observation
Editor丨Duozi
What is the main business, my main business is to make money!”
The "Buffett" in the clothing industry, Li Rucheng, the boss of Youngor, always responds so hard whenever people criticize him for not doing his job.
even left a sentence: "My original main business was a farmer, if I don't do a good job, then I am already out of business when I make clothes!".”
Hard is hard, but people can always see him announce his return to his main business many times, but the process does not seem to be perfect.
Not long ago, Youngor announced that it intends to change the company's name "Youngor Group Shares" to "Youngor Fashion Shares".
The key word was changed from "group" to "fashion", Youngor explained that the company has established the strategic goal of building a world-class fashion industry group, and will further focus on the main fashion business in the future.
The word "fashion" is more often used in the field of clothing. Youngor started clothing, so this move is believed that Li Rucheng is finally ready to "close his heart" to do the main business of clothing.
For the layout in the field of clothing, Youngor has previously invested a total of 1.3 billion yuan to take over four stores of Meibang clothing.
The relevant person in charge of Youngor said: "After the acquisition of Meibang clothing stores, we will open Youngor's self-operated stores, mainly to open large stores, and the most important thing for us now is to adjust the channels." ”
The action seems to be very big, Li Rucheng announced his return to focus on the main business of clothing, but it is not the first time, and even every time he announces his return, it is always a little disappointing.
In 2012, the state continued the real estate regulation policy, the real estate market developed steadily, and the industry entered the era of profit equalization. During the same period, ** was also sluggish, continued to bear, and the Youngor investment sector incurred a loss of 23.1 billion yuan.
In the same year, Youngor's clothing business achieved an operating income of 408.3 billion yuan, net profit of 81.8 billion yuan, an increase of 11 over the same period last year37% and 1847%, maintaining a steady growth posture.
In the face of such an environment, Li Rucheng shouted for the first time to return to his main business.
He publicly stated that the company will return to the main business of clothing, and strictly control real estate investment, adjust the scale of investment, and concentrate resources on brand clothing.
Having said that, how to do it is another matter.
Soon after the shouting, the following year, on the pretext of further enriching the development potential, Youngor added 5 new land reserves during the year, with a total land price of 2.6 billion yuan.
And contribute 3400 million yuan, transferred to UnionPay business***404% of the capital contribution;Structural adjustment of available financial assets, and increase strategic investment in Bank of Ningbo.
This move made people see that Li Rucheng seemed to be saying one thing and doing another.
In 2016, Youngor's garment business achieved an operating income of 446.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 005%；Net profit 54.7 billion yuan, down 15 percent year-on-year97%, becoming the company's overall performance growth "drag oil bottle".
Li Rucheng once again announced in a high-profile manner that "it will take 5 years to create another Youngor".
As a result, its subsequent performance was disappointing. 5 years later, in 2021, Youngor's fashion business achieved an operating income of 682.1 billion yuan, which did not double the growth.
During this period, Youngor also continued to invest nearly 4 billion yuan in 2017 to bid for three lands. And in July of the same year, it was announced that it would invest 2 billion yuan to set up Shanghai Youngor Real Estate Development
Youngor said that the establishment of Shanghai Youngor Real Estate Development aims to search for high-quality projects and plots through mergers and acquisitions, expand and strengthen the company's real estate business, and cultivate new profit growth points.
In 2019, Youngor once again emphasized that in the future, it will further focus on the development of the main garment business, and the company will no longer carry out financial equity investment in non-main business areas.
During the reporting period, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the China Securities Regulatory Commission's "Guidelines for the Industry Classification of Listed Companies (Revised in 2012)", the company's industry classification was also adjusted from "real estate" to "textile, garment and apparel industry".
In the following year, the company's net foreign investment was 44.6 billion yuan, but it still continued to increase by 1 over the same period last year3.4 billion yuan. In the same year, it won a number of land plots in the core area of Ningbo by introducing partners or jointly acquiring land.
Every time the return to the main clothing business is announced, the real estate and investment businesses are still jumping repeatedly, making the return seem unreliable. Judging from the financial report, Youngor's return has no significant growth effect.
In 2012, the operating income of Youngor's clothing business was 408.3 billion yuan, accounting for 38 percent of revenue04%；In 2022, the operating income of Youngor's fashion business will be 631.7 billion yuan, accounting for 42 percent of revenue62%。
In the same period, the majority of YOUNGOR's revenue was still dominated by real estate. In 2022, the operating income of the company's real estate business will be 855 billion yuan, accounting for more than 50% of revenue.
In this regard, Li Rucheng once publicly said: "The profits earned by investing in real estate and finance are not earned by Youngor clothing for 30 years." ”
Whether in the real estate finance industry or the clothing industry, Li Rucheng is actually a legend.
He was born in 1951, and when he was 15 years old, he took the initiative to sign up for the lighthouse brigade to work as a farmer in Yadu Village, before graduating from junior high school, and worked for 14 years.
It wasn't until 1980, when he was almost 30 years old, that he ended his main business as a farmer and found a job in the town's youth garment factory.
said that it was a garment factory, but it was just a small workshop that was barely built with 20,000 yuan of resettlement fees for educated youth. The workshop was in the basement under the stage, and even the sewing machines were brought from the workers' homes.
Li Rucheng mentioned: "At that time, I mainly wanted to learn a craft, I learned tailoring, my wife learned tailoring, in case the factory collapsed, we could still open a husband and wife tailor shop." ”
As expected, in the past two years alone, the youth garment factory has been dying, and a notice has been issued that all employees will be given a three-month vacation, aiming to let everyone fend for themselves.
He went to the Northeast, drank 5 meals of wine in two days, and finally returned to Ningbo with a large order of 12 tons of fabric processing, and earned 200,000 yuan from the factory with this order, and continued his life.
Since then, the youth garment factory has continued to sign long-term contracts with the garment factory in Shenyang, and the efficiency of the factory has risen sharply, and the monthly salary of employees has risen from 20 yuan to 72 yuan, and Li Rucheng has also been unanimously elected as the factory director.
After Li Rucheng became the factory director, he quickly led the garment factory to stand out and change its previous appearance.
He first cooperated with Shanghai Kaikai Shirt Factory through "hugging his thighs", and Kaikai Shirt Factory provided trademarks and related technologies for a fee, and Qingchun Garment Factory produced and sold it as a branch of Kaikai Shirt Factory, opening the door.
As a result, in the second year of cooperation, the profit of Qingchun Garment Factory soared from 400,000 yuan to millions, and the sales in the third year reached 10 million yuan.
Then, Li Rucheng, who realized the importance of the brand, began to create his own brand and registered the trademark "Beilun Port" to create his own brand.
When he launched the shirts of the first brand "Beilun Port" to the market, the annual sales once reached 3 million pieces, and it was rated as a best-selling product in the country by the Ministry of Commerce.
However, with the official introduction of the well-known Pierre Cardan foreign brand to China in 1990, Li Rucheng suddenly felt that mid-to-high-end brands were the future of China's clothing market, so he quickly chose to break his wrist.
He decisively abandoned the "Beilun Port" brand, and established a new Sino-foreign joint venture in 1990 - Youngor Garment *** and subsequently completed the share reform.
In the early days, Li Rucheng's dream was to build Youngor into a world-class brand, so he spent 500 yuan on the advertising slogan "Youngor, China's Pierre Cardin".
By around 1997, Youngor had become one of the largest companies in the field of shirts. In April 1997, the seminar "China Has a Youngor" was held in the Great Hall of the People.
What makes it powerful is the clothing business of one stitch and one thread.
Today, the Youngor men's shirt category has won the first place in the national market comprehensive market share for 26 consecutive years, and the men's suit category has won the first place in the national market comprehensive market share for 23 consecutive years.
Compared with his achievements in the field of clothing, Li Rucheng has a very outstanding performance in other fields.
In 1991, the total output value of China's township enterprises exceeded 1 trillion yuan, accounting for half of the country's GDP that year, and it was on an equal footing with state-owned enterprises.
At that time, the Ministry of Agriculture selected 1,000 national township entrepreneurs for the first time, and selected 51 outstanding township entrepreneurs to commend them. Li Rucheng, the 40-year-old head of Youngor, is the youngest of them.
As an outstanding township entrepreneur, Li Rucheng came to Beijing to attend the National Township Enterprise Work Conference. This broadened his horizons and prompted him to make the decision to develop real estate.
In 1992, YOUNGOR established a joint venture with Macau Nam Kwong Company to establish a real estate company, and purchased 7 pieces of land with a total area of 870,000 square meters in the suburbs of Ningbo and Beilun, becoming the earliest enterprise in China's garment industry to set foot in the real estate industry.
Since then, Li Rucheng has successively developed East Lake Garden, Urban Forest and other real estate projects in Ningbo and Suzhou, and has successively won Diwang projects in Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai and other places.
When making clothes, he even buys stores instead of renting them.
As a result, Youngor spent a lot of money to buy a number of shops in commercial centers such as Nanjing East Road and Hangzhou Yan'an Road in Shanghai in the early years, because they bought early, and the value added was considerable.
For example, the building where Hangzhou Youngor Yan'an Road is located costs about 300 million yuan, and now the valuation has exceeded 1 billion yuan.
In 1999, when Youngor moved to the factory, Li Rucheng also built a commercial house in the same place, and it was quickly sold out, so that he could make a lot of money.
To a large extent, the real estate business has also supported the continuous growth of YOUNGOR for many years.
From 2002 to 2022, the revenue of Youngor's real estate business increased from 53.4 billion yuan increased to 855 billion yuan, an increase of about 16 times. The revenue of the apparel business increased from 178.3 billion yuan increased to 631.7 billion yuan, only about 35 times.
Although compared with the domestic real estate companies with a scale of 100 billion yuan, the revenue of Youngor's real estate business is only close to 10 billion, and the scale is still small. However, it is positioned as a regional leader and has long been known as the "first brother of Ningbo real estate".
In the matter of investment, Li Rucheng is also an expert among experts.
In 1997, Ningbo Commercial Bank was established, and Youngor had a price of 101 yuan, the total cost does not exceed 200 million yuan, and then the increase in holdings has been increased.
Ten years later, Ningbo Commercial Bank changed its name to Bank of Ningbo, and the stock price soared and Youngor successively ** Bank of Ningbo, cashing out as high as 10 billion yuan.
In addition, in 1999 Youngor also spent 3200 million yuan to participate in CITIC**, obtained 961% of the shares, becoming its second largest shareholder.
Later, with the listing of CITIC, in 2007, Youngor **CITIC** shares were 4506560,000 shares, 16Investment income of 5.1 billion yuan.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in Li Rucheng's investment. It is reported that Youngor has successively participated in the investment of China CITIC Bank, Huaxia Bank, Midea Real Estate, etc.
According to data, from 2002 to 2022, Youngor has reaped a total investment income of more than 40 billion yuan, ranking among the top 20 in the total number of profits earned by 129 public offerings** for investors.
Li Rucheng, the boss of Youngor, has the title of "Buffett in the clothing industry".
According to Li Rucheng's original idea, clothing is a basic industry, real estate is a growth industry, and investment is an exploration industry.
As early as the early 1990s, YOUNGOR, which started with clothing, began to get involved in real estate and equity investment, and gradually formed a pattern of parallel development of the three major business sectors of clothing, real estate and investment, which also benefited it a lot.
As of the first three quarters of 2023, YOUNGOR has achieved revenue of 745.8 billion yuan, with the fashion and real estate sectors contributing 68% and 32% respectivelyNet profit 269.3 billion yuan, with the fashion, real estate and investment sectors contributing % and 64% respectively.
With many years of "not doing business", relying on real estate and investment to support performance, bringing more than 10 billion profits, Youngor has also brought a lot of returns to investors.
According to statistics, since the listing of Youngor, the cumulative cash dividend is as high as 2479.2 billion yuan, with a dividend rate of 4173%, which has exceeded many "white horse stocks".
If you want to build a long-lasting business, there are many difficulties.
With the downturn in the real estate industry in the past two years, in the first three quarters of 2023, Youngor's real estate business revenue will be 237 billion yuan, net profit 33.1 billion yuan, down 71 percent year-on-year54% and 8565%。
Dragged down by this, Youngor's overall revenue and profit fell by 41% year-on-year85% and 3578%。
Previously, Li Rucheng said frankly: "Now the real estate market has begun to change, and the first era has passed." Financial investment is also very risky, and the future will focus on the main clothing industry. ”
But in the clothing business, it is unknown whether Youngor can return as the king. After all, after many years of returning to the main business, Youngor's clothing business still has no significant growth.
Compared with his friends, Youngor was left behind.
In 2012, the revenue of Heilan House was 136.8 billion yuan, far lower than the 40 percent of Youngor's clothing business$8.3 billion. By 2022, Heilan House's revenue will be 1856.2 billion yuan, much higher than Youngor's fashion business only 631.7 billion yuan.
* The upper channel has gradually become an important purchase channel in the clothing market, and the clothing business of Youngor is mainly based on offline channels. As of 2022, the company's offline sales accounted for about 85% of revenue, while online sales accounted for only about 15% of revenue.
The sales area of Youngor brand clothing is even mainly concentrated in East China, and the regional characteristics of the brand are more obvious. In 2022, East China accounted for 58 percent of the company's revenue61%。
Li Rucheng once said: "People are about to retire, there is no state of work, they will age quickly, my plan is to live to 120 years old, and do it for another 30 years."
However, as a traditional clothing industry, whether it is design or sales channels, clothing is facing a new situation of continuous upgrading of consumption and diversification of demand.
In the new era and new consumer trends, whether the 72-year-old Li Rucheng can still grasp the trend and usher in the second spring in the new era is unknown.
Each era has a different protagonist, and in this era, can the 72-year-old Li Rucheng still eat?
Article**: Flower Finance Observation).
This article is based on publicly available information and is for information purposes only and does not constitute any investment advice.