In recent years, tea and pastries have risen in the name of national tide and new Chinese style, and ......It has sprung up on the streets and alleys, and there are queues in front of every store to buy, but now it is not so noisy.
A few days ago, it came out of Changsha and became popular in first- and second-tier citiesTiger Head Bureau Standard Chartered Cake LineBecause of an affiliated companyBankruptcy review, has become the focus of attention of the whole network, once a smash hit with more than 100 stores across the country, but now online and offline have closed down, leaving only a sigh. Why did you end up here?
Bankruptcy liquidation
It is listed as untrustworthy and is restricted
According to Tianyancha, the parent company of the new Chinese pastry brand Hutou Bureau, Shanghai Wanwu Youxiang Catering Management, recently added a bankruptcy review case. The applicant, Sheng Moumou, applied to the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court for bankruptcy liquidation of the company on the grounds that the company could not pay off its due debts and obviously lacked solvency, and the case has now been filed.
According to the announcement of the objection period, the applicant Sheng Moumou applied to the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court for bankruptcy liquidation of the company on the grounds that the company could not pay off its due debts and obviously lacked solvency, and the case has now been filed. If there is any objection to the application, it shall be submitted in writing to the court within 7 days after the announcement.
Shanghai Wanwuyouxiang Catering Management was established in December 2020 with a registered capital of about 1520,000 RMB, the legal representative is Hu Ting, and Hu Ting, Song Huanping, Shanghai Fengyou Enterprise Management Partnership (Limited Partnership) and other joint shares. The risk information shows that the company has information on multiple persons subject to enforcement, with a total amount of more than 5.33 million yuan, in addition to a number of dishonest persons subject to execution (lai), consumption restriction orders and final case information.
Since September 2023, Shanghai Wanwu Youxiang Catering Management, an affiliated company of Hutou Bureau, has added a number of information on the person subject to execution, with a total amount of 533470,000 yuan. Among them, the highest one appeared on January 8, with an enforcement target of more than 1.71 million yuan, involving a dispute over a sales contract, and the enforcement court was the Shanghai Minhang District People's Court.
From financing, store expansion to store closure and liquidation
Fall under a 5-year spell
For the baking market, it has always been a piece of "fragrant bread", everyone wants to take a bite, but not everyone can take a bite. As suchBao Caisheng, the founder of Master Bao, said: There is a strange theory in the baking industry - reshuffle once every 5 years. And the ending of the Tiger Head Bureau also confirms this famous saying again.
In September 2019, Hutou Bureau Standard Chartered Cake Store opened its first store in Duzheng Street, a popular business district in Changsha. Faster than the product, is the tiger head logo and the Chinese retro façade infused with modern aesthetics - the traditional plaque is engraved with a well-designed font, and high-saturation red, blue and green can be seen everywhere in the store, highlighting a national trend. The KOL's check-in and online word-of-mouth fermentation gathered the first wave of traffic for Hutou Bureau. It is understoodThe first store reached 300,000 yuan in revenue in the second month of opening, and by the autumn peak season of 2020, this figure was refreshed to more than 1.2 million yuan.
Capital quickly smelled the smell, and in January 2021, when the Tiger Head Bureau only had a few stores, Sequoia China, a top investment institution, pulled the trigger and issued ** ammunition to this Internet celebrity baking brand. Half a year later, it was announcedIt received $50 million in Series A financing led by G** GGV Capital and others, and its valuation once reached 1.5 billion yuan.
In 2021, Hutou Bureau released the "100 Store Plan", saying that it plans to open more than 150 stores in first-tier and new first-tier core cities in 2022, and in December of the following year, Hutou Bureau announced that it would open franchises, saying that it would start recruiting "business partners" in some cities. However, as of February 2023, the official website of Hutou Bureau shows that there are 43 existing stores, which is no significant change from the previous year.
In April 2023, Hutou Bureau fell into a "wave of store closures"., Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Changsha and other cities some stores show "temporarily closed".The company was exposed to wage arrearsAccording to the news from ** "Dachang Youth", as early as mid-2022, the Hutou Bureau has begun to lay off employees, and the teams, including the customer service team, member center, and information center, have been disbanded one after anotherThe cumulative amount may reach as high as 200 million。At that time, the Tiger Head Bureau said to **: "The information about the bankruptcy is not true, and it is working hard to recover."
Immediately afterwards, Hutou Bureau officially announced that all e-commerce businesses were suspended, including Tmall, JD.com, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Dewu, Vipshop, Pinduoduo and other channels were temporarily closed. According to Times Finance, the GMV of Hutou Bureau's e-commerce channel in 2022 will be about 100 million yuan, and it will begin to achieve profitability in the second half of 2022.
On the evening of March 30, 2023, a user posted on Xiaohongshu: Hutou Bureau has collapsed! He has experienced a series of events such as the company's "financing of 300 million, crazy store opening, Internet celebrity marketing, fund breakage, store closure and withdrawal, arrears of 200 million, wage arrears, pacification and deception, bankruptcy liquidation" and so on. The user bluntly said that the company still does not admit the issue of "bankruptcy liquidation". At the same time, other employees of the Tiger Head Bureau said in the comment area of the post: Labor arbitration is underway, and I don't know if the salary can be returned. At the same time, he also said in ** that the boss of the Tiger Head Bureau is ready to run away.
In the past four years alone, the Tiger Head Bureau has gradually shown signs of unsustainability. From several rounds of financing, a valuation of hundreds of millions, to shrinking and closing stores, continuous lawsuits, and now to complete bankruptcy and liquidation, the situation of the former Internet celebrity tiger head bureau is embarrassing.
The ending of the Tiger Head Game is just the beginning
A new round of store closures may be on the way
With the gradual establishment of national self-confidence and the rise of the national trend, some baking brands have combined Chinese pastries with modern baking technology, and new Chinese baking has emerged. In addition to the Tiger Head Bureau,New Chinese pastry brands such as Momo Dim Sum Bureau, Luxi River, Zhan Kee Peach Cake, Chef Bao Pastry, Dongjing Road Dim Sum Shop, Shanhe Cake Bureau, and Nanyang Dim Sum Bureau have taken advantage of the situation to enter the game, according to the big data of red mealsAs of October 2023, 12 new stores have been added to the bread baking track20,000 stores, 12 closed010,000, with a net increase of 1,874 stores. Overall,In 2023, the growth rate of the total number of bread baking stores in the country will be only 1%. However, after an extensive period of rapid development, the new Chinese baking track has entered the stage of "squeezing bubbles" in recent years. Capital's enthusiasm for it is also gradually declining. Compared with the peak period of 2021, the number of financing events of new Chinese bakery in 2023 is decreasing year by year.
Some brands may slow down their store expansion or close their stores or even go bankrupt. In addition to the Tiger Head Bureau,Another crisis of bankruptcy is the Momo Dim Sum Bureau. It shows that there are stores in 8 cities across the country. It is located in 5 cities of Changsha, Changde, Hengyang, Shaoyang and Zhuzhou in Hunan Province, and 3 cities in Beijing, Hangzhou and Wuhan outside the province. On January 25, there were no stores of the brand in three cities outside Hunan Province.
Like Hutou Bureau, after receiving multiple rounds of financing, Momo Dim Sum Bureau chose to go out of Changsha, Hunan Province, and lay out in Beijing, Wuhan, Hangzhou and other cities. However, now it has come to the situation of retreating to Hunan. According to the Tianyancha app, the business status of Wuhan One Cake One City Catering Management Service has been changed from existence to cancellation.
According to ** report statistics, the fall of brands in the baking industry has become commonplace in recent years. It is known as the champion of Japan's must-eat dessertsLetao Otaru foreign sweets shopThe Shenzhen store is closed；A well-known doughnut brandDunkin' Donut Music withdrew from the Chinese marketThe old bakery Christine stores are all closed, and the property is sold to pay off the debtNiujiao Village was exposed to bankruptcy and liquidation. There are also many new brands that have only opened one store, such as those that used to be openedDikka Bakery, a high-end bakery brand on Huaihai Road in Shanghai, disappeared after only a little more than five months
Everyone is chasing traffic and popular models, squeezing their heads to explodeWhen the Internet celebrity filter fades and the popularity is no longer there, what remains in the market is the brand's own product powerIf you don't have the core competitiveness, then how fast the gust of wind of Internet celebrities comes, how fast it goes.
Remember:Becoming popular is only the starting point of the brand, not the end.
This article synthesizes New Business Brand Observation, Winshang.com, Retail Business Finance, etc.