The Kunpeng plan does not work quality and user experience, and it is difficult for Zhongxue to win the hearts of consumers if it is sold cheaply. Author: Boya Arranger: Chenxi Editor: Liu Yu.
Producer: Retail-Finance ID: Retail-Finance
In October last year, Zhong Xuegao, the "Hermes in Ice Cream", was on the hot search for arrears of wages, and now it has caused heated discussions about "share freezing" and fallen into the quagmire of expiring fire sales.
According to the enterprise investigation, recently, the 35 million shares held by Xue Gao Food (Shanghai)** were frozen, involving 3 of its companies. On the third-party shopping platform, Zhongxuegao's products are sold at a very low **, of which the expiring products have been as low as 25 yuan a piece.
The Assassin Zhong Xuegao showed his declining momentum and collapsed across the board. In 2023, Double 11, Zhong Xuegao, who was originally a "frequent guest" on the list and the head live broadcast room, is also gone, and Zhong Xuegao, who has risen by relying on online channels, seems to be losing its main battlefield. Obviously, Zhong Xuegao, the "Internet celebrity ice cream" who is racing at great speed, failed to achieve long-term popularity after all.
Zhu Danpeng, a commentator on China's food industry, said that Zhongxuegao's high-end products could no longer be sold. In the final analysis, its business philosophy is not sustainable, and it pays more attention to the present, using a little traffic to harvest consumers' leeks.
Eating ice cream in summer, eating hot pot in winter, and the sales data of seasonal fresh products make the development of the retail industry always revolve around consumer habits.
Behind the "seasonal" is actually the concept of "seasonal", especially in ice cream and other ice-related industries, the concept of seasonal season has also become fashionable.
Of course, in the increasingly fierce competition in the business war, "selling cold clothes on hot days" and "buying popsicles in cold days" are no longer uncommon, and "anti-season" can help merchants to inventory, but it overdraws the health of the whole industry. For consumers, the purchase behavior under the "off-season" is mostly the pseudo-demand induced by marketing gimmicks such as "low price", and it is difficult to sustain the purchase enthusiasm stimulated in a short period of time.
Source: Internet.
In March 2018, Zhong Xuegao was born, the name is homophonic to "Chinese ice cream", and the founder Lin Sheng's goal is to "make the best ice cream in China". In the summer of the same year, Zhong Xuegao launched tile-shaped ice cream, which was labeled as an "Internet celebrity" when it was launched.
Source: Weibo.
This is Zhong Xuegao's first ice cream variety that caused a sensation on the whole network, ** swiping the screen, swiping the screen with appearance, and it was sold out in 15 hours during the Double Eleven period. Later, due to the lack of raw materials, this ice cream was never recreated.
Zhongxue can become popular, in fact, it is inseparable from three points: domestic labels, high-end raw materials and limited co-branding.
Relying on the Internet celebrity route, Zhong Xuegao uses strange tastes, dark collocation, sky-high gimmicks and overwhelming marketing to form a unique differentiation, not so much that "leeks" are harvested by ice cream, but that merchants have pinched the social needs of consumers.
In the winter of 2019, Zhong Xuegao launched a variety of new flavors of ice cream, but netizens began to be "picky".
According to a previous report by Beijing Business Daily, Zhong Xuegao's "Fragment Plus Ice Cream" co-branded by Luzhou Laojiao only increases the concentration of the wine, and there is nothing new; The co-branded Roewe Marvel's "lazy addictive ice cream" was complained by netizens that the food co-branded car was too far-fetched; As for the co-branded Xiaoxian stewed "Bird's Nest Liuxin Ice Cream", it allows young people to start the death mode of "eating bird's nest ice cream for health".
Zhong Xuegao's "Big Squid Seafood Ice Cream" co-branded by three squirrels was complained by netizens that he was not concerned about food safety, "After all, the three squirrels are a foundry production model, and there have been many food safety problems. ”
As for the "Golden Cinnamon Red Bean Ice Cream", the new autumn products that were also "late" due to raw material problems had to be sold in winter, and they also claimed to be new winter products.
Source: Weibo.
Zhong Xuegao's desperate anti-seasonal sales model is nothing more than a "strong twist" in the education market.
In other words, Zhongxuegao, which is dominated by the season, intends to promote off-season sales, but the category list.
First, the channel list.
First, the winter is difficult to "heat" and other problems have never been able to form a sustainable purchasing power, and the off-season of ice cream sales also has higher requirements for Zhong Xuegao's channel management, chain process, capital turnover, etc., and the "sword of Damocles" hanging above Zhong Xuegao's head is crumbling.
With the strong rise of domestic brands, Zhongxuegao's "domestic label" no longer shines, and the inattentive limited co-branding, as well as the "instability" of high-end raw materials, have made Zhongxuegao even worse.
According to Tianyancha, after completing the A round of financing of 200 million yuan in 2021, Zhong Xuegao has not reported any news of financing.
Source: Qichacha.
At the beginning of 2022, while Zhong Xuegao reduced the company's registered capital, the original shareholders Xia Lu, Shanghai Fengrui Venture Capital Center (Limited Partnership), and Zhong Xuegao Venture Capital (Shenzhen)** withdrew.
Generally speaking, in addition to stopping project operations or reducing the scale of the company's operation, a company can also make up for losses, adjust excessive capital, and improve the efficiency of capital use by reducing its registered capital. These also seem to convey the message of Zhong Xuegao's "hibernation" to the outside world.
Source: Qichacha.
In addition, Zhongxuegao Food (Shanghai)** recently added a new information on the person subject to execution, and the execution target is 81810,000 yuan, and the enforcement court is the People's Court of Jiading District, Shanghai. It is understood that the company's shares in a number of companies have been frozen.
Known as the "Hermes of ice cream", does Zhong Xuegao really live up to his name?
**On the list, Zhong Xuegao is undoubtedly a high-end product at the level of a noblewoman.
Since the establishment of the brand, Zhongxuegao has focused on the high-end market of light luxury, and "high-end raw materials" is its characteristic and the main fulcrum of high-end quality of products. Although in April last year, Zhongxuegao launched a new low-cost ice cream product "SASAA" to save the company's reputation, but the product also entered the fire sale period early, ** from the retail price of 35 yuan has dropped to less than 3 yuan, but the market response is still mediocre.
Photo: Zhongxuegao launched a new low-cost ice cream product "Sasaa".
The most unacceptable thing for the public is that Zhong Xuegao, who is positioned at the high-end and pays attention to quality, has frequently overturned in quality, and false propaganda has become "commonplace".
The content of the claim that "only the special red grapes from the core grape growing areas of the Turpan Basin are selected", and the inspection report shows that the specifications of the red raisins are bulk grade 1, and the special red grapes constitute false publicity.
Source: Weibo screenshot.
It is claimed that its raw materials have won international awards and have been jointly developed by global organizations, and that global R&D institutions such as China, Italy, the United States, and Japan have jointly developed production equipment that is only 10 units in the world, but this is not the case.
The old Shubei matcha ice cream, which claims to "only use Japanese Yabuku tea", is actually made from fresh leaves of various varieties of tea trees such as Jiukeng, Longjing, and Yabuku.
claims that "no drop of water, pure bovine frankincense" and other content, but in fact, the product ingredient list clearly contains drinking water ingredients.
Source: Weibo screenshot.
The false propaganda incidents that have been exposed many times have ruined the goodwill of fans, and also made "Internet celebrity products" a derogatory term.
Previously, regarding Zhong Xuegao, the report of the China Consumers Association specifically listed a "Internet celebrity 'Zhong Xuegao' was suddenly tortured by onlookers, and 'high-end cold food' faced quality doubts", which mentioned that a total of more than 40,000 pieces of negative information related to Zhong Xuegao were collected during the monitoring period.
In the early days, with careful and precise marketing strategies, Zhong Xuegao earned enough eyeballs; In the medium term, the limited sale of "sky-high" ice cream and the normalization of KOL+ live streaming helped it to be named the "Hermes of the ice cream industry" from an unknown person and occupy a place in the Chinese ice cream market.
Source: Weibo screenshot.
But the "Hermès quality" is not obtained by false advertising, but by consumer reputation accumulated from the perfect craftsmanship of hand-sewn leather goods that has been passed down for generations.
What Zhong Xuegao lacks is "craftsmanship", and the fact of using high-end raw materials for gimmick marketing will only reduce consumers' goodwill and desire to buy by becoming a brand that shakes wit, plays word games, and fools and perfunctory consumers.
Those who spend a lot of money on marketing are not as good as real guns spent on quality.
Not expensive, not worthy of new consumption? "Of course not.
When the "expensive" dominates the crowd and even turns the tide, new consumption becomes fake consumption. In essence, the confidence of new consumption is not "more expensive" but "better".
First, ** affect repurchase. If the pricing (or actual sales**) of the product does not meet expectations, then consumers will choose to "buy only the active price" or "don't plan to buy again", which will ultimately affect product sales, repeat purchases, and brand plasticity.
New consumer brands still need repeat customers, and a one-stick transaction can only be exchanged for a period of development, and "consumer recognition price" is what brands should care about the most.
Second, characteristics and quality are the "trump cards" to attract consumers to pay. Most of the influencer products have added value and high premiums. Many consumers buy influencer products to obtain social currency, and what they buy is not the product itself, but a kind of "engagement" and "freshness". But the so-called "Internet celebrity" marketing is not tried-and-true, once caught in the vicious circle of chasing traffic and making quick money, the speed of the tower is also very fast.
The reason why Zhong Xuegao is no longer likable is mostly that the marketing is far greater than the product itself, using publicity, hype, momentum, punching cards, inviting celebrities to endorse, and even making fake advertisements, etc., to raise the ice cream ** by more than ten times. In the end, its products could not withstand this set of marketing at all, and only capsized the ship.
At this stage, industry experts have expressed concern about the phenomenon of excessive Internet celebrity and high-end ice cream brands, believing that "blindly pushing the so-called high-end and ultra-high-end products will disrupt the normal system of ice cream, so that the entire Chinese ice cream market will eventually face a trend of deformity and declining sales, which will inevitably lead to a decline in sales and a shrinking total volume." ”
Domestic products out of the circle, whether it is the shaping of brand value or the dissemination of traditional culture, should and should be encouraged. With the improvement of living standards, people are more and more willing to pay for the "art of eating", but what matches the best quality should be worthy of the name, and constantly cultivate products, respect consumers and the market, and internalize the traffic value into a high-potential enterprise with brand value.
Just as the new retail subverts traditional retail, new consumption needs to be based on the pain points of the industry and reshape this field with a new concept.
"Small and beautiful" has never been the sea of stars of new consumer brands, and "big and strong" is the ambition worthy of its strength. Don't use "expensive" to make ice cream taste bad, and don't let new consumer brands be dusted by "false publicity".
Winter is the off-season for the entire ice cream industry, and Zhongxuegao is not like Yili, Mengniu and other ice brands in the market, which can supplement the growth point of performance in other categories of products; Secondly, Zhongxuegao's dependence on online channels is too high, and the layout of offline channels is almost zero, so consumers cannot get an instant shopping experience; Again, Zhongxue has a single category, and it is obviously a little difficult to cope with the off-season of ice products.
After experiencing the "Ice Cream Assassin" turmoil, Zhong Xuegao's position in sales has gradually been marginalized, compared with the previous high-density offline distribution, now Zhong Xuegao is no longer a "freezer must-have", arrears of wages, public account stoppage, low-price fire sales ......Zhong Xuegao collapsed across the board, and his future was uncertain. It once aspired to be China's TOP1, but it seems that it has not escaped the ending of "Internet celebrities will eventually pass out".