Zhong Xuegao was once ridiculed by netizens as the "LV" in the ice cream industry, and when it was first launched, it was very expensive, and a single ice cream could reach up to 66 yuan.
Although it is expensive, with some eye-catching gimmicks, Zhong Xuegao still captures a large number of fans, and many people are willing to pay for Zhong Xuegao, and it is difficult to find one. During the Double 11 in 2018, 20,000 small ice creams priced at 66 yuan were sold in 15 hours, which is called "consumption upgrade".
However, who would have thought that in just a few years, Zhong Xuegao fell from heaven to the world, and then plunged into hell.
In the past two days, Zhong Xue's ** price has dropped from 60 yuan to 2The news of 5 yuan rushed to the hot search on major platforms, and many netizens also commented on it.
Judging from the product information of some shopping platforms, the current sales of Zhongxuegao have dropped to a very low position, and some of them even only need 2$5.
For example, if a merchant is in the 38 major promotion activities, the price of 30 Zhongxue high coupons is only 799 yuan, 2 for a single branch66 yuan; There are also some merchants who can even be lower than 2 if the volume is large$5.
In addition, Zhong Xuegao has another brand sa'The ** of the SAA is lower, at the time of the 2023 press conference, at that time, a SA'SAA's ** or 35 yuan, at present, some online shopping platforms have ** to about 1 yuan, or even less than 1 yuan.
For example, on a certain platform, some merchants can achieve 40 SAs'SAA** only costs 40 yuan.
Even some of Zhong Xuegao's classic models** are no different from ordinary ice cream, on many online platforms, some of Zhong Xuegao's classic styles, such as apricot milk ice, light milk, strawberry white qiao, semi-semi-qiaoqiao, etc., are only sold for about 5 yuan.
Judging from the current price of Zhongxuegao, it is actually no different from ordinary ice cream, and it has even been opened up by some classic brands such as Menglong.
Many netizens were surprised to see this.
Once upon a time, Zhong Xuegao was the "LV" of the ice cream industry, which made ordinary consumers unattainable, but I didn't expect that in just two years, their ** was so obvious.
After passing the peak, Zhong Xuegao's business in the past two years has not been ideal.
On the one hand, it is rumored that wages are in arrears.
In October 2023, a former employee of Zhong Xuegao mentioned that because of the company's poor efficiency, the company carried out optimization, and during the optimization period, they discussed the optimization compensation plan with personnel, and signed a resignation consent letter and agreed that Zhong Xuegao's compensation and salary will be paid on October 15, 2023, but after the date arrived, Zhong Xuegao did not fulfill it because there was no money in the account to compensate.
In addition, some Zhongxuegao insiders revealed that the payment of wages will be delayed from August 2023.
Although Zhong Xuegao did not come out to respond positively to these things, it can be seen from their actual actions that the business is in difficulty, as an Internet celebrity ice cream, their official *** stopped publishing news as early as August 11, 2023, and Weibo also stopped updating on August 22, 2023, indicating that some of their daily maintenance has been updated.
In addition, their office has also shrunk, they used to rent the 3rd and 23rd floors of the Oriental Fisherman's Wharf International Center in Shanghai's Yangpu District as their headquarters office, but now the 23rd floor has been withdrawn and all the staff have been merged into the 3rd floor.
According to some ** revelations, the current Zhongxuegao employees have been greatly reduced, and it is said that since 2023, the layoff ratio of Zhongxuegao's headquarters has been close to half.
On the other hand, the arrears are enforced.
In addition to arrears of employees' wages, Zhong Xuegao was also pursued by multiple suppliers for the goods, and at the end of 2023, Zhong Xuegao added 4 pieces of equity freezing information, and the amount of frozen equity reached 479140,000 yuan.
At the beginning of February 2024, Zhong Xuegao added three new pieces of equity freezing information, with the frozen amounts of 20 million yuan, 10 million yuan, and 5 million yuan respectively.
On February 19, 2024, Xue Gao added another information on the person subject to execution, and the execution target was 81810,000 yuan.
This means that the cumulative amount of frozen equity of Zhongxuegao has reached about 40 million yuan.
It can be seen that Zhong Xuegao is indeed facing business difficulties.
Zhong Xuegao was founded in 2018, their positioning is very clear "high ingredients, high appearance, ** grid", with their unique positioning, they are very fast together, with the attribute of Internet celebrity, it quickly became popular on the Internet, the second year of its establishment, that is, in 2019, Zhong Xuegao's sales exceeded 100 million yuan.
From May 2021 to May 2022, Zhongxuegao sold a total of 1500 million ice creams, with a revenue of up to 800 million yuan, has also become the No1 in the Double 11 ice cream category.
Although Zhong Xuegao's ** style has been controversial, it still can't stop Zhong Xuegao's rapid development, according to Zhong Xuegao's development speed, their revenue may even exceed billions in the next few years.
However, there has always been a lot of controversy about Zhong Xuegao's **, and their ** has aroused strong disgust among the majority of netizens, and Xue Gao's network sales have been affected, which has put pressure on their revenue growth, and at this time they have begun to spread the revenue front offline.
But at this time, there are already some popular brands such as Yili, Hexuelu, Mengniu, etc., as well as some brands such as Menglong, which have gained a firm foothold, and it is not so easy to grab market share from these masters.
As expected, Zhong's performance under Xue Gao** was very poor, and he couldn't sell at all, in this context, Zhong Xuegao did a very stupid thing, that is, "Ice Cream Assassin".
In June 2022, many people reported that when they bought ice cream in some retail stores, they couldn't tell whether it was ordinary ice cream or Zhong Xuegao, and when they checked out, they found that an ice cream cost dozens of yuan.
This made many people feel that they were slaughtered, and as a result, it caused public anger, and many people went to Zhong Xuegao's live broadcast room and Weibo and WeChat to leave messages to attack, and for a while, the "Ice Cream Assassin" attracted great attention from the whole network.
After this incident, it had a great impact on Zhong Xuegao, and his founder Lin Sheng had to come out to respond, but his response added fuel to the fire.
Lin Sheng mentioned in response to the Ice Cream Assassin, "The cost is 40 yuan, do you like it!" ”
This further aroused the anger of the majority of netizens, daring to ask ** high, there was no clear price, but mixed into ordinary ice cream as an assassin, are you still reasonable?
After these events, Zhong Xuegao was greatly impacted, and sales were rapid**, although later Zhong Xuegao tried to save the market by cutting prices, but to no avail.
At this time, Lin Sheng, the founder of Zhongxuegao, began to ease his attitude, and he mentioned it in an interview.
Zhong Xuegao will send every batch of ice cream to Shanghai, and he will taste all batches of ice cream every morning, and when he eats the matcha ice cream with a sweet taste, let the staff check the production records; When he ate the strange taste of chocolate, he scolded and fed it to the pigs."
The meaning of this passage is that Zhong Xuegao is very strict in the pursuit of product quality, every piece is done to the extreme, and there are some flaws that are directly fed to pigs.
But no matter what Zhong Xuegao says, no matter how he lowers the price, once he stands on the opposite side of consumers, it is impossible to regain the market.
Zhong Xuegao's experience is actually a typical case of failed consumption upgrade.
Zhong Xuegao originally launched the **66 yuan ice cream, in fact, there was an obvious intention of "consumption upgrade", but it violated the essence of consumption upgrade.
In recent years, everyone has been emphasizing consumption upgrading, but many people simply understand consumption upgrading as a promotion.
As a result, many businesses have launched some gimmicks, and then directly improved the **, but they have not followed in terms of service, quality and other aspects.
Take ice cream as an example, the real consumption upgrade should be to provide consumers with reasonable products from the quality, health and other aspects of the product, rather than using some expensive materials to promote the improvement of the product.
After all, the vast majority of consumers of ice cream are ordinary salarymen, these salarymen are very sensitive to ** in the context of no obvious increase in income, some people may occasionally buy an ice cream of dozens of dollars out of curiosity, but it is impossible for you to let him buy it for a long time.
So what happened to Zhong Xuegao seems to be their arrogance or public relations failure, but the root cause is that the price is too high and detached from the most basic needs of consumers.