The title image is from the movie "The King of Comedy".
Author: Koala is a deer |Editor: Ge Weiwei.
"The world doesn't have to be lived or dead. ”"We believe that the so-called competition in this world is not life and death, but self-achievement in competition and cooperation. At the end of 2023, Zhang Liaoyuan, the founder and CEO of Three Squirrels, wrote such a sentence in the circle of friends.
In January 2024, the four nut products of Three Squirrels were on the shelves of Snacks Very Busy, Zhao Yiming Snacks and other stores, and the time point was less than a month before BESTORE cleared Zhao Yiming's equity.
On January 31, in an interview with the "Daily Economic News", Three Squirrels said that the cooperation with mass merchandisers will gradually expand the category and extend to other retail mass stores in the later stage, and may even be exclusively available through channels.
In 2023, the three squirrels, as the leader of snack brands, will act frequently: from opening live broadcast e-commerce to store expansion to PK cost-effective high-end snacks, they can't stop at all. Behind the three squirrels' bold attack is not only their own ambition, but also their awe of their peers.
And this time, the three squirrels turned offense into cooperation, what kind of calculation did they play? How do mass sellers think about such a "handshake and peace"? What kind of new pattern will the competition in the snack track evolve into in the future?
Three Squirrels has taken the lead in proposing a "high-end cost-effective" strategy in the industry since the end of 2022.
High-end cost-effective", this term is quite meaningful, as the name suggests, both high-end and cost-effective. This strategic approach of "both wants and wants" was quickly emulated by other competitors, and BESTORE, Yanjin Shop, Laiyifen and others quickly joined the battle. While everyone showed their swords, it actually hinted at a unified summary of the past route:The pure high-end route is not easy to follow.
In the matter of snacks, people value nothing more than two things, one is delicious; The second is health. Delicious refers to the taste, not to mention the thousands of flavors, the introduction of snacks is similar to the new tea drink, but whenever there is a certain snack brand out of which popular flavor, other brands will rush to make a copy without distortion. Then there is health, which is about raw materials and processes. However, the standard of healthy snacks is less oil, less sugar, less salt, not over-processed, and at most, the high quality of the raw materials, such a standard is the same as the taste, and it is not difficult to achieve a high score.
On the whole, the high-end of snacks can be done, and every brand can do it if they want to, and there are no obvious barriers.
The R&D expenses are also very telling, and the R&D expenses of the three squirrels in 2020 and 2022 are 05.3 billion yuan, 05.8 billion yuan and 03.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 0100 million yuan. The figures of several other heads are also similar, and the R&D expenses of BESTORE, Laiyifen and Qiaqia Food in the first three quarters of 2023 are 0 respectively3.6 billion yuan, 00.9 billion and 04.3 billion yuan, no matter which number is compared with its revenue, it can only be regarded as negligible.
It's not that brands don't want to R&D, it's that valuable R&D and innovation are very difficult and limited.
Although merchants feel helpless, consumers are happy. Since everyone can be delicious and healthy, consumers can shop around under high standards and strict requirements, so that the high-end route originally envisioned by the brand eventually evolved into a volume**, which is what the three squirrels call "high-end cost performance".
In October 2023, Zhang Liaoyuan expressed his thoughts in an exchange: "China has entered an era of unprecedented consumption changes. Now traditional e-commerce, Douyin, Pinduoduo, Meituan, WeChat private domain, snack collection stores and Sam's Club have all openedThe bottom factor is price-performance ratio
After clarifying the new policy, the three squirrels began to put their ideas into action in a way that combined knowledge and action.
How to achieve cost-effectiveness on the premise of ensuring quality? People's first reaction is generally to give profits. Indeed, in the first half of 2023, the gross profit margin of Three Squirrels will be 2497%, down 289%。Zhang Liaoyuan once had a series of interpretations of "high-end cost performance", but in summary, it is actually one sentence: to make high-quality and low-cost products with its own brand model.
The formulation of the "cost-effective" strategy has undoubtedly set a ceiling on the price of the three squirrel products, and it is impossible to increase the price significantly.
In the first three quarters of 2023, Three Squirrels achieved an operating income of 458.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1407%；Net profit for the same period was 1700 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8142%。That is to say, although the company has achieved rapid growth in net profit, revenue has declined.
How can this be explained? Actually,The three squirrels achieved efficiency by reducing costs. In the first three quarters of 2023, the company's various expenses showed a significant downward trend: administrative expenses decreased by 17% year-on-year26%；Selling expenses decreased by 31 percent year-on-year62%；The number of employees has also plummeted.
In the future,If the three squirrels want to make a breakthrough, they not only need to compress the cost side, but also need to expand the revenue side. The company's focus in the future is not only high-end cost performance, but also the cost performance of all categories and all channels.
As a snack manufacturer, although Three Squirrels debuted as an Internet brand, it has been committed to opening up the upstream, midstream and downstream industrial chain in recent years, and has begun to attack the traditional channel offline.
According to the 2022 China Leisure Snack Industry Research Report, offline channels are still the main channels for domestic leisure snack sales, of which snack stores, supermarkets, and convenience stores account for 83% of the overall sales channels, and online channels account for only 13%.
Starting in June 2023, Three Squirrels officially launched the community snack shop model. At present, Three Squirrels has opened more than 80 community snack stores in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui and other places.
Three Squirrels Community Snack Shop, picture source: Three Squirrels official Weibo.
Speaking of which, the characteristics of community snack stores are no different from those of mass market snacks, all of which are cost-effective, and they are more cost-effective. At the same time, because the community snack store is full of Three Squirrels' own brand, and there is no distributor, the products that can be provided are usually cheap and large, which is very in line with the consumption demands of community residents.
The open source research report pointed out that "under the optimization of the chain, the company's products can even be benchmarked with the main low-price snack stores, such as the daily nuts sold by the company's stores for 19."8 yuan catty, lower than Zhao Yiming's snack shop 32 yuan catty."
The same idea was also concocted into the community by the three squirrels, and they took the route of running volume. However, after all, the radiation range of community retail stores is limited, and if you want to cover multi-dimensional people, compared with thousands of mass-selling snack stores, the model of relying on community snack stores alone or ** is still slightly thin. Then, the competition with mass sales snacks is not abrupt.
However, after choosing to cooperate, the problem of the three squirrels was not completely solved. How many categories to place in a mass-market snack store? With the channel of mass merchandising, how can you maintain your original community snack store? After choosing the high-end cost-effective route, do you want to abandon the original high-end line? These questions remain questionable.
said that he was very busy with snacks and Zhao Yiming snacks for a long time, in fact, the two of them had already become a family.
On November 10, 2023, Snacks is busy and Zhao Yiming Snacks officially announced a strategic merger. After the merger, Yan Zhou, the founder of Snack Busy, will continue to serve as the CEO of Snack Busy, Zhao Ding will continue to serve as the CEO of Zhao Yiming Snacks, and Yan Zhou will also serve as the chairman of the group company.
It is worth mentioning that the total number of stores after the merger of Zhao Yiming snacks will exceed 6,500, exceeding the 3,700 stores previously announced by Wanchen Biotechnology, and has become the company with the largest number of mass snack chain brand stores. According to incomplete statistics from One View Commerce, there have been 9 integration-related incidents in the mass snack track since the beginning of 2023.
If you can't beat it, join in. In other words, the expansion of everyone collecting firewood is high, and the expansion of a single brand can certainly make a brand enjoy the results alone, but at the same time, its difficulty is self-evident. Especially in an industry like food and beverage, where it is difficult to get out of obvious barriers, it is better to turn enemies into friends.
The relevant person in charge of the snack is very busy with his response to this cooperation: "They also do the output of the first chain, which is our upstream, these products are suitable for our channels, and we have needs, so we can cooperate." ”
Indeed, compared to the obsession that the three squirrels may have in the early days, for a snack wholesaler like a snack store that is very busy, cooperation is not harmful.
Originally, the main competitor of the mass merchandiser snack store was the snack brand that did not enter the mass merchandiser store, in addition to the counterparts in the subdivision track. Now, the problem is directly solved. Although there may be a part of the profit, with the top category of snacks such as Three Squirrels, the competitiveness of mass merchandisers will undoubtedly add a heavy weight.
On January 27, the country's largest snack store "Super Snack is Busy" officially opened in Changsha, the capital of Internet celebrity food, with the first floor being a snack shopping area and the second floor being a snack themed leisure and entertainment area, where customers can take photos and check in for fun.
According to the statistics of snacks are very busy, as of the end of business hours on the evening of January 28, the turnover of the store exceeded 780,000 yuan in the two days of opening on the 27th and 28th.
Image source: Snacks is very busy, official Weibo.
According to the person in charge of the snack is very busy, the single product has been in short supply since it was put on the shelves, and hundreds of packs of spicy strips on the shelves of the store every day were quickly sold out, and there was even a phenomenon of rush to buy. The topic of "China's largest super snack store opened in Changsha" has gained nearly 7 million popularity on the Douyin platform, ranking first in Changsha's local list.
Snacks are very busy cooperating with many domestic first-line snack production brands such as Mengniu, Want Want, Jiashili, and Haoyudian, and customizing dozens of plus snacks to sell in stores. In addition, Super Snacks is very busy and has invited Changsha's local top three brands, Tea Yan Yuese, Yuanyang Coffee and Goode Lemon, to settle in, and consumers can buy snacks while drinking milk tea, forming a younger and more trendy "shopping and eating" social model.
Snacks are busy, are really busy.
In the business world, there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies.
Consumers' demands for low prices and cost-effectiveness continue to increase, and the popularity of mass-marketed snacks has gradually surpassed that of traditional single snack brands. Faced with the "very busy" snacks are very busy, although the three squirrels have not yet fallen into a situation where they can't be beaten, the pressure is indeed increasing day by day.
In 2022, snacks are very busy to achieve sales of about 6.4 billion yuan, surpassing the 28th of Yanjin Shop9.4 billion yuan and 43.3 billion in Laiyi8.2 billion yuan, close to 72 of the three squirrels9.3 billion yuan.
The three squirrels thought about it. In this snack market, which is expected to reach a trillion-dollar volume, companies need to compete for contracts when they need to do so. As for the next reincarnation, is there a competition with mass sales snacks? Or is it a collaboration? That will be a story for another time.
Today's topic: How do you see that the three squirrels are busy with snacks?