Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Deer Finance, Author 丨 Mr. Lu, Editor 丨 Shen Wansan
Three squirrels are on the hot search again, this time still not because of products or performance.
The three squirrels that have not appeared in the field of public opinion for a long time suddenly became popular again, and they were also on the hot search, because some netizens pointed out that the model 'squinting' makeup on the product promotional poster of the three squirrels was suspected of insulting Hua.
"Squinting" has long been considered a physical element of the West's stereotypical prejudice against chinese people. Previously, the domestic animation movie "Lion Boy" was also questioned by some criticism because the protagonists were "squinting". Nowadays, the product poster model makeup of the three squirrels is considered by many people to be deliberately ugly in line with Western aesthetics.
Although this is only the product promotional poster launched by three squirrels in October 2019, it has been more than two years since now. However, under the pressure of public opinion, the three squirrels still officially issued an apology statement on this matter.
The three squirrels issued a statement through the official Weibo that the model on the page is Chinese, and the makeup is based on his personal characteristics, without deliberate ugliness. He also apologized for the feedback from netizens that the model's makeup did not conform to the public aesthetic and caused discomfort.
In fact, as a homegrown domestic snack brand, we are willing to believe that the three squirrels do not have the motivation or willingness to subjectively and deliberately ugly. This may just be a design mistake in product promotion.
But the three squirrels are now on the hot search, and we have hastily found that the national Internet celebrity snack brand that quickly emerged at that time has now quickly fallen silent. Revenue does not increase but falls, the stock price is falling endlessly, what happened to the three squirrels?
National snacks: e-commerce Dongfeng, national brand
The rise of three squirrels was like a gust of wind.
Founded in Wuhu, Anhui Province in February 2012, Three Squirrels raised $1.5 million in Series A financing from IDG in March 2012. On the 65th day of the launch of Tmall, the three squirrels jumped to the first place in sales of the Tmall nut category. In 2012, in the Double Eleven, three squirrels participated in the Double Eleven promotion for the first time, and the sales of the day reached 7.66 million, setting a new record for the highest daily sales of a single store in the Tmall food industry.
Subsequently, with the help of e-commerce dividends, three squirrels began a high-speed development process. In 2013, the sales of the three squirrels exceeded 300 million, and the omni-channel sales in 2016 exceeded 5 billion yuan, and the annual sales of the three squirrels in 2019 exceeded 10 billion, becoming the first enterprise in the snack industry to cross the threshold of 10 billion.
In the capital market, the three squirrels are also smooth sailing. After several rounds of financing, on July 12, 2019, three squirrels were listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, the stock was referred to as "three squirrels", and the stock code was "300783", which was known as the "first share of national snacks" at that time.
Three squirrels were born in the process of the development of national e-commerce, Ali's independent development of Tmall Mall, and vigorous support for the Tao brand. Taobao brand first appeared in the field of Taobao clothing, and a number of clothing brands born in Taobao, including Handu Clothing House and Oshar, were born.
Subsequently, Tmall Mall became independent, and the Tao brand began to expand from clothing to cosmetics, toys, food, home and other fields. During this time, Tmall Mall has concentrated on supporting a number of Tao brands to quickly increase the volume, including brands such as YuNifang and FangcaoJi, and of course, three squirrels. These brands were cited as typical of Tmall's support for new brands, and there was no talk of new consumption at the time, and these new brands were more called Internet brands or Internet celebrity brands.
It is in this context that the three squirrels, riding on the e-commerce east wind of Tmall Mall, quickly soared to become the first brand of national snacks. There was a time when gifts to friends during the New Year's Festival, giving snacks from three squirrels, avant-garde and trendy, delicious and delicious, parents welcomed their children to like, it is a useful and interesting choice. These three squirrel brands are still quite praised at the public level.
Repeatedly on the hot search: food safety, stock prices are depressed
However, in the process of rapid development, the three squirrels have been searched for on Weibo from time to time because of food safety problems.
As early as July 2016 to June 2017, three squirrels were sued by consumers for a number of food safety issues such as product shelf life labeling that did not meet food safety standards and products that did not meet food safety standards.
On August 15, 2017, the former State Food and Drug Administration released three batches of unqualified food, including three squirrel pistachios, and the reason for the unqualified was that the mold exceeded the standard. In March 2019, the three squirrels were reported by many netizens that their dried fruit food was moldy and bugs appeared.
From April to May 2021, on the well-known complaint platform Black Cat Complaint, three squirrels were repeatedly complained by consumers of eating various "foreign bodies" in their food, including bugs, eggs, plastics, wires and unknown objects.
In May 2021, three squirrels were detected to have peroxide values (in terms of fat) in a food safety supervision and sampling inspection organized by the State Administration for Market Regulation that did not meet the requirements of the national food safety standards.
Just after the double eleven in 2021, some netizens posted on Weibo that the three squirrels purchased in the Via live broadcast room deteriorated and molded every day, and after reflecting to the merchants, the other party rejected the compensation application of netizens on the grounds that the opened bag of nuts could not be used as evidence, and the netizens pulled out more cases of moldy and deteriorated snacks of the three squirrel snacks recently purchased by netizens.
All in all, in addition to the poster model incident that suddenly aroused public doubts, the three squirrels have been sad about food safety this year.
In addition to food safety issues, the three squirrels have other problems that need to be solved.
The first is the issue of revenue. Since 2019, the revenue of the three squirrels has soared to more than 10 billion, and in 2020, it will immediately fall back into 10 billion. In the third quarter of this year, the revenue of the three squirrels fell by 8.59% year-on-year to only 1.8 billion yuan. In the previous second quarter, the revenue of the three squirrels has fallen by 13.6% to 1.59 billion yuan. In the first three quarters, the revenue of the three squirrels was 7.07 billion yuan, down 2.23% year-on-year.
Secondly, in terms of stock prices, when it was first listed, the stock prices of the three squirrels soared. In less than a year, the stock price of the three squirrels has risen from the issue price of 14.68 yuan / share to 91.09 yuan / share, with a total market value of more than 36 billion yuan. However, since June 2020, the stock price of the three squirrels has continued to fall, and the total market value has fallen by nearly 20 billion from its peak.
Judging from the current trend of the entire consumer market, the decline of the three squirrels will continue, perhaps stepping into the rhythm of recession, from then on, and gradually withdrawing from the historical stage.
The rise of new consumption, the great retreat of the Tao brand
The prosperity and decline of the three squirrels are caused by multiple reasons superimposed. But the core reason is still the times.
Time flies！ My lord, times have changed!
The rapid development of the Tao brand benefits from the Tmall mall's practice of creating its own traffic and influence and building a typical brand. But today, Tmall has become a big trend, and now it is the next general direction to re-support small and medium-sized businesses and move towards common prosperity.
At a time when traditional brands did not pay so much attention to e-commerce and could not keep up with the online red brand play, the three squirrels were able to harvest traffic and attention in a blue ocean of e-commerce market. But today, the giants of traditional industries have kept up. In the annual or double eleven sales lists of various industries, the traditional giants not only regained the top of the list, but also increasingly occupied the ranking position. Many of the Tao brands that were quite popular in previous years are now gone, and the three squirrels are now stumbling.
This phenomenon is caused by the current situation. At that time, there was no concept of new consumption, and online shopping was almost concentrated in a few e-commerce platforms, and users passively accepted the platform's advertising and recommendation. Tmall uses its own e-commerce traffic to quickly build a new brand, of course, over the years, three squirrels have also paid a huge cost for platform traffic.
But now that a variety of new consumer brands are on the rise, there are new consumer brands in every field that are supported by huge amounts of money. At the same time, the main battlefield of brand marketing is no longer in the e-commerce station. WeChat public account, Weibo was once the mainstream, and now it has been considered to be the past tense, vibrato, small red book is red, of course, is not allowed to give up the main position, and there is a B station such a young people's main battlefield.
Diversified communication platforms, marketing methods, and grass planting methods are dizzying, and new consumer brand building has formed a new paradigm. Consumers have more choices, their attention is distracted, and brand marketing has entered a new stage. But the Tao brands have fallen, they have risen from the e-commerce platform, but they are lost in the e-commerce platform.
The data shows that from 2016 to 2018, the sum of the revenue of the three squirrels from several major e-commerce platforms accounted for 95.46%, 93.92% and 86.67% of the main business income, respectively.
Product problems have led to a sluggish brand reputation, and the lack of grass dissemination on the content platform has caused the lack of brand potential. Nowadays, the traffic cost of online e-commerce platforms is becoming more and more expensive, and the three squirrels naturally lack the support point for the next step of growth.
Of course, the three squirrels are not unaware that online traffic will become more and more expensive.
Since the beginning of 2019, the three squirrels have begun to lay out offline and create growth space through offline distribution to obtain offline traffic.
The 2021 semi-annual report of the three squirrels shows that the revenue of the three squirrels' offline business accounts for about 30% of the total revenue. In the same period, the total revenue of the three squirrels increased by only 0.17% year-on-year.
This means that the offline business has indeed brought some growth, but in this long time, the online business of the three squirrels has indeed declined significantly.
In addition, although the offline business does bring revenue increases. However, according to statistics, in the first half of 2021, three squirrel feeding stores added 8 new stores and closed 16. 191 new affiliate stores were added and 122 were closed. It can be seen that the offline expansion of the three squirrels is indeed not easy.
Although the offline snack market space is huge, the management cost and capital consumption are very high in the offline store opening and distribution model. Moreover, there are strong competitors offline, and Qiaqia Food, Yanjin Shop, and Baicao Flavor have been laid out in the offline snack market for many years. For example, there are more than 2,700 offline direct stores and franchised stores of Good Shop, which is more than twice the number of three squirrels, and has formed a strong offline snack brand recognition and consumption habits among users.
The brand slogan of the three squirrels is, "Let the world's owners cool up". But now, the owners are about to forget about the three squirrels. Online stall, offline obstacles, the next step of the three squirrels is not easy.