Author: Quiet, Editor: Jia Lele, head image from: Visual China
In 2002, Jia Nailiang officially debuted. That year, a shoe company called Saturday was founded. Jia Nailiang would not have thought that after more than ten years, he would intersect with this company.
In August 2021, Jia Nailiang opened his Douyin live broadcast debut with goods, with an average of 132,000 online people in the noon and evening live broadcasts, more than 100 million likes, and sales of up to 110 million yuan.
Jia Nailiang's live broadcast team is from The Remote Look Network, and the shareholder behind it is the shoe company called Saturday.
The company, which started with women's shoes, has now made a splash in the field of anchor brokerage, in addition to signing Jia Nailiang, it has also signed anchors such as Lou Yixiao, Chen Yiru, and Shen Tao.
How did Saturday's main business go? One word: miserable.
A few days ago, Saturday shares released a 2021 performance forecast, and the net profit pre-loss exceeded 400 million, down more than 18 times from the same period last year. You read that right, it's 18 times.
Why did the "first stock of women's shoes", which was famous in the capital market at that time, fall into such a situation? Can Jia Nailiang save Saturday's women's shoe business by live broadcasting?
First, the loss: the stock price does not fall but rises
After Saturday's results announcement, the opening share price pulled straight up the next day, rising 2.93% by the close. The announcement of serious losses, the stock price on the day is not reasonable, did not fall but rose, why?
First, the huge loss is bearish in a short period of time, from another point of view, it is to make room for the performance growth of the following year.
According to the performance forecast, there are two main reasons for the loss:
In the fourth quarter, we will increase the promotion of footwear inventory, and it is expected to make a provision for bad debts and inventory decline of 280 million to 350 million yuan for the whole year;
The performance of the two new media companies that were acquired has fallen sharply, and it is expected that the impairment of goodwill will be 180 million to 270 million yuan.
After the release of the performance forecast on Saturday, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued a letter of concern, which mentioned that the inventory price decline reserve in 2021 was significantly higher than that in 2020, and questioned whether it was reasonable and whether there was surplus management.
In more colloquial terms, are you throwing off the baggage of history and taking a big shower? This question is not without merit, and this involves the second reason.
Second, compared with the women's shoe business, the anchor agent is better in both heat and imagination.
Another announcement released at the same time as the pre-loss announcement shows that the original women's shoe sales business will be divested on Saturday, only the asset-light business such as brand authorization and management will be retained, and the hot anchor brokerage business will be the focus, and the development of virtual person IP will be integrated into the live streaming and short video business.
It can be seen that in order to concentrate resources on the development of anchor brokerage, Saturday shares almost carried out a business structure adjustment of the hero's broken wrist.
This direction of transformation can be recognized, which has long been verified.
At the end of 2019, Saturday's stock price performance was extremely eye-catching, and 17 up and down boards were harvested in 26 trading days, precisely because of an acquisition, that is, the Remote Lookout Network mentioned at the beginning of the article, after the acquisition, the Remote Lookout Network also became The main source of profit for Saturday.
This is also the reason why the market has interpreted the divestiture of the women's shoe business and the complete transformation as positive.
Of course, the transformation is not the right direction to be found at once.
Saturday 2009 listed on the small and medium-sized board, under the "ST & SAT" (Saturday), "D: FUSE" (Divs), "SAFIYA" (Sophia) and other well-known women's shoe brands.
According to Euromonitor, Saturday ranked seventh with 3.1 percent of the top 10 brands in the mid-to-high-end women's shoe market share in 2010.
With the upgrading of consumption and the development of e-commerce, the domestic clothing and footwear market has gradually slumped. Saturday also fell into a downward trend in performance, and from its listing in 2009 to 2018, the decline in operating income and net profit was the norm.
In 2017, Saturday targeted self-media, and successively acquired fashion Fengxun Company, which operates the fashion women's website Onlylady Women's Zhi, and Beijing Shixin, which operates the beauty interactive media Kimiss Girlfriend Network.
Saturday plans to build a fashion self-media matrix with Fashion Fengxun and Beijing Shixin as the core online, to understand market demand in a timely manner through self-media business, quickly respond to market changes, and at the same time divert online traffic to offline sales terminals, and finally realize traffic realization.
Mergers and acquisitions halted Saturday's downward trend in revenue, but also buried a deeper hidden danger – goodwill. The impairment of goodwill caused by these two companies is one of the reasons for the loss on Saturday 2021.
When the acquisition of Yaowang Network, a goodwill of 1.302 billion yuan was also formed on Saturday, and it is not known whether the future will also be impaired due to the performance of the network not meeting expectations, but the task that Yaowang Network has shouldered in the past is a complete failure.
Second, why the anchor can't save women's shoes
How popular live streaming is, how popular the sales channels are, and how profitable business they are, Via and her anchor brokerage company have already told us.
As an MCN organization that cultivates star artist anchors, The anchor brokerage business of Yuanwang Network ranks first in both Kuaishou and Douyin platforms.
Among them, the celebrities who signed contracts with The Remote Look Network include Yu Dagongzi, Li Xuanzhuo, Naiti Guli, FangFang is very picky, lemon women's shoes, Seven Masters, Beautiful Girl Hi Buy go, Xuebao, Dali, Tina Xu, Li Da's voice, awkward seven duan and other more than 100.
In addition, there are more than 20 celebrities who have signed contracts with Yuanwang Network, including Jia Nailiang, Wang Yaoqing, Wang Zulan, Shen Tao, etc.
When acquiring Yuanwang Network on Saturday, it said that it believes that it can use the advantages of Yaowang Network in terms of technology and channels to serve the existing fashion leather shoe business, reduce the marketing costs of the fashion leather shoe business, effectively broaden sales channels, improve the turnover rate of goods, thereby reducing inventory, enhancing brand image, and improving the repurchase rate.
The fact is that in 2019, the revenue of women's shoe business accounted for less than 60%, and by 2020, the revenue of women's shoe business accounted for only 31%.
McN, which is responsible for revitalizing the women's shoe business, sits on the MCN company with tens of millions of traffic, and its own performance is good, why did it not save Saturday's women's shoes? Do you not want to save or can't save?
The high probability is unintentional salvation.
Let's start with the Kuaishou platform.
According to the statistics of the market value list on January 21, there were only 4 live broadcast information of related products in the 30 days of the live broadcast of the Kuaishou platform on Saturday, of which 1 was Yu Dagongzi, 2 were Xuebao, and 1 was Super Min Shoe House.
Yu Dagongzi (30.151 million fans) and Xuebao (2.045 million fans) are both contracted anchors of Yuanwang Network, and Super Min Shoe House (408,000 fans) is currently unable to determine the partnership with Yuanwang Network or Saturday.
The total sales of the above four live broadcast data are less than 100,000 yuan.
Let's look at the Douyin platform.
Saturday's live broadcast on the Douyin platform is mainly based on the brand side, and at present, it has not been retrieved that the stars or Internet celebrities signed by the Remote Look Network include Saturday brand women's shoes in the live broadcast of the Douyin platform.
Brand self-broadcast data on the Douyin platform on Saturday is still low. On the Feigua Mini Program, there are three stores and Saturday-related official or flagship stores, the market value list on January 24, 2022 statistics, the total number of fans of the three accounts is 105,000 people, in the previous 30 days, the three accounts live broadcast a total of 92 times, live broadcast 11,000 fans.
Finally, the Taobao platform.
There was a daily live broadcast on the Taobao platform on Saturday, with about 7,000 viewers, a total of 2.169 million fans, and 49,000 likes.
It can be seen that whether it is Kuaishou or Douyin and Taobao, Saturday's brand women's shoes live streaming data are low.
Whether it is a marketing channel or a head anchor with goods channel, the remote network has not seen a significant resource tilt towards Saturday. On the official website of The Distant Vision Network, none of its co-branded brands are exhibited on Saturday.
In this way, the synergy effect claimed when Acquiring Yuanwang Network on Saturday broadened women's shoe sales and increased women's shoe inventory turnover did not seem to be actively realized.
Of course, it may also be that after the acquisition of RemoteView Network on Saturday, the business departments or between parent and subsidiary companies have not achieved a good integration, so there may be certain problems in Saturday's internal coordination and management.
It was acquired to broaden the sales channels of women's shoes, but in the end it sold the women's shoes business.
Third, why is the women's shoe business not easy to do?
So why is Saturday a business of getting rid of women's shoes?
The answer is that the women's shoe business is not doing well.
In the 1990s, a number of brand women's shoe companies grew rapidly with relatively clear business strategies and became the dominant players in the domestic consumer market. However, since around 2012, the once brilliant shoe brands have been in a dilemma of development.
The decline of old women's shoes is the joint effect of brand operation and channel changes.
The first is the aging of the brand.
Under the traditional business model, the transmission of demand to the production and design ends has an obvious bullwhip effect, and the understanding of consumer experience and user needs is lagging behind and inaccurate, and it is difficult to respond quickly accordingly.
Products that do not conform to the aesthetics of the market are more likely to be slow to sell, which is also the reason for the high inventory of the clothing and footwear fulfillment industry.
On the one hand, high inventory will drag down the company's cash flow, and on the other hand, it will produce a high loss of inventory price. Only the footwear business is counted, and the inventory turnover days on Saturday 2020 exceed three years. And the Dadong women's shoes that live very well on the market are in a de-intermediated way, from design to shelf in as long as 14 days.
The result of consumers' aesthetic improvement and diversification is that some consumers prefer women's shoes of high-end foreign brands with strong design sense, and the other part pursues affordable women's shoes with faster fashion styles.
The change in consumer demand has led to the dumbbell-shaped growth of the market, the trend of consumption polarization is obvious, high-end brands and low-end brands are growing fast, and the sales growth rate of intermediate brands such as Belle, Daphne, and Red Dragonfly, which once dominated the market, has lost to other grade brands.
The second is channel change.
With the development of e-commerce and other developments, offline channels such as traditional department stores have gradually declined, and women's shoes that rely on street stores and department stores have been impacted.
On the other hand, although the size and sales of shopping malls in offline channels are growing, it is difficult for old women's shoes to enter such high-end shopping malls with trendy trends.
The traditional department store industry is withering, high-end shopping malls cannot enter, and traditional brand women's shoe companies Belle and Daphne have fallen into the tide of store closures.
Third, the rise of sports.
With the rise of the sports and leisure trend, sneakers are no longer only worn when sports tourism, and more and more women's shoes are worn on dating, shopping, work and other occasions.
Major sneaker brands have quickly gained market recognition with functional + fashion, and the proportion of sports shoes in the total consumption of footwear has continued to increase.
In contrast, the large category of leather shoes has shown a slow decline in the overall scale of the industry in recent years, and the production capacity of the leather shoe industry has also shrunk year by year.
According to the Data of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, it is expected that by 2026, the domestic leather shoe industry will shrink to 1.7 billion pairs.
Saturday, Belle, etc. also have sports categories.
However, for sports brands, consumers pay more attention to comfort, and the degree of category segmentation is also one of the criteria for judging the professionalism of sports footwear.
Even if the old women's shoe brand can be comfortable, it is difficult to get rid of the inherent cognition of consumers of the brand, which undoubtedly increases the difficulty of changing the brand positioning.
IV. Conclusion
When we look back at the history of Saturday's development, it is not difficult to find that the turning point of its fate occurred around 2010, with the previous march and the year after the dismal year.
No one is a prophet who can foresee the future.
But when a problem occurs, it can always be solved. After Saturday's performance went downhill, we found a lot of external reasons such as channels and brand image, and wanted to remedy it, but ignored the most fundamental problem of product strength.
The direction is off, and no amount of effort will help.
Ye Maozhong, a well-known advertiser, once said that the road of life is very long, but the key is only a few steps. If you make a few wrong steps, then there is a chain reaction: the bicycle breaks, and then the bus does not catch up; the bus does not catch up, the plane does not catch up.
Why not on Saturday?
bibliography:
[1] "The women's shoe industry is experiencing the pain of transformation, and new retail is imminent" Hu Xiaojian
[2] "The Future of China's Women's Footwear Industry", Roland Berger Management Consulting
[3] "The Era of Brand Upgrading Has Arrived - Footwear Industry In-Depth Report" Guohai Securities