Nuts open the way into the distribution battlefield Three squirrels recreate the performance growth pole

anonymous

Three squirrels (300783. SZ) is brewing an "uphill battle."

At the recently opened Tianjin Autumn Sugar and Wine Conference, Zhang Liaoyuan, the founder of Three Squirrels, announced that the company would achieve the goal of "recreating a ten-billion squirrel in five years". The main way to achieve the above goals is to "focus on nuts, focus on distribution".

In fact, the three squirrels that started with Internet marketing have achieved the goal of tens of billions of revenues as early as before, but it has to be admitted that this achievement mainly comes from online channels. With the continuous expansion of the offline nut market, what is in front of the three squirrels is a huge "cake", which will undoubtedly become the new performance growth pole of the three squirrels.

It is understood that the three squirrels began to set up a distribution division in June this year, setting up five major war zones and 21 provincial sales organizations across the country.

In the distribution war, the three squirrels will take the nut as their own "bullet", propose to focus on the nut, and build a suitable product structure according to the distribution channel. In addition, the three squirrels also targeted the gift box market and launched a series of products.

However, Zhang Liaoyuan said that in the future, the three squirrels will also sub-brand their selected snacks and introduce many sub-brands into the distribution system, ultimately achieving the goal of multi-brand and globalization.

The battle for moderate distribution

There is no doubt that the three squirrels are currently the leaders in the nut industry. For eight consecutive years, it has maintained the first place in the sales of nut snacks on the whole network, and has become the first leisure snack enterprise with revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan. Relying on the Internet, the three squirrels have achieved remarkable results.

But at the moment, three squirrels are "escaping from their comfort zone." Recently, three squirrels announced that they will achieve the goal of "recreating a ten-billion squirrel in five years" through "focusing on nuts and focusing on distribution".

The three squirrels are aiming at the vast market space offline. "At present, the whole of China's tree nuts have a market size of nearly 70 billion yuan, of which about 20 billion yuan online and about 50 billion yuan offline, and of this 50 billion yuan, offline bulk goods and pre-packaging account for half of each." Zhang Liaoyuan revealed, "We have a 20% share online, which is in a relatively leading position, but our share offline is only 2%, which is a good opportunity for the three squirrels and all the dealer partners." ”

Zhang Liaoyuan believes that the current main market of the snack industry offline is still millions of terminal stores, in the next 1 to 2 years, once the distribution channels are forced, the lack of the three squirrels offline market will be quickly filled.

In the view of Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in the Chinese food industry, the distribution of three squirrels can maximize the integration of online and offline operations, the mutual integration and communication of online and offline resources, and the complementarity of online and offline shortcomings.

According to reports, three squirrels have entered a number of mainstream stores. The New Year Festival will also invest 150 million yuan in advertising costs to strengthen the attributes of the three squirrel nut brands.

In this regard, Zhang Liaoyuan said that the online low-price model leads to price wars, and offline price wars are also one of the best means, but offline will not become the main way of competition. The biggest moat of the three squirrels under the line is the brand mind.

Under the strategy of "focusing on nuts, focusing on distribution", three squirrels have been built into a moderate distribution system.

Wu Feng, general manager of the three squirrels distribution division, said that since the new upgrade of the distribution division was established on July 1, 2021, in just 100 days, the sales team formation including the five major war zones has been completed, the distribution business process rule formulation and the distribution CRM system development and the distribution mode of the dealer's exclusive central warehouse has been successfully operated; and the brand authorized agent has been determined by the 230+ annual average sales scale of more than 65 million yuan in the country, and 80% of the top 100 chain supermarkets in China have cooperated with 80% of the top 100 supermarkets in China. It is estimated that the distribution of exclusive star products will be sold in 15,000 KA stores in November, and it is planned to complete the entry of the benchmark chain convenience system in the fourth quarter to cover 30,000 high-quality convenience stores; the first batch of traditional channels has achieved the centralized display of thousands of stores.

Wu Feng revealed that the revenue of the distribution business of the three squirrels in 2021 is estimated to be about 1.8 billion yuan, and it is planned that the distribution business as a whole will achieve an annual sales target of 5 billion yuan in 2023.

In fact, the distribution of three squirrels originated in 2018, the 2B platform distribution was launched, and the three squirrels entered the Ali Retail Pass and Jingdong Xinlutong platform as the main development direction, covering more than 400,000 terminal stores. From 2019 to 2020, the new channel business of the three squirrels was launched, and two major channels of platform distribution and wholesale direct supply business were established, covering more than 540,000 terminal stores. In 2021, the three squirrels carried out the construction of a moderate distribution system, added the functions of the marketing management department and the planning department, launched the five major war zones, and built 21 provincial and regional teams.

Wu Feng introduced that there are two meanings behind moderate distribution, one is to rely on the brand to lead the establishment of a new relationship between distributors and retailers of three squirrel goods to achieve efficiency improvement and cost optimization; the other is to achieve full-scene reach of products to consumers through moderate distribution.

"The offline distribution business of the three squirrels will gradually and rapidly upgrade from the wholesale direct supply model to the moderate distribution model, develop brand authorized dealers, and gradually cultivate channel strategic partners with annual sales of 30 million+; upgrade the development and distribution of exclusive products, standardize the channel operation order by channel; optimize channel costs, improve channel efficiency, large-scale coverage, and multi-channel reach; category channels + focus nuts + middle office empowerment, driving the growth of offline distribution of nut categories." Wu Feng said.

Zhang Liaoyuan said that relying on the brand of three squirrels, new goods and a re-integrated supply chain and a young new distribution team, plus 150 million yuan of advertising for saturation promotion, "We will achieve 10 billion in the next five years, and there is no upper limit for this goal." ”

Focus on nuts

Channel change has brought more possibilities for the product circulation of the three squirrels, and in the distribution war, the bullets of the three squirrels are "nuts".

In fact, in this field, the three squirrels as industry leaders, the competitive strength can be reflected in the data. Up to now, the three squirrels have created 1 billion-level large items such as daily nuts, as well as pecans, macadamia nuts, paper-skinned walnuts and other billion-level large items. Since its inception in 2012, Three Squirrels have firmly dominated the prepackaged tree nut market, with cumulative sales of more than 2.2 billion bags and sales of nearly 30 billion yuan.

According to data from Rees China, the market share of three squirrels in the nut market reached 39%, ranking first, and the "Research on The Trend of Snack Food Consumption in the New Consumption Era" released by the Circulation Industry Promotion Center of the Commerce Department also mentioned that the three squirrels "ranked first in China's nut sales for 5 consecutive years from 2016 to 2020".

The nut market still has huge room for improvement. According to Rees China data, the average nut consumption in Chinese is currently 0.5 kg/person/year, while the global per capita nut consumption is 0.7 kg/person/year, which is 1.4 times that of China; the per capita consumption of nuts in the United States is 2.7 kg/person/year, which is 5 times that of China; and the per capita consumption of nuts in the Netherlands is 5.3 kg/person/year, which is 11 times that of China. With the upgrading of consumption, the improvement of per capita purchasing power and the popularization of the health value of nuts, the market space of Chinese nuts will be further opened. Looking at the past ten years, China's nut market is expected to increase to 3 times, reaching a market size of nearly 200 billion yuan.

Nuts are the earliest origin of the story of the three squirrels. In 2012, Zhang Liaoyuan first did the nut business based on pecans, almonds, macadamia nuts, etc.; by 2014, the three squirrels began to lay out other zero food categories, and announced that they would become a full-category snack brand, with SKUs as many as 1,000+.

But by 2020, the three squirrels began to send signals to return to nuts. From proposing "dried nuts + selected snacks" to this year's "focus on nuts", the SKUs of the three squirrels have been continuously slimmed down and now remain at about 300.

In addition, the three squirrels continue to promote the update and upgrading of the nut category. This year, three squirrels launched the Super Nut Series, with four products: pecans, pistachios, hand-peeled badan wood, and original fragrant walnuts. It is reported that the series uses the saturated heat energy killing process created by three squirrels after 5 years of research and development, so that the nuts are better peeled, more crispy and more flavorful. In the mid-autumn festival special live broadcast of Via on September 2, three squirrels "appeared" with a series of nut products, and launched the new Super Pistachio and Daily Nuts 100% Pure Nuts. In less than 4 hours that night, the three squirrels sold a total of 2.034 million bags of nuts, with cumulative sales of more than 10 million yuan.

At the same time, according to Wu Feng, the three squirrels launched a distribution series of new products for distribution, including nut star products, nut gifts, daily nuts and selected snacks.

In addition, gift box products will also be the main market of the three squirrels offline distribution channels. According to Rees China data, gift giving is a unique market in China, with a market size of more than 200 billion yuan, of which nut gift boxes are expected to exceed 30 billion yuan in the gift market in the next three years, and 85 billion yuan in ten years.

"Nuts have a unique advantage in the gift market, that is, health, high-end, suitable for all ages. Nuts in the gift market has a scale of tens of billions, and more importantly, nut gift boxes have just begun to show rapid growth, which is on the eve of the outbreak. Offline channels, in addition to daily nuts, nut gift market influx of a large number of players, in recent years nut gift boxes have gradually become a new trend of gifts, more and more people began to send nut gift boxes. Chen Yingying, senior consultant of strategic positioning consulting agency Rees China, said that in the gift market, the crowd effect will be further amplified, and the advantages of leading brands will be further highlighted; as the leading brand of nuts, three squirrels will seize a larger share of the nut gift market.

It is worth noting that "focus nuts" is the first step in the "cross strategy" of the three squirrels. In the next step, the three squirrels will achieve "multi-brand, globalization".

As early as this year's three squirrels ninth anniversary celebration activities, Zhang Liaoyuan said that the future three squirrels will be divided into two steps: focus on nuts, the three squirrel main brands into excellent nut brands; transform a single brand into a multi-brand, so that China's food through a multi-brand way to the world.

This time, Zhang Liaoyuan also said at the press conference, "In the next step, we will brand all the selected snacks." After the New Year Festival, we will realize more than 20 sub-brands, and then all of them will be introduced into the distribution system. ”

Battle of the Mind

"A strong brand must be the representative of a certain category, and even become synonymous with this category." Chen Yingying said that the king of the category usually obtains 70% to 80% of the profit or market value of the category, and the representative of the three squirrels for the nut category will continue to increase. In Chen Yingying's view, this will be a "battle of the mind", occupying the traffic entrance of the mind, building a mental moat, and becoming an excellent representative of the category.

And this is also Zhang Liaoyuan's new idea for the development of three squirrels.

In fact, with the growth of consumption power, people's demand for products is increasing day by day, and a large number of new categories have been spawned in the short term, but the precipitation of brands is slightly lagging behind, and the degree of brand concentration has not been significantly improved.

In Zhang Liaoyuan's view, China actually has only 30 years of brand history. The decade from 1990 to 2000 was driven by channels. "At this time, there are a lot of self-righteous, but not necessarily brand, because the channel is developing, as long as you master the channel resources, you can have a good life, which is essentially a kind of melee."

From 2000 to 2010, emphasis was placed on the establishment of the brand mind. "We can understand that in the early stage, we are relying on the Internet to do traffic business, doing traffic business is very simple, the logic is that there is a lot of traffic, and I sell more things to the same group of people." And when the traffic business becomes user-driven and brand-driven, there are fewer things. At this time, we choose to do subtraction instead of addition. In other words, can your brand represent a category? ”

Zhang Liaoyuan said that the most essential difference between the brand model and the traffic model is that the traffic model is more affected by the price factor, and the brand will rely more on the channel; the brand model, which is more affected by the user's mental factors, occupies the user's mind, and will bring more opportunities.

When it comes to the brand of three squirrels, it is impossible to avoid the IP of "three small squirrels". "This year is the tenth year of the development of three squirrels, we have never looked for a spokesperson, 'three little squirrels' is our spokesperson." To this day, this IP has played a great value, our IP animation is deeply loved by children, the IP-based squirrel town is a new place for family gatherings, and then there are IP movies released. Zhang Liaoyuan said, "'Three little squirrels' is a kind of personal expression, we call consumers 'masters', call dealers and suppliers 'partners', IP is the gene engraved in our bones, it represents brand power." ”

The goal of the three squirrels is to make the three squirrels an excellent representative of the nut by occupying the most valuable positioning. "Three squirrels, China's nut sales lead for five consecutive years." Invest more than one billion yuan in three years, and quickly seize the mind through saturation promotion. By introducing the leader positioning and saturating the resource investment, the three squirrels will occupy the traffic entrance of the mind and build a mental moat.

The "real" of three squirrels

"Focus on nuts, focus on distribution", the three squirrels undoubtedly have to fight a "hard battle", when explaining the problem of "what do we have", Zhang Liaoyuan will "true values" as one of the weapons of the three squirrels to enter the distribution.

"Our core value is authenticity. The success of the three squirrels today is brought about by the integrity of Internet business technology. This kind of integrity is when two people don't know each other, you give me money, I give you goods. We've kept up with this era of integrity. Zhang Liaoyuan said.

When it comes to the battlefield of distribution, authenticity is just as important. Zhang Liaoyuan said: "We don't want to pay bribes, we only talk about business and cooperation. On the first day of its creation, the three squirrels came up with a system called "Eleven House Rules for Squirrels", of which 4 point directly to the problem of integrity. Today, in the next 5 years, if we want to recreate a ten-billion squirrel, this problem must not be wrong. In my opinion, if the real business is in the short term, it can only be called speculation, from the medium term it is demand, from a long-term point of view, it is trust, and trust is based on reality. This is the tacit understanding and consensus that I hope to reach with all my partners today. ”

In Zhang Liaoyuan's view, the industry-leading IP with three small squirrels is the "nuclear weapon" of the three squirrels entering the distribution market, and the real value is the button that detonates the "nuclear weapon".

In fact, "real" is reflected in all aspects of the operation of the three squirrels, and clean construction is not only the focus of business development, but also a major feature of the three squirrels to build a strong fighting fortress. The company plays a leading role in the industrial chain, adopts the "1 + X" alliance model, gathers upstream and downstream enterprises inside and outside the province, and forms a cultural identity of starting a business in the right way and making people honest. From "verbal integrity" and "paper integrity" to "digital integrity", the integrity culture of the three squirrels has been continuously improved with the development of enterprises. In 2018, the company won the "China Integrity Innovation Award Nomination Award", in 2020 won the "China Integrity Innovation Award Featured Innovation Project Award", and in 2021 won the first "Private Enterprise Integrity and Compliance Innovation Award".

In this way, the activities of the three squirrels and social responsibility are complementary. In the special period of early 2020, the company set up a "volcano commando team" and attracted 1160 "squirrel people" to join, which effectively guaranteed the company's resumption of work and production and the safety of employees' life and health. In July 2020, in the face of the severe flood prevention situation in Wuhu, three squirrels took the initiative to undertake the embankment duty work of the stationed street.

In addition, in 2020, three squirrels launched the "help" public welfare agricultural brand. The company set up a "Red Squirrel Public Welfare Pioneer Team". By organizing charity sales, this team fully grasps every opportunity to turn love into strength. In 2021, "help a handful" is expected to drive sales of 500 tons, achieve profits of 3 million yuan, all serve the construction of origin infrastructure, education and culture, extend the industrial chain to the field, and contribute more to promoting farmers' income and achieving common prosperity.

Bring faith and start all new. From all categories to focus nuts, from excessive dependence on online to omni-channel balanced development, the three squirrels that represent the brand in the era of e-commerce traffic have changed themselves and embarked on a second entrepreneurial journey again. In the face of the distribution market, with the advantage of nuts, the era of omni-channel integration and development, what kind of industry miracle will the three squirrels create, which is undoubtedly expected.