Many time-honored brands are carriers of intangible cultural heritage, the imprint of urban transformation, and the portrait of market folk customs. However, the "time-honored brand" is of course "old" as precious, but it is also necessary to maintain the vitality and fireworks flavor when creating a name, not only to inherit the old craftsmanship, but also not to exclude innovation, from product innovation to channel innovation, model innovation, the same can not have the slightest slack.
Therefore, time-honored brands must also embark on their own path of high-quality development in order to have long-term vitality. As a large-scale consumer industry group rooted in Shanghai and China, Yuyuan Co., Ltd. owns 19 time-honored Chinese brands and a number of representative intangible cultural heritage items such as the Yuyuan Lantern Festival. How to rejuvenate these time-honored brands and achieve high-quality development is a must for Yuyuan to achieve its own long-term development.
So how does Yuyuan answer this question?
Methodology 1: Business focus, balance between offense and defense, and focus on light
First of all, for a listed company like Yuyuan, the business strategy determines the company's judgment on the future of itself and the industry.
In the face of changes in the industry and the company's own situation, Yuyuan Co., Ltd. put forward the business strategy of "business focus, offensive and defensive balance, and light and heavy".
Specifically, in terms of business focus, Yuyuan's existing business is currently divided into mature core business and other businesses. Yu Garden's core business includes jewellery and fashion, wine and beverage, and the goal is to build it into one of the leading brands in the industry. For other industries, it is hoped that they will rely on differentiated competition and become "one and two" enterprises in their respective industry segments.
In terms of offensive and defensive balance. Before 2022, the company was in a period of strategic expansion, focusing on investment and mergers and acquisitions, and from 2022 to 2024, taking into account the changes in the external environment, the company's asset-liability portfolio was optimized, and the business focus gradually shifted to retreat. In the past few years, Yuyuan's successful exit from Zhaojin Mining, IGI and other projects has not only realized the return of funds, but also cashed in rich investment returns.
In terms of having light and weight. Through the integration of business management and property management business, the company has accumulated asset-light operation capabilities and accelerated external expansion; For the asset-heavy business, we will adopt a light and heavy approach, explore pan-real estate funds, equity cooperation and other models, and build the ability of industrial investment and large-scale replication of operations. The company has successively accelerated the disposal of some heavy assets. In the first half of the year, the TOMAMU resort in Japan was sold, and in July, the Shanghai Xingguangyao project was sold. However, the combination of light and heavy does not mean that it completely abandons heavy asset-related businesses, but focuses resources on strategic projects that can achieve high returns, such as the new projects that the company harvested in the core location of Haitang Bay in Sanya, Hainan this year.
Methodology 2: Adhere to the innovation-driven strategy and inject new momentum into the development of products
It is not enough to have a business strategy, but also to implement the strategy into all aspects of operation. In this regard, we might as well observe from the three aspects of products, channels and brands.
After all, for enterprises with consumption attributes, endogenous growth often comes from the three core elements of brand power-driven, channel-driven and product-driven. In fact, Yuyuan shares in the product, brand, channel "three forces".
In terms of product innovation, in the first half of this year, Yuyuan's well-known time-honored jewelry brand Lao Miao once again launched a new "String of Good Luck" series of products for young consumer groups, which accurately gained insight into the current young consumers' preferences for small gram gold jewelry, and met the needs of young consumers for emotional value in product positioning and design, focusing on blessing the blessing implication of "good luck". "A String of Good Luck" has been quickly recognized by the market after its launch, and the 2.0 products of this series have been intensified in research and development.
At the same time, cross-border cooperation is also a major secret to the renewal and upgrading of time-honored brands. Also this year, the cross-border cooperation of Yuyuan's time-honored catering brands can be described as gratifying, and the circle-breaking and explosive models are frequently born.
For example, the innovative store "Nanxiang Mantou Dian", a time-honored Nanxiang steamed bun store, joined hands with Balenciaga, a France luxury brand, to launch a customized version of France black truffle xiaolongbao and BB Dingsheng cake, triggering a rush to buy online and offline; Songhelou cooperated with Zhou (Jay Chou's official two-dimensional image and brand) to bring a variety of freshly baked co-branded packages, which attracted much attention at the time-honored brand expo in September; Chunfeng Songyue Lou and KFC jointly created an energetic "upgraded" vegetarian bun, which became a hot-selling breakfast; The food co-branded by Yuyuan Culture Catering Group and the mobile game Lian and the producer has also become a hit in the store.
In terms of channel innovation, the company further made efforts online, built a breakthrough in Douyin storecast from 0 to 1, opened 51 online stores, tested the empowerment of Douyin storecast, and channeled traffic to stores through Douyin local life O2O, improved the quality of membership operations, and strengthened the high-end customer strategy. In the first half of this year, its GMV on the Douyin platform reached 140 million yuan, and it is expected to become a new retail track with great growth potential for Yuyuan's jewelry brands in the future.
Methodology 3: With the theme of "Oriental Life Aesthetics", further enhance the brand potential
Finally, on the brand moat, as an enterprise with profound historical and cultural heritage, Yuyuan has grasped the company's core competitive advantage - culture.
In order to give full play to its own cultural advantages, Yuyuan Co., Ltd. put forward the strategy of oriental life aesthetics. The core definition of the so-called oriental life aesthetics is a way of life that pursues beauty with cultural heritage and emotional value, and is the expression and interpretation of Chinese culture that is younger, fashionable and trendy.
Under the guidance of this strategy, taking the company's well-known cultural and commercial project Yuyuan Mall as an example, in the first half of this year, the business district attracted a total of 18.97 million passengers, a year-on-year increase of 22%, and the sales volume of the business district reached 1.68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31%. The time-honored brands and well-known catering brands in Yuyuan Mall also performed well overall. For example, Nanxiang Steamed Bun Store Yuyuan Store, in the first half of this year, the operating income reached 46.54 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 16%; There is also a Ningbo soup dumpling shop, which was renovated in January this year, and was well received by consumers after its reappearance, with an operating income of 9.36 million yuan as of June 30 this year, a year-on-year increase of 76%.
In addition, Yuyuan Co., Ltd. is also seeking a breakthrough in the region, and is committed to relying on good brands, products and services, to spread the Chinese culture represented by oriental life aesthetics to the world, so that more consumers around the world can feel the unique charm of Chinese culture.
From the end of last year to the beginning of this year, from the end of 2023 to the beginning of 2024, the Yuyuan Lantern Festival, a famous national-level intangible cultural project under Yuyuan Co., Ltd., was held in Paris, France, for the first time, attracting nearly 200,000 local France lantern watchers and receiving rave reviews on overseas social platforms. After watching the Yu Garden Lantern Festival in France, many France people expressed a strong interest in China and Chinese culture, and wanted to come to China again to see the Yu Garden Lantern Festival in Shanghai and experience the taste of Chinese New Year on the spot. The Yuyuan Lantern Festival in France was also selected for the 2023 Shanghai "Chinese Culture Going Global" special support fund project and the 2023 Shanghai "Silver Pigeon Award".
To sum up, Yuyuan Co., Ltd. regards oriental life aesthetics as the company's top strategy, and proposes to "keep the classics and be an Internet celebrity" for the development of time-honored brands. With its profound cultural heritage, forward-looking strategic vision and business strategy that keeps pace with the times, it is leading its time-honored brands and intangible cultural heritage items to be reborn, and gradually exploring the road of global development of Chinese brands, so that time-honored brands, intangible cultural heritage items, and the Chinese culture contained in them can approach global consumers and shine on the world stage.