"I'm really anxious."
Consumer investor Song Weicheng has been "unemployed" since the beginning of the year. In the past six months, he failed to start a project. Seeing that colleagues in the science and technology medical group of the same institution are busy every day, there is nothing to vote for.
What makes him even more anxious is that the organization's attitude towards the consumer track has also changed 180 degrees: the boss directly told him that this time it was not focused on the consumer track. Only half a year ago, Song Weicheng was still screaming and killing enthusiastically in the consumption boom.
Venture capitalists are always the first to notice the wind direction of opportunities. They have already folded the tallest Zhu Lou, and now they have to turn around. Nowadays, "new consumption is not popular" has become a street code word passed down by VCS. Some of them started a new stove and switched to hard technology and biomedicine; Others simply re-employment and send new resumes to headhunters.
In fact, as we all feel, the gust of new consumption really can't be blown away-since the middle of last year, the consumer industry has begun to show a trend of "frenzy gradually resting".
No matter the amount of investment or the amount of investment, it has met with Waterloo. According to the IT orange data, the number of investment events in Q 1 new consumption sector in 2022 decreased by 32% month-on-month and year-on-year, with the largest decline, and the investment enthusiasm was not as good as before.
People are not surprised by this comparison. During the "quietest" period of 6 18 this year, there were less than 100 new brands ranked first in sub-sectors, compared with 459 last year, which made people feel that new consumption roared away.
New consumption has indeed cooled down, but in the final analysis it still belongs to the consumption track. If the time period is extended, from the perspective of industry attributes and long-term investment value, five of the six industries with the best performance in the past 2 1 year are consumer industries, and large consumption is still the main track for long-term investment.
Standing at this time node, Caijing Wuji tries to summarize the new consumption in the past, dissect the present and look forward to the future: Why hasn't the new consumption of "network celebrities" crossed the threshold of "long red"? How do head brands find new ways to break away from convention? Is there any chance for China's new consumption?
2022 is destined to be a year of "defoaming" of new consumption.
On March 9th this year, TIMS China, a well-known coffee brand, made an announcement after obtaining a new round of financing. The announcement mentioned that "the pre-merger valuation of TIMS China was adjusted from $65.438+$68.8 million to $65.438+$40 million." So far, in 2022, the first consumer unicorn that publicly lowered its valuation appeared.
Tim Hortons is an earlier coffee brand than Starbucks. In the past few decades, its equity has been changed many times and finally sold to Burger King. It was under the management of the latter that TIMS was established in China and opened more than 400 stores in China.
To some extent, TIMS China took the lead in lowering the valuation, which is a weather vane. Because this may be the beginning of the noise fading. And to explore the reasons behind it, the new consumption collective flameout, which is also the result of a variety of factors.
From the macro external environment, new consumption is a "successful epidemic, a failed epidemic".
A general consensus is that 2020 is the first year of the rise of new consumption. At that time, the COVID-19 epidemic swept the world. Under the background of uncertainty in all walks of life, daily eating and drinking is only a relatively certain choice in the capital market.
According to the published data, in 2020, the total retail sales of social consumer goods decreased by 3.9% year-on-year, while the consumption of tobacco, alcohol and food as necessities increased by 5. 1% year-on-year.
For a time, hot money poured into the consumer track. From 2020 to the first half of 20021,new consumption became a new capital export. From the VC's point of view, the investment spree has directly entered the climax-diet soda, fresh tea, Lamian Noodles, coffee, baking, botanicals, even mala Tang, fried skewers, condiments, underwear ... Consumer companies that you can think of and unexpected have started financing.
However, to everyone's surprise, since the second half of last year, due to the sudden and repeated epidemic and the uncertainty of global economic growth, the total retail sales of social consumer goods has entered a low growth stage. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the overall growth rate of social zero slowed down at 2021-1,and the growth rate of online retail sales basically remained at around 15%.
As a result, new consumption directly faces problems such as weakening consumption power, and capital also begins to "shrink back".
On the surface, the 6 18 "quietness" of major e-commerce platforms this year is the most intuitive embodiment. But in fact, the data of double 1 1 began to appear last year. According to the data of 202 1 double 1 1, the turnover of the whole network was 96510.2 billion yuan, which did not exceed the trillion mark. At the same time, the new consumer brands that have climbed to the top many times in previous years have also been squeezed out by the more powerful traditional international brands.
From micro to industry, the growth of new consumption is less than expected and the traditional growth methodology is invalid, so the bubble burst is inevitable.
In the past two years, the fundamental fulcrum of emerging new brands is the reinterpretation of consumers, commodities and markets. New brands try to cater to new consumer groups, new consumption patterns and new consumption scenarios and gain a firm foothold in the market.
In the eyes of entrepreneurs and investors, "Weibo influences public opinion, WeChat keeps private domain, Tik Tok creates popularity, Meituan decides word of mouth, Xiaohongshu plants grass every day, and Ladder Media is responsible for brainwashing". Therefore, "new media (Tik Tok Xiaohongshu)+new channels (social/live e-commerce)+new products (extremely cost-effective) = new brands" has become a universal law that new consumer enterprises follow as a standard.
Looking back now, a large number of cutting-edge brands have set up channels on platforms with young people as the main body, such as Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker, Little Red Book and Bi Li, all of which have this formula.
But the problem is that, on the one hand, with the help of these new channels and new media dividends, new brands often ignore the creation of their internal core competitiveness, and each sub-category quickly falls into a strange circle of homogenization and involution. For example, the perfect diary and the snow-covered tea are limited in growth and fall into the curse of "listing is the peak";
On the other hand, brands that get dividends in the early days have formed their heads in most tracks, leaving fewer and fewer opportunities for other new brands. For example, Inspur is playing with blind boxes, and POP MART is already ahead of its peers; On the coffee track, Ruixing seized a large market share, and sugar-free bubble water and vibrant forest also occupied the top spot in the market.
All this also means that the injection of capital in the past made the new consumer industry mature prematurely like a stimulant, deviating from its normal business rules, and now it has ushered in a callback process.
This also explains why the judgment of the investment circle has changed from "all consumer goods are worth doing again" in the early years to "99% new consumption will die" now. It is an indisputable fact that new consumption needs to be "defoamed".
Many new consumer enterprises have more or less fallen into the growth bottleneck after experiencing crazy financing and barbaric growth. What should we do next? Where should I go? This has become an urgent problem for new consumer enterprises.
Now new consumers have found a relatively standard answer-turn to CVC.
What is CVC? Different from traditional VC, it refers to enterprise venture capital. As an independent investment subsidiary or investment department established by a non-financial enterprise, it is also a common strategic layout after the enterprise develops to a certain stage and accumulates certain funds.
But in fact, for most of the new consumption, most of them are still in the high-input stage of vigorously opening stores, expanding by leaps and bounds, and seizing the position of the "leader" of the track. Some enterprises have not even achieved profitability and still rely on capital transfusion. Making venture capital in advance under the condition of unstable foundation also implies the "internal troubles and foreign invasion" of new consumption.
From the perspective of brand development, CVC has become a "forced" choice.
As mentioned earlier, this concentrated outbreak of consumer goods in China relies on the "universal formula", while the C-end cannot be separated from the live broadcast of Tik Tok, Aauto Quicker and Taobao. In essence, it is better to play on the traffic side and seize the enthusiasm of this wave of short videos and live broadcasts. However, it is neither a threshold nor economical to buy traffic from the traffic platform and accurately deliver it to specific people.
Compared with the rise of the old generation of traditional consumer brands, they all started from the supply chain, and the production end (M end) cannot be separated from the strong domestic supply chain. This means that when the flow formula begins to fail, how can it stand out from the new consumption? How to face the old consumption? Then we must return to the real competition.
Vertical investment in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain is to survive, protect from being stuck in the neck, and have the confidence to survive.
Because the pressure from the "old consumer" giants is the most direct. A huge brand may fall behind, but its energy must not be underestimated.
Take Yuan Qi Forest as an example. After it was successfully detached, it was stopped by domestic and foreign beverage giants and "stopped production" many times. The game behind the supply chain made Yuan Qi Forest realize its "soft spot", so it began to invest in building factories, and also invested in the upstream sugar substitute supplier "Ruifen Bio" to lock in the production capacity.
And POP MART. In order to get rid of the attacks of strong competitors such as 52TOYS, TOPTOYS, X 1 1, POP MART successively invested in animated films, established Broadcasting Investment Co., Ltd., and took a stake in 2: 10, in an attempt to establish a platform-based capability through investment and become an incubation platform for new brands.
On the other hand, new consumption inevitably enters the era of stock competition. For the new head consumer brands that have developed to a certain scale, the growth rate will definitely slow down, especially for some tracks with low ceilings or in a mature development stage. New consumer brands can only achieve category expansion through investment and pierce the ceiling of a single brand/category.
The leap from consumer brands to consumer goods groups has also become the destination of most new consumer brands.
When it comes to investment, we can't ignore the dynamic forest. With the support of Challenger Capital founded by Tang Binsen, Yuan Qi Forest has made more foreign investments, from yogurt "Beihai Ranch" and Never Coffee, to brands such as Panda Craft, Guanyun Wine and Pastoral.
Compared with internal incubation, financing from investors can't be consumed. Investment and M&A are the optimal allocation of assets, which are obviously more attractive to new consumer brands.
Qing Yong, the founder of Tomato Capital, once said: "The internal independent incubation sub-brand model is heavier, with greater costs and risks. Foreign counterparts are relatively light, because they are screening brands that have been formed through market competition, and they do not need to go from 0 to 1. "
In addition, whether listed or unlisted, the demand for new consumption management market value (valuation) is universal. The valuation of the organization itself includes its possible investments in the future. Only by telling the story of brand matrix well can we continue financing and continue to invest in mergers and acquisitions.
It is worth mentioning that, from the external factors, the enthusiasm of institutional consumption is declining, resources are also concentrated in the head enterprises, and the space for small players is shrinking. From this dimension, the valuation of some targets is ushered in a trough, which is indeed a good time to bargain-hunting.
However, whether it is to stabilize the basic market or to find the second growth curve of performance, new consumption can not compete with the commercial nature of the industry and the most basic development law of the company. In this multi-party battle, everything about CVC's new consumption must return to the original point, product strength, brand awareness and whether the moat of the supply chain is deep enough.
When the industry is in high spirits, the radical growth of new consumption makes common sense give way to various concepts and vocabulary, such as "national tide", "revival of domestic products" and "generation Z", which seem to be related to these concepts. You can catch the growth express.
But the trap is also buried here. As an insider said, "the money in consumers' pockets is limited, and which one or two products do you finally choose?" "The problem now is oversupply, and most new brands are too replaceable."
In fact, this is also the real way to break the new consumer industry-"respect the law."
In the view of financial mowgli, the consumer industry has no concept of new consumption. The most concentrated embodiment of the consumer industry lies in the brand, and the bottom of the brand is product power, brand power and channel power. This bottom has not changed in the past decades and will not change in the future, so there is no so-called "new consumption".
New media, new channels, and the advantages of new supply chain bring the ultimate cost performance of products. For any excellent consumer enterprise in the world, they are only the carriers of information dissemination, product sales, and meeting the needs of users, and they are also the most basic basic skills of an excellent consumer enterprise.
Whether it is Coca-Cola, Unilever, Procter & Gamble or qiaqia Food, these brands that have gone through the time period do not rely on the dividends of the media and channels, but on the continuous polishing of product strength, the deepening of channel strength and the continuous accumulation of brand strength. It takes a lot of time for every brand to build relationships with consumers.
On the other hand, these new brands with internet entrepreneurial background need efficiency and data, trying to start with speculative thinking of "grasping dividends". This kind of practice that runs counter to time is "anti-common sense" from the moment it was born, and it can't subvert the old consumption.
Therefore, from successful brands to great brands, consumer goods can't bypass time. Fortunately, a group of new brands in the head began to return to the old road of "old consumption" actively or passively.
For example, every family is actively laying out offline. Perfect Diary has completed a series of operations of domestic beauty products in just three years. With the ebb of new consumer goods, Perfect Diary once fell into a growing dilemma. In 20021year, Perfect Diary began to promote the "online+offline" gameplay, and laid out more than 200 stores across the country, trying to penetrate the family consumption scene by using community elevator media advertisements.
For another example, last year, in order to achieve the sales target of 7.5 billion yuan, Yuan Qi Forest began to intensively launch intelligent networked refrigerators in the offline market, hoping to quickly pry open traditional channels such as restaurants and canteens. Although this move occupied the chassis of traditional beverage giants and attracted giants with strong offline sales ability to encircle them, it was at least a crucial step for a consumer goods enterprise.
Time is an unavoidable mountain for young new brands. No matter how efficient the new consumer brand is, there is no way to be an enemy of time. Because time carries a better understanding of consumers' needs, constant polishing of product quality and rising feelings with consumers.
This is why, when we look at the "old and new" where consumption is over-amplified, we can see that the Internet has not completely subverted the consumer industry, and the traditional gameplay still has strong vitality.
Objectively speaking, compared with the 20th century, young brands in the 20th century (265,438+0) have many advantages of "winning at the starting line" in terms of capital, talents and technology, and they also have more opportunities to occupy a place in the market through innovation that keeps pace with the times.
In the long run, the rise of consumption in China is inevitable, and it is also extremely certain that there will be many large consumer companies in China in the future. For the current new consumer brands, the first steps of "from 0 to 1" and "fast and right" have been completed, but the next step will be the process of "from 1 to 100", and the fast company should do it slowly.