Wen | AI Finance and Economics Agency Yang Qiao
Editor| Yang Jie
The "only one in a lifetime" DR diamond ring has turned over.
Because of a suspected fan stealing the artist's ID card number to buy products, as well as the incident of relevant information being leaked by "insiders", DR diamond rings have been questioned by many users, and were sent to Weibo hot search a few days ago.
The PARENT company of DR Diamond Ring, which is sprinting for the IPO, has also fallen into an embarrassing situation: the DR Diamond Ring brand that started with "true love marketing" has planted its heel on the "True Love Agreement" this time, how can it persuade young people to continue to pay for the "love story" it tells?
The incident originated on November 10, when a user who claimed to be an "insider" of DR diamond rings broke the news on social media that he had queried a number of traffic artists who were users of DR diamond rings. In a "purchase list" exposed by it, the names of many artists, including Song Weilong, Huang Junjie, Xia Zhiguang, Yan Xujia, Ren Shihao, Zhou Qi, Chen Xiang, Cao Enqi, Zhang Yijie, Mengzikun, Su Wenhao, etc. appeared.
DR diamond ring is endorsed by the well-known pianist Lang Lang and Gina couple, the main theme is a man, can only buy one diamond ring of the brand in his lifetime", "only send one person" "true love" signboard. When purchasing a DR marriage proposal diamond ring, the user needs to pass the ID card information authentication, and sign the "True Love Agreement" to designate the recipient, and can only be ordered once in life and does not support re-purchase.
As a result, the matter has aroused the questions of fans of these artists. Subsequently, some artists debunked rumors that they did not buy.
Subsequently, a Weibo user who claimed to be a fan of one of the artists "revealed that he had previously obtained the artist's ID card number through scalpers, and used the ID number and his mobile phone number to purchase a DR diamond ring. At first, he thought that the brand side still needed to verify his identity again, but he did not expect that the purchase was successful. The fan said that he immediately consulted DR's customer service to change the information, but the customer service said that "it cannot be changed after placing an order.".
Suddenly, the incident sparked controversy on social media. Not only the fans of these artists, but also ordinary consumers have also raised questions: dr diamond ring so-called "only one person in a lifetime", the original is to enter an ID number, do not need the original and personal verification to buy and log in to the system? This "beautiful" slogan has become a gimmick; the so-called "true love agreement" has also become a blank piece of paper.
Moreover, the problem of user information leakage involved in this incident has also become the focus of many people's attention.
In addition, some netizens proposed that the purchase record of the DR diamond ring can be eliminated for 500 yuan, that is to say, as long as the person who buys it spends money to eliminate the record, it can actually be purchased again. For the question of "spending money to eliminate records", DR customer service responded: "The problem that there are users on the network who rumor that spending money to unbind true love is not true, and the company does not support deleting and unbinding information." ”
DR Diamond Rings issued an urgent statement for this purpose. Among them, DR emphasized the brand concept of "love should be carefully chosen, and after choosing firmly each other is the only one", and said that to this end, the brand also set up measures such as signing a true love agreement and binding ID number for purchase users, and established a "true love inquiry system" on this basis.
But the statement was silent on how to review, verify and protect user identities.
Fu Jian, a lawyer at Henan Yulong Law Firm, told AI Finance and Economics that if DR Diamond Ring has obtained consumer consent and established a corresponding management and preservation system when collecting personal information, then DR Company has no illegal liability. However, due to their own negligence or dereliction of duty, resulting in the leakage of citizens' personal information, the department responsible for personal information protection has the right to order them to make corrections, give warnings, confiscate illegal gains, and order the suspension or termination of services for applications that illegally handle personal information.
He also said that if a company deliberately leaks or sells consumers' personal information, then the act is suspected of constituting the crime of infringing personal information.
Affected by the incident, DR Diamond Rings is currently shutting down its True Love Verification Query System.
Brand marketing expert Chen Xuan told AI Finance and Economics that the DR diamond ring overturning incident is essentially a disconnect between brand promotion and technology, technical errors, and insufficient auditing capabilities. However, this directly exposes its weakness: if the brand's "exclusive" attributes are questioned and do exist, the foundation of the brand will be damaged.
"True Love Marketing" has turned over, which is not good news for the DR diamond ring that sprints to the market.
(Photo/Weibo screenshot)
In many marriage proposal videos related to "love" related to TV series, variety shows or short video platforms, dr diamond rings can often be seen.
The parent company of DR Diamond Ring is Dia Co., Ltd., which is mainly engaged in jewelry brand operation, jewelry customization and R & D design, etc. It is its main business to customize high-quality marriage proposal diamond rings for the marriage and love group. In July this year, Dia shares publicly submitted a prospectus to be listed on the ChiNext board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
At the time of the development of DR diamond rings, established jewelry brands such as Chow Tai Fook, Chow Sang Sang, and Saturday Fook had already steadily occupied most of the market share in the jewelry market. DR Diamond Ring wants to stand out, and can only work brand marketing.
DR diamond ring sword to the side, put forward the classic advertising slogan "can only be customized in a lifetime", once again in the jewelry circle to promote the concept of "diamond equals love", and crowned with the name of "loyalty", suddenly let the DR diamond ring in the marriage jewelry market successfully gained a lot of users.
In order to consolidate the brand value, DR Diamond Ring proposes that men's purchase of wedding diamond rings need to be bound to id cards, and both parties also need to sign a true love agreement, sign a promise and a promisee, generate a true love code belonging to the two, and make a commitment to true love in this life. In addition, DR has also launched a "true love verification query system", which can query the user's purchase and binding records with the ID card, and if there is a user who has purchased behavior, DR diamond ring will refuse to continue to sell wedding diamond rings to the user.
DR Diamond Rings will market this concept almost to the extreme. In channels such as Xiaohongshu, major e-commerce platforms, and short video platforms, the ads and planting notes of DR diamond rings have blossomed. In the TV series advertising implantation, the figure of the DR diamond ring is also pervasive. In addition to the spokesperson Lang Lang and his wife, including Qi Wei and Lee Seung-hyun and other celebrity wedding promotions, dr diamond rings have appeared.
According to the prospectus, from 2018 to 2020, Dia shares achieved total revenue of 1.5 billion yuan, 1.665 billion yuan and 2.464 billion yuan, respectively, and net profit was 273 million yuan, 264 million yuan and 563 million yuan, respectively. In 2020, the marriage proposal diamond ring achieved an income of 1.868 billion yuan, and the marriage pair ring achieved an income of 555 million yuan. Dr brand has more than 20 million fans on Internet platforms such as Weibo, WeChat public account, Douyin, and Kuaishou.
At the same time as revenue growth, the selling expenses of Dia shares are also rising, from 500 million yuan in 2018 to 729 million yuan in 2020. From 2018 to 2020, its annual sales expenses accounted for 33.32%, 40.51% and 29.58% of the total revenue, respectively.
DR diamond ring pays special attention to online promotion, and the cost of online promotion of Dia shares over the years also accounts for more than 80% of the marketing costs, and its online promotion costs account for 91.04% in 2020.
In contrast, its research and development expenses, in the past three years, the research and development expenses of DR diamond rings have accounted for less than 1% of the total revenue. In 2020, the R&D expenditure was only 0.17 billion yuan. In addition to the operating costs of opening a store, the cost of diamonds and the cost of commissioned processing, the cost of Dia shares is basically "swallowed up" by marketing expenses.
For expensive goods such as diamond rings, more users will still choose offline consumption. More than 90% of the revenue of DR diamond rings also comes from offline store channels.
Previously, De Beers's slogan of "diamonds are eternal, a diamond is eternal" has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. As a symbol of love, the diamond ring is also expensive, often tens of thousands. In the prospectus of Dia Shares, from 2018 to 2020, the price of its marriage proposal diamond rings at the sales end reached 10,600 yuan, 11,500 yuan and 10,900 yuan, respectively.
However, according to the prospectus, the unit cost of its marriage proposal diamond ring was 3160 yuan, 3286 yuan and 3196 yuan in the same period.
The marriage pair ring of the DR diamond ring is relatively lower in terms of cost and price compared to the marriage proposal diamond ring because the diamond used is a broken diamond. From 2018 to 2020, the unit cost of its ring is basically between 1180 yuan and 1480 yuan, while the unit price of sales is about 4500 yuan.
According to the prospectus, the gross profit margin of Dia shares reached nearly 70%, higher than that of Zhou Dasheng, Hengxin Xili and other enterprises in the same industry. The average gross profit margin in the industry is between 44% and 48%.
However, there are still many people willing to pay for it. According to De Beers data, in China, people aged 21-39 are the main consumers of diamond jewelry, contributing about 78% of diamond jewelry sales. Among the main consumer groups of DR diamond rings, people under the age of 34 contribute more than 90% of their income, of which young people aged 25-29 account for the highest proportion.
The "true love" publicity of DR diamond rings also makes many young people pay even in order to "identify the true heart". They have a specific sense of ritual and values for love, and the DR diamond ring wants this "true love premium".
In Chen Xuan's view, DR diamond ring introduces the concept of "social", injects the spirit of contract for love into the diamond ring product, and makes the user's love expression "public". In addition, the public has a certain understanding of the product brand through publicity, and the commitment and contract are open in the social environment, and bystanders and users will "force" users to buy products, which also makes users not care about whether it is "worth it" in pricing, but pay more attention to the added value of the brand on the product.
But the publicity of "only sending one person in a lifetime" has also caused DR Diamond Ring to fall into another trouble: people who have the ability to consume but want to consume twice, so they are rejected by it. In order to expand the market, THE PARENT COMPANY OF DR DIAMOND RING, DIA SHARES, IS ALSO DEVELOPING NEW BRANDS WHILE CONTINUING BRAND PROMOTION. In the three years from 2018 to 2020, the proportion of sales of its proposal diamond rings is also declining, from 85.41% in 2018 to 76.31% in 2020.
In August 2017, Dia Co., Ltd. set up a wholly-owned subsidiary, Caber Oli (Shenzhen) Jewelry Co., Ltd., to cultivate a sub-brand "Story Mark", customize the exclusive wedding ring for customers, and continue to exert its "exclusive customization" marketing of love. AI Finance and Economics has learned that the brand's offline stores have one in Hong Kong and two in Chengdu.
In May 2020, Dia co., Ltd. also established Hol Culture (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. to cultivate an online sub-brand MOST ME, and its main business is also to sell jewelry.
But so far, the combined revenue share of these two brands is still less than 1%. In addition, the company's prospectus shows that Kaber Shenzhen lost 1.9306 million yuan in 2020, and Hor culture lost 487,300 yuan.
The new brand still failed to support the company's revenue. This time, the "rollover" of the main brand of DR diamond rings, which started with marketing, is undoubtedly a heavy blow to the company. The promise of "true love" has lost credibility, what kind of love story can DR Diamond Ring tell and continue to attract the attention of the capital market?
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.