Produced by Radar Finance and | Li Yihui, ed. | Deep Sea
Internet celebrity bookstores have once again seen large-scale store closures.
According to CCTV financial reports, Yanji has 8 stores in Beijing, and only 3 are currently open normally. In addition to Beijing, Yanji also has stores in Tianjin, Xi'an, Shanghai and other cities.
At the beginning of last month, a number of netizens broke the news that there were situations such as arrears in employee salaries, social security only withholding and not paying, and the longest arrears were as long as one year. The company responded that the epidemic caused a tight cash flow, and had to close some stores in the short term and pay employee salaries in batches to maintain operations.
In recent years, the development of high-value net red bookstores has experienced a process of capital pursuit, store expansion and divestment shrinkage. Behind this, it reveals the difficulty of making a profit for physical bookstores. No matter how the net red bookstore combines books with coffee and cultural and creative products, most stores only make a break even, and it is difficult to continue to make stable profits.
As the epidemic continues to affect offline entities, the popularity of online celebrity bookstores has gradually faded, and the chain from drainage to monetization has been broken.
Some industry insiders believe that net red bookstores should change the thinking mode of simply selling books or selling goods, create cultural service capabilities with books as the core, and fine "bookstore +" project operation, which is still the key to the sustainable development of physical bookstores.
Arrears in wages and cuts off by suppliers
Before leaving, Wang Meng (pseudonym), who worked at a store in Chengdu's Jinjiang District, was still owed wages by the company after April when he left in November. A former employee of the Wangfujing Central store in Beijing also said that the last salary was at the end of August, and no follow-up salary has been received so far.
After many netizens exposed on Weibo that there was a wide range of arrears of wages and social security payments, in early November, Yan Ji reissued the wages of some employees, and Wang Meng also received a supplementary 1 month's salary, but there was still a difference of 5 months of wages and social security that had been cut off since March.
In terms of knowledge, a number of netizens also pointed out that the arrears of wages to employees have been owed for a long time, and the longest arrears are as long as one year.
Insiders close to the company revealed that it was true that the salary payment was delayed. In the first half of 2020, the company adjusted the salary payment rules internally, taking the method of paying the basic salary first and extending the commission, and then adjusting it to pay part of the living expenses, which eventually evolved into the overall salary extension.
For the problem of wage arrears, the relevant person in charge of Yanji responded that as a responsible enterprise, Yanji will not escape. The company apologized for the problems and inconvenience caused to employees, and has been actively resolving everyone's demands.
In the open letter released on Weibo, Yan Ji also admitted that due to the needs of development, the company adjusted the focus of development and began the transformation of the direction of business operations, and at the same time, affected by the epidemic, it caused a tight cash flow, so in the short term, it had to close some stores and pay employee salaries in batches to maintain the overall normal operation, expressing self-blame.
According to media reports, in addition to employees, many suppliers have also been said to be in arrears for several months to one or two years.
A shop-in-shop stationery supplier who has cooperated with Yanji said that he still has about 300,000 yuan of the payment that has not been recovered. The supplier explained that offline stores to the supplier to settle the account period, is a common practice in the industry, but the words are in arrears from 2020 onwards, so that he can not continue to cooperate.
Radar Finance previously reported that some suppliers posted that they were said to be in arrears in payment, "from 2017, it was slowly delinquent to 3 months a payment, until March 2018, it was completely unpaid." The reason given by the other party is that the company is difficult, has no money, has opened a new store, and the capital turnover cannot be opened. ”
As the arrears became longer and longer, because of the supplier's demand behavior, Yan Ji returned their products across the board. Suppliers can only accept it in order to reduce the loss of goods.
The inability to pay the supplier on time led to the interruption of the book channel in some stores. Some media visits have found that the number of books in some stores that are currently open is scarce, such as the Wukesong store in Beijing, there are not many books on the shelves; the financial street shopping center store, the shelves are nearly half empty, and there are very few cultural and creative goods.
Employees of the company's Guangzhou and Chengdu said that due to the outstanding arrears, from 2020, many well-known publishing houses such as CITIC, Zhanlu, Shanghai Translation and Republic have stopped directly offering books to Yanji. In order to get the books of these publishing houses, Yan Ji can only purchase them through book dealers, resulting in higher operating costs.
Affiliates have no property to enforce
With the outbreak of these negative events, the closure of some stores has become a choice that Yan Ji has to face.
According to public information, last year, Yanji closed a number of stores in succession, including in May 2020, the Chengdu Kaide Tianfu store covering an area of 3600 square meters, covering bookstores, coffee, art galleries, markets and theme restaurants, which is also the first store in southwest China. In August of the same year, Yanji closed the Ningbo Impression City store, which has a store area of nearly 500 square meters, and in addition to other cooperative brands, the store also introduced brands such as Yan Cafe and YJY Kids Yanbao Paradise.
Since the beginning of this year, Yanji has closed or closed many stores across the country for rectification, including Guangzhou Tianhe Vanke Store, Beijing IKEA Huiju Store, Shanghai Enterprise World Store, etc.
Since late October, some netizens have reflected on the public comment network that the K11 flagship store in Guangzhou has been closed, and the door has posted "internal adjustment, suspension of business." Guangzhou K11 said that after friendly consultation between the two sides, Yanjiyou Bookstore will end the existing lease with K11 Mall in November. It is understood that this is the only store left in Guangzhou.
CCTV Finance said that the official website of Yanji shows that there are a total of 8 stores in Beijing. However, according to a consumer survey who applied for a membership shopping card, the Wangfujing Central store has been closed, and only three stores in Wukesong, Guanyuan and Financial Street are currently open.
In addition to closing stores, Yan Ji also revealed that the company's new store opening plan was also shelved. Although there is no direct evidence that the capital chain is broken, internal employees say that the company has indeed been trying to solve the problem of funding shortages. Nandu Weekly quoted employees inside the company as saying that every time there was a meeting, Dan Jie, the chairman and CEO of yanji, would say that "the company will soon have a financing coming in." ”
Tianyan's investigation shows that since its establishment, Yan ji has obtained 4 rounds of financing successively. The most recent two tranches were the RMB120 million Series B financing completed in March 2017 and the RMB100 million B+ Round of Financing led by hongtaiDa Entertainment Industry Fund completed in December 2018.
According to the analysis of the outside world, the outlet of offline bookstore cross-border has long passed, and under the current situation, it is difficult to find a "receiver". However, at the same time, the company has been continuously filed for litigation, and recently added a number of new information on the executors, and some affiliated companies have entered the termination enforcement procedure because they have no property available for enforcement.
According to Tianyan' inspection, since November, The affiliated companies of Yanjiyou, Shanghai Yanjiyou Brand Management Co., Ltd. and Jiangsu Yanjiyou Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., have issued a number of restriction orders on consumption, and the total amount of execution of Shanghai Yanjiyou Brand Management Co., Ltd. has exceeded 3.76 million yuan.
According to the public enforcement ruling, the court did not find that Jiangsu Yanjiyou Cultural Communication Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Yanjiyou Brand Management Co., Ltd. had property available for enforcement, and the result of the relevant case was to terminate the enforcement procedure.
From May to October this year, because Sichuan Yanjiyou Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., Beijing Yanjiyou Cultural Service Co., Ltd. and other companies had contract disputes with suppliers of real estate, decoration and equipment, they were listed as untrustworthy enterprises because they "failed to perform their designated performance obligations on time". Yan Ji and CEO Dan Jie, as the above-mentioned corporate legal person, was restricted from high consumption.
From the brilliant moment of financing hundreds of millions of yuan to the lack of property to execute, Yanji quickly fell into the "cold winter".
The traffic paradox of an internet celebrity bookstore
According to public information, Yanjiyou was formerly known as the "Reading Today" bookstore, the first store opened in 2006 in Chengdu Bauhinia Community, initially renting books, selling magazines and popular books.
Around 2010, today's reading turned to a compound format, with a store with 30% books + 60% cafes + 10% creative products, "book sales and cafes each accounted for half of the profits, and the cost was recovered in less than two years."
Cross-border coffee, cultural creation, let young people drink coffee here, while listening to lectures, to create a network of internet celebrities to let Yan Yan find the secret of traffic. Therefore, since 2014, the "Words and Words" stores based on the prototype of today's reading compound format have been launched and copied and landed throughout the country.
According to the official website information, the store scope of Yanjiyou covers West China, North China, East China, South China, involving the above cities, as well as 14 cities including Tianjin, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Nantong, Ningbo, Shenzhen, Xiamen, a total of nearly 60 physical stores.
In addition to a few words, offline brands such as Sisyphus, Pioneer Bookstore, and Zhong Shuge are also practitioners of the net red bookstore model, striving to be "the transmitter of a better way of life". According to industry insiders, the gross profit margin of coffee and cultural creation in offline physical bookstores can generally reach more than 60%, almost 2.5 times that of books. However, even if coffee + cultural creation becomes the standard of offline bookstores, most stores can only achieve flat support, the reason is that the store rent, staff wages and operating costs are not low, and the early decoration costs are not a small expense.
Moreover, how to convert the punch card traffic into real sales is also a headache for internet celebrity bookstores. Many bookstores come to punch in a lot of people, but there are not many consumers who are seated.
Further, no matter what kind of business model, bookstores are still an offline format, and a large number of offline users are needed to spend in bookstores. After the epidemic, the net red bookstore lost the killer skill of survival, and the inability to restore the flow of customers will inevitably cause operational difficulties.
In March 2020, Dan Jie mentioned in an interview that after the outbreak of the epidemic, due to epidemic prevention, Yanji closed most of its stores, and from the end of January to the end of February, there was basically no harvest, and the entire sales fell by more than 95%.
Under the current wave of store closures, how can survivors find a way out? The analysis believes that bookstores need to put down the body of Internet celebrities and return to the essence of business.
On the one hand, in the pace of expansion, store location, decoration and other links should be more cautious, strict control of rigid cost expenditure; on the other hand, you can refer to the model of member stores and libraries, to apply for library cards for customers, so that the membership fee becomes a stable income channel, on the basis of which the fine "bookstore +" project operation, improve the coffee, catering, cultural activities and other profitable projects.
Taking Jiantou Bookstore as an example, its Shanghai store has gathered a lot of high-quality cultural resources, and the bookstore has become a professional cultural service provider, which contributes about 40% of the revenue.
Some industry insiders said that for Yan Jiyou, closing the store is not the worst case, stop blindfolded and run wildly, in order to calm down to find a profit model that suits you.
Note: This article is the original of Radar Finance (ID: leidacj). Unauthorized reproduction is prohibited.