The author | Cat brother
The source | Big Cat Finance (ID:caimao_shuangquan)
There was once a jurisprudence that said that dealers in three different regions in order to enter the hospital to sell products, constantly raised prices, increased the commission to the hospital department from 15% to 30%, or did not distinguish between high and low, and finally increased to 50%, of course, of which 15% to the hospital department, the remaining 35% all into the personal pocket of the director of the ophthalmology department.
It is said that the hospital profiteering, but such a price increase is not common, the rebate is doubled and doubled, and it is given to give.
What is this product?
This product is very familiar to many parents - OK mirror, also known as orthokeratology mirror, for myopic children.
In the past two years of the epidemic, many adults have been reducing their expenses, and "ping ti" has even been selected as one of the top five hot words in the field of consumption in 2021, but if it is to buy things for children, especially when it comes to a lifetime of eyes, many people still do not hesitate to choose the best and most expensive.
Therefore, the company that manufactures these products will make a lot of money, like OPCOM Vision, the most profitable product is the aforementioned OK mirror, how high is the gross profit?
By analogy, everyone knows that the profits of medical beauty are amazing, like the production of hyaluronic acid Bloomage biological cost of 19 pieces, the factory price of more than 100, the gross profit margin of more than 80%, live and free of the printing machine. (Poke link to read)
OPCOM Vision is not to be left alone, their OK mirror, the cost of 110, the factory price of 1216, the gross profit margin of more than 90% (2019 data), last year's slight decline, there is also 89%.
This is actually nothing, the most ruthless is the retail price, the cost of more than 100, the retail price of seven or eight thousand, more than ten thousand expensive, because the profit is against the sky, the agent is willing to give high rebates in order to fight the market, and the hospital earns more than the listed company, naturally spare no effort to promote.
Do you think this is the end? Not yet.
This glasses need the same care as contact lenses, which requires the purchase of nursing fluids and eye drops, two vials totaling four or five hundred, enough for one month, the shelf life is only two or three months, and the light care solution has to spend five or six thousand a year. In addition, the lens is a high oxygen permeability synthetic resin material production, itself is very delicate, very easy to break not to say, even if carefully used, the lens will appear deformation, scratches and other issues for a long time, need to check regularly, do not have to change, the average service life is only 1.5 years.
Calculated down, the basic cost of wearing an OK mirror for a year is basically 15,000 yuan to start, which is still the choice of domestic lenses, if you choose to import, the light lenses will have to be one or two thousand, and the cost of one year will run to twenty or thirty thousand.
To say this thing, it is really a blockbuster product tailored for anxious parents and children with general myopia.
Why?
Now, students from childhood academic pressure is heavy, electronic equipment popularization, vision continues to decline, in 2018 the national myopia patients have exceeded 600 million, becoming a big country of myopia, adolescent myopia rate reached 53.6%, ranking first in the world.
Most children become myopia in elementary or junior high school, and the myopia rate in high schools in many areas exceeds 80%:
Therefore, somewhere, the eyesight was included in the scope of the middle school entrance examination, which caused a scolding, after all, no one wanted to do this.
Although there are more and more children with myopia, in the beginning, parents still do not want their children to wear glasses directly, hoping to delay or even cure.
At this time, they will be strongly Amway a myopia prevention artifact - OK mirror.
The principle of this thing is actually very easy, the formation of myopia, that is, the near thing has been seen for a long time, the eye muscles are relaxed, and the lens is thickened. High myopia of more than 600 degrees is also classified as a blinding disease, and the incidence of floaters, cataracts, glaucoma is several times higher than that of ordinary people, and even other risks such as corneal detachment, which have a great impact on life.
In the past, the solution for myopia was one - wearing glasses, and later there were various myopia surgeries.
In 1994, the FDA approved a orthokeratology mirror, which is now available on the market. The specific operation is to wear it at night when sleeping, which can change the shape of the cornea, gradually flatten the curvature of the cornea, and shorten the eye axis:
To put it bluntly, it is to use external forces to affect the changes in the cornea and eye axis. How does this product work?
The research literature shows that OK mirrors can reduce myopia development by 85-93%.
Of course, not all children can use it, what astigmatism is too high, there is inflammation in the eyes, too young and active, are not suitable for wearing.
By 1998, OK mirrors were sold in China, and from the beginning they were very, very expensive.
In 2000, when the house price of Chaoyang in Beijing was only three or four thousand, a pair of OK mirrors had already sold for three thousand:
It was in those years that the sky-high price of OK mirrors attracted a person.
Born in 1960, OPCOM's chairman, Tao Yuequn, graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China, then went to the United States to study, and received a doctorate from UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).
He studied nuclear fusion physics during college, which is not comparable to the eight rods of ophthalmology.
But perhaps because he is a bully, he has seen too many students wearing glasses, and he knows everyone's need for the treatment of myopia, considering that Chinese love to learn, the future myopia rate will exceed that of the United States, superimposed on the huge population base, and the new market prospects of this blank space are unlimited.
So, he turned his head and made orthokeratology lenses, first obtained the qualification of a registered manufacturer of glasses health care giant Bo Lun, and returned to China in 2000 with the investment he received from the United States to start OPCOM.
At that time, the market was all imported OK mirrors, which were first sold directly through optical stores, and the result was more problems.
Just around 2001, more than 80 cases of eye injury and disability after wearing OK mirrors broke out nationwide.
Barbaric growth is certainly not OK, so soon, the state will be plastic mirrors included in the list of major medical device supervision, and require plastic mirrors to undergo clinical trial approval, fitting needs to be provided by medical institutions with "medical institution practice license" level two (including level two) or above.
This threshold is a lot higher, and the great development of OPCOM vision began from this year.
They obtained the production license in December 2001, the product passed the FDA certification in 2004, the product trial production registration certificate in 2005, the product quasi-production registration certificate in 2008, the overall upgrade to OPCOM Vision Co., Ltd. in 2013, and the GEM listing in 2017.
In order for the company to list on the A-share market, Tao Yuequn also gave up his American citizenship and became a Chinese citizen.
You can see that the company is growing very fast, why?
As mentioned earlier, in order to solve the problem of myopia, parents are very anxious, the problem is very realistic, this belongs to the nature of just need, under the continuous promotion of hospitals and manufacturers, the OK mirror market has been booming in recent years.
In 2020, OPCOM's sales have approached 500,000 pieces, what is this level?
They have a market share of 24%, the first in the country, the peak of 2021, the company's market value of more than 90 billion, more than a lot of dry chips.
There is also a reason why they sell well is relatively cheap, the second lucid is made in South Korea, the third euclid is made in the United States, the fourth Hengtai is from Taiwan, the fifth Alpha is a Japanese manufacturer, a corneal plasticizing mirror market, it can be said that the pattern of the Spring and Autumn Five, but the price can be a lot worse.
Because it is too profitable, so many manufacturers have continued to rush in, such as Aibo Medical, which does intraocular lenses, has also begun to produce OK mirrors, and the product price is also more than 7,000, and it was also listed in July last year to raise 800 million yuan, which is very optimistic about this market.
Also, extrapolating down, there are now about 1 million children using OK mirrors, considering the number of myopic children, in theory, there is still a lot of market space.
That said half a day, why are parents willing to pay the bill?
Look at the curative effect.
The effect of OK mirrors has been controversial, and some people say that they have not worked at all after using them:
Some people also retorted that they had worn orthokeratology lenses for seven or eight years, and the degree of myopia had only risen by 100 degrees, which was very useful.
At present, the academic community has compiled more than 1500 papers released worldwide to delay myopia and statistical analysis, compared with the control group, the eye axis extension rate of the OK mirror group is reduced by 0.14MM per year, which is equivalent to a 45% reduction in myopia progress, or recognizes that this product is effective.
Can delay myopia, which is also the feeling of many parents, so word of mouth spread, but everyone with some ability to match.
Of course, the cases of mirror injuries that appeared around 2000 have not disappeared now, and there are still cases of teenagers wearing OK glasses often in the news, resulting in inflammation and even blindness.
However, now that something has happened, basically it is not blamed on the OK mirror itself, but more on the parents and children's "improper use" and "improper washing" heads:
According to a study by the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, 38% of all cases of infectious keratitis diagnosed as microbiologically pathogenic 18 years of age and younger were directly related to the use of OK lenses.
But this can not stop the enthusiasm of parents, if a child from the third grade to the third year of high school, the cost is about 200,000, but this can not cure myopia, can only delay the development of myopia, but for this effect, many parents think that spending 20,000 yuan a year is still worth it.
Since we all see it this way, there is no need to question the prospects of this market.
In order to raise children, the current parents are really fighting, which has also made one profiteering industry after another, where is the next? You have to be able to figure out that wealth freedom and class jumping are not big deals.