300 million people supported the ski track, sequoia, Hillhouse has entered the game

"If it wasn't for work, I would have liked to spend my days in the ski slopes."

Xiaowen in 1994 sighed to the chinese network. According to her, since she started skiing in 2017, she basically goes skiing every weekend of the snow season, first on the outskirts of Beijing, then in Chongli, and in order to experience higher quality skiing, she has also visited Changbai Mountain twice and Nagano, Japan.

"I like exciting activities myself, every time I slide down from the mountain, the wind blows from my face, the wind in my ears is the sound of the wind, and I see a white expanse in front of my eyes, and at that moment I feel that I am detached from society and finally have a short relaxation."

At present, there are not a few "ski enthusiasts" like Xiaowen. According to the "2020 China Ski Industry White Paper", in the 2020-2021 snow season, the number of ski trips in mainland China has reached 20.76 million.

On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Douyin, and Kuaishou, where young people gather, skiing is also the "top stream" of this winter. On Weibo, the topic #The entire circle of friends went skiing #on the hot search, with 330 million reads and 59. 70,000 discussions; more than 460,000 notes related to "skiing" in the Little Red Book, and billions of videos on the topic of "National Ice and Snow Season" on Douyin and Kuaishou have been played billions of times.

As the enthusiasm of the national skier continues to rise, the keen capital has also begun to lay out.

CVSource investment data shows that since January 2021, 7 ski-related companies have obtained financing, of which Aoxue Culture, SNOW51 and Snow Owl Technology have won two consecutive rounds in one year, and investors include Sequoia China Seed Fund, Shenzhen Venture Capital, GSR Venture Capital and other well-known institutions. Prior to this, in 2019 and 2020, there was only one financing incident for the track.

Under the catalyst of "skiing for all" and the Winter Olympics, the "heat" of skiing is obvious. However, after interviewing a number of investors on the investment network, it was found that the attitude of the primary market to the track did not seem to have reached a consensus, and many investors still expressed their wait-and-see, and even some people said bluntly: "Skiing is not a good investment track in China."

Skiing, another trillion market?

On February 4, the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics will be held in Beijing. As the Winter Olympics approached, the people's enthusiasm for ice and snow sports was also pushed to the peak.

Li Jinglin, who has many years of skiing experience, told The China Investment Network that compared with 2020, the skiing atmosphere around him has increased significantly in 2021, "there are more people skating, and there are more ski clubs."

Times data shows that in the 2019-2020 snow season, the number of skiers on the mainland was 10.45 million, while in the 2020-2021 snow season, the number was 20.76 million, an increase of 98.7% year-on-year.

Ski companies are also on the fast track. According to Tianyancha data, as of now, there are more than 7,000 ski-related enterprises in the mainland, of which the number of new ski-related enterprises in 2021 is 1206, up 61% year-on-year, the highest number in six years.

From the perspective of industrial scale, the scale of the mainland ice and snow industry will reach 600 billion yuan in 2020, according to the "Ice and Snow Sports Development Plan (2016-2025)" formulated by the State General Administration of Sport, by 2025, the total scale of the mainland ice and snow industry will reach 1 trillion yuan, which will drive 300 million people to participate in ice and snow sports.

On the other hand, the commercial value of ice and snow athletes has also been highlighted.

Taking the recently closely watched skier Gu Ailing as an example, according to incomplete statistics, the number of Gu Ailing endorsement and cooperation brands is at least 23, and there are many well-known brands such as JD.com, Midea, China Mobile and Yuanqi Forest, and international luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Tiffany and IWC have also handed her olive branches.

According to lazy bear sports reports, the number of endorsements by Gu Ailing in the past two years has exceeded the number of Lin Dan, Sun Yang and other people at their peak, almost twice that of "Asian flyer" Su Bingtian, and the "gold absorption ability" is second only to Yao Ming.

Capital bets on "white opium", and Sequoia and Hillhouse have entered the game

Under the boom, keen capital has also seen the "money" scene of the ski track and has laid out the layout.

Wang Zhan, chairman of the indoor ski training institution Xueleshan, once mentioned in an interview that in August and September last year, there were three things to do almost every day: meet investors, meet investors, or meet investors.

In December 2021, Xueleshan announced the completion of a strategic financing of 100 million yuan, invested by Zhengxin Investment and New Dragon Pulse Capital.

Prior to this, another ski training institution, SNOW51, also received two rounds of financing in March and April last year, namely the A round and the A+ round, with an amount of 100 million yuan.

In addition to the training field, the ski equipment market is also favored by capital.

As early as April 2020, Hillhouse Capital announced the establishment of a joint venture with the world snowboard brand Burton to jointly operate Burton's China business; in January 2021, the ski equipment brand "Aoxue Culture" announced that it had obtained a 20 million yuan Pre-A round of financing, the investor was Shenzhen Venture Capital, and in October, Aoxue Culture received tens of millions of yuan of A round investment from Baorui Capital.

In January this year, the sports technology company "Snow Owl Technology", which cut into snowboarding, announced that it had won two rounds of financing in half a year, with a cumulative amount of tens of millions of yuan, and the angel round was led by Jianfeng Evergreen and followed by sequoia China Seed Fund; Angel + round was led by Sequoia China Seed Fund, and Xiaohongshu and Shenwan Capital followed suit.

In addition, ski sports social platform GoSki, ski mobile app "Skiing", and ski service platform "Where to Play Ski" have also received financing in the past year.

"The imagination space of VC/PE may be less than 100 billion"

Trillions of scale, large funds to enter, the ski track seems to present a "prosperous" scene. But many investors still take a wait-and-see attitude towards the market.

"Can't find a sustainable growth point", Wang Yixiao, an early investor who has long been concerned about the sports industry, told China Investment Network, "In the final analysis, ski projects are inseparable from the sports industry, for the sports industry, sports popularization, infrastructure and technological innovation are the cornerstones of development." At present, the bottom of the domestic sports is that the sports population is too small, and the ski project has not yet broken free from this verified industry law. ”

According to the "China Ski Industry Development Report", the population penetration rate of China's ski market is only 1%, which is far from 35% of Switzerland, the world's number one Nordic skiing country, and significantly behind 9% in Japan and 8% in the United States. According to the "White Paper on China's Ski Industry", the number of skiers in China in 2019 was 20.9 million, of which 77.4% were skiers, and the annual per capita number of skis was not more than 2 times.

That is to say, the current ski players are mostly "experiential" skiing, and there are problems such as the stickiness of new customers and the low frequency of consumption.

"Only if the Chinese people can truly regard ice and snow sports as a way of life, this market is worth looking forward to," Wang Yixiao said.

Regarding the attitude of investing in ski tracks, He Fuchang, founding partner of Jinding Capital, has a clearer attitude, saying bluntly: "At present, skiing in China is not a good investment track. ”

He Fuchang believes that first of all, the seasonality of skiing is very strong, most cities in China only have 2-3 months a year for the ski season, and the short business cycle leads to a short sales time for this track product. Secondly, the price factor also seriously affects the repurchase rate of consumers.

Ski enthusiast Meng Yuan also calculated an account for the investment network: driving from Beijing to the Chongli Snow Resort, which is not far away, the round-trip toll is about 200 yuan, the oil money is 300 yuan, the ski ticket is about 500-800 yuan / 1.5 days, the accommodation ranges from 200-500 yuan, and the average price of the meal is 40-60 yuan / meal. In this way, the minimum single consumption of skiing is also about 1500 yuan, if you go every week, the monthly consumption will reach four or five thousand yuan. "When I first started working in 2017, I spent most of my monthly internship salary on skiing in the winter."

However, Meng Yuan told The Investment Network that compared with the above expenses, ski equipment is the main part of consumption. According to him, ski equipment can be subdivided into three categories of ski shoes, ski equipment and ski parts, "how to get a good snowboard is also thousands of dollars, advanced even tens of thousands of yuan, in addition, the unit price of snow clothes, snow pants, snow boots are also more than a thousand yuan." ”

The high consumption threshold determines that the deep users of this industry are still a small group of people with real spending power.

In addition to the above pain points, investor Zhang Xu also pointed out to the investment network: "Although the ski industry has a trillion scale, at present, the opportunities left for the primary market are very limited. ”

At present, the ski track is mainly subdivided into four major industries: ski resort operation, ski construction equipment, ski equipment and ski training. Among them, ski resort operation and ski construction equipment are heavy asset investment, and the investment cost is often billions of yuan. Because of the high investment threshold, long return cycle, and the general financial institutions can not digest, so now the investment in the snow field in the market is Vanke, Sunac and other real estate developers, while the investment institutions are mainly concentrated in ski equipment, ski training and derivative content these asset-light projects.

However, according to the "2021-2027 China Ski Equipment Industry Market Development Model and Strategic Consulting Research Report" released by Zhiyan Consulting, the size of China's ski equipment market in 2020 is about 12.69 billion yuan, and it is expected that the figure will exceed 15 billion yuan in 2022; while the market size of ski training is even smaller, only 6.51 billion yuan in 2020. Although some insiders speculate that the scale of ski training is currently more than 10 billion, the two markets add up to only about 30 billion, compared with the overall scale of the ski industry, accounting for less than 5%.

"The market that really belongs to VC/PE in the future may be less than 100 billion," Zhang Xu said.

However, investor Wang Yixiao told China Investment Network that the investment in the ski market is not all imagination, such as "ski + logistics", "ski + technology" and so on There are more opportunities.

"Over the past year or so, the financing situation of sports technology companies in Europe and the United States has been very good, and this wave will gradually spread to China, which may drive a wave of small upsurges on the industrial side and investment side." But no matter how hot it is, it is not as hot as the wave of new consumption in the first half of last year, and it suddenly disperses in a rush. (Text/Wang Manhua, Source/Touzhong.com)

(At the request of the interviewees, Xiaowen, Li Jinglin, Wang Yixiao, Meng Yuan, and Zhang Xu are pseudonyms)