The world's online business Ding Jie Yang Jie
Edited by Li Danchao
At the beginning of 2022, Heytea was in "trouble".
Yesterday (February 9), Heytea was exposed to carry out large-scale layoffs, involving 30% of employees. In response, Xicha said that the relevant rumors are false information, the company does not have the so-called large layoffs, and a small number of personnel adjusted to normal personnel adjustment and optimization based on year-end assessment.
Figure Hi Tea Official Blog
"Tianxia Online Business" found on social networking sites such as Pulse, Weibo, and Xiaohongshu that there are many people who are certified as Employees of Heytea or claim to have been Employees of Heytea and "spit" on Heytea layoffs. "Tianxia Online Business" contacted a user who posted "Xicha resignation slip" and "salary slip" in Xiaohongshu, and the other party said: Xicha has problems such as forcing employees to leave, no year-end bonus, no subsidy, excessive overtime and so on.
Not long ago, Xicha was also caught up in the price war with Nai Xue's tea. Another noteworthy thing is that Heytea may hit the market this year.
Behind a series of actions, what is Nie Yunchen, the founder of Xicha after 90, thinking?
Big layoffs? Hi Tea Response: The news is untrue
On February 9, according to Sina Finance, Heytea is implementing layoffs, and the internal layoffs have been launched a few years ago, and some more will be laid off years later, involving 30% of the total.
The report also mentioned that after confirming with a number of Xicha employees, the layoff information security department was completely laid off, and the store development department was laid off by 50%; the laid off employees will be compensated by normal N+1, and they can also choose to transfer internally to other departments, such as technical posts to business posts.
In the face of controversy, Xicha responded that the news was untrue, the company did not have the so-called large layoffs, and a small number of personnel adjusted to normal personnel adjustment and optimization based on year-end assessment.
Although Xicha denies "major layoffs", "Tianxia Online Business" found that many former "Xicha workers" have "complained" on websites such as Pulse.
"Tianxia Net Business" found a user who posted "Xicha departure slip" and "salary slip" on the Xiaohong book, and the other party said that she was a junior drinker at a Xicha store in the northwest region and left her job a few years ago. She said that the layoffs are real, as for the "N+1" mentioned in public reports, some employees have not implemented, and there are store layoffs in her area that are private communication by store managers, but the departure file will show active departures.
Screenshots of users of "Xicha Resignation Slip" and "Salary Slip" posted on the Little Red Book
The dispenser also said that in fact, the layoff storm had already begun in October last year, And Heytea stipulated that each employee must work 200 hours per month, while strictly controlling "working hours", resulting in some employees being deducted from the basic salary + full attendance subsidy due to "unstandard working hours".
"I myself have not paid all my salary since October last year, there is no year-end bonus or new year subsidy, and it is mandatory not to leave during the New Year, because I am afraid that the store will not be full of manpower."
In the Little Red Book post posted by the user, many former employees of Xicha told similar experiences. At the same time, this statement has also been confirmed by the employees of a store in Ningbo of Xicha, who said that some people in the store were forced to leave their jobs because of insufficient working hours, and some people worked 290 hours last month, and half an hour of meal time became a luxury.
Dialogue between "Tianxia Net Business" and the front-line practitioners of Xicha
What makes more employees complain about is also the corporate culture of Xicha. For example, an annual meeting with no meals and few benefits is mandatory until 12 o'clock in the middle of the night. It is reported that the live broadcast screen of the annual meeting is full of messages such as employees hoping to raise wages and issue year-end bonuses.
Interestingly, also at the annual meeting of Xicha, founder Nie Yunchen publicly commented that there were drawbacks in friendly business, which was regarded by employees as "lack of pattern".
High-end tea drinking is not calm
According to the statistics of the Red Food Brand Research Institute, as of November 25, 2021, there were 32 financings in the new tea industry in 2021, with a total amount of more than 14 billion yuan, and the number of financing events and the amount of financing disclosed have been higher than in the whole of 2020, reaching a peak in the past 10 years.
It's a very fiercely competitive track. According to enterprise investigation data, among the more than 300,000 tea-related enterprises in the country, more than 130,000 enterprises have been suspended, liquidated, revoked and cancelled, accounting for 43%. High-end, mid-range, low-end, every market entrant is killed by the sword and light sword shadow.
Xicha and Naixue's tea two enterprises have long been deeply cultivated in the first-tier and new first-tier cities, all of which play the image of new tea drinks, direct sales models and Internet celebrities, and the two occupy nearly 40% of the market share in the high-end market of new tea drinks, becoming the "duopoly" recognized by the industry.
Figure Mob Institute
In terms of market share, Xi tea is higher than Nai Xue's tea.
According to the investigation, Heytea has undergone 5 rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of more than 3.5 billion US dollars, and the investors include Tencent, Meituan Dragon Ball, Sequoia Capital, etc. As of the last round of financing before the press release, heytea was valued at 60 billion yuan.
This also made nie Yunchen, the post-90s founder behind Xicha, soar in value. At the age of 29, he was listed on the "2020 Shenzhen Wealth Creation Hundred List", the youngest on the list.
But in the recent year of 2021, the growth rate of Heytea began to slow down.
According to jiuqian consulting middle office data, the number of stores of Heytea did not exceed 800 until the third quarter of 2021. In addition to the slowdown in store growth, the average profitability of Heytea's stores has also begun to decline, and from July 2021, Heytea's nationwide ping effect and average store revenue have begun to decline. Taking the data of October 2021 as an example, the average revenue and sales efficiency of Heytea stores fell by 19% and 18% compared with July, and fell by 35% and 32% respectively compared with the same period last year.
Neixue's tea days were also not good.
On the evening of February 8, Nesher's Tea announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that it expects to record revenue of about 4.28 billion yuan to 4.32 billion yuan in 2021, and record an adjusted net loss (not measured by IFRS) of 135 million yuan to 165 million yuan, the fourth consecutive year of loss. As of press time, Nesher's tea share price was HK$7.09, down more than 60% from the time of listing in June last year, with a total market value of HK$12.16 billion.
Figure NaiXue's tea earnings report
In the second half of last year, due to the impact of the epidemic, a considerable number of tea shops in Nesher's tea were affected, and the stores were temporarily closed, reduced their business hours or switched to the "only delivery or self-pick-up at the store" business model. According to the data, as of December 31, 2021, Nesher's Tea operated a total of 817 tea shops.
Figure Nai Xue's Tea Official Blog
According to Naixue's tea 2021 interim financial report, the epidemic has significantly increased the proportion of Revenue from Online Orders, and the proportion of revenue from takeaway orders will remain relatively stable in the future. Previously, according to Peng Xin, the founder of Naixue's tea, online orders have alleviated the pressure on store operations to a certain extent, and the financial report data shows that in the first half of 2021, The proportion of Online revenue of Naixue's tea has reached 72.2%.
Where is the intention of fighting a price war and selling tea bags?
The star track is difficult to make a profit, and the rapid expansion is full of dangers. How to establish higher competitive barriers and run out of the long-term profit model is a topic that Heytea and Naixue's tea need to think about for a long time in the future.
At the beginning of 2022, they first put down the "high-end" position and fired the first shot of "fighting for profit" with price reduction.
And this drop, so that the "milk tea Hermes" known as the Hi tea into the 10 yuan era. Open the Xicha Mini Program to find that the prices of pure tea, milk tea, and fruit tea categories have changed, and the decline range is 3-7 yuan. The cheapest "pure green tea queen" and "pure young buds" are priced at 8.1 yuan and 9.9 yuan respectively, both of which are pure teas.
On the other hand, Nai Xue also launched a product that entered the 10 yuan list - easy golden peony priced at 9 yuan, which is also a cup of pure tea with the taste of Tieguanyin. Similarly, low-priced products are not the core categories of both.
The move of Hey Tea and Nai Xue's tea can be regarded as the opposite in the industry. Since the beginning of last year, the cost of raw materials and accessories for freshly made tea drinks has been rising, and tea has issued a notice of "price increase due to rising costs" in January this year. And the two new tea brands that have made a single cup of milk tea to 30 yuan have suddenly broken into the 10 yuan range, and things may not be so simple.
Some insiders have analyzed that the price reduction of Heytea may be to stimulate consumption and increase turnover to roll cash flow. During the epidemic period, the impact of tea drinking offline stores is not small, and Heytea is a direct store. The aforementioned decline in ping effect may be the biggest pressure that Heytea has encountered.
Some people also believe that the price reduction is not only a high-end tea brand that wants to tap the existing users, but also an attempt by Xicha to dive into a broader sinking market. The price of some products after the price reduction of Heytea and Naixue's tea has been comparable to that of the second echelon brand. In 2020, Xicha also opened a "Xixiao Tea" test low-end line in Shenzhen, and tea products priced between 6-16 yuan filled the gap in the low-end market of Xicha; and Naixue opened the Naixue PRO store strategy and the heavy warehouse coffee market.
Figure Xi Tea Official Bo Figure Xi Tea Official Bo
The former reduces the cost of raw materials and packaging materials, and the location standard of the store is lower, and the ping efficiency is further improved; the latter pro store improves the ping efficiency by reducing the storefront, streamlining the manpower, removing the on-site bakery area, and prefabricated baking products in the central kitchen.
This has undoubtedly accelerated the competition for coco, tea hundreds of ways, a little bit, books and burning immortal herbs, and ancient teas in the mid-market market.
In addition to reducing prices and opening new stores, Heytea has also launched bottled sodas, laid out major convenience stores offline, and created good results on Tmall. According to Tmall Xiao'er, on the first day of the sale of the first batch of sodas, 300,000 bottles were sold in the live broadcast room of the head anchor, and 25,000 boxes of soda were sold out in seconds. In the Xicha Tmall store, the baby evaluation of Heytea sugar-free sparkling water exceeds 40,000.
In addition, Hee tea and Nai Xue's tea also sold tea bags. On Double 11 last year, the tea bags sold by Nai Xue's tea ranked second in The Tmall Herbal Tea.
Whether it is pushing bottled sodas or selling tea bags, high-end tea drinks are moving towards "retailing".
According to the observation of "Tianxia Net Business", "retailing" is one of the important choices for catering enterprises to achieve economies of scale after gathering certain brand influences, which allows Xicha to get rid of offline problems such as "expansion of personnel equal proportions", "old with new" and "reduction of ping efficiency" at a certain level. Manner hand-brewed coffee, Haidilao self-heating pot, Xibei kung fu dishes, this year have become the new growth points of the above-mentioned catering enterprises.
But this track is not small competition. Bottled soda has a yuanqi forest, and the tea bag industry has a pleasant color of tea, although the latter only has stores in Changsha and Wuhan at present, but relies on tea bags to go to the whole country, and its employees have shouted the slogan of "drinking tea and pleasing color, tmall" in the store.
Standing at the crossroads of "expanding from a single-dependent store to a retail economy of scale", Nie Yunchen still has many problems.