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Did you see the news of the tea these two days?
Since the end of last year, all kinds of new consumption have generally not been very good, which is actually not surprising, because the predecessors have died a large number of years as early as 15 to 16 years, and the most feared thing about this operation is Pinduoduo.
Pinduoduo kills out by cheap, how can you beat people by raising prices?
You always have to believe in the human instinct to like cheap.
And now investors are also aware of an interesting question, the new consumer tube is not an opportunity, but may not match the profit model of venture capital.
First, the risk of consumer goods is also very high.
Second, investors can't afford to wait.
Third, the business is fit for life, but not sexy.
It can't be a once-and-for-all business.
The translation is that the consumption of this water is too deep for everyone to grasp.
Come one by one, let's talk about the first one.
The logic of many people's low consumer goods risk is that each segment seems to accommodate at least ten runners.
As long as there are consumers who recognize the account, they can afford to support a consumer goods company.
This is wrong.
The risks in the consumer goods sector are not low.
It's even riskier than the Internet industry, which needs to burn a lot of money to get started.
You have to know that setting up stalls and opening stores is also a consumer industry (of course, it is a retail terminal), and Internet entrepreneurship is not a pit for the poor.
Engaging in consumer goods can be pit together.
Isn't it strange to look, in fact, that these are two different "high risks".
The high risk of the Internet industry lies in the low fault tolerance rate, once it can not become the top two, it is basically dead.
The competition is brutal, and a subdivision track can't even accommodate two players.
For example, acquaintance socialization is basically a winner-take-all.
The winners of the Internet are often born very simple and crude, who does it first, who burns money first, who burns money efficiently, who is the winner.
This is the more certain aspect: betting on the more decisive one is highly probable.
Another benefit of the internet is that it is fast.
It's cruel, but it's as fast as lightning.
Long pain is not as good as short pain, and the Internet's killing game is "short pain".
In three years and five years, the war is over, and it is really not possible to hurry up and reopen the next game.
Once killed, it basically lies down and wins, and it can maintain its current market position.
For example, Weibo, WeChat, Taobao, Douyin, all of which are the same.
Either it can't be killed, but it really comes out, which is actually a combination of risk and opportunity, and the time is very short, so it is suitable for capital to throw money, open the card quickly, and reopen it if it is really not OK.
Consumer goods seem easy to kill.
Two words, buy quantity.
Find TV stations in the pre-Internet era, and find e-commerce anchors + Little Red Book in the post-Internet era.
But sustainability is not easy.
Jianlibao, Plum Garden, Rising Sun, two-sided needles, these are the beneficiaries of the game of buying in the past, and they have also made a lot of money and have become the national memory of a generation.
But now?
The brand is still there, the consumer memory is still there, but the Iron Throne is lost.
That's fine.
After all, people can still live a life, after all, the data is true.
It's the data age.
New consumption data is easier to observe, but it is also easier to create.
Teacher Zhang Dogzi (not scolding him, it is the signature of this) said it very well in "Investing in Consumption Like Doing Business",
"Data indicators are extremely confusing".
This month's budget is increased by one million, and sales will definitely increase;
The promotion budget is added by one million, and the repurchase data is definitely not good.
The Internet industry burns money, can burn out user data, can burn out user stickiness.
But consumer goods can only burn a hammer.
If investors take these beautiful data to make consumer goods investments, they can only throw a hammer.
Did you find it?
The high risk of consumer goods companies is not that the Internet industry is "0 or all", but that burning money can not burn results.
Much less certainty.
For example, I now have 100,000 yuan to invest.
One option was that I was going to give A a hundred thousand pieces, and A told me frankly that in five years the end of the fight would either disappear or become the first, as long as the first follow-up was to lie and earn.
Another option is that I only need to give ten players ten thousand yuan, they will not disappear, but they all tell me that it will be ten years before the industry status can be determined, and if they can't survive in this decade, they will continue to give them money.
So which do you say investors should choose?
Definitely choose the first one.
The ghost knows where he will be ten years from now.
Throw money out, and the money can burn out.
The vote is right, and the ROI is very high.
The small track is tens of billions, and the major track is nearly one trillion.
Compared to the little money burned, it is really nothing.
It doesn't matter if you vote wrong.
Because the reason why it was wrong was because it was burned cautiously, and it burned too little.
The second option is the real high risk.
The gambling dogs in the secondary market must have strongly agreed, after all, the yin fell is more ruthless.
Three years and five years can make the Internet's money-burning war come to an end.
VC can afford to wait.
Investing right and wrong is a big case, investing in the right place to make money, and investing in the wrong place to be acquired.
Because of the short time, there is still value in being acquired.
For example, the rotten business of sharing bicycles, if the small yellow car does not encounter the Immortal Bureau, it can also be acquired.
Oh I'm slow, gan.
But that's not the case with consumer goods.
Consumer goods are a very long track.
It's so long that capital can't afford to wait.
It's so long that many consumer goods lose the value of being acquired.
It's so long that many investment managers have jumped ship and may not wait for the day when they can successfully exit.
Some people will find it strange that a consumer product that quickly hits the annual sales of three billion by buying volume is not listed in only three years? Three years, is that a long time?
Of course not.
I admit that this was indeed a success.
As long as the capital level can be withdrawn, of course, it is considered a success.
However, the window that quickly rushed out by relying on the traffic dividend at a specific time end has long been closed.
That time period is invested, and there may be no such window period.
Again, this is just [a specific period].
At that time, the ROI of the projection master can still be more than 1 to 1, you ask the current ROI?
Scare you to death.
And for those players who rely on the amount of buying, the next few days are still long.
A lot of it just comes up in revenue, and it's still early to make a profit.
From past experience, there is no consumer goods brand in this world that can be called "successful" after only three years.
Consumer goods can not only take three years and five years, it takes ten or twenty years to truly become a brand, which is really a relief.
But it can only be regarded as a sigh of relief, because it can only be regarded as stable, and with a group of loyal consumers, it is far from being able to breathe.
Can't survive until a generation of consumers give birth to a generation of consumers, it is not a success.
For example, such as the beverage track, there are talented people in the Jiangshan generation, and no king can reign supreme forever.
From the beginning of Jianlibao, rising sun, to the later Wahaha, Master Kang, Immai Lang, and then to today's Yuanqi Forest.
Tell me, which of them became the real overlords?
No.
They've all been leading the way for years, and it's not necessarily a positive one.
Why do Internet companies burn money for a few years to end?
It's because they can eat on one product for ten years, and maybe even continue to eat it.
For example, QQ, which we are familiar with, has lived for nearly twenty years.
But consumer goods companies can never rely on one product alone.
Because consumers are always happy with the new and tired of the old, always looking forward to the next product.
Consumers are scumbags.
Here you will say, don't you like the new and tired of the old app?
Yes, but there is an issue of migration costs here.
Users are accustomed to an APP, the migration cost is very high, and the core representative is Apple's family bucket.
Some representatives that are not very core, such as various chat products and even cloud disk products and game products.
Consumer goods, the purchase of users is always incremental, so he does not have this migration cost.
Clothes bags, always the next good.
Food and beverages are always more delicious than those that have never been eaten.
It has not persisted for more than ten years, has not occupied the minds of two generations of consumers, has not been irreplaceable in the absolute field, and the moat of consumer goods is not called a moat.
For more than a decade, capital really can't afford to wait.
All they want is fast-forward and fast-out.
Third, the new consumer business is not sexy.
Compared to the Internet business, it is too unimaginative.
The Internet can allow 100 million people to use their APP products in a few months, become their long-term users, and henceforth lie on the golden mountain and rely on this 100 million daily life to start traffic business.
Once and for all, brothers.
Network cables and WIFI are productivity.
But consumer goods, no.
Today you make a big promotion, sell chocolate for 1 cent, and let 100 million people eat your chocolate.
What about tomorrow?
What is the retention rate?
I can tweet every day, but I can't eat chocolate every day.
The biggest problem with new consumption is that there are too many substitutes, which leads to too expensive channels.
There are alternatives to cosmetics and alternatives to food and beverages.
The real enemies of new consumption are:
"Man has only one stomach", "Man has only one face".
The market is so big, even if the old brands are no longer powerful, they still divide up a part of the market, and more new brands are still queuing up to enter the game.
Do you count how many stomachs and how many faces you can occupy?
Capital is greedy and anxious.
But new consumption needs longer to gain a foothold, and it also needs more thought to coax consumers.
Capital gives new consumption support every day, and eventually it will destroy the rhythm of a brand.
The original 10 years of things, you have to let them do 3 years to complete, this is not a challenge to the business model.
This is challenging the limits of physics.
So is the ultimate new consumption a Nobel Prize?
For a consumer goods company, rhythm is really, really important, not the sooner the better.
The rhythm is chaotic, the steps are crooked, and it can't go that long.
Harm others and harm yourself.
At this time, looking at the world's venture capital, the best cases are always low marginal costs, and slightly higher ones will have problems.
Or rather, the best is always the fastest.
And here at consumption, fast does not mean good, too fast may be bad.
It's like love.