Blue Hole New Consumption reported today
March 3 news, recently, the domestic electronic atomization industry well-known media Blue Hole New Consumption and high-end atomization brand ZIPPO VAZO jointly launched the "Blue Hole Third Anniversary Celebration and Industry Opening Year Seminar Lianmai Series Of Activities", in the "Blue Hole New Consumption" WeChat video account in the form of live broadcast with many brands to discuss enterprises, industries and products and other topics, aiming to help shop owners and practitioners understand the development status of each brand at the beginning of the year and solve various questions in the post-regulatory stage of the industry.
The event will invite various brands to be guests in the live broadcast room, continue to output different views and opinions, and provide a large number of red envelopes and products, dry goods, benefits are available, please lock the "Blue Hole New Consumption" video number.
This series of consecutive activities is exclusively supported by ZIPPO VAZO, and we hereby thank you.
Today, Blue Hole visited LAMI Leimi Beijing Company and discussed the company and industry development with RAMI Leimi and ZERO+Zero Jia CEO He Chang face to face. Rather than a discussion, it is better to say that He Chang's stand-up comedy performance alone, the host of the whole audience also has only a few lines, saying that the sky is not afraid of fear, afraid of He Chang's speech, and once again saw it.
Small talk is small talk, but there are many dry goods. As a brand with two-line development of solid and liquid atomization, in the post-regulatory era, how to look at these two categories, and how to do business opportunities for solid atomization products in the future, Hechang has poured out his own views and opinions.
On the left is He Chang, CEO of Leimi, and on the right is Chen Zhong, editor-in-chief of Blue Hole New Consumption
Blue Hole: Recently, I saw that you were working intensively on "Opening a New Meeting", what kind of activity is this?
He Chang: In simple terms, it is an offline customer meeting, and it is also a product tasting meeting. "Opening up the new" is also a good meaning, that is, "creating a new situation, pioneering and innovating". We will invite customers in the e-cigarette industry in the target city, of course, not limited to Dealers and shopkeepers of the Leimi system, to gather together to experience the products of Leimi and Zero Jia, as well as the sauce and wine of the Thick Workshop. Smoke, wine, fog, three spices in one. At present, there seem to be relatively few such offline activities in the industry, and Blue Hole does not engage in exhibitions, so we will continue to maintain market expansion activities.
It is often said that "tobacco and alcohol do not separate families", there are many customers who want to expand the liquor category from e-cigarettes, and there is also a demand for expanding e-cigarettes from liquor, so we put tobacco and wine tasting together. Each activity of the "New Meeting" has a full product experience and market policy explanation, and together with interactive discussion, we can communicate more directly with customers in the first-tier market, so that the quality and information concentration of the activity are relatively high, and the customers feel more valuable.
Our belief is always: no matter how good the marketing is, it is not as good as letting people directly experience the product, the product is good or not, everything is in the word, try to understand it all, so "open a new meeting" especially emphasizes the customer's sense of product experience and direct feedback.
At the beginning of March, 15 "new meetings" will be held across the country, basically one every other day, the density is very large, after the plan implementation team further optimizes the run-in, it is expected that we can complete at least 200 or more games throughout the year, and if it is smooth, we can touch 300 new meeting activities, the scope basically covers most of the cities in China, and I hope that the "new meeting" can build a face-to-face offline communication activity platform for industry colleagues around the world.
Blue Hole: Last year, you also seemed to have a national lecture tour of "Dock Club" to talk about your experience of field visits.
He Chang: As the name suggests, the "Wharf Club" is to visit the wharf and visit powerful industry customers everywhere. Last November and December last year for two consecutive months. I went to more than 20 cities with the sales team, held 16 consecutive dock meetings, and more than 20 large-scale banquets, and our thick workshop was not less drinking. The form of the event elaborated the product strategy of Wuyeshen Group and the trend analysis of the market after the supervision of e-cigarettes through a complete introduction, hoping to help industry participants actively adjust their business strategies to cope with the inevitable changes in the market situation in the next stage.
Each "Wharf Fair" will invite 50 to 100 local city industry agents and shopkeepers (not limited to The Leimi brand) to participate, so it is also a relatively extensive opportunity for industry colleagues to communicate. We have also learned a lot of things in this journey, really heard the voice of the first-line market, although everyone is doing different brands, but there is a very frank and open communication atmosphere as the basis, we can stand more in the industry perspective and discuss important issues with common value.
In this process, I deeply feel that the company's decision-makers must not take it for granted that if they want to play a good game of chess in the country, sitting in the company is not clear, there is no in-depth investigation and research throughout the country, do not understand the specific conditions of different places, it is easy to come up with a strategy that does not meet the objective conditions of the market, that is very dangerous. This trip is also a very rare market research opportunity for us, and it is a valuable process to understand and learn from different practitioners. Now, some of the market judgments made at the meeting are also becoming a reality, which can also indirectly help the participants to accurately judge the future market.
Blue Hole: You are one of the few brands in the industry that liquid atomization and solid atomization are walking on both lines, and you will talk about your views on the current stage of these two categories.
He Chang: From the perspective of commonality, solid e-cigarettes and liquid atomization belong to new tobacco, and the centralized tobacco system management. From the perspective of differences, product demand and customer groups are different, solid e-cigarettes are biased towards middle-aged smokers, and liquid atomization is biased towards young people. Although solid-state e-cigarettes have a difference between tobacco and non-tobacco plants, the target customer base is still the same.
From the perspective of the global market, the market size of solid-state electronic cigarettes is much larger than that of liquid atomization. From the perspective of industry development, the research and development difficulty of solid-state electronic cigarettes is far greater than that of liquid atomization, and the technical and supply chain thresholds are higher.
From the perspective of customer base differences, solid-state e-cigarettes are closer to the middle-aged smokers, the age group is larger, the consumption repurchase ability is stronger (focusing on the stability of the supply), the taste loyalty is higher, and the price sensitivity is lower.
On the contrary, liquid atomization is more targeted at young people (even non-smokers), has lower spending power, lower taste loyalty (hoping to constantly replace new flavors to maintain consumer viscosity), and is more price sensitive (focusing on low-priced supply). The above difference conditions determine that the consumer group potential of solid-state electronic cigarettes is greater, the market potential is larger, and the future trend is more certain. After the new taste restrictions of liquid atomization, a large number of flavors disappear, which is bound to reduce the attractiveness of young groups, and its category growth will be adversely affected by a certain degree and market contraction.
Leimi is currently a solid state electronic cigarette (ZERO+ Zero Jia) and liquid atomization (LAMI Leimi) two lines have a full layout. Leimi is still on the way to learn from Yueke and catch up, and Zero Jia has become a solid head position in the category market. Our strategy is to "guarantee one for two", Zero Jia "to protect one", and Leimi to "fight for two", and there is a long way to go. The judgment of the market trend is that liquid atomization is the premise of entering the e-cigarette market, solid-state e-cigarette is the future of the e-cigarette market, the meaning and value of the two fronts are different, there must be, but also at different stages to focus on different, alternate cover, roundabout forward, and steadily advance towards the goal.
Tobacco-type solid-state electronic cigarettes to IQOS as an example, from 2015 into the country, to 2018 concentrated crackdown ban to disappear, the middle of the year has created an annual sales of 40 to 50 billion sales scale, in contrast, 2021 The entire domestic e-cigarette market added up to only 20 billion, not half of the order of magnitude of IQOS at that time.
We can also assume that if IQOS extends the market lifespan by two more years, will there be an opportunity for liquid atomized e-cigarettes to begin to rise in 2018? There may be a long delay. In this way, the rise of liquid atomization and iqos retreat are synchronous and causal in time. Liquid atomization actually rises in the domestic market to replace the demand of IQOS, but the substitution effect is not good in a few years, but due to cheaper and richer and the convenience of taste and early e-commerce promotion, the core customer group of e-cigarettes has undergone a serious shift, from the group of smokers to the group of young people, and the original IQOS user group has sunk. Another difference is that the intermediate transaction costs of liquid atomization products after the e-commerce ban have increased dramatically, and they need to be sold through a large number of physical stores, and again the technical threshold of the liquid atomization industry is low, and a large number of homogeneous products have caused a rollercoaster industry involution.
The origin of all this lies in the withdrawal of IQOS in the domestic market, and the domestic e-cigarette market should be said to have not recovered so far, and it is far from reaching the new high. The withdrawal of IQOS products represented by the demand for cigarette substitutes, but also the huge potential market demand for non-tobacco solid-state electronic cigarette categories, which has reached the verified demand of tens of billions of scales, and this part of the sunken customer base naturally exists to replace the same experience and the same price, which is also the reason why we are highly optimistic about non-tobacco solid-state electronic cigarettes.
We are greatly optimistic about the non-tobacco solid-state e-cigarette market, remain firmly optimistic, maintain heavy investment, maintain active participation, and enhance competitiveness from the aspects of technology, process, and materials. We maintain a neutral and optimistic judgment on the liquid atomization market, maintain the existence of military strength, maintain steady development, and enhance competitiveness from the aspects of monomer, smoke liquid, and somatosensory.
Blue Hole: In the past year, Leimi has invested a lot of energy in ZERO+ Jia, and the circle of friends can see its poster every day. What results has ZERO+ Zero Jia achieved so far?
He Chang: First of all, it should be noted that Zero Jia belongs to the non-tobacco type of solid-state electronic cigarette classification. We define it as HDB (Heat doesn't Burn), which literally translates to: heating, not burning. The concept of HNB, which is more commonly mentioned in the industry, is not actually a category name, it is a registered trademark of Philip Morris and cannot be used casually. So we proposed the concept of HDB, which is specifically used for the definition of "non-tobacco-based, plant-based solid e-cigarettes" as a category.
Zero Jia this product we feel that in the past year there is a more intensive, more powerful market action, but in fact, in the research and development reserves, Wuyeshen Group has made a lot of positive investment since 2015, during which it has continuously optimized its products, and has reached close to or surpassed the tobacco-type solid-state electronic cigarette in terms of quality and experience of use, and has recently begun to go to the market and accept the test of users. At this stage, the market feedback is very positive, and more and more old users of e-cigarettes have begun to use Zero Jia products to achieve alternative consumption.
Simply put, Zero Jia is to achieve a domestic alternative to the original market of IQOS and comply with the new e-cigarette regulatory regulations. In addition to the crowded liquid atomization market, a new battlefield has been opened up, opening up the second battlefield of the e-cigarette category.
Because Zero Jia does not involve tobacco materials, and at the same time belongs to the large category of electronic cigarettes, the customer base and liquid atomization are naturally different, so that it can make a good business supplement to tens of thousands of e-cigarette stores in the domestic market that only use liquid atomization as a single category.
Zero Jia This category supplement and liquid atomization are not mutually substitutional relationships, so don't worry about washing away your original liquid atomization customers, it is really a lot of worry. Judging from the actual market feedback, how much liquid atomization products you sold in the past store, how much you sold with zero Jia, and the original category will not be reduced.
Zero Jia is conducive to doing incremental income, does not affect your stock, and Zero Jia's customer group is your liquid atomization products can not catch at all. Generally speaking, such customers are older, have stronger spending power, high taste loyalty, like a taste to buy is five or ten, there has been a taste that does not change, and the unit price of the customer is also higher. Because they smoke longer, it is difficult to accept the sense of experience of liquid atomization products, can not reach the sense of satisfaction, but also more difficult to accept because the liquid atomization consumer group is too young to meet the problem of identity improvement, face can not be satisfied, you can hardly imagine a forty-year-old boss in a Moutai liquor bureau on a fogging small cigarette to talk and laugh, the sense of picture is too strange, some shop owners feedback Zero Jia customers do not bargain, do not ink, eager not to find change, repurchase and tip, which is really in the current e-cigarette market
People belong to yes.
In the current special period of increasing market turmoil, for entity operators, double categories are bound to have a greater margin of safety than single categories, and double categories mean that the ability of double customer groups to obtain customers is also double insurance in terms of profitability, so it is a more rational and wise choice to abandon single categories and join double categories.
Other than that. Zero Jia's market is not how big the Leimi brand (liquid atomization) is, Zero Jia is not affiliated with the Lei Mi brand, it should be viewed independently, Zero Jia itself is an aircraft carrier, not a carrier-based aircraft. Zero Jia focuses on the brand cooperation opportunities of the whole industry and takes the initiative to break the wall of zero-sum game thinking. If a Leimi competitor brand store could not have survived, since the addition of the Zero Jia category, obtained a new customer base, obtained a new incremental profit, the store can continue to operate, the original liquid atomization sales have no impact, then it can be said that Zero Jia is equivalent to helping the leimi competitor brand?
To put it bluntly, the solid and liquid customer groups are naturally two layers, well water does not violate the river water, no matter what liquid atomization brand operator you are, Zero Jia is your preferred incremental category supplement, are "the first choice in the second category". Since the large category of e-cigarettes itself has two classifications of solid and liquid, is it not wise to open an e-cigarette store but only keep one side? Rent manpower is always fixed, who can get incremental customers who can reduce costs and increase efficiency, in fact, this is a very simple truth.
The existence of this category of Zero Jia, so that the Leimi company to look at the peer vision from a simple competitive relationship into a pluralistic competitive relationship, Zero Jia focused on the development of new customer groups, focusing on providing incremental profit space for sellers, and no one conflicts, rather than saying that my best cooperation customers are major brand agents, it is better to say that direct cooperation with major brands, of course, this is our good wish, the industry is light is also an objective fact, so it is still a good product.
Blue Hole: Look at the number and frequency of your daily circle of friends, it is really more dedicated than micro-business, more diligent than the shopkeeper, such a high enthusiasm for work, presumably absolutely optimistic about the future development of the industry, share your analysis.
He Chang: The first reason is pride, I think companies in the entrepreneurial stage should live "around the product". If we people get together and can't make the ultimate product, then this company has no meaning of existence, and it is stupid to simply support the company but not have a powerful product.
I am more frequent publicity, but also the trust and gratitude of my team and products, because I know where we are good, why it is worth my constant recommendation, and then cheesy, that is, I promote my products out, I feel that I have face. Of course, it is not that today is perfect, but always in the optimization of the product, every current stage I am proud of our products, then the circle of friends is also taken for granted.
The second is also the purpose of doing a good job of connection, I have nearly 6,000 friends in WeChat, many people do not speak, do not reply, do not like does not mean that they have not noticed what you are doing, they may also be concerned about your products, if you can always take the initiative to output, the circle of friends is a good connection window, you can effortlessly and independently see the progress of the product, the development of the brand, the vitality of the organization. Over time, I also hope to save a good popularity for the Leimi brand, as the saying goes, the more you see, the more you know, what if you can get in love? Naturally, it is possible to win the trust and attention of Tamidore. In technical terms, this is called the accumulation of brand equity.
My circle of friends is the Leimi advertising circle, do not like to block me on it, which day I remembered, and then want to open a look, the progress of which, a day does not fall in, directly to keep up with the progress, is not also very good?
The third is also for the whole team to drive, there will be a lot of people in the team will not be able to pull down, will also worry about this worry, in fact, I think there is no need to do so, entrepreneurship is to do its best to get the opportunity of the product to be known, send a circle of friends is not the most basic, raise your hand can do it? So I think it's also a matter of attitude, and it's also a touchstone.
Blue Hole: At the Blue Hole Summit last year, Leimi proposed the concept of a "compound store", is this concept landed now?
He chang: It was an idea at the time. But now, the composite store focuses on the nature, not the form. The whole industry is moving towards collection and compounding. The historical mission of a single category of e-cigarette stores is coming to an end.
For example, more and more liquor merchants and liquor stores are already selling Zero Jia products, and the distributors of Leimi have also introduced thick workshops to win the distribution rights of liquor regions. Wuyeshen Group itself has a long-term layout and heavy investment in both tobacco and alcohol categories, and we judge that now is a good time for the interaction and integration of the three major categories of tobacco, alcohol and electronic cigarettes.
Of course, this may also be an advantage of our platform level, Wuyeshen Group has been specializing in the field of tobacco for 23 years, making Moutai town sauce liquor for 11 years, and investing in new tobacco for 7 years. In the integration of tobacco and alcohol categories, we have accumulated rich industrial experience, which can better meet the model evolution of the new tobacco market terminal.
Blue Hole: I have never heard that Leimi has overseas plans, how do you think about overseas markets?
He Chang: In the direction of overseas markets, our overall strategy is to "follow along" and remain modest and cautious. Follow the big brands that do well, provide better experience products on the basis of the previous market, and do a good job in cultivating the overall pattern of overseas markets where price competition is the first, and compete with brands for the future layout quality. Now it still belongs to the stage of "increasing soil fertility", it is still a little early to talk about harvesting, in short, we are actively optimistic, humble practice, cautious progress. Just fly close to the ground, not support.
Blue Hole: Reveal Leimi's master plan this year.
He Chang: In general, there are four words: seek truth from facts.
In the supply chain, we will continue to increase investment, continue to strengthen the vertical depth of the ability, the organic integration of Leimi, Xinhuo, Shennong Tobacco, continue to improve research and development technology, and continuously improve quality strength.
In terms of market strategy, "open the door, welcome in, go out", cooperate in a diversified cooperation model, and do not do rigidity. "Produce more grain, fertilize more", continue to improve service capabilities, improve market influence, and continuously improve survivability and anti-risk ability, even if it is slower, but to ensure that the ship does not overturn.
In terms of organizational ability, we recruit talents, and through common value creation, we will do a good job in the design of value evaluation and value distribution in the mechanism, so that partners who join the company's platform have harvest value, have a sense of achievement, and continuously improve the vitality of the organization.
Blue Hole: Many of the people watching the live broadcast today are shopkeepers and practitioners, do you have good advice to give them.
He Chang: Choice is more important than ability, and patience is more valuable than intelligence. The short term is turbulent, the medium term is good, and the long term is worth fighting for a lifetime. Funds may be borrowed, but cognition can only improve itself.