Image source @ Visual China
Text | Pencil road, the author | Lin Sensen, Editor, | Wu Jinna
This is the Nth attempt of Qudian and Luo Min to fail to transform.
A few days ago, the U.S. stock listed company Qudian announced that its education project Wanlimu children's business will be greatly reduced, retaining only a children's growth center. At the same time, Luo Min also sent a circle of friends, indicating that he would say goodbye to this education project.
Founded in December 2020, Wanlimu Children continued its education business under its name after qudian's luxury goods e-commerce business was gradually abandoned. The main business of Wanlimu Children is an offline quality education complex.
The new project continues Qudian's usual high-minded style of acting. At the beginning of its establishment, Qudian set its goal to open 100 stores in 2021. Announced downsizing At present, Wanlimu has opened and operated 11 children's growth centers. It is reported that a single children's growth center covers an area of about 3500 square meters, costs 30 million yuan, and is completely self-operated. In other words, Qudian has already paid a trial and error cost of 330 million yuan before.
Like Wanlimu e-commerce, Wanlimu Children carry the same mission - to vibrate the stock price of interest stores and find new growth points. After going public in 2017, Qudian's stock price fell all the way. The peak market capitalization was $11.3 billion, and now it is only $192 million, down 98.3%. At the same time, Qudian is also facing the risk of delisting.
Before Wanlimu Children, Luo Min had many attempts at internal entrepreneurship, but all of them were silent.
According to public information, Luo Min was born on March 12, 1983, and when he was 34 years old, Qudian was listed. According to Luo Min's shareholding ratio and the market value of Qudian at that time, Luo Min's net worth exceeded 10 billion yuan, and he achieved financial freedom early. Today, Luo Min will celebrate his 39th birthday and is still in his prime. I don't know if he still has the confidence and energy to continue to start a business and complete his dream of a market value of 100 billion.
01 Fun shop self-help, continuous action
The new business that fun stores have high hopes for has not survived this spring after all.
A few days ago, Luo Min, the founder of Qudian, sent a slightly sad circle of friends late at night. "It's time to say goodbye, the original intention of making children grow up happy and healthy is still there, but the epidemic does not allow it, too much is not allowed ..."
The picture of this circle of friends is from the educational project of Qudian - Wanlimu Children. So speculation is that d may mean that the project has failed.
The Wanlimu Children's Project appeared in December 2020 and focuses on the quality education of children aged 0-9 years. However, the name "Wanlimu" was not first used for children's education, but for luxury e-commerce.
Back two years ago, in February 2020, Qudian launched a new project, Wanlimu, positioned as a luxury e-commerce platform, declaring that it is committed to building "the world's largest luxury e-commerce platform". At this time, Qudian has been listed for more than two years, and its market value has fallen from more than $100 to hundreds of millions of dollars. Wanlimu e-commerce is considered to be one of the big moves of Qudian to save itself.
Wanli's appearance is extremely high-profile. Qudian advertised for it on the Internet, announcing that it would carry out "tens of billions of subsidies", and signed 5 spokespersons zhao wei, Huang Xiaoming, Lei Jiayin, Zheng Kai, and Jia Nailiang.
However, at this time, the future of vertical luxury e-commerce has begun to bleak. The opening of The Wanlimu also became its peak, followed by a downward spiral. According to media reports, in the second half of 2020, Wanlimu entered a bottleneck period of growth, accompanied by consumer doubts and complaints. It was at this time that Qudian began to gradually abandon Wanlimu and shifted its focus to "Wanlimu Children".
In June 2021, Wanlimu products were gradually removed from shelves, online stores were closed, employees resigned or transferred... At this point, the Wanlimu project ended in failure. At the same time, Wanlimu Children took over the baton of Wanlimu and shouldered the mission of "Zhen interest store".
Unlike other children's quality education platforms that focus on online, the main body of Wanlimu Children's Education is its offline store, Wanlimu Children's Growth Center, a quality education complex. According to the data, the Wanlimu Children's Growth Center covers sports, art, expression, thinking and other fields, including art, Lego, ballet, basketball, football, tennis, swimming and other seven categories.
Like Luo Min's previous entrepreneurial projects, Wanlimu Children are also holding high. It is reported that the area of a single Wanlimu Children's Growth Center is more than 3500 square meters, which is completely self-operated. At the same time, Wanlimu children do not need to make an advance payment and only sell small lesson packages, and they can be refunded at any time if they are not satisfied with the experience. When many educational institutions were in a difficult situation of refunds, Wanlimu Children's move received a lot of praise at that time.
02 Different "Miles" with the same ending
At the beginning, Qudian was still full of confidence in Wanlimu Children, and was expected to open 100 stores in 2021 and 500+ stores in 2022.
What gave him confidence was the timing of the emergence of the Wanlimu Children. 2020 is the most ferocious year of the epidemic, but it is the most prosperous year for the education industry, especially online education. The data shows that the number of education-related enterprises has risen from 780,000 a decade ago to 4.12 million. At the same time, capital has also continued to enter the layout, and in the first half of 2020 alone, tens of billions of funds have poured into the education track.
Perhaps it is the fantasy of a beautiful future that makes the children of Wanlimu start to throw a lot of money. According to media reports, the recruitment cost of Wanlimu children alone has reached hundreds of millions of yuan.
Wanlimu Children adopts a partnership mechanism, partners do not need to invest, but according to ability and background, partners enjoy different treatment. Partners at higher levels are also promised options. According to Lazy Bear Sports, Wanlimu Children has selected more than 600 seed partners among more than 1800 interviewers.
Such a recruitment of talents at any cost, Wanlimu Children are indeed ready for rapid expansion. In January 2021, the first store of Wanlimu Children's Growth Center, the Flagship Store of Xiamen, was opened. Luo Min has mentioned that as of August 24, 2021, Wanlimu Children's Children has 3 children's growth centers in operation. At the same time, lease agreements for a further 37 children's growth centres have been signed, of which 24 are under renovation.
However, the world is unpredictable, only half a year after the opening of the first store, the education and training industry has ushered in a heavy hammer - the introduction of the "double reduction" policy.
Although Wanlimu children mainly focus on quality education, in the case of the vigorous implementation of the "double reduction" policy, many uncertainties and obstacles have been added to the future of Wanlimu children. At the same time, many discipline education giants are also transforming quality education, which has sharply increased the competitive pressure of Wanlimu children. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, the children of Wanlimu have fallen into a difficult situation.
In August 2021, Wanlimu Children was rumored to have begun layoffs. According to reports, the number of Wanlimu Children's Seed partners has dropped from 600 to about 100. At the same time, some insiders said that Wanlimu Children will not open new stores for the time being, even if the city with potential letter of intent has chosen to withdraw, and the shop that has been renovated does not plan to open.
A few days ago, Qudian issued an announcement that it plans to drastically reduce the children's business of Wanlimu and temporarily retain a center to continue to serve customers. Luo Min also said, "In the context of the recurrence of the epidemic and the changing regulations of the education industry, the company re-evaluated the situation, adopted a cautious attitude, and decided to significantly reduce the children's business of Wanlimu. ”
This announcement, coupled with Luo Min's previous circle of friends, the end of Wanlimu Children is already clear. At this point, the two "miles" of the same name have come to the same end.
03 Fun Shop "Dead Wood Is Hard to Meet spring"
Whether it is Wanlimu or Wanlimu Children, they are all given the same responsibility by Qudian, that is, to become a new growth point of Qudian to boost stock prices.
As mentioned above, since the listing of Qudian, the stock price has fallen all the way, and it fell below $1 in December 2021. Since then, Qudian's stock price has been below $1 for a long time.
Qudian is not only facing the problem of low stock prices, but also hovers on the verge of delisting. The NYSE stipulates that if the average closing price of the company's stock price is less than $1 for 30 consecutive trading days, it will face the risk of forced delisting.
In February this year, Qudian received a "delisting warning" letter. If Qudian fails to restore its average share price to more than $1 within six months, it will be delisted.
The main reason why Qudian has come to this step today is that its main credit business is not optimistic. After the listing of Qudian, the normative documents of relevant departments in the fields of online small loans and cash loans have been landed one after another. As soon as the news was sent, the stock prices of Qudian, Xinerfu, Yiren Loan, Paipai Loan, Yiren Loan and other platforms listed in the United States involving cash loans all fell sharply. After the storm, although the stock price of Qudian has been showing a downward trend,
In addition to the main business, Qudian frequently tries new businesses, looks for new growth points, and continues to spend huge sums of money, but they have failed, which makes it more difficult for Qudian to turn over.
In the case of Wanlimu Children, there are 11 campuses that have previously started operation, and the single store investment is more than 30 million yuan, which means that the Wanlimu Children's Project has invested at least 330 million yuan or more.
The previous Wanlimu luxury e-commerce project is also, and the cost of sales and promotion of Qudian in a single quarter will cost 64.8 million yuan, not to mention the huge subsidy costs and celebrity endorsement costs.
In addition to these two projects, Luo Min has started a business more than a dozen times within Qudian. For example, in 2017, the auto consumer finance staging business "Big White Car" was launched, and this project was stopped two years later; in 2018, the high-end home economics project "WeiPu Jia" and the children's one-on-one learning platform "Fun Learning" were launched.
Time has passed, and the above projects have disappeared. Qudian can no longer come up with data that makes investors happy. Qudian's most recent financial report was for the third quarter of 2021, showing total revenue of RMB347.4 million (US$53.9 million) in the third quarter, down 59.1% from RMB849.4 million in the same period last year. Net loss was RMB94.2 million (US$14.6 million), compared to a net profit of RMB592.3 million in the year-ago quarter.
New points are hard to find interesting shops, and recently it is even more troublesome. On February 28, 2022, Qudian and Luo Min paid a settlement of US$8.5 million to the plaintiffs in the lawsuit due to securities fraud. It was a protracted lawsuit. Since the end of 2017, a large number of Qudian investors have launched a class action lawsuit for securities fraud against Qudian, founder Luo Min and some executives, and the plaintiffs believe that Qudian did not fully disclose commercial and regulatory risks before the IPO, causing their investment losses.
The failure of this lawsuit has severely damaged the credibility of Qudian and Luo Min. As of press time, Qudian's share price is $0.760 and its market capitalization is $192 million. Compared with the highest market capitalization of $11.3 billion, the market value of Qudian has fallen by 98.3%.
According to public information, Luo Min was born on March 12, 1983, and was listed on qudian when he was 34 years old. According to Luo Min's shareholding ratio and the market value of Qudian at that time, Luo Min's net worth reached 10 billion yuan. Today, Luo Min will usher in his 39th birthday, still in his prime, I don't know if he still has the confidence and energy to continue to start a business and complete his dream of a market value of 100 billion.
Resources:
Fun Shop Down! From a market value of 10 billion to 200 million, Luo Min only took 4 years" Deep Blue Finance
"'Wanlimu Children' Big Brakes, Layoffs in Response to Policy Changes" Sloth Bear Sports
"The alleged securities fraud compensation of 50 million, on the verge of delisting, how did Qudian come to this step?" Wired Insight