Written | Ho Furong
Edit the | Wu Xianzhi
In April last year, Monster Charging went public, and on the same day, Street Power and Sodian merged, and the competitive pattern of "three electric and one beast" became "small bamboo beast".
After this, the shared charging treasure industry also gradually faded out of the industry's sight with the bursting of the sharing economy bubble, until the news of the layoffs of Xiaodian Technology spread again recently. According to reports, Xiaodian Technology is currently facing fierce personnel turmoil, expecting to lay off about 2,000 employees, accounting for nearly 40% of the company's total number of people, and has not promised compensation.
This seems to confirm once again the bone reality of the shared charging treasure industry.
Xiaodian's layoffs were caused by the company's direct transfer agent. More than 90% of the previous points of Xiaodian belonged to the direct operation model, and today's sudden change also reflects the difficulties of the entire industry model. High entrance fees, multi-player competition for high-quality points and other problems have plagued enterprises for a long time, which is also the main problem faced by the direct operation model.
"Sodian and Street Power are now both agent models, and we do not do direct operation, a big reason is to let more local agents participate, so as to maximize the spread and seize the market." The above-mentioned Zhumang Technology insider said. The agency model became its main playing style.
Today, including monsters, small electricity and other head players who were originally directly operated, as well as other small and medium-sized players have been developing an agent model, the shared charging treasure enterprises that have a single profit model seem to be becoming a charging treasure sales company.
However, this is also a helpless move for them to quickly seize the market and pass on the risk.
The profit model is difficult to understand
The sharing economy is difficult to make a profit, and the charging treasure industry is no exception, and almost none of the head players can continue to make a profit.
The turn of 2020 and 2021 is the most prosperous moment in the industry. Monster Charging also went to the capital market during this period, listing is the peak, and then fell endlessly.
At that time, Monster Charging was offering $8.50 and had a market capitalization of $2.1 billion. As of the close of trading on March 8, 2022, monster shares have fallen to $1.090, with a total market capitalization of only $267 million.
Continuous losses and single business models have always been common problems for all players who share charging treasures, and they are also the reasons why the industry is not optimistic.
According to the monster charging financial report, the monster charging revenue in the first three quarters of last year was 846.9 million yuan, 972.4 million yuan and 930 million yuan, respectively, with a year-on-year growth rate of 162.46%, 52.85% and 0.60%, the growth rate showed a rapid downward trend, and the growth of Q3 almost stagnated. Q3 net loss was $79.44 million, compared to a net profit of $109 million in the year-ago quarter.
Charging Monster explained that the reason for the turn from profit to loss is the regional outbreak of the epidemic, resulting in a significant decline in the flow of people in various scenarios. According to the forecast, the monster charging in the fourth quarter of 2021 is still not optimistic, and the revenue is expected to be 800 million-830 million yuan, down about 10%-15% from 930 million yuan in the same period last year. It can be seen that the industry will continue to be sluggish.
Dismantling the monster's financial report will find that its losses are mainly caused by high marketing costs. In Q3 2021, the marketing expenses of Monster Charging reached 814 million yuan, accounting for 87.53% of the revenue in the current quarter, an increase of 23.8% year-on-year. This is due to an increase in incentive fees to facilitate network partners, increased POI coverage and increased personnel-related expenses.
At the same time, according to the prospectus of Xiaodian Technology, the incentive fee of Xiaodian Technology has increased from 105 million yuan in 2018 to 1.013 billion yuan in 2020. The share rate increased from 24.2% to 38.2%, while the entry rate increased from 1% to 16.3%. It can be seen that the cost of developing based on points and seizing high-quality merchants continues to rise.
The shared charging industry is still in the situation of multi-player grabbing the market, and players are competing for high-quality points, and the admission fees and the proportion of shares given to merchants in this process are constantly increasing, further leading to losses in the industry.
There is no industry barrier to the shared charging treasure itself, and when the monster is listed, the chat information provided by Cai Guangyuan shows that the pixel-level Copy between peers runs through each other. This leads to any player as long as the price can break the pattern, in order to seize the market is very easy to fall into a vicious competition situation. It is difficult for enterprises to grasp the bargaining power of the point, resulting in the expansion of marketing expenses.
A regional agent for searching for electricity said that it is very common for high-traffic points such as bars, nightclubs, stations, hospitals and other places to raise the admission fee to more than 200,000 yuan a year.
The industry is still in the market expansion period, the phenomenon of working for merchants is still very common, and the difficulties of the industry model are prominent.
The joys and sorrows of the proxy model
The shared charging treasure industry mainly expands the market through the direct operation model and the agency model. The direct operation mode is the model in which the shared charging treasure enterprise pays the entrance fee to the merchant and the fee charged to the user is divided into the merchant according to the agreed proportion.
However, with the gradual rise of marketing expenses and losses, the drawbacks of direct operation have emerged.
Can the agent model solve the problem of loss of shared charging treasure enterprises? At least at this stage, it has been regarded by various companies as an important plan for reducing their expenditure and expanding their markets.
Xiaodian began to transfer from direct operation to agent in July last year, focusing on the layout of the agent model, and the layoffs are also a further deepening of the agency model; monster charging to expand the sinking market, through direct operation + agent joint promotion; the US group directly shrinks the direct operation, turning to the agent model to sink to the third and fourth lines; Zhumang Technology directly abandons the direct operation after the merger of soy and street power, and is moving towards the pure agent model.
Regional agents are generally people who master the resources of local merchants, which is undoubtedly more rapid and easy for local merchants to expand, and the agency model is also regarded by enterprises as a breakthrough way to control costs and occupy the market.
We learned from multiple brands that under the agency model, agents buy out the shared charging treasure cabinet directly from the brand side, and the follow-up is the three-party profit sharing of merchants, agents and enterprises.
However, the enterprises are still in the expansion stage of seizing the market, and the relevant enterprises are interested in maximizing the interests of agents and inviting them to enter the urn.
The above-mentioned Zhumang Technology source said that the first-level agent enjoys the pricing power of the charging treasure lease, and the proportion of the share with the merchant is also negotiated by the agent himself. In addition, the ratio of the company to the agent is 1:9 before the return of the capital, and 2:8 after the return of the capital, "the agent must make a lot of money." ”
In addition, the monster charging agent mode only extracts 5% of the enterprise, and the remaining 95% is negotiated by the merchant and the agent.
"We are all settled in the shops of acquaintances, everyone knows, generally sign exclusive agreements, and merchants participate in the formation of the line." A monster agent in Chongqing said. It can be seen that the gap between local agents and direct sales models, the advantages of agents who master business resources are further highlighted.
Nowadays, the head players in the agency model are using this kind of "selling products + small percentage" gameplay, which is lighter than the direct operation model, and helps to improve the situation in which the merchant has the bargaining power. However, the situation that the agent holds the pricing power will also amplify the situation of random charging in the market, such as the inflated price of the charging treasure in the just-needed scenes such as scenic spots and bars, which will further lead to the user's disgust.
In addition, small players in some places have made a bloody investment in order to seize the market.
An insider of Xiudian said that their brand can now rank in the top five in the industry, and is currently in a period of market expansion, under the agency model, they will give all their income to agents and merchants, the brand side does not participate in the commission, and the company's income only comes from the one-time sale and purchase of products.
"No way, now the competition is too fierce, our point number is not as good as the other heads, in order to grab the market can only give profits."
The industry seems to be less and less imaginative, and now it is more and more reduced to a hardware sales company, but it is precisely because the threshold is low that there is never a shortage of competitors.
However, while the agency model makes the enterprise lighter, it also passes on the operational risk to the agent.
An agent of a leading enterprise in Guangzhou is recently posting on major social networking sites to transfer more than 140 charging treasure cabinets in his hands, and Photon Planet has communicated with him to learn that he began to do it in July last year, and most of them have not returned to the capital now. "At that time, the brand side estimated that I could return the capital in three months, and now more than half a year has passed."
Today's situation is that he has more than a hundred products in his hands, and he has to spend a lot of time every day to maintain it, and he has no time to take care of it. "Even local agents can hardly check in for each one, and it's fairly common to have a few devices in a store because merchants are always driven by profits." The above-mentioned agents said.
At the same time, according to the understanding of photon planet, each player does not have an exclusive agent in a certain area when developing agents, and each brand in a region can have multiple first-level agents, and the first-level agents can continue to expand the second-level agents below.
For shared charging treasure companies, in order to seize the market, it seems to be caught in a kind of scuffle of selling charging treasure cabinets. When there is too much supply, it is the agent who carries the pot in this mode.
The second growth curve lacks imagination
The single profit model is one of the main reasons why the shared charging treasure industry has been criticized.
According to the revenue composition of Monster Charging in Q3 2021, it is mainly composed of shared charging services, charging treasure sales and other businesses mainly based on advertising services, contributing revenue of 895.4 million yuan, 27.4 million yuan and 7.2 million yuan respectively.
In addition to the shared charging revenue being basically the same as the same period last year, it accounted for 96.28% of the total revenue. In addition, the sales and other business revenue of charging treasure increased by 14.0% and 47.5% year-on-year, respectively, but the proportion of total revenue is still negligible.
There are not many options for developing a second growth curve based on the shared charging treasure itself. As far as the existing practice is concerned, either cross-line or make a fuss based on the charging treasure.
The first is the advertising service, which also seems to be the only option that can be developed based on the shared charging treasure cabinet.
The above-mentioned people of Zhumang Technology said that they are promoting the upgrade of the shared charging treasure cabinet, and the most direct is the cabinet with a screen. "The main use of the screen is to play advertisements, in addition to some merchants' own advertising needs, you can also develop other brand advertisers to promote delivery." In the past, the form of advertising was mainly based on fuselage stickers, and advertisements could also be implanted inside the Mini Program.
However, on the whole, due to the limitations of active users and usage scenarios of charging treasure, it is difficult to achieve high growth in advertising-based revenue. At present, the advertising revenue of Monster Charging accounts for less than 1%.
In addition, these players have jumped out of the charging treasure itself to do other business development.
For example, Xiaodian Technology revealed in the prospectus that it will explore To B digital marketing services to provide short video and live marketing solutions for partners and merchants at the point.
Monster Charging developed liquor business, launched liquor "Kaihuan" in April last year, and used the current point to do liquor promotion.
Zhumang Technology has made efforts in the field of intelligent hardware, and began to pilot hardware products such as thermometer charging treasure, unmanned retail, mask machine, AED external defibrillator all-in-one machine.
Whether these new attempts can help companies break through a single growth model will take time to test.
The demand of the shared charging treasure industry is not big, and it is not small, but this low-frequency just need industry seems to be less able to afford to play more
"Now our Zhumang Technology's city point number ranks first in the industry, and now the merger of so-on and street power is more than 1 million, and the point of monster charging is about 800,000." The above-mentioned Zhumang Technology insider said.
At the same time, Sullivan and the Head Leopard Research Institute jointly released the "Market Pattern Insight Report on China's Shared Charging Treasure Industry in the First Half of 2021", and the user scale of Zhumang Technology, Monster and Xiaodian reached 300 million, 260 million and 240 million respectively, ranking among the top three in the industry.
On an occasion and the pattern of the shared charging treasure industry will change, Zhumang Technology will achieve a counter-overtake of the monster in terms of user scale and point number.
In the later stage of the development of the industry, it may also move towards merger like the online ride-hailing industry, and eventually end the situation of division and chaos.