Author: Muraguchi grows grass
"Those things you don't know about in the Confinement Center."
How much does it cost to raise a child until he graduates from college at the age of 22? Although the statistics are various, in general, in first-tier and quasi-first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, a child needs to invest at least 1 million yuan from birth to work, which has become a consensus.
If you add the confinement center to confinement, I am afraid that this cost is not enough, after all, in first-tier cities, 50,000 confinement clubs per capita is not a rare thing.
"From pregnancy to now, it has cost almost 150,000." Miss Tang, who is confinement at a confinement club in Shanghai, roughly calculated an account, of which 85,000 yuan of "confinement fees" accounted for the majority of the 150,000 yuan. It is understood that miss Tang's choice of the confinement club is a single-family villa, in Shanghai, which belongs to the high-end confinement club.
In fact, professional confinement services originate from the mainland and Taiwan. With the improvement of domestic living standards, this "new species" began to spread in China. Especially in first- and second-tier cities, people's acceptance of confinement centers is higher.
According to the report of the Industry Information Network, the market size of China's confinement center in 2020 is about 15 billion yuan, with a compound annual growth rate of 42.45%. However, what does not match the growth rate is that the current degree of chaining of domestic confinement centers is low, even if it is the head brands such as Aidi Palace and San Bella, the number of stores in the country is also countless, and the vast majority of confinement centers are still unable to get out of their "birthplace".
On the one hand, the confinement center charges a lot of money, coupled with the favorable policy of encouraging three children, making it look like a good business; on the other hand, many people say that they have spent a lot of money, but the experience in the confinement center is not satisfactory.
Behind the seemingly perfect confinement service, what are the hidden secrets? Yue Yue (pseudonym), who once worked in the yuezi center in a new first-tier city for three years, told the new retail business review about the three major pits she summed up when working at the confinement center.
Confinement is a woman's most important moment besides getting married, especially in China. Chinese feel that if the confinement is not sitting well, it is easy to leave "confinement disease". Today's young people have good economic conditions and are willing to pay for services, so the acceptance of the confinement center has gradually increased in recent years.
In fact, confinement in the confinement center does have several advantages:
First of all, professional, the confinement center can provide meticulous and thoughtful 24-hour services in all aspects, especially the confinement clubs of some private hospitals, and can also provide medical services other than nursing and rehabilitation;
The second is to save trouble, what exactly to prepare for confinement, even if you do more homework in advance, there will inevitably be omissions, but you do not have to consider these problems in the confinement center, and some confinement centers will even move the service forward to pregnancy and then to home;
Finally, worry- about it, many mother-in-law and daughter-in-law contradictions began with different concepts when they "confinement", went to the confinement center, from nutritious meals to personal cleaning, baby care and even some parenting knowledge, are responsible for the confinement center, these contradictions lose the soil of fermentation.
However, just like the front and back of the coin, in some confinement centers, especially in the middle and low-end confinement centers, there are some truths that consumers cannot see. Small ones can bring unpleasant experiences to the mother, and large ones may pose risks to the health of the newborn.
Pit 1: Dining is hard to personalize
At present, there are three main types of domestic confinement centers:
The first type is the top and high-end confinement centers, which are generally located in single-family villas, with higher fees, of course, the corresponding service level and degree of standardization are also relatively high;
The second type is the confinement center opened by renting hotel rooms, after the epidemic, the hotel has more vacant rooms, and some hotels will also choose to operate the confinement business across borders;
The third type, commonly known as apartment-style confinement centers, usually rents a floor in some apartment buildings, which have more personnel flow and less privacy than the first two types.
These three types of confinement centers can actually be divided into medical care types and convalescent types according to the model.
The medical care type is mainly a confinement center affiliated with some private hospitals, with full-time medical personnel and certain medical conditions;
Many of the convalescent doctors are part-time, only nurses are full-time, mainly to provide nursing and rehabilitation services, can not provide medical services, such as the common neonatal jaundice has to be sent to professional medical institutions.
I have worked in both hotel-style and apartment-style confinement centers, which account for the highest proportion of confinement centers, and the grade is almost the same, with per capita consumption between 30,000 and 50,000 yuan.
However, no matter what level of confinement center, a big magic weapon to attract expectant mothers is catering. Because this is the part that is most easily felt intuitively besides the living environment. Therefore, many confinement centers will attract target groups through activities such as confinement meal tastings.
Usually the confinement meal is three meals a day, plus three snacks, also known as "three meals and three points". Almost all confinement centers will take this as a selling point, such as promoting that their ingredients are freshly picked in the place of origin, five-star hotel chefs are in charge, customized meals in stages, etc., but in fact, in addition to the mid-to-high-end confinement centers that can achieve personalized meals, it is difficult for low-end confinement centers to do all.
For example, in the confinement center where I am located, although the hotel itself has a back kitchen, it is too late to provide the hotel's own guests with meals, and it is impossible to meet our needs. Later, we could only cooperate with companies that specialized in confinement meals.
However, catering outsourcing has brought three problems, one is that it is impossible to provide personalized meals according to the mother's confinement process, and to pack and deliver meals according to the portions, and can only do a good job of delivery according to the general needs, such as how many fish, how many shrimp, how many rice to do every day, after delivery to the confinement center, the second meal.
Second, outsourced catering companies are sometimes far away from the confinement center, and even if some dishes are delivered in insulated barrels, it is difficult to ensure that they will not be cold after being delivered to the confinement center. Therefore, we have another aunt, and then use the microwave to reheat after the second meal, such a meal must be discounted in taste.
Third, the confinement center cannot supervise the whole process of meals from purchase to cleaning and cooking, so there are often women who eat foreign objects such as hair and wire during the confinement meal, and then complain, which is also a common problem encountered by many confinement centers.
Of course, for some special women, we will also provide some "visible" personalized meals, such as women who have just given birth will not arrange meat soup, pregnant women with diabetes should arrange coarse grains, women with seafood allergies will not arrange seafood, and so on.
The second pit: the sister-in-law is practicing
The nursing mode of confinement centers is generally divided into two types: confinement system and nurse system.
To put it simply, the confinement system refers to the full-time confinement of the mother in the confinement center, while taking care of the baby and the mother, this mode is generally the mother and baby room. The nurse system is a centralized management of babies by multiple nurses in turn, which is generally a model of separation of mother and baby.
Some people may think that mother and baby rooming together can enhance the feelings of mothers and babies, but the premise is that the confinement is powerful and has rich experience.
The middle and low-end confinement centers are basically incapable and unwilling to "raise" full-time confinement sisters-in-law. This means that what appears to be a one-on-one sister-in-law is actually a "temporary worker", and they are all hired from a housekeeping company.
Outsourcing can save costs for confinement centers, but the hidden dangers are unstable personnel and different experiences, which makes it difficult to control service levels.
Generally speaking, when the mother is in the hospital, the confinement center will maintain contact with the mother, which is mainly based on cost considerations, after all, if you ask for a confinement sister-in-law one day later, the expenditure will be less than one day.
In order to control costs, the confinement center hires a confinement sister-in-law for a mother-in-law, and the cost usually does not exceed 20% of her consumption. For example, if a woman pays the confinement center 50,000 yuan, the confinement center is only willing to spend up to 10,000 yuan to ask for a confinement sister-in-law, and this price, after deducting the commission of the labor service company, the confinement sister-in-law will get less.
Obviously, experienced confinement sisters-in-law are reluctant to work in the confinement center. The confinement sister-in-law left for the confinement center is basically some novices who have just entered the industry, and these novices will be officially hired after simple training after arriving at the confinement center.
Compared with the novice mother, these sisters-in-law seem to have a little experience, but in terms of cultural literacy and scientific parenting knowledge and experience, the level is uneven.
Our center once had an accident, there was a premature baby after drinking milk did not take the milk in time, and then the baby choked the milk sister-in-law did not deal with it in time, which eventually led to the baby suffering from neonatal pneumonia and a lawsuit.
Later, we learned a lesson, according to the situation will be equipped with a sister-in-law, if it is a twin or premature baby, arrange a more experienced sister-in-law, after all, it is a very troublesome thing to complain.
The third pit: profit mainly depends on production and health
In recent years, our city confinement center has opened more and more, because of the fierce competition, the unit price of customers has become lower and lower, and in the off-season, even a room only sells for 19800 yuan.
This is because for confinement centers, there are some hard costs that cannot be cut, such as rent, confinement and meals. We have done a rough calculation internally, and these three expenses together basically account for about 60% of sales revenue.
Taking a 30,000 yuan confinement package, the three costs add up to about 18,000 yuan. If you calculate the marketing costs, wages and social security, as well as the daily expenses such as water and electricity network fees, hardware configuration fees, and maintenance costs of the confinement center, the net profit of a single business may be less than 10%.
The main profit is not good, and can only rely on the profit of the side business. As a result, in recent years, almost all confinement centers have placed the burden of profitability on postpartum rehabilitation services.
Of course, in terms of recommending postpartum rehabilitation programs, the confinement center is very cleverly packaged. Many confinement packages include some entry-level health care items, such as shampooing, milking, lochia, etc.
The provision of these projects, ostensibly to improve the brand competitiveness of the confinement center, is actually drainage, but it is to promote mothers to purchase more other postpartum rehabilitation programs with these experiences, such as pelvic floor muscles, rectus abdominis repair, intimate areas, spine maintenance, and so on.
Among these projects, the projects that can be made of machines have the highest profits, basically one investment and unlimited returns. Some projects that need to be done by technicians will have higher costs, one is because the level of technicians is high, and the labor cost is high, and the efficiency of manual services is not as good as that of machines.
From the heart, these so-called postpartum rehabilitations are not ineffective at all, but some projects are only done ten times and eight times in the confinement center, and the effect is not achieved at all.
There are also some projects that are actually related to the recovery of the body itself, that is, even if these projects are not done, as the body gradually recovers, some of the body's muscle energy will be slowly repaired.
In addition, when these postpartum services become KPIs tied to the rehabilitation, the "smell" of postpartum rehabilitation changes. At that time, we required the maternity engineer to complete the consumption task of 5,000 yuan per room, similar to the routine of the barbershop card, and some obstetricians used too much force when selling, which was easy to cause the mothers to resent.
In the past twenty years, the domestic confinement center industry has experienced a development process from scratch and from small to large. According to the data of Tianyancha, there are more than 5,700 related enterprises in the mainland confinement center, and from 2017 to 2021, the average growth rate of newly registered enterprises will reach 57.7%, and 229 new registered enterprises will be added in 2021.
Obviously, the competition in this industry will become more and more fierce, and the price war is no longer the best choice for enterprises to survive. How to gain word of mouth by improving the quality of service, and ultimately increase the unit price of customers, is what the industry must think about.
At present, some mid-to-high-end confinement centers have sought new attempts outside the early profit model, such as providing services such as swimming, early education and even full moon ceremonies for newborns. These new businesses will not only enable the confinement center to have differentiated competitiveness, but also be expected to obtain new profit growth points and avoid falling into the price war circle due to homogenization competition.