Text | E-commerce online, Wen | Wang Xin, editor | Si asked
"I really didn't expect to drink a milk tea and collapse the house!"
On March 28, "Gu Ming was fined 11.61 million for tax evasion" appeared on the hot search, with more than 190 million views and 26,000 discussions. Many netizens said in the comment area that they have dodged the collapse of countless star idols, but they have not avoided the collapse of milk tea: "Gu Ming, are you worthy of the money I spent on you?" ”
In 2010, Wang Yun'an, a recent graduate, opened the first "Gu Ming" milk tea shop in Daxi Town, Wenling, Taizhou City, and subsequently developed into a milk tea empire with more than 6,000 franchise stores in the country.
The development process of GuMing and Mixue Ice City is somewhat similar, and a little different: the same from the sinking market, the same inspirational story of the founder, the difference is that Mixue has become the king of the sinking, Guming with the price lower than Xicha, Naixue, stable quality, occupies a place in the mid-end milk tea market, and obtains two rounds of financing around 2020 and 2021. It's just that it is difficult for people to label it accurately, and everyone often only remembers the head of the industry - high-end xicha, Naixue, sinking market has honey snow, and ancient tea is more often bound to the title of "xicha pingdi".
Ancient tea was once known as "Xi Cha Ping Ti"
In today's inner-volume tea industry, brands fight each other, everyone has their own market and audience, and no one can kill anyone until the brand itself makes a mistake. Gu Ming, just this time made a big mistake, tax evasion is enough to arouse the disgust of consumers, even if Gu Ming officially said that it has paid back the tax and paid a fine, there is not much impact on franchisees and stores, but it is difficult for heartbroken consumers to say that they will buy Gu Ming's products again.
01 From sinking, to ascending
Gu Ming, who came out of the small county town, opened the franchise model in the second year of its establishment.
According to Gu Ming's official website, there are more than 6,000 stores in the country, which is a huge number - counting in the top position of the industry (20,000 stores in Mixue, more than 7,000 stores in ShuyiXiancao). At the beginning, Gu Ming's franchise route was the "rural encirclement of the city" route, first with the town as the core, gradually developing to Taizhou urban area, and then radiating to the townships and urban areas throughout Zhejiang. Then, with Zhejiang as the core, it expanded to more third- and fourth-tier cities in the surrounding areas.
According to the official website, in addition to the store rent and transfer fee, the franchise fee is between 270,000 and 290,000 yuan, of which 18,800 yuan of three-year brand cooperation fee and 25,000 yuan of operating service fee can be paid in full when the store is opened for 13 months, and if the store is closed within 12 months, this part of the fee is waived.
A franchisee revealed to "E-commerce Online" that together with rent transfer fees, it generally costs 500,000 to 700,000 yuan.
Although Gu Ming did not disclose the company's profit model, it can be seen through the general business model of the tea industry that Gu Ming mainly relies on channels such as collecting service fees, training fees and franchisee purchases to obtain revenue.
In many previous articles on Gu Ming, Gu Ming's "no store north of the Yellow River" strategy has been mentioned, because Gu Ming only opens stores where the logistics distribution chain can be delivered, and the own logistics supply chain is also the largest moat of Gu Ming.
Since 2013, GuMing has deployed a self-distribution model, built its own supply chain, and then built its own orchards to establish storage bases in East China, Central China and South China, and the cold chain distribution model can achieve the low-temperature delivery of raw materials to stores every other day.
Gu Ming mainly plays all kinds of fruit tea, such an operation can help franchise stores use unified raw materials, ensure the stability of each franchise store, and also make Gu Ming become the "ping substitution" of many big-name milk teas - Gu Ming's signature cheese succulent grapes, which has been known as the flat replacement of heyte tea succulent grapes.
Changes have appeared in the past two years, the high-end does sinking, the sinking does the exploration, and the boundaries are becoming more and more blurred. "E-commerce Online" found through the narrow door dining eye search that Gu Ming began to open stores in Shandong, Gansu, Shaanxi and other cities. It is no longer just focusing on the sinking market, and has gradually explored, and the proportion of stores in first-tier and new first-tier cities has exceeded 20%.
Breaking its own layout strategy may mean that Gu Ming needs to find new growth points: the stores in Zhejiang and surrounding provinces and cities are gradually saturated, while the western and northern markets can still be explored; the third- and fourth-tier sinking market competition for many milk tea brands is fierce, and there may be greater surprises in the first- and second-tier cities that explore the population flow of third- and fourth-tier cities.
This is also the trend of the entire industry, Xicha, Naixue price reduction, harvest mid-range consumers; Starbucks, Luckin to the district and county, cross-border to harvest new users. Even if it has been deeply cultivating the sinking market, in the face of competition from many brands, The chassis of Gu Ming is still not "stable", and it has become an inevitable choice to find increments by exploring and expanding the plate.
02 Strict franchise system
In the "2020 Annual Report" released by China Beverage Express, a string of data was mentioned: in 2020, GuMing opened 4,097 stores in 139 cities, achieving 500 million cup sales, the growth rate of single-store revenue increased by 37.1% compared with 2019, and the store closure rate remained at 0.13%.
Franchise stores are a way for brands to quickly build awareness, a set of data can show the rapid expansion of guming in the past two years: narrow door restaurant eye data show that guming opened 849 stores in 2019, but opened 2253 stores in 2020, 1806 stores in 2021, and two-thirds of guming stores were opened in the past two years.
Searching for Gu Ming to join on the Little Red Book, there are many experience stickers about Gu Ming interviews, and some people have interviewed two or three times, but for various reasons they still have not passed.
Xiaoma Song, chief marketing consultant of Luo Ji thinking, once revealed that in 2019, the probability of Gu Ming's selection of franchisees was about 100 people, and only 1 could pass. He also wrote in his own article that Wang Yun'an, the founder of Guming, is a person who pays great attention to details, cherishes the design and details of the store, and often has the idea of improving.
The founders who cut the details in this way are also very detail-cut when choosing franchisees.
Gu Ming, which has been joining since 2011, has a very mature playing style and screening mechanism: age 25 to 40 years old; when one to two stores, investors need to completely carry out basic operations in the store, three stores and above, investors also need to be responsible for store operations full-time; one to two stores are not recommended partnership.
"Gu Ming basically refuses to invest and work part-time, and the interview will ask you a lot of questions related to your experience to examine you." Merchants who had applied to join Gu Ming just told "E-commerce Online" that there were three interview opportunities to join, and they did not pass twice.
Even if you pass the interview, you may face more stringent requirements.
A Guming franchisee said in her Little Red Book notes that even if it passes the review, it may be assigned to other cities as a "pioneer", she chose Zhejiang as the intention area when she registered, but the choice area provided to her by the headquarters is Guangdong, which is about equivalent to letting her be a "pioneer". Another franchisee and "e-commerce online" revealed that in the preliminary review stage, Gu Ming told him that at the beginning, it could only be opened in a place where it was not prosperous, and the wang shop of the good business circle was left to the old franchisee, and he could only accept helplessly: "Many people can't even pass the audit, and after a few more years, it is the old business, and then there will be a wang shop." ”
In daily operations, Guming Company also has strict regulations for franchisees. A franchisee told E-commerce Online: "Headquarters puts special emphasis on rules. The monitoring in the store needs to be installed in accordance with the company's regulations, and the company often monitors the behavior of the employees in the store, such as whether there is milk tea according to the norms, whether there is a clothing code, whether the guests come and shout slogans, and so on. Those who do not do well will be deducted points, and more than 3 times they will be dismissed from the store. If the company can't view the monitoring, it will also determine that you deliberately blocked it and fined you 2,000 yuan. ”
Gu Ming has strict rules for store decoration
After the storm of Gu Ming's tax evasion and punishment came out, a franchisee was a little worried, "Who would have thought that a company that manages franchisees so strictly does not pay taxes well?" We joined is to figure a brand, now the brand has a problem, we can only hope that the heat will quickly come down, I am now on the brand of ancient tea, must not be so trusting. ”
Those who were ready to join before were also considering whether to apply for a third interview: "Let's look at the follow-up first, if the impact is too big, I may try to join other brands." ”
03 Milk tea rolled in, no mistakes can be made
More and more volume of milk tea, the competition between brands is becoming more and more fierce, gu ming at this time to make mistakes, far more than tax evasion caused by public opinion storms and franchisee trust crisis.
One is the issue of food safety. On February 22 this year, the "Insider Picket Bureau" reported that the Wuhan Square store of Gu ming used the remaining yogurt for a date, and the yogurt was used as usual for four days after expiration, and also used rotten fruits. On the black cat complaint platform, there are also more than two hundred complaints about ancient tea, many of which are bad attitudes of business clerks, drinking foreign objects in milk tea.
There are still many problems with the rapidly expanding ancient tea. This is a problem that almost every franchise brand will encounter: the franchise brand is a guarantee of sales or traffic, and when the franchisee and the brand are bound, this guarantee also has a two-sided nature.
Intensive franchise stores can promote sales for the brand name, but at the same time, the quality of the franchise store, the brand image will also be damaged, if the brand does not handle the negative problems of individual franchisees, it may also cause a serious negative impact on the entire brand image, which in turn will affect more franchisees.
Even though Gu Ming has always had a strict franchisee system, under the rapid expansion, it is difficult for Gu Ming to completely restrict more than 6,000 franchisees and cannot carry out strict supervision.
The second is the price increase strategy of ancient tea. In January this year, Xicha lowered the price of in-store drinks, of which pure tea was reduced by 3-5 yuan, 5 fruit teas were reduced by 2-3 yuan, and cheeses were reduced by 1 yuan; Naixue's tea also launched a new series of tea drinks, with prices between 9-21 yuan. Subsequently, Lele Tea also announced that it will launch products below 20 yuan, with a minimum of 8 yuan.
Since the end of December last year, many netizens have complained about the secret price increase of ancient tea on Weibo, Douban and other forums: "Suddenly it rose by 1 yuan, and before February, it secretly rose by 1 yuan, how did ancient tea always secretly increase the price?" ”
The high-end brands that gradually reduce prices and plan to enter the sinking market will undoubtedly clash with the low-end brands that have previously been deeply involved in the sinking market. The price increase of ancient tea at this time also contrasted with the price reduction of many high-end brands, and many netizens also said that the ancient tea that broke through the 20 yuan mark is now not a "flat replacement", and the attractiveness of new ancient tea products is far less than imagined.
Now, under the development of various new tea brands, the market has entered the era of stock, growth is no longer easy, and no one can really fully occupy a certain part of the market.
In addition to the advantages of cold chain and multi-site warehousing, the advantages of other aspects are not significant. In the "Comparison of Ping Effects of Chinese Internet Celebrity New Tea Brand Stores" compiled by the Head Leopard Research Institute, the ping effect of Gu Ming is close to that of Mi Xue Ice City, but it is not as good as the same mid-range brands and CoCo.
In the middle-end brand with the same positioning as guming, CoCo, which also uses fruit tea as the main product, although the franchise stores are not as many as guming, but the coverage is wider, and there are many franchise stores in Xinjiang, Jilin and Tibet. Books based on roasted fairy grass and milk tea also burned fairy grass, which also surpassed the ancient tea in the total number of stores.
The war on the new tea drinking track has entered the second half, and Gu Ming's competitors are also secretly working hard, making mistakes at this time, so that Gu Ming gradually loses its original advantage.
Can Gu Ming, which once won the favor of capital, learn a lesson and reshuffle the cards to win back consumers? There is not much time left for Gu Ming to change.