The world has been suffering for a long time! A 13-store e-cigarette shop owner complained about a three-year feud with agents and brand owners

Blue Hole New Consumption reported today

April 5 news, Blue Hole last night temporarily re-aired an e-cigarette agent spit conference live broadcast, more than 8,000 shopkeepers poured into the live broadcast room, watched this "spit pomp".

Agents are very common in the consumer goods industry, playing a role in carrying on the upper and lower levels, receiving the authorization of the brand owner and shipping to the retailer.

This involves a tripartite relationship, one is the relationship between the agent and the brand owner, the second is the relationship between the agent and the shop owner, and the third is the relationship between the brand owner and the shop owner.

Last night's spit conference focused on a certain e-cigarette country generation, the main spit is a few points:

First, it is difficult or rare to pick up goods, especially for popular goods.

Second, the ratio is exaggerated, and even when ordering, only the part of the cigarette bomb that you want to buy is not received.

Third, the power of agents in some places is too large, eating and taking cards, and even excluding illegal acts.

Fourth, agents will sell best-selling goods to spontaneous warehouses and micro-merchants, resulting in store shortages and market prices.

In order to be as comprehensive as possible, last night's live broadcast of Lianmai involved a number of ABC shopkeepers of the brand, and even micro-merchants, spontaneous warehouses and wheats revealed the unspoken rules and spoke for the country, admitting that agents gave hot goods to the spontaneous warehouse at a price higher than the wholesale price, but at the same time they had to accept the ratio.

That is to say, the agent also has to accept the brand owner's order ratio, and eventually transfer to the store owner to bear the ratio.

The reason is that the development and change of the e-cigarette industry is too fast, and the industry may be in an optimistic state when formulating production plans, but after a quarter, the industry situation has taken a sharp turn for the worse, resulting in products that have been produced becoming slow-selling products.

For example, the first quarter and the second quarter of 2021, presumably the good times in the industry in the past two years, the preparation of goods in various links is radical, and the result is that the industry has fallen into a trough in the second half of the year, and the cigarette sticks are slow to sell, resulting in deformation of each link, and a large number of cigarette sticks are shipped as waste.

In the end, at the bottom of the industrial chain, the retail end bears all this.

It is foreseeable that after the e-cigarette management measures take effect on May 1, each family will also have a large inventory of cigarette poles that do not have the function of child locks, and really face the embarrassing situation of "dogs do not smoke".

When the avalanche occurs, not a single snowflake is innocent. When I leave, there is no table without leeks.

Last night, some people pointed out that some shopkeepers usually collude in goods and chaos, resulting in penalties by agents and so on.

Everyone has to pay the price for radicalization.

After the live broadcast, a shopkeeper with 13 stores sent thousands of words of text to Blue Hole after watching the live broadcast, recording all the dissatisfaction with the brand owners and agents in the past three years.

It can really be described as: sad side e-cigarettes, the night is difficult to calm down.

In order to avoid unnecessary disputes, we have hidden his personal information and brand information, and you can pay attention to the process.

The following is the full text:

Hello Teacher Chen, I am a XX store owner, respectively in 2 provinces in four cities opened 13 XX stores, after watching the live broadcast just now, I have some feelings want to communicate with you, if you are disturbed, please include more!

In March 2019, I first came into contact with the XX generation, as the operator of entertainment venues and 20 years of smoking old smokers, smoking addiction is heavier than normal smokers, did not expect that after just 7 days of time, actually successfully quit cigarettes so far and there is no possibility of relapse or even relapse, first of all, for the new electronic cigarette product I am grateful.

In May, I began to think about Whether XX could be done as a business, and before the XX provincial and regional generations landed, I started xx's small agent. It wasn't until later, with the regional agent of the XX region, that XX docked me with the local representative and began the process of the store.

I opened 2 stores at the same time, one in a provincial city in the northwest, one in a city of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, at that time the brand side required everything to go according to the design, all the doors only XXXX four letters, not like now so fancy plus a variety of flagship stores, general stores, specialty stores, the only official after-sales shop, etc. These gimmicks, so many people pass through the store, do not know what is sold inside, customers do not come in, we can only go out to promote, shop goods into the Internet bar, bar, Di bar, engage in electric syllables, bus station advertising, taxi advertising, The promotion that can be done within the local big V public number, the shopping mall big screen, etc. within the cognition has been done, and the old leeks are basically promoted at their own expense for the sake of business.

The brand side is also very solid, the earliest batch of operations once a week online meeting, every once in a while an offline meeting, everyone meets, exchanges promotion experience with each other, enhances each other's industry knowledge, chats and drinks, and is happy.

Because the protection area of the store at that time was 3 kilometers, said to be 3 kilometers, the old shopkeepers would basically consciously choose a little farther away from their peers to achieve complementarity without interfering with each other and mutual benefit and win-win situation.

XX's initial operation team is really responsible, great! It is difficult to open up the market, and then under the joint action of everyone, the market has gradually opened, from going out to sell, slowly through promotion and the fission of customers to customers looking for buying, asking around where XX's stores are.

In November 2019, after the online sales ban came down, XX began to exert efforts offline, in order to vigorously expand stores, gave a higher incentive policy than the previous retail price of 10,000 goods, reaching a retail price of 30,000 or even a subsidy of 30,000 purchase price.

In December 2019, I accidentally received the news of xx four generations, when the national xxx had not yet landed business, but there were scattered salesmen privately promoting, I took a set of trials from a promoter in Nanjing, and the results can be imagined, far better than a generation in all aspects.

At that time, it was understood that XXX was the largest private mobile phone channel listed enterprise in China, and its XXX business mainly did 3C digital, electronic products and other online and offline multi-channel shipments, and XX would exclusively sign four generations of products to XXX.

There is a premise background to add, at that time, in order to complete the performance of the brand side to open more stores, in the face of the rules that agents are not allowed to open stores, in the name of their own company salesmen in their respective areas to open stores, and the hot taste to their own stores operations.

The brand side XX may also be for checks and balances, there is an exclusive operation of signing the new product four generations to the national generation XXX, and the hottest four generations are given to XXX to do.

Our guess at that time was that the strength of the district generation in various places was different, the ability was also different, was it possible that the district agent would be cut off when the contract expired, and it would be given to the listed company XXX to cooperate, and even look forward to the arrival of this matter, after all, no one was willing to be stuck in the neck, such as the district salesman's name under the name of the store always has watermelon, old popsicles, and other stores do not, can only sell tropical fruits and so on.

National generation XXX came, it came with four generations, initially due to small publicity, there is no XXX branch team in various places, it is estimated that they do not know if this thing if they spend money to do it, in the end can not be gained, and these two all the district A store owners are not allowed to open XXXB stores, XXX's new store owner B store is not allowed to open A stores, which means that XXX wants to add its own store owners, and heard that there are non-compete agreements and the like. At that time, the number of daimy stores in the whole country seemed to have reached nearly 2-3,000.

So the two sides are clearly called brothers, behind the back of the two sides of the company are digging each other's corners, (my B shop is still a family legal person ~) After a few months of fermentation, the performance of infinitely better than a generation began to kill four parties, a rod is difficult to find, as long as the warehouse arrives on the same day it was finished in seconds, lasted for about a year or so, xxx's number of stores has not improved qualitatively, but the various regions are after all the head snakes, have set up a special team to do, expand a large number of stores out, And the family business is bursting, I can only use the three words of very profitable to describe.

When the national store volume reached nearly 8,000 or so, perhaps the brand side XX drifted, perhaps it was the capital that fueled the waves, XX from the initial store protection distance of 3 kilometers, successively adjusted to 1.5 kilometers, 1 kilometers, 500 meters, and even the last 300 meters that put everyone in a stalemate.

I would like to ask Lao Chen, nationwide, which brand of store density has reached this level? Michelle Ice City also has to cry and faint in the toilet, right? Although some commercial streets are relatively dense, XX is this density in addition to commercial streets and penetrates into the community.

In retrospect, was there something seriously wrong with the decision-makers on the matter at that time? Shops selling buns have not been so dense!!!

During this period, at the same time, XX four generations of berries, pineapples and other hot selling flavors, small quantity, high sales, short supply, do not know which of the national generation XXX opened the beginning, the hot selling taste mark-up supply to the previous supply of 3C channels, so into the mobile phone store from the original price XX yuan to 20 yuan higher, more and more refreshing, and then led to the store hot taste out of stock and became the norm.

In fact, the follow-up has been around the local shop owners in the national online meeting when the matter feedback to the brand side, and then to all the shop owners promised, specifically I can not remember whether to supplement in the contract or just verbal commitment, XX will go through the dealers, the goods according to seven three or eight two to come, assigned to the store and OTHER channels such as KA, priority to ensure the supply of the store, and then other channels to take.

Later, in the short term, the national xxx has converged in the short term, and the production capacity has increased, and the shortage of berries, pineapples and other out-of-stock situations for more than half a year has been alleviated.

Later, the brand side opened up the two sides of the national and regional generations, and after mutual supply, the brand side added a lot of shipping channels, such as 1500 chain pharmaceutical stores in Guangdong Province, (which should be an endorsement for the sake of great health), and cooperated with the national Gome electrical appliances to shop goods, Suning shops, mobile phone chain stores, tide brand store goods, and so on, each of the above is hundreds of thousands of scale to enter.

The national generation XXX repeats the old technique, the hot taste increase to such stores, the store has begun to sometimes out of stock, sometimes with the goods, began to engage in some disgusting things, arbitrarily pinch the shop owner, there are acquaintances have a relationship with the goods, it does not matter to watch others sell.

Until one day, an inflection point occurred. Maybe the brand side can't see it, eating is too ugly, since the four generations signed to the national generation XXX exclusive, this exclusive is now in the pit before the hard work of the store customers, then change the rules of the game, through the improvement of the four generations, the emergence of the five generations, and to the early generation of the district generation.

Under the blessing of the company's regional protection policy, the district generation opened a crazy mode, from April 1, 2021 to implement, the brand side adjusted the protection distance of the store to reduce to 300 meters, after 3-4 months of rapid fermentation, the total number of stores in the country surged from 8,000 to about 30,000, in its name, surpassing the Zhengxin chicken steak (at that time, the Zhengxin chicken steak in the country 25,000).

The hidden danger brought by this is that there are few monks and porridge, the speed of the store is much higher than the speed of the store, more than 30,000 stores come out, plus outlets, shops in the store, mobile phone stores and even nail art, hairdressing and other formats of entry, the price war rises in response, the store should be the last to come out to reduce the price, after all, there are price penalties in the constraint, most shopkeepers are still very responsible.

And later production capacity up, after more goods, mobile phone stores are accustomed to small profits and quick sales, after all, their mobile phone business is too transparent, where they have seen 40% of the profits, think that earning 5 yuan can be sold, on the brand side, the channel end of the price chaos behavior is mainly only for the premise of the store, the mobile phone store began to cooperate with a large number of agents, electronic cigarette micro-business began to explosive growth, look around, now which customer's WeChat, there are no three or five micro-businesses, the store eventually fell into an after-sales center, Q&A center, Brand-side billboards.

In a word, the same thing, people sell cheaply, robbing 90% of the customers of e-cigarette market pioneers.

I say this without exaggeration, the data is derived from the previous turnover, customer unit price, and pick-up rate of my 13 own stores.

I also fell from the annual sales level of tens of millions to 13 stores with only 2 profits, 11 with capital preservation or even loss-making operations.

Brand side XX is responsible for the lack of respect for the chaotic price control, the spirit of the contract of the shipping channel rules, and the store deception.

The national generation XXX is responsible, since it has found a mobile phone store as a breakthrough, if the agreement is clear at the beginning to control the price, it will not be chaotic.

Mobile phone stores and individual stores to expand the development of micro-business spurt, resulting in most of the stores shipping slow, the original main output port is now no power, tied sales caused by the 123 generations or even five generations out of the 4 generations have also become inventory slow sales, agents can not move the goods, began to non-stop tying, there is a margin pressure, you do not take the goods on the complete lack of goods to sell, you take there is a backlog of inventory, just live connection that big warehouse said they have a backlog, please ask him, I have more than 500 large warehouses and micro-businesses in my mobile phone, who have sold at low prices and promoted 23 generations?

Rarely, right? What does this mean? You have no backlog, some people say that the industry threshold is low, to the dog neck hanging a bone dog can dry, please ask him how many degrees of regular smoke oil atomized out of the formaldehyde content is safe and harmful? Don't need to learn? Is existence reasonable? Can reasonable words be one-size-fits-all?

National xxx and individual regional agents have made money and inflated. As far as I know, the district acting partners in a small place have bought 20 million houses in Shanghai, and pinching their own customers has become the norm, resulting in a vicious circle of store inventory, and only then has a variety of big melons that are now exposed every day, I have to say that although the national team came late, it did a beautiful job.

District generation is also responsible, for example, a provincial district generation is doing a good job, in order to make everyone make money, do not hesitate to share less goods, will not maliciously open a store to cause everyone to not earn, nor do they mess with the outlets to affect the turnover of the store.

And other provinces, whether forced by performance pressure or for their own interests, open shops arbitrarily, the speed is too fast, the new shopkeeper's professional knowledge is unqualified on the job, and even some true and false start to operate, breeding the emergence of various wildcards, and even many store owners only recognize money, sell wildcard three no products in the store, chaos the market, but also chaos.

Damage to others and not to themselves, finally now the cloud opens the sunrise, the thunder comes, although the fruit flavor is removed, the martial arts are abolished, but the original intention is back, isn't it, what is the purpose of doing e-cigarettes?

At the same time as making a little money and supporting the family, in order to reduce harm, for great health, and for the industry that can replace nicotine and less injury.

Tobacco is tobacco, as long as the chaos is terminated, the industry is healthy and orderly and steadily developing, no matter what the taste, for our old leeks, it is fragrant!

Thank you Mr. Chen for listening to my nonsense for half a day, more nagging!

finish!

Blue Hole Statement:

This article is not to embarrass anyone, we hope that in the last days before the orderly supervision, everyone in the industry can bid farewell to the old time with dignity and welcome the arrival of a new season of competition.

Why come to the embarrassing situation of "even if you don't know each other, the end of the world is a passerby from now on".

After the supervision begins, the brand side will lose control of the channel and become the supplier of the tobacco company, and the private agents who have been spat on will withdraw from the historical stage, and the layoff transformation is inevitable.

The world has been suffering for a long time, and what Qin is, does not refer to any brand and national generation, but to the disorder and loss of control of the entire industry.

Constraints and balances are expected to be the main theme of competition in the second season.

A large number of retail store owners who became leeks in the first season are likely to usher in a turnaround. After the product is connected to the national transaction management platform, all goods transactions must all occur on it, all goods can be traced, the whole chain is controlled, and the chaos such as micro-business, serial goods, and chaotic prices will be completely ended.

The owner's happy time may come soon.

If you want to ask the brand face-to-face, welcome to book the latest live broadcast Lianmai.