Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618)
Wen | Zhai Yuanyuan
Cover source | Visual China
How hot is camping?
Half of the people in the circle of friends are either camping or on their way. Exquisite camping has become a new social currency for young people, with more than 2.46 million notes related to camping on the Little Red Book.
Although there is still a week to go before the "May Day" holiday, the upstream and downstream of the camping industry chain have begun to be "overcrowded".
A camping brand that provides tent rental services told Tech Planet that this year's "May Day" tent rental demand is strong, the number of rentals has more than tripled, usually non-holidays, they generally only have a better market on Saturdays and Sundays, and the number of rental tents is in more than ten sets. But this year's "May Day" tents have been booked, and all 50 sets of equipment have been booked.
Hotel-style tent camps completed the booking work earlier, and Tang Wei, founder of Niulu Camping, told Tech Planet that the general "May Day" camping has been booked at the end of February. Although this year's Shanghai camps were generally unable to operate due to the impact of the epidemic, they did not close in March, and weekend tent reservations were scheduled until mid-July.
Upstream tent brands are also in short supply. "Don't you know that a park tent has to wait a month?" The group of friends waited for the tent every day to cry. Little Red Book camping blogger Su Su told Tech Planet that the two more popular brands in the current camping circle, its park tents have been out of stock, the scheduled purchase has to wait for a long time, has been scheduled until May 10, some users on March 18 to buy tents have only recently received.
Orders have surged, and brands have had to voluntarily abandon some buyers who have not yet converted. The customer service of the domestic brand Mugaodi Tmall flagship store will directly dissuade customers when consulting products, saying that the delivery time is not easy to say, and the current package backlog is too much, resulting in a burst. "There are more orders, and they can't be sent for the time being." If you are in a hurry, it is not recommended to buy it."
The camping market is on fire, and this year's "May Day" holiday is expected to create a new outdoor camping record, but is camping really a good business?
Camping has become an entrepreneurial outlet, adding 15,000 new enterprises a year
Where to play on "May Day"? Most people choose to camp nearby.
Camping Xiaobai Chen Chen told Tech Planet that since the Qingming holiday, almost every weekend can see people in the circle of friends picnicking and camping. Tents, canopy, stars hanging lights, hand-punched coffee pots, these exquisite camping items full of small bourgeois elements have become the traffic code of young people's circle of friends. The last Kryptonian hobby in the circle of friends who had such a neat movement was skiing a few months ago.
Chen Chen joined the camping spree with this wave.
Not only Chen Chen, since 2020, more and more people have begun to choose this close-up leisure travel method.
According to The Little Red Book data, from January to May 2021, the number of searches for camping on the Little Red Book increased by 428% compared with the same period in 2020. This year's Qingming holiday camping searches increased by 427% compared with the same period last year. According to Ctrip data, the number of bookings for camping products during the Qingming Festival increased by more than 3 times year-on-year. Tmall data shows that in March this year, camping-related consumption increased by 100% year-on-year.
Surging consumer demand is the first to be insightful to entrepreneurs. According to the data, from 2014 to 2020, the size of China's camping camping market increased from 7.71 billion yuan to 16.80 billion yuan, and more than 8,000 and more than 15,000 campgrounds were added in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
The "Hi King Wild Luxury" camp was established in the first year of camping in 2020, and the company's first camp was selected in Xi'an, positioning the micro-resort camp chain brand of family camping. Founder Wang Chunwang told Tech Planet that in 2020, the company's passenger flow has been in a period of slow rise, and there are not many surprises. Entering March 2021, passenger flow began to increase rapidly. Passenger flow is an important dimension to measure the popularity of the camping market, Wang Chunwang said, last year their camp every weekend passenger flow of about 500 or 600 people, this year's weekend passenger flow increased to 1500 people, an increase of nearly 3 times.
In 2021, camping enters a phase of explosive growth. Last year, camping was on fire from March to June, and for three full months, the passenger flow and revenue increased simultaneously. "Hiking" has developed from a monthly income of 70,000-80,000 yuan to 200,000 and 300,000 yuan. In April this year, the income of the "Hi King Wild Luxury" camp reached 800,000. This is by far the highest monthly revenue month.
The single-store model was established, and "Hiking" decided to further expand and speed up the opening of stores nationwide in order to become a camping chain brand. In just one year in 2021, "Hi King" has achieved more than 20 from one camp.
From the perspective of user portraits, Wang Chunwang said that the common characteristics of camping enthusiasts are usually "new three haves": there are babies, cars, and leisure, and most of the users are mainly post-80s and post-90s.
Another camp brand, "Sanfenye", entered the market in 2021, when the industry is soaring all the way. The person in charge of the "three-point field" camp told Tech Planet that most people are in the wait-and-see stage in 2020, and in 2021, the business logic and business model of camping have been verified to be feasible, the sales of the camping industry chain are obviously soaring, and the attention and topic of the consumer side for camping continue to increase, and the time is ripe, so they decided to join the camping track in September.
At present, "Sanfenye" has opened a total of two camps, one mainly for the landscape camp and one for the starry sky camp. It provides a bag check-in service, similar to a hotel-style tent, but also provides a small number of camp space rental services, and users bring their own tents. In contrast, the threshold of the latter is higher, because the user needs to prepare the equipment by himself, and the overall set of equipment is at least about a thousand yuan.
According to Jessim, the flow of camping in the "three-point field" is generally concentrated on weekends, twice a week, and each game is about 20 or 30 people.
In addition to the camp brand, camping customization has also gradually opened up the market. Yang Guang, an entrepreneur who specializes in camping consulting and camping customization services, said that last year, the number of high-net-worth customers they received was less than 300, and this year, during the "May Day" period alone, many companies have booked camping activities with them, mostly for the company's executive team building, the number of people is close to 80.
Some people earn tens of millions, and some people lose hundreds of thousands
In the story of the gold rush, only a few people can dig for gold, but everyone needs a shovel. In the camping industry chain, there has been polarization now, some people have an annual income of tens of millions, some people lose hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there is no profit so far.
Tent manufacturers may be the first wave of players in the camping industry to receive dividends.
The owner of a tent manufacturer in Zhejiang told Tech Planet that compared with last year, this year's tent market is more hot. Production usually starts two months ago. Founded in 2019, the company was initially positioned as a trading company, mainly for overseas markets such as Japan, and built its own brand through oem forms.
Since last year, the domestic camping market has exploded, and the most intuitive performance is that a large number of overseas tent brands have begun to appear on social media such as Douyin, and in real life, parks and other venues have also begun to emerge dense tents. So they cut part of their energy into the domestic market, and even built a factory for this purpose, in order to better control the production cycle and supply of hot categories.
The self-built factory was originally built to ensure the supply of their own brand products, but they later found that there began to be an influx of external orders, and many players who crossed the border into the tent industry came to them to place orders. The domestic camping market is rising, and overseas is due to the war caused by the tent market to be sluggish, under comprehensive consideration, they decided to transform the factory together, contact with domestic brands, and OEM for the brand.
At present, the domestic order business of the above-mentioned tent manufacturers accounts for about 30%. Their goal this year is to achieve revenue of 10 million yuan for domestic orders and 30 million yuan for total revenue. To keep up with capacity, they added another factory this year.
According to the manufacturer's boss, the profit margin on the manufacturing side is not very high, and the net profit is about 15%. But there is no shortage of wealth stories around, the boss said that some tent merchants annual sales of up to forty or fifty million yuan, the profit is considerable, some people scooters directly switch from Audi to Maybach, some people real estate directly to the building as a unit statistics, "is a few buildings is not a few sets."
Where there is a market, there is an influx of capital, and from the perspective of the reaction of the primary and secondary markets, capital can be described as favoring the equipment track. Mugaodi, an outdoor camping equipment manufacturer, has closed up for eight consecutive trading days, up 49.88% year-to-date. Another outdoor equipment brand, Naturehike, also recently announced the completion of nearly 100 million yuan in financing. Some equipment manufacturers even began to play the role of investment, taking out a part of the funds to invest in supporting agents to do camp brands.
Camp brands, on the other hand, are relatively less likely to become profitable.
At present, "Sanfenye" has invested nearly 1 million yuan in the camping camp, including camp rent, tent and other equipment costs, and personnel costs. They expect that the return cycle will take about 2-3 years.
Camping custom service providers also did not break even. Founded in 2018, Yang Guang, owner of the camping brand that provides services such as camp planning, event execution, camping customization, equipment rental, etc., said that this year's "May Day" rental demand is strong, and they have completed the reservation rental of 50 sets of equipment. Since last year, there have been customers who are willing to pay them to consult the camp operation plan, but so far, they still have not achieved profitability, equipment plus personnel costs, two years, about a loss of hundreds of thousands of yuan.
Is camping a good business?
Jinhai Lake, which enjoys the reputation of "Little Switzerland on the outskirts of Beijing", has become a popular punch card resort for young people in the past two years. Would it be a good business to run a campground in Gimhae Lake?
Hiking entrepreneur footprint told Tech Planet that last year, a camping entrepreneur won a piece of land in Jinhai Lake for 700,000 yuan, covering an area of about 400 to 500 acres. In addition to the camp rent, there are about 40 or 50 sets of other tents and other equipment, and the cost of equipment is about 150,000 yuan at the price of 3,000 yuan a set. Together with other costs, the total cost is around 1 million. The entry threshold is not low, but the return cycle is also very fast, and in a year's time, the entrepreneur earned 1 million.
It seems that the investment cost is low, the return on investment is high, the return cycle is relatively short, and there will be profits in a year. However, the entrepreneur only operated for one year.
The premise of the camp's profitability is that it needs a stable site partner, that is, super land acquisition ability, otherwise the latter will become the biggest destabilizing factor.
Footprints said that if it is not a fixed site, simple nomadic camping is indeed a difficult and unprofitable thing. The more likely it is to be profitable to operate camps in a fixed site and in a deterministic form.
One camping entrepreneur told Tech Planet that they also suffered a one-sided breach of contract in a cutscene while running the camp. Originally, they agreed with the lessor of a certain venue that the camping income would be divided according to the proportion of three to seven. However, with the increase in the number of campers in the later period and the business getting better and better, the owners of the venue began to be dissatisfied with the three components, and the other party intervened through various forms of obstruction. "The venue is theirs, they don't have the spirit of the contract, and there's nothing we can do about it." In the end, the entrepreneur had to find another camp.
Wu Di, the founder of a light luxury camping brand, told Tech Planet that after two years of entrepreneurship, he stepped on many pits, two of which were impressive experiences, one was the site of the Harbin camp, and the other was in Gansu.
Wu Di recalled that at that time, more than 300,000 yuan was invested in Harbin, and the business was hot in the first month of the business period, but the weather in Harbin was too cold, and it could only work for three months a year, the cycle was too short, the business period was too short, and it was not cost-effective to raise a team. It is too affected by seasonal factors.
The failure of the Gansu camp is limited by the local consumption concept, population and consumption capacity are relatively low. The corresponding group of people in camping is generally middle-class, has leisure and money, and the concept of consumption does not need to be re-educated, but they have not reached such a level of consumption in the cities selected in Gansu.
Therefore, after the two pit experiences, Wu Di came to a conclusion, camping should first be cautious about setting up the project, there must be a decision-making mechanism, can not be patted on the head to make a random decision, the source of any error is in the project, otherwise there will be endless troubles in the future. The project standards need to be met: the site of the city population can not be less than 8 million, the local house price can not be less than 10,000, the distance from the city center can not exceed 80 kilometers, the drive can not exceed 1 hour, it is best to be south of the Huai River in Qinling Mountains, the climate is mild.
In fact, camping entrepreneurs face more uncertainty risks, a number of practitioners said in the interview, the current camping industry is in the early stages, the relevant policies and regulations are not very clear, the land policy is not very certain, there is no clear industry standards to refer to, camping homogenization, the public awareness of camping environmental protection is relatively weak, so even if some entrepreneurs can achieve a net gross profit margin of up to 50%-70%, the camping market still has a long way to go.
(Remarks: Except for Wang Chunwang and Tang Wei, the names in the text are pseudonyms.) ）
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