Image source @ Visual China
The text | a moment of business, the author | Kuribuki, Editor | Zhou Ye
Under the epidemic, the real economy is generally difficult to do, and bookstores are one of them.
Recently, the "net red bookstore" Yanji announced the closure of a store in Xiamen, which is the fourth store closed in Xiamen within a year, and it is also its last store in Xiamen.
This is not the first time that Yan Ji has closed stores, and yan Ji has closed some stores in Guangzhou, Beijing, Chengdu and Xi'an.
Under the epidemic, the days of other Internet celebrity bookstores are also difficult to survive, and they are experiencing a long cold winter.
In February 2020, One Direction Street released crowdfunding for help; fangsho's Chongqing store was closed on June 25, 2020; Eslite Life Shenzhen store closed at the end of 2020, leaving only one store in suzhou in mainland China; in August 2021, Zhong Shu Ge Jing'an store closed its doors to customers...
Whether it is a veteran bookstore or an internet celebrity bookstore, a large number of offline passenger flow to the store consumption, under the influence of the epidemic, the passenger flow is reduced, sales will fall, will inevitably cause operational difficulties, store closure is a last resort choice. According to the "2020-2021 China Physical Bookstore Industry Report", a total of 1573 bookstores across the country closed in 2020, more than three times the number of stores closed in 2019.
Now, two years have passed, the impact of the epidemic is still continuing, the Internet celebrity bookstores are still struggling to support, the future is foggy, and I don't know when we will usher in a turnaround.
01 Words and words: the tide of store closures that can't stop
Recently, Yanji's store in Xiamen Baolong City announced the closure of the store, which is the fourth store in Xiamen within a year.
At this point, all the stores of Yanji Bookstore in Xiamen were closed and completely withdrew from the Xiamen market.
This is not the first time that Yan Ji has closed a store and withdrawn from a city.
In November last year, the Yanji and Black Gold flagship store in Guangzhou K11 closed, which means that Yanji has officially withdrawn from Guangzhou; at the end of 2021, only two of Shenzhen Yanji's bookstores are open normally, and the other three stores have been closed. Previously, Yanji Bookstore closed some stores in Guangzhou, Beijing, Chengdu and Xi'an.
According to the China Youth Network, from 2020 to the end of 2021, Yanji has exposed news about stores from time to time, collected public information from local media, and roughly counted, yanji and nearly 20 stores across the country have been closed one after another.
The wave of store closures continues. In addition to the closure of the last store in Xiamen, in early April this year, the Yanji Bookstore in the Beijing Financial Street Shopping Center closed and closed, which is another store in Beijing after the Yanji and Beijing Wangfu Zhonghuan store closed at the end of last year. There are a total of eight stores in Beijing, and now only two stores are still operating normally.
Words and stores, picture / words and East China official Weibo
However, the latest store information details were not disclosed on the official website of Yan Jiyou, and the list of 58 stores in its peak period was still retained in detail. That is to say, from the previous peak period, Yanji has now closed nearly one-third of its stores across the country.
Behind the closure of the store, there are many difficulties faced by Yan Ji.
In December last year, according to CCTV Finance, as a representative of the "net red" bookstore, "Yan Ji You" was exposed to problems such as wage arrears and non-payment of social security to employees, and a number of Yan Ji left and in-service employees also exposed the arrears of wages and social security on social platforms. In a report in the Economic Observer, it was mentioned that in October 2021, when he left his job after being owed 5 months' wages, he found that his social security had been owed for 7 months.
At the same time, in addition to closing the store and being exposed by employees for unpaid wages, Yan Ji was also collected for arrears of payment to suppliers. According to the China Enforcement Information Disclosure Network, from May to October 2021, because Sichuan Yanjiyou Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., Beijing Yanjiyou Cultural Service Co., Ltd., and Shanghai Yanjiyou Brand Management Co., Ltd. had contract disputes with suppliers of real estate, decoration and equipment parties, they were all listed as untrustworthy enterprises because they "failed to perform the payment obligations determined by the effective legal documents within the period specified in the enforcement notice", and their chairman and CEO Dan Jie was restricted from high consumption as a legal person of the above-mentioned enterprises.
As the online "crusade" storm intensified, Yan Ji issued a public statement to blame all this on the pain of the company's transformation and the epidemic. The statement said that due to the company's development needs, Yan ji has adjusted the focus of development and started the transformation of the direction of business operations, and at the same time affected by the epidemic, resulting in a tight cash flow, so in the short term, it has to take the closure of some stores and the payment of employee salaries in batches to maintain the overall normal operation.
Once, Yanji was favored by capital with the model of Internet celebrity chain bookstores, according to the statistics of Tianyancha, Yanji has obtained 4 rounds of financing from 2014 to 2018, with a total financing amount of more than 240 million yuan. With the blessing of capital, Yan Ji has opened a crazy expansion model.
Words and financing situation, figure / sky eye check
Time back to the beginning of 2019, when Yan Ji had just obtained a new round of B+ financing of more than 100 million yuan, its chairman and CEO Dan Jie said in an exclusive interview that he planned to add more than 100 stores across the country that year, and the speed would be faster after two years, about one or two hundred per year.
However, the arrival of the epidemic has completely broken the ambition of several words and expansions, and even fell into many difficulties.
02 In addition to a few words, other bookstores are not happy
The closure of stores and unpaid wages is not an isolated case, and in the two years of the epidemic, other bookstores have also had a bad time.
On February 24, 2020, One Direction Street Bookstore published an article titled "Out of the Isolated Island and Defend bookstores 丨 insist on 15 years of one-way crowdfunding to continue their lives", the first sentence of the article is "The epidemic has no end, the bookstore can't hold up".
One-way street in the text mentioned in 2020, originally is the 15th anniversary of the establishment of one-way space, did not expect that after the sudden epidemic lasted for more than a month, the bookstore revenue fell sharply, it is difficult to continue, as of February 24 of that year, one-way only 4 physical bookstores, only Beijing Chaoyang Joy City store began to operate, and Joy City's current overall passenger flow is only one-tenth of the usual every day, the bookstore can only sell 15 books per day, half of which are still book-loving clerks to buy, Bookstore revenue in February is expected to plummet by as much as 80% compared to previous years.
One Way Street has also launched promotional activities such as stored value discounts, online live broadcasts, and group sales to seek self-help, but with little success.
One-way space storage activity, graph/one-way space applet
In addition to crowdfunding to continue life, bookstores such as Zhong Shuge and Sinan Bookstore have chosen to take users to visit bookstores in the form of live broadcasting. Zhong Shu Ge is the first to test the water Taobao live broadcast of a bookstore, the store managers in the bookstore through, with users cloud punch card bookstore, and recommend books for users, a month of 7 consecutive broadcasts, up to a number of viewers nearly 10,000 people.
At the end of February 2020, according to the news of the Taobao live broadcast platform, more than 200 well-known bookstores such as Zhong Shuge, Zhida Bookstore, Maijia Ideal Valley, CITIC Bookstore, Pu Pulan Picture Book Museum and so on were collectively transformed into Taobao live broadcast rooms, including many managers of "net red bookstores" who became anchors and led readers to recommend new books while "visiting the store".
According to Taobao data, the number of bookstores that opened live broadcasts during the epidemic increased by 5 times year-on-year, and the number of book live broadcasts increased by nearly 10 times, and the live broadcast content of bookstores also included the launch of online lectures, inviting writers to talk, and releasing new books.
But obviously, in the face of huge force majeure, these measures are just a drop in the bucket.
On January 9, 2020, Fangsuo Culture released the news that Fangsuo Chongqing Store will close its business on June 25, 2020; on April 2 of the same year, Fangsuo Culture published the news that Fangsuo Chongqing Store was about to close and liquidate on WeChat public accounts and Weibo, and said in a notice article, "From April 1 to June 25, Fangsuo Chongqing Store has 30% off all books, and high-quality sample books and magazines are as low as 30%. This is fang's only store in Chongqing, and closing means exiting Chongqing.
Fangsuo Culture, Photo/Fangsuo Culture Official Weibo
In July 2020, Eslite Life announced that "Eslite Life Shenzhen", located in Shenzhen's Vientiane Tiandi, closed its business at the end of 2020 due to the severe impact of the new crown epidemic, leaving only one store in Suzhou in mainland China; in August 2021, the Zhong Shu Ge Jing'an Store, once known as the "Most Beautiful Bookstore in Shanghai", closed its doors...
Under the impact of the epidemic, every physical bookstore is facing unprecedented new challenges, and every step is difficult. According to the "2020-2021 China Physical Bookstore Industry Report", a total of 1573 bookstores across the country closed in 2020, more than three times the number of stores closed in 2019.
As Jin Hao, founder of Zhong Shu Ge, said, there have been many reports on the recent relevant words, physical bookstores are indeed not easy, the bookstore to sell books as the main policy, the pressure is also very large, some bookstores have been in a state of loss, but how to sell books well does need to be studied.
The epidemic is more like an accelerator of industry evolution, the more difficult the moment, often the more the key moment of the big wave of sand and shuffle, how to sell books well, how to survive on their own, is the most realistic problem in front of the bookstore.
03 The epidemic has spread, and the bookstore can't survive
It has become a consensus that the business of physical bookstores is not good, and Xu Zhiyuan once replied when asked why he did the program "Thirteen Invitations", "Because I made a bookstore that does not make money, I have to do some other things to make money." "Under the spread of the epidemic, the plight of bookstores has become more and more serious.
In order to attract traffic, many internet celebrity bookstores will choose shops in the lively shopping malls in first- and second-tier cities, although many internet celebrity bookstores can enjoy certain rent concessions in shopping malls, but the early decoration costs, as well as the rental costs of first- and second-tier cities are still not low hard costs, which reduces the overall profit margin of the internet celebrity bookstore itself.
Yan Ji and bookstore, picture / Yan Ji and official Weibo
Taking Yan Jiyou as an example, in 2018, Yan Ji invited a well-known Japanese designer Chi Bei Zhizi to design a store in Xi'an, and invested 140 million yuan in its creation, while its B round of financing was only 120 million yuan at that time. That is to say, Yan Ji has invested almost all of his financing income into decoration. There is still a return on throwing money, and the flagship store of The Maike Center has been evaluated by some netizens as the highest-value bookstore that has ever seen, attracting many users to punch in, but this store has been open for less than two years, and it was announced to be closed.
While the high cost of offline operations, the rise of online channels has increased the pressure on physical bookstores. At present, not only Taobao, Jingdong, and Pinduoduo attract consumers in the form of high coupons and full discounts of 50% off and 20% off perennial, but also Douyin, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu have joined the camp of selling books in the form of live sales and graphic grass.
At the end of September last year, Douyin blogger Liu Yuanyuan opened a special live broadcast of 100 million yuan, claiming to "shout out half of the Chinese publishing house", and marked in the preview that "500,000 books were prepared to break the price to less than 10 yuan, 100,000 books of 1 yuan, and the explosive books broke through the double eleven price." In her livestream, the cheapest book sells for just $1, which is already far below the cost of a book.
Physical bookstores are often limited to the cost of rent, water, electricity and labor, and it is often difficult to have a large discount.
Not only that, the second-hand book channel represented by more fish and Confucius used book network has also developed rapidly, consumers have more and more book purchase channels, more and more convenient, and the discount is higher than that of offline bookstores, robbing a large number of customers who originally belonged to bookstores, and physical bookstores are more difficult.
Relying solely on the retail income of selling books to make money, bookstores simply cannot survive in the crushing price war of online e-commerce, so more and more bookstores have begun to combine book marketing with coffee, catering, cultural and creative goods, etc., taking an integrated route, and expanding new revenue sources, including Sisyphus Bookstore, Fangsuo, Kubrick, One-Way Street Bookstore, Nanjing Pioneer Bookstore, Taiwan Eslite, etc. all belong to this type.
Compared with selling books, these conforming bookstores are more like places for people to read and interact leisurely, and at the same time, relying on high-value, design-filled decoration styles, creating an immersive "cultural space" full of artistic atmosphere, which has become a "punch card" photo place for many people.
The benefits of the integrated route are obvious, taking the words as an example, from the perspective of its store furnishings, books account for 50%, cultural and creative retail accounts for 28%, coffee beverages account for 22%, but from the perspective of profit margin, it is the smallest proportion of coffee, up to 75%, followed by 40%-50%, and the profit margin of the books with the largest proportion of furnishings is only 10%-30%, far lower than the profits brought by coffee and cultural creation.
However, in reality, many people go to the Internet celebrity bookstore to punch in, but there are not many consumers who really buy books and sit in, and how to convert the traffic that comes to punch in the name into solid sales has always been the problem of the Internet celebrity bookstore.
Under the influence of the epidemic, this difficulty has been infinitely magnified. If the bookstore wants to have sales, whether the user comes to consume specifically or punch at random, the most important premise is that a large number of offline users must come to the bookstore. However, the epidemic restricts everyone's going out, the flow of customers has been greatly reduced, and no traffic means that there is no cash flow income, which will inevitably cause difficulties in the operation of bookstores over time.
As early as March 2020, Dan Jie mentioned in an interview that after the outbreak of the epidemic, due to epidemic prevention, Yanji closed most of its stores, from the end of January to the end of February, basically no grain, and the entire sales fell by more than 95%.
Now, two years later, the impact of the pandemic continues, and the bookstore's winter is longer and colder than ever. Struggling to support and survive is still a true portrayal of the bookstore in the past two years, but no one can answer when spring really comes.