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Increasing the size of e-commerce is a move that has to be made.
Written/Starry Night
Editor/Wen Jie
The first generation of Internet celebrity Master Bao finally "touched the net".
On April 26, Master Bao's WeChat public account updated a tweet titled "Master Bao's pastries have begun to do e-commerce". It is mentioned in the article that Master Bao's pastries have successively launched their own stores on major e-commerce platforms, and in the future, they plan to gradually restore some pastries produced and sold in the store to the newly built food factories and bring them into the e-commerce system for sale.
Although only the titan and pineapple crisp are currently online, the eighteen-year-old baking brand has finally taken the first step in doing e-commerce.
In the past two years, the tide of new baking tracks has surged up, and new brands such as Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau and Hutou Bureau Standard Chartered Cake Shop have attracted the attention of many young consumers by taking advantage of the east wind. Although Master Bao still ranks first in the list of major brands, those brands that have been established for only one or two years have shown an explosive force that cannot be underestimated, and Master Bao's increase in size is a move that has to be taken.
Only from the current point of view, master Bao's e-commerce platform products on the shelves are not ace products "meat pine shellfish", and it is still unknown whether the future can break through technology and successfully move handmade products online. At the same time, the online war between new tea and new baking of pre-made snacks is also surging in the dark tide, what strange tricks can Master Bao, who is late in coming?
"Li ghost" is rampant, and the purchase is doubled
Not surprisingly, under master Bao's tweet announcing the layout of e-commerce, the biggest voice is to hope that meat pine Xiaobei can be online. "Trouble Master Bao to study how to sell seaweed meat floss scallops online, but also to ensure the taste, really like!" This comment was liked by fans to the first one, and also received a response from Master Bao.
In response, "We will strive to carry out technology research and development, restore the pastry process produced and sold in more stores to the food factory, and strive to find a more advanced way to restore the store, but before doing this, we will not be able to provide you with Xiaobei on the e-commerce platform for the time being." ”
This means that fans who do not have Master Bao's stores in their cities are still not related to many signature products.
In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that small shellfish products are the soul of Master Bao. As early as 2020, Master Bao's annual data showed that the annual sales of Xiaobei cake exceeded 100 million. Over the years, this ace item has not only achieved Master Bao's jianghu status, but also allowed countless daigou and cottage stores to share a piece of the pie.
Long before Master Bao's fame became famous, his cottage shop took the lead in grabbing the heat. In May 2018, a cake shop with a sign of "Master Bao" attracted attention due to false queues and the illusion of a hot business. Soon after, a company called "Beijing Yishang Catering" issued an apology statement, and everyone learned that it was "Li Ghost".
After catching the big fish of Beijing Yishang Catering, Master Bao found that there were as many as thousands of cottage stores across the country, while there were only about 30 authentic Master Bao stores at that time. After realizing the seriousness of the cottage problem, Master Bao spent a lot of effort on defending his rights.
A consumer told Zinc Scale: "In 2018, when I purchased products at the Master Bao store in Beijing, I found that the receipt was printed with the addresses of all the authentic stores at that time, and also stated that I never joined. This initiative has been praised by many consumers, and it has also appeared in the process of counterfeiting of new brands such as Chayan Yueshi later.
In addition to the cottage merchants taking advantage of the empty to accumulate wealth, Master Bao's purchasers also eat and drink under the protection of his fame. Zinc Scale found that even now Master Bao has opened offline stores in 38 cities across the country, but the business of purchasing agents is still booming.
Master Bao purchased the price list
In the offline stores, the price of seaweed flavored crispy pine scallops is 30 yuan / kg, crab yellow flavored crispy pine shells are priced at 34 yuan / kg, lemon yogurt crispy pine shells are priced at 33 yuan / kg, and cocoa flavored crispy pine shells are priced at 30 yuan / kg. Usually, a pound weighs around 7 to 8 pieces.
But in the hands of daigou, the prices of these products have risen a lot. The way of sale of daigou is regardless of the weight, each serving is usually 8 packs. Seaweed flavored crisp pine scallops, crab yellow flavor crispy loose flavors are priced at 59.8 yuan per box, lemon yogurt crispy pine shellfish and cocoa flavor crispy pine shellfish have two more pieces, and the price has also risen to 69.8 yuan / box.
Although this price includes SF free shipping costs after reaching a certain purchase quantity, the price of nearly doubling is enough to see that the profit of the purchasing agent is not thin.
More importantly, in the comment area of these purchasing stores, many consumers who have purchased Master Bao have identified these products under the banner of purchasing agents as cottage products.
Based on Master Bao's fame, many consumers have tried to see its true appearance from various channels, but driven by interests, the price difference and cottage products emerge in an endless stream, which also affects Master Bao's brand image to a certain extent. Now, Master Bao has launched an official e-commerce flagship store, I don't know if it can reverse this situation?
Financing is slow, and sub-brands are not good
As an old Internet celebrity in the baking industry, Master Bao's progress in getting involved in the capital war is significantly slower than that of newcomers.
In 2004, Master Bao's pastry was also called "Bao Zai Cake House", and after 18 years of development, Master Bao only experienced three rounds of financing. Zinc Scale found from the search on the love of the enterprise that Master Bao completed a strategic investment of 100 million yuan on December 15, 2017, and half a year later, in May 2018, he completed a series of financing of an unknown amount, followed by the end of 2020 to complete the strategic financing of an unknown amount.
Master Bao's financing process is slow source: Aiqicha
Founded in 2020, the new baking leading brand Momo Dim Sum Bureau has completed five rounds of financing in just 8 months in 2021, with a cumulative financing amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. With the help of capital and the traffic playing method of the new consumption era, the speed of momo dim sum bureau is like riding on a rocket, and on many platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Weibo, and dianping, Mo Mo dim sum bureau is known as one of Changsha's business cards and a must-punch place.
The new roasting is red to purple, which naturally has an impact on Master Bao. After all, young people who have repeatedly lost battles in the trend, but who have repeatedly lost and fought, never skimp on paying for new things. "In the past, I missed Chef Bao when I didn't eat him for a while, but then there were too many pastries to choose from, and the frequency of buying Master Bao became very low." One consumer said about zinc scales.
What is Master Bao busy with outside the capital market? As mentioned above, Master Bao has always been deeply troubled by the cottage shop, and because the trademark registration did not achieve full category coverage in the early days, Master Bao was exploited by unscrupulous merchants. For many years, Master Bao has been trying to defend his rights and crack down on counterfeiting.
Bao Caisheng, the founder of Master Bao, has publicly stated: "If I don't fight counterfeiting, I can spend a lot of time on research and development." Originally, I was going to produce a lot of new products, but the fight against counterfeiting affected the development of new products. ”
Between 2016 and April 2020, Master Bao filed lawsuits against 213 infringing stores across the country. Until 2021, Master Bao mentioned in the "annual summary" that his rights protection work in 2021 was basically over, and stores across the country successively removed the word "Bao Caisheng" and retained "Master Bao's pastries".
After that, Master Bao, who finally regained his new life, buried his head in business again.
During this period, Chef Bao launched his sub-brand "Haofu Dao", which mainly promotes traditional Chinese pastries, no longer sells star products such as meat pine shellfish, and adds new products such as original jujube cake, milky peach crisp, millet peach crisp, black rice peach crisp and so on. However, the good fortune that is not supported by small shellfish products has not ushered in a good blessing.
Before the official announcement, many stores of Haofu Road have been suspended, and Master Bao has shifted his focus back to the main brand and accelerated the speed of opening stores. This short attempt at diversification is a failure.
Determined to continue to expand the influence and value of the main brand, Master Bao also played a new consumption trick. Master Bao, who had almost no discounts in the past, now when launching new products, he will also launch group purchase packages on platforms such as Dianping and Douyin, and invite KOLs and KOCs to share punch cards, which has indeed brought a lot of traffic to Master Bao.
But this game is not lasting, zinc scale on many platforms to see consumers in the group purchase of new products, still said that the future will still choose classic products, the taste of new products is not like the signature shellfish with other brands of products "wall".
In other words, Master Bao, who officially ushered in the new baking era, is not enough to rely on traffic play, only the ace products that are concentrated in research and development and come up with sincerity are the weapons to retain consumers.
In addition to Xiaobei, does Master Bao have a second card?
Compared with the new baking brand that comes and goes quickly, Master Bao's original Xiaobei products ensure that they are all "rich for a lifetime".
Lai Yang, executive vice president of the Beijing Business Economics Association, has publicly said that the popularity of Master Bao's brand is because its products have unique characteristics, so they are sought after by consumers, and the brand has not appeared "short-lived" phenomenon. However, although Xiaobei products have endured for a long time, under the market competition pressure of the rise of new baking brands, Master Bao cannot stand still.
The unsatisfactory performance of the sub-brand "Haofu Dao" also means that Master Bao's signboard is not a one-size-fits-all, and it is difficult to improve the performance in the case that the product fails to bring consumers a certain attractiveness and influence. Coupled with the slowdown in Master Bao's financing process in the past, continuous investment will only accelerate the decline of new brands.
Therefore, whether Master Bao wants to expand the brand influence or add sub-brands, he needs a more perfect operating model, management system and planning ideas.
Xiaobei's explosive product has achieved Master Bao's leading position in a single field, but the overall research and development barriers in the baking industry are limited, and now the Xiaobei products on the market have emerged in an endless stream, and more supply chain brands directly create standardized processing of prefabricated products. Even if these products cannot replace Master Bao, they have also poached some of Master Bao's blank channels.
At present, Master Bao's layout of e-commerce, first, after solving the cottage problem, finally has free time, and second, it is due to the ever-changing new consumption era, which does not change.
According to ai media consulting statistics, after 2013, the scale of China's baking market has remained above 220 billion yuan all year round. By 2021, the size of China's baked food market is estimated to reach 260.08 billion yuan, an increase of 19.9% year-on-year, according to this growth rate, in 2023, the baking industry will officially take the 300 billion yuan mark.
The "Tsingshan Capital 2020 China FMCG Early Investment Opportunity Report" also mentioned that the per capita consumption of baked goods in Chinese mainland is 6.9kg, which is 2 times higher than that of Hong Kong, China and Japan, where eating habits are similar.
In the face of such a "promising" market size, entrants have already moved. For example, the Hutou Bureau Standard Chartered Cake Shop, which was only founded in 2019, not only opened a store expansion race with the Mo Mo Dim Sum Bureau offline, but also opened a flagship store online, with more than 40,000 + fans, and frequently appeared in the live broadcast room of Li Jiaqi and other head anchors, and the monthly sales of evergreen biscuits, golden cheese crisps, and other products were tens of thousands.
Master Bao, who is late in coming, now only takes out pineapple crisp and tizi crisp, although it has a certain appeal, but it is not new enough. After the early heat fades, consumers with offline stores around will continue to choose to buy freshly made store products, while consumers who do not have store options may have more other choices. In other words, master Bao's e-commerce without Xiaobei can be described as lack of stamina.
It is worth mentioning that new tea brands such as Xicha and Naixue's Tea are only opened online flagship stores after the number of offline stores and the number of fans have accumulated to a certain extent, and differentiated products are listed on the shelves to achieve the effect of expanding fans and linking fans. Master Bao's current operation mode not only has not gone out of differentiation, but it is even more difficult to mention offline drainage and online momentum.
Master Bao, who has been cautious all the way, may always lack some innovation. On the young track of new Chinese baking, people often say that it is not enough to tell a good story, and it is necessary to have excellent products + enough innovation to truly retain young consumers. Master Bao, who is long red and not an internet celebrity, should try to come up with more creative products and make some unbreakable innovations.
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