A "raw egg" can sell for 2.69 yuan / one, and the edible eggs of the yellow swan have been controversial as soon as they were launched.
According to the propaganda of the yellow swan, the edible eggs of the yellow swan have introduced the "Japanese 38-year raw egg standard", which is expensive and expensive. However, there are views on the market that not only does Japan have no national standards for raw eggs, but there are no similar production standards on the mainland, and the so-called "standards" of Yellow Swan may not be authoritative.
So, is the raw egg of the yellow swan really a quality, or an IQ tax?
I. Pseudo-demand under the "pseudo-Japanese system"?
Although eggs are not just needed in the strict sense, they play an important role in most families' three meals a day, and consumers' sensitivity to egg prices is not high. However, it is worth noting that the "not high" here means that the price of the egg does not exceed the value of its product.
According to the data of The China Business Intelligence Network, the average price of eggs in the country on June 19 was 10.09 yuan / kg, and according to the calculation of 16 eggs per kilogram, the average price of a single egg was about 0.63 yuan. In the mainland terminal market, the single price of ordinary raw eggs is mostly below 1 yuan, and once its price rises to more than 1 yuan, consumers may look for other products as alternatives to eggs.
That is to say, it is not easy to make eggs high-end, and the limited value of eggs limits the room for their price to rise. Therefore, although the market capacity of the mainland egg industry has reached more than 300 billion yuan, the industry as a whole is in the stage of "classless products", and the degree of branding is less than 5%.
In order to increase the added value of eggs, the yellow swan took the "pseudo-Japanese" routine.
Like Yuanqi Forest and Mingchuang Premium Products looking for brand "endorsement" in the Japanese market, the main selling point of Yellow Swan is also obtained from Japan's "lessons".
Feng Bin, the founder of Yellow Swan, invited Hiromitsu Kato, the "father of Japan's edible eggs", to serve as the chief scientist of Yellow Swan, and introduced the so-called "Japan's 38-year raw egg standard", taking the world's highest standard egg quality as the benchmark, and promoting raw eggs to the public.
At present, the price of raw eggs in the Tmall flagship store is 53.8 yuan / 20 pieces, and the price of a single egg is about 2.69 yuan, which is 4.27 times that of ordinary eggs, and even exceeds the price of duck eggs.
The yellow swan that has opened up new markets is naturally favored by capital. According to the Tianyancha APP, The parent company of Huang Swan, Fengji Food Group Co., Ltd., was established in 2018 and has raised 6 financings so far. It can also be seen from the increasing amount of financing that capital is optimistic about the future of Yellow Swan.
However, after carefully studying the development process of the yellow swan, it will be found that the current "achievements" of the yellow swan may not be all its own credit, because its "pseudo-Japanese" selling point has long lagged behind the times.
The mainland consumer goods industry has roughly experienced three "trend-oriented", namely the tide of foreign goods - pseudo-Japanese - domestic goods.
Most of the targets of the tide of foreign goods are Western countries, and most of the domestic brands in this period will register trademarks overseas and take fake foreign names, such as Yashili and Mousse; The target of the "pseudo-Japanese system" is Japan, such as Mingchuang Premium Products and Yuanqi Forest, it is worth noting that since the Yuanqi Forest, few companies have been able to succeed through the "pseudo-Japanese" style of play, nongfu Mountain Spring is a typical example, not only did not reach the goal, but even provoked "a riot".
When you look at the brand endorsement of a brand with Japanese elements, you will naturally compare it with Genki Forest and Mingchuang Excellent Products, which is actually a kind of survivor bias, and the public always associates good examples and ignores failure cases.
The failure of the "pseudo-Japanese" style of play is mainly due to the rise of the tide of domestic goods, and now that the tide of domestic goods has passed, the "achievements" of the yellow swan naturally cannot be attributed to its so-called "Japanese standards", or more should be attributed to the times: conforming to the wave of consumption upgrades and catching up with the free ride of channel upgrades.
First of all, from the perspective of the purchase demand of yellow swan consumers, the reason why consumers buy raw eggs at high prices is to hunt for curiosity, and the other is to have the purchase demand for sterile eggs.
Under the wave of consumption upgrading, the consumption thinking of a new generation of consumers is constantly upgrading, from eating enough to eating richly and eating better. For eggs, consumers also have more ideas, such as eggs, Benedict eggs, cloud eggs and many other novel ways to eat. Under the popularity of food bloggers, sterile eggs have also begun to be paired with other ingredients, attracting a large number of consumers to try early.
With demand, in the absence of too many brands to choose from, the sterile eggs of the Yellow Swan are naturally willing to be purchased.
Secondly, from the perspective of the sales channels of the yellow swan, the emergence of "advanced" sales channels has contributed to the sale of high-priced eggs of the yellow swan.
Yellow Swan's offline channels are mainly box horses and boutique supermarkets, in fact, the main offline consumption scenarios of raw eggs in the mainland also occur in "high-end" supermarkets. At a time when the public's acceptance of sterile eggs is not high, it is probably only the "advanced" sales channels like Hema that can reflect the difference of sterile eggs and stimulate consumers' curiosity to buy sterile eggs with higher prices.
In general, the fact that Yellow Swan can achieve the current results is not entirely due to its unique selling point, but also because it conforms to the trend of the times. In other words, the current "achievements" of Yellow Swan may not be replicable and sustainable, and once the market wind changes, Yellow Swan's raw egg business may also become a pseudo-demand, and there is a risk of unsustainable operation.
Second, the authority of production standards is in doubt, afraid of being involved in the IQ tax controversy?
Huang Swan is the second egg-related enterprise founded by Feng Bin, before that, Feng Bin also introduced foreign capital to establish Shengdile Village, and even once impacted the listing, but Shengdile Village later took the initiative to withdraw its IPO application for various reasons and failed to go public as desired. Perhaps for Feng Bin, the emergence of the Yellow Swan brand not only means the re-start of entrepreneurship, but also pins on Feng Bin's dream of listing.
However, in terms of the current development of Yellow Swan, whether it wants to go public or expand revenue, it may not be easy, because Yellow Swan has the risk of doubtful compliance and long-term lack of profitability.
First of all, the authority of the so-called Japanese standards by Yellow Swan is questionable and has the potential to mislead consumers.
Yellow Swan put the "38-year-old raw egg standard introduced into Japan" in a prominent position when promoting it, but Yellow Swan did not elaborate on whether this standard is authoritative.
At present, there is no information to fully prove that the so-called standard of Yellow Swan is the official standard of Japan, and there are even sayings in the market that this standard is the standard of a Japanese company, and Yellow Swan uses Japan as a prefix when it is advertised, which may mislead consumers. There are already opinions in the market that the raw eggs of yellow swans are not IQ taxes.
In addition, because the mainland does not advocate raw eggs, the relevant industry standards for raw eggs are not sound, and there is a lack of unified production standards. In order to further increase the credibility of the selling point, Yellow Swan not only issued China's first enterprise standard for edible eggs, but even jointly launched the group standard of "Edible Eggs" with related enterprises, but this standard may be suspected of "self-discipline".
It can be seen that the yellow swan is suspected of insufficient compliance in the publicity process, and the yellow swan may further "prove its innocence" and explain the rationality of its selling point.
Secondly, the curiosity is not enough to support the long-term development of the enterprise, and the product value is doubtful or will affect the sustainable profitability of Yellow Swan.
In order for consumers to continue to pay for raw eggs, Yellow Swan needs to further improve the value of raw eggs, so that the value of the product has the hard power to match high added value, such as more nutritious, safer and more delicious.
But for now, the competitiveness of yellow swans may be slightly insufficient.
In terms of nutrition, the nutrition of raw eggs is difficult to open the gap with ordinary eggs, and improving the nutritional value of eggs is not something that can be solved by commercial science. Moreover, there are research data that show that the digestion and absorption rate of raw eggs in the human body is far less than that of boiled eggs, and the nutritional content has not only not improved, but even declined significantly.
In terms of safety, the biggest selling point of raw eggs is safer, such as no salmonella, but the eggs produced by regular factories can basically rarely detect salmonella, and the safer selling point of yellow swans may not be enough to become a moat for enterprises. As for making raw eggs more delicious, this is also a mysterious and mysterious thing.
On the whole, it is not easy for the raw edible eggs of the yellow swan to open up the high-end egg market, but there is still a certain degree of difficulty in order to expand the scale and continue to operate. Once consumers stop hunting, the high-end business of yellow swan eggs may become more and more difficult to do.
Reference Articles:
See the column: "Yellow swan eggs that satisfy people's curiosity, or is it a flash in the pan?" 》
Retail Business Finance: "Yellow Swan "Difficult To Produce" Can Eat Raw Eggs? 》