Interface News Reporter | Zhao Xiaojuan
Interface News Editor | Ya Han Xiang
On December 21, Xiang Piaopiao (SH603711) issued a personnel announcement saying that Jiang Jianqi, chairman and general manager of the company, applied for resignation as general manager of the company. After resigning as general manager, Jiang Jianqi continued to serve as chairman of the board of directors and other positions in the company, and his position in the subsidiaries did not change. Jiang Jianqi is also the founder of Xiang Piaopiao.
Yang Dongyun, who succeeded Jiang Jianqi as general manager, has many experience in consumer companies.
The 52-year-old has worked for Procter & Gamble, Triumph, Yida Group and Super 8 Hotel, and his two resumes before joining Xiangpiaopiao were the executive president of White Elephant Food Group and the president of Jiankang Yuan Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd.
Stimulated by the news of the replacement of the general manager, after the opening of the market on December 22, the share price of Xiangpiaopiao rose to 15.07 yuan per share. Jiemian News asked Xiang Piaopiao about the planning plan after the new general manager took office, but the other party did not reply for the time being.
Yang Dongyun has experience in creating "explosive models". During his tenure as Vice President and CEO of White Elephant Group from 2010 to 2015, he personally led the development and promotion of White Elephant Stewed Big Bone Noodles, a method of making bone broth into a concentrated essence pack that no brand had tried at the time. In 2011, the white elephant big bone series achieved explosive growth from 100 million to 20 billion. In the following four years, Yang Dongyun let the white elephant go head-to-head with Master Kong's braised and Tongyi Laotan sauerkraut through the label of bone broth nutrition.
Xiang Piaopiao, which has been established for 18 years, is in dire need of such a story.
Jiang Jianqi's way of creating Xiangpiaopiao and making it a national product worked at the time. Jiang Jianqi noticed that there was always a long queue at the entrance of the milk tea shop, so he decided to develop a brewed milk tea. He also learned Xi from other consumer entrepreneurs, frantically placed TV commercials, and chose Hunan Satellite TV, which was more influential in entertainment programs at that time, to launch it, focusing on young customers.
In 2008, the advertising slogan "Xiangpiaopiao milk tea, selling more than 300 million cups a year, and the cups can circle the earth when connected" is still the memory of this brand.
With the help of large single products and crazy advertising and marketing, Xiangpiaopiao's revenue exceeded 1.9 billion yuan in 2012, and even exceeded 3 billion yuan after its listing in 2017, until the peak of 3.98 billion yuan in 2019.
Since then, Xiang Piaopiao has begun to decline in revenue for three consecutive years.
Wind data shows that from 2020 to 2022, Xiangpiaopiao achieved revenue of 3.761 billion yuan, 3.466 billion yuan, and 3.128 billion yuan respectively, a year-on-year decrease of 5.46%, 7.83%, and 9.76%. In the first half of 2023, Xiangpiaopiao's operating income will be 1.171 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 36.26%. Xiang Piaopiao said that in the first half of this year, domestic consumer demand showed a recovery trend, but the overall recovery pace was still slow.
In addition to the aging of the brand of Xiangpiaopiao products, this stage is also the era of the rise of tea chain brands, which has robbed its market to a certain extent. According to data from the Meituan New Catering Research Institute, the market size of new tea drinks has grown by nearly 300% historically since 2015, and is expected to continue to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 30% until 2025.
Before finding Yang Dongyun, Jiang Jianqi actually intended to let his eldest daughter Jiang Xiaoying reform Xiangpiaopiao's products.
Jiang Xiaoying did try to "remove the fragrance and flutter" along the direction of the new tea drink.
Jiang Xiaoying, 30, started working at Xiangpiaopiao after graduating from university in 2016, initially in charge of e-commerce and new media operations. In 2017, under the leadership of Jiang Xiaoying, Xiangpiaopiao also launched Meco Honey Valley and Lan Fangyuan, which are mainly ready-to-drink in cups, to enter the mid-to-high-end liquid milk tea market; in 2018, it launched fruit juice tea, which is a standard fruit tea, emphasizing 0 fat and 0 added pigments.
These ready-to-drink products form the second growth curve of Xiangpiaopiao, for which the company has also set up a ready-to-drink team of 1,000 people to operate independently. Jiemian News sorted out its annual report data and saw that from 2017 to 2019, the revenue of Xiangpiaopiao's ready-to-drink products was 217 million yuan, 419 million yuan and 1.005 billion yuan respectively, and the proportion of revenue from this business increased from 8% to 25%.
But then, ready-to-drink products failed to sustain this explosive power.
From 2020 to 2022, the revenue of ready-to-drink products will be 660 million yuan, 640 million yuan, and 638 million yuan respectively, with a relatively flat growth. This stage also coincided with the period when new brands such as Genki Forest occupied the ready-to-drink beverage market through products such as sparkling water, and then also set off a trend of electrolyte water and sugar-free tea. But Xiang Piaopiao does not seem to have seized the outlet, but has made 0 additions or taste adjustments in its own product system.
In addition, competition in the ready-made tea market has intensified further. With the large-scale development of freshly made tea shops, and with the help of franchise stores, the ensuing low prices and marketing activities from time to time stimulate consumers' shopping impulses. All of these make it impossible for new products that rely on retail channels to explode quickly.
Xiang Piaopiao also tried to boost performance growth by launching new products this year.
In the peak season of winter brewing products, Xiangpiaopiao still increases the continuous innovation of ready-to-drink products. In its Taobao flagship store, on December 23, Dahongpao milk tea will be on the shelves, and the Ruxian series of oat milk tea and oat coffee will be on the shelves in early December, with a single bottle priced at 7-9 yuan.
According to the latest investor Q&A disclosed by Xiang Piaopiao, in the pan-brewing category, Xiang Piaopiao has also launched a series of pan-brewing products such as "CC lemon liquid", "power express electrolyte concentrate", "brown sugar ginseng ginger tea", etc., and the online feedback is relatively positive, but the proportion of revenue contributed by these new brewing products is negligible.
Frequent new products have become the basic play of China's beverage market. Local beverage companies such as Wahaha, Yuanqi Forest and Dongpeng Special Drink are doing this, but it is not easy to run a hit that can really lead the overall performance growth. Nielsen data shows that the survival time of new products in the market is getting shorter and shorter, with an average of less than 18 months.
The second growth curve is not enough, and how to curb the further decline in Xiangpiaopiao's revenue scale has become the task of the new general manager Yang Dongyun.