来源 | 赢商网（ID：winshang）
Author | Li Qian
头图来源 | 三只松鼠官方微博
Financing, Expansion, Merger, Prosecution...... In the past two years, the snack shop track has often been in the eye of the storm of public opinion. On the one hand, the listed snack brands such as BESTORE, Three Squirrels, and Laiyifen are fluctuating in high-end and cost-effective, and on the other hand, new snack collection stores such as Snack is Busy, Zhao Yiming Snacks, and Snack Youming are accelerating their expansion.
As the "No. 1 snack stock", Laiyifen has been deeply cultivating offline store channels in recent years, and has tried to develop the coffee brand "Laika Coffee"; BESTORE, which focuses on high-end snacks, has also recently "put down its body", officially announcing the simultaneous implementation of price reductions for 300 products in various channels, with an average price reduction of 22% and a maximum reduction of 45%; Three Squirrels, whose revenue is heavily dependent on online channels, announced the implementation of a "high-end cost-effective" transformation strategy at the end of last year to ensure profits while keeping the terminal price at a benign level.
Snack brands have their own unique ways to cope with various challenges from the general environment and the snack track. This article takes the three major listed snack companies of Laiyifen, BESTORE and Three Squirrels as the object, observes the distribution of their stores in shopping malls, and takes stock of their development plans.
Laiyifen
- 3600+ offline stores, radiating from East China to the whole country
Founded in 2001, Laiyifen was listed on the A-share market in 2016 and became the "No. 1 snack stock". Laiyifen, which started offline, has been deeply cultivating the offline market and expanding offline chain channels through counters and shelves. At the same time, the total number of offline stores in Laiyifen is also the largest among the three brands. As of June 30, 2023, Laiyifen has opened a total of 3,663 stores across the country, including 2,084 directly operated stores and 1,579 franchised stores.
According to the data of Yunshang Management, Laiyifen's stores in shopping malls are mainly concentrated in Jiangsu and Shanghai, accounting for nearly 70% of the total, while there are no Laiyifen stores in the four provinces of Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai and Gansu. As can be seen from the figure, Laiyifen's stores are mainly concentrated in East China, which may be related to its establishment in Shanghai. After establishing a solid foundation in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Anhui, it will radiate to all parts of the country. At the same time, the unit price of Laiyifen is also as high as 60-65 yuan, and the Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai regions with higher purchasing power are more suitable for the layout of Laiyifen's offline stores.
Even with a high unit value, the mass-market shopping mall is still the first choice for Laiyifen stores, and the proportion of stores in mid-to-high-end and high-end shopping malls is very small. In terms of the choice of shopping center product lines, Laiyifen stores prefer Wanda Plaza, Wuyue Plaza and Baolong Plaza product line projects.
With the increasingly fierce competition in the snack track, Laiyifen has promoted the company's performance growth by developing different product lines. As early as 2021, Laiyifen launched a freshly ground coffee sales business in stores, and this year, Laiyifen will upgrade the coffee format, although it still relies on existing snack stores, but will develop as an independent brand. In addition to coffee, Laiyifen also began to enter the sauce-flavored liquor industry in 2020 and launched the "Zui Ai" series of sauce-flavored liquor.
Source: Laiyifen's official Weibo
Chen Wei, vice president of Laiyifen's operation and development system, said that in terms of store expansion plan, Laiyifen will first consolidate the main battlefields in East China such as Shanghai and Jiangsu, and at the same time focus on the layout of the South and North China markets, and promote it in the way of "first line and then second line, first provincial capital and then prefecture-level city", and open stores in high-traffic points in key cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. At the same time, Laika Coffee will also lay 800-1,000 stores within this year, and consider opening independent stores in the next two years.
Ryohin 铺子
- "High-end snacks" turned the front to "cost-effective", deeply cultivating Central China and consolidating South China
Price reduction and prosecution are the key words of BESTORE in recent times.
BESTORE, which has always adhered to high-end pricing, recently announced that more than 300 of its products have been reduced by an average of 22% and the highest price reduction of 45%, which is also the first large-scale price reduction activity in 17 years. In addition, because Zhao Yiming Snacks and Snacks were busy merging, BESTORE angrily sued Zhao Yiming Snacks, the former invested company, in court, and Zhao Yiming Snacks has not responded as of press time.
Source: BESTORE's official Weibo
According to the data of Yunshang Management, the shopping mall stores of BESTORE established in Wuhan, Hubei Province are more distributed in Guangdong, accounting for 19.95%, and BESTORE has not yet deployed shopping mall stores in Northeast China and Xinjiang and Tibet. The relatively large number of shopping malls in Guangdong is mainly due to the fact that BESTORE has increased its development efforts in the South China market, and the South China market, with Guangzhou and Shenzhen as the main focus of efforts, is becoming a new growth point for BESTORE. As the founding place, Hubei region, although the number of shopping malls is not as large as that in South China, it ranks first in the country in terms of the distribution of street shops.
It is understood that BESTORE proposed the positioning of high-end snacks in 2019, and said that "high-end snacks" will be BESTORE's corporate strategy and brand management strategy in the next ten years. BESTORE's latest shopping bag is impressively printed with "BESTORE, high-end snacks, leading the sales of high-end snacks in the country for 7 consecutive years." "Based on the positioning of high-end snacks, more than half of BESTORE's stores choose to be located in mid-range shopping malls. Although the proportion of stores in high-end and mid-to-high-end shopping malls is smaller, it is also slightly higher than the other two snack brands. Wanda Plaza has become the shopping center product line with the most stores in BESTORE with an absolute advantage, and Wuyue Plaza and Vientian City rank second and third.
In the results announced at the beginning of this year, BESTORE said that it planned to open 1,000 stores within the year. According to its main operating data announcement for the third quarter, there are currently 3,344 stores, an increase of only 118 stores from 3,226 at the end of the previous year, and there is still a large gap from its plan. However, it is believed that under the transformation of its "low price" strategy, the layout of stores will also make great progress.
Three squirrels
- With a short time to enter the market, community snack stores will become a growth point in the future
Three squirrels, among the three listed snack companies, are the "latecomers" in the offline market.
The three squirrels that started from e-commerce are slightly inferior to Yifen and BESTORE in terms of the layout of their offline stores. Since the opening of the first offline store in 2016, the three squirrels have been making adjustments to the form of offline stores, from the direct store type "food store" to the franchise store type "alliance store", and then to the recently launched "community store", from the business mode to the location of the store, the three squirrels who are good at e-commerce channels are exploring the most suitable offline model for "high-end cost performance" through exploration again and again.
Source: Three Squirrels official Weibo
According to the data of cloud business management, East China and Central China are the regions with the largest distribution of stores in the Three Squirrels Shopping Center, among which Jiangsu ranks first with 17.65% of the number of stores. The number of shopping malls in the southwest and northwest regions is relatively small, and some provinces such as Sichuan and Guizhou do not even have three squirrel shopping mall stores.
It is understood that the Three Squirrels Wuwei Park was built in Wuhu, Anhui Province, and the entire park integrates R&D, processing, testing, logistics and distribution and e-commerce integrated industrial chain. Thanks to the geographical distance advantage of the supply chain, Anhui and Central China have become the regions with the largest number of Three Squirrel stores.
Similar to Laiyifen, Three Squirrels' shopping mall stores are mainly located in popular and mid-range shopping malls, and although high-end and mid-to-high-end shopping malls are involved, their proportion is not as high as that of high-end stores. However, in the choice of shopping mall product lines, it is strikingly similar to BESTORE, and Wanda Plaza is still "far ahead" of other shopping mall product lines.
In June this year, Zhang Liaoyuan, chairman of Three Squirrels, said at an online performance briefing that Three Squirrels' future growth will mainly be in "exploring and landing a number of private label community snack stores". Three Squirrels judged that the family consumption scene of providing high-quality and high-price snack products with the community as a unit is about to become a new round of demand and continue to become the mainstream, which will also be the new direction of Three Squirrels to expand the store.
At present, the mass sales of snacks are in the limelight, with more than 4,000 stores of "snacks are busy", more than 2,500 stores of "Zhao Yiming snacks", and more than 3,700 snack stores under Wanchen...... The rapid growth of mass-market snack stores is accelerating the market share of Laiyifen, BESTORE and Three Squirrels. Next, it is worth looking forward to how the three major listed snack companies of Laiyifen, BESTORE and Three Squirrels will meet the challenge of mass selling snack brands.
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