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Have you ever eaten Zihi Pot? For many office workers, it is indeed a very convenient and delicious instant hot pot food. When Zihi Pot was just launched, many netizens let their wallets suffer a small damage.
At its peak, the annual sales volume could reach a terrifying 1 billion, and according to the price of almost 20 yuan for a barrel of Zihai pot, the number of sales this year can be called terrifying. But can you believe it? With this self-congratulatory pot of sales and revenue, it is now impossible to pay 410,000 advertising fees!
1. Keep freezing and spending money
Just some time ago, it was rumored that the company owned by Zihi Guo was unable to pay the advertising expenses generated on the Xiaohongshu platform to promote its own stinky snail brand food, a total of 411,500. Netizens felt incredible after seeing it, this is a self-congratulatory pot that has achieved sales of 1 billion back then.
In this regard, the explanation given by the company is: "cash flow is too tight". It stands to reason that such fast-selling food should not have the problem of tight cash flow. Take the sales volume of stinky snail brand food as an example, it was launched in July 2021 and sold 168,000 in only 7 days.
It's just that after the launch of the food for a while, sales have plummeted, and to this day, there is almost no publicity. Many stores also chose to take it off the shelves after that, which shows that this is indeed a failed brand.
In March of this year, the Golden Antelope, a self-hi pot enterprise, has been included in the list of abnormal operations, and the equity of the legal person Cai Hongliang has also been frozen during this period, with a total of 6.11 million yuan. The Zihai Pot Enterprise Management Consulting Company, a subsidiary of Golden Antelope Enterprise, was also frozen for 14.59 million yuan.
It can be said that today's golden antelope is in a half-dead state. The reason why they have entered such an embarrassing stage is closely related to their own operation and one thing.
2. Expansion marketing and the epidemic
It can be said that the beginning of Zihi Pot is the dream of many catering companies. Since opening this gimmick, Zihai Pot used a very clever publicity and marketing strategy at that time, making Zihai Pot instantly popular in the market. This also has a terrifying result of 1 billion sales a year at its peak.
But after that, the crazy expansion began since Hi Pot. Especially in 2020 and 2021, in the past two years, Golden Antelope has established 15 factories in China. Everyone should be clear about the gold content of these two years in Chinese history.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic at the end of 2019, many enterprises across the country have not survived the impact of the epidemic and have chosen to close. Or in other words, it is to suspend the development plan, first work steadily, reduce losses as much as possible, and wait until the epidemic is over to accumulate steadily.
But Zihai Pot continued to build factories during the epidemic, and in addition, the cost of brand promotion and publicity was really not less. In 2020, the publicity expenses reached 96.9407 million, accounting for 10.12% of the revenue. The cost of operation and promotion was 49.2248 million yuan, accounting for 5.14%.
In 2021, the publicity expenses will be increased to 156 million yuan, accounting for 15.73%, and the operation and promotion expenses will be 89.5716 million yuan, accounting for 9.03% of revenue.
Until 2022, these two expenditures have shown an elevator downward trend, with the former being 8.384 million yuan and the latter being 21.5999 million yuan. It is at this stage that we can see that there is really a problem with the cash flow of Zihai Pot.
The biggest possibility is that it uses the so-called reverse thinking. During the epidemic, when competitors shrank, we attacked bravely and maintained the offensive momentum.
But in reality, this kind of offensive momentum doesn't make sense. During the epidemic, everyone also knew that they bought the goods, but they couldn't deliver them. Even if it is delivered, it may not be able to go out and pick it up. At that stage, the return rate of many items was very high.
At that time, Zihai Guo wanted to spend a lot of capital during the epidemic to publicize and build factories, and after the epidemic ended, it would make full efforts. But it may not have imagined that its cash flow would be so severely interrupted.
Third, the competition is fierce
Since Hi Guo was listed, everyone has seen the popularity of sales, but it has also led to many companies taking a fancy to the interests of this circle and wanting to join in it and share a piece of cake. When there are more competitors in the industry, there will inevitably be a situation - price war.
This is also a big factor in the impact of the cash flow of Zihai Pot, and many companies in this industry have studied a lot of explosive products. For example, Haidilao has completed the construction of a self-heating hot pot product line from offline to online, and uses its own IP to sell explosive models.
Zihi Pot is the opposite, from online to offline hot pot restaurant, not that it is impossible to succeed, but according to the results, Zihi Pot really can't make any waves.
epilogue
In 2022, the brand department of Zihi Pot will be disbanded, and now there are many Zihi Pot products on the market that are less than 10 yuan, and their existence is like many mocking words, swearing the failure of Zihi Pot. What do you think of the current situation of Zihi Pot? Post your thoughts in the comment section.