On April 23, with the completion of the listing of the Hong Kong stock market on Tea Baidao, the competition of the domestic "second share of new tea drinks" has also settled.
On this "high-potential track", which was once favored by many investors, "Nai Xue's Tea" once beat a number of competitors such as Heytea, and became the first tea brand to land on the Hong Kong stock market in 2021, attracting attention for a while.
It's a pity that this former "king of milk tea" has not been in the limelight for too long.
Up to now, Naixue has been losing money for three consecutive years, and compared with the brief peak created at the beginning of the listing, the market value has evaporated by HK $28.4 billion, a decline of more than 85%.
Like Nai Xue three years ago, the success of Chabaidao's listing this time has naturally gained a lot of attention.
In 2023, 1 billion cups will be sold, the total revenue of more than 8,000 stores across the country will be nearly 17 billion yuan, and the net profit will reach 1.15 billion, ranking third in the industry with a market share of 6.8%......
The series of data given in the prospectus of Chabaidao is really eye-catching.
It is precisely because of such a beautiful report card in hand that major competitors such as Tea Baidao Lik Ancient Tea, Honey Snow Bingcheng, and Shanghai Auntie have realized their dream of landing in Hong Kong stocks this year.
But unfortunately, on the first day of listing, Hong Kong stocks did not give Cha Baidao a good face.
On April 23, Chabaidao, with an issue price of HK$17.5, debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, but the stock price trend surprised everyone, falling sharply all the way, and the highest intraday decline was even close to 40%.
As of the close of the first day, the share price of Chabaidao has come to 12.8 Hong Kong dollars, the decline was finally fixed at 26.86%, and the market value shrank by nearly 7 billion Hong Kong dollars in one day, which is equivalent to about 64 billion yuan.
It is worth mentioning that the figure of "6.4 billion" is more than twice the sum of the net profit of Chabaidao in the past three years.
The loss of face is small, the loss of money is big, but the brand image is damaged for no reason by commercial behavior, and it seems to have a greater impact.
After 16 years in business, the post-80s couple behind Tea Baidao must be in mixed moods at the moment.
In addition to the name of "the second share of new tea drinks", Chabaidao is also known as the first share of "franchised tea drinks".
As the name suggests, Chabaidao is mainly a franchise business, and there are only 6 self-operated stores at present, focusing on small models and takeaway business, with small investment and high cost.
In 2023, Chabaidao will sell 1.016 billion cups of milk tea, including about 60 million cups of classic products, and the sales data is quite good.
But in fact, Cha Baidao mainly earns the money of franchisees.
According to statistics, 95% of Chabaidao's total revenue last year came from the sale of goods and equipment to franchisees, and 4% was franchise fees and royalties, which were businesses that relied on franchisees to purchase and sell, and relied on brand support to make money.
In other words, Tea Baidao relies on the advantages of the supply chain and brand support ability to help franchisees make money, and then relies on franchisees to "conquer the city" and expand brand influence.
This business model can be said to be a very exciting asset-light operation, and the boss's mind is quite smart.
But what few people know is that the boss behind Chabaidao is not a capital tycoon who plays tickets across borders, but a young couple born in the 80s.
Their entrepreneurial story also began with a bubble tea shop on the edge of Wenjiang No. 2 Middle School in Chengdu in 2008.
In 2008, just as the "portable brewing milk tea fever" set off by Xiang Piaopiao swept the country, a small store with an area of less than 20 square meters was opened at the entrance of Wenjiang No. 2 Middle School, which was the first "Tea Baidao" in the country.
The two owners of this shop are Wang Xiaokun, who was born in a family of tea merchants, and Liu Weihong, his wife who graduated from Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and has a lot of research on tea drinking.
Wang Xiaokun was born in 1981, and his wife is two years younger than him, and they are all the first stubbles of the "post-80s".
They were not yet 30 years old, and they didn't know the so-called "business routines", and they just wanted to do a small career that they were interested in and good at.
The fragrant and hot sales made them keenly aware of the huge potential market for brewed tea.
Soon, they followed suit and opened this low-cost and low-priced bubble tea shop.
At that time, milk tea was just a bunch of drinks brewed with various powders made with water, and the plastic sealing machine shook it vigorously and then inserted a straw, which was the finished product.
The price is not high, the taste is sweet and refreshing, it is very popular with students, and the business is very good.
Due to favorable factors such as the gap in the market and the matching of the location to the target group (student consumer group), Wang Xiaokun and his wife quickly earned their first pot of gold.
After tasting the sweetness, they chose a site on the campus of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and opened a second branch, and "Tea Baidao" also officially registered its trademark.
Since then, Tea Baidao has begun to transform.
After the upgrade, Tea Baidao no longer only provides low-end brewed milk tea, but also begins to add elements such as fresh fruits to make high-quality tea products, and has also created a lot of popular products, such as Yangzhi nectar, soybean milk jade unicorn, etc.
In 2010, after opening several self-operated stores, the couple began to realize that their energy was always limited, so they decided to recruit franchisees and make the brand a chain operation.
At the beginning, the expansion of tea Baidao was not fast, and it took six years to break through 100 until the arrival of new tea drinks.
After upgrading the brand, the couple officially began the road of high-speed franchise expansion.
Since Tea Baidao is a brand in Chengdu, Wang Xiaokun imaged the tea props into the image of a panda, and when other families were busy asking for endorsements, he invited national treasures to be endorsements for free.
Since then, Tea Baidao has been deeply bound to the Panda IP, and a panda Ding Ding has also been adopted, and the product has also begun to promote "Chinese tea", focusing on the national trend.
In 2018, Tea Baidao opened up a nationwide franchise, up to the first-tier cities, new first-tier cities, down to the fourth and fifth-tier small counties, with all-round coverage of stores.
Compared with similar brands such as Mixue Bingcheng and Heytea, the expansion speed of Tea Baidao is like a "hurricane".
In just one year, the number of tea Baidao stores nationwide has exceeded 500, and by 2022, it will reach a terrifying number of more than 6,000.
There are two reasons why the expansion speed of Chabaidao can be so fast:
First, it has caught up with the trend of new tea drinks in the past five years, consumer demand has increased significantly, and other brands are also expanding rapidly;
The second is that it has not carried out the in-depth development of the supply chain, and has put all its strength on the development of franchisees, which is also different from other brands.
The strong expansion ability has made Tea Baidao rise rapidly, and its market share ranks among the top three in the industry, and it has made money solidly.
According to the latest data, Wang Xiaokun and his wife hold a total of 81.7% of the shares of Chabaidao, and are the absolute interlocutors within the brand, with an equity market valuation of 13.4 billion yuan.
However, the supply chain problems that the couple ignored in the development of Tea Baidao made Tea Baidao a "porter" in the tea industry.
While Mixue Bingcheng is busy planting fruits, and Heytea is busy improving the closed loop of the supply chain, Chabaidao has been buying raw materials from suppliers, and then increasing the price to transfer them to franchisees.
In the short term, this method is of course trouble-free and profitable, and profits can be guaranteed by volume alone;
However, in the long run, not only the quality of raw materials cannot be stably guaranteed, but also the price also makes franchisees "not much profit".
A very strange phenomenon is that at present, several directly-operated stores of Chabaidao have no profits, but superimposed on the various data of franchise stores, the annual net profit of the brand is actually positive.
It is said that "the wool comes out of the sheep", on one side is the consumer, on the other hand is the franchisee, who is the sheep?
This year, Chabaidao "monkey urgently" listed on the Hong Kong stock market, also because the early franchisee dividends bottomed out, and the trapped franchisees were reluctant to cut their flesh and withdraw, but they were unlikely to bleed again, and it was difficult for new franchisees to develop again, and the brand growth space narrowed sharply.
As a result, listing has become a path of sustainable development.
A-shares are not qualified enough, U.S. stocks can't be listed, and Hong Kong stocks have become the only choice.
Not surprisingly, like Nai Xue, who was listed on the Hong Kong stock market a few years ago, it fell below the issue price on the first day of listing.
As mentioned above, the first new tea brand to be listed on the Hong Kong stock market is "Nai Xue's Tea", which is a high-end tea brand that benchmarks Starbucks.
Milk tea not only contains both milk and tea, but also adds a variety of high-quality fruits, and even the name is very public: domineering strawberry, jasmine first snow, golden mountains, etc.
Its founder, Peng Xin, also publicly stated:
"Other brands may only need 100,000 yuan to open a bubble tea shop, but Nai Xue needs millions."
It is true that its first three stores are all opened in high-end office buildings and business districts in Shenzhen, with an area of 200-400 square meters of super large stores, with a single store investment of nearly 2 million.
In 2021, Nai Xue's tea will be listed on the Hong Kong stock market, and it will also break on the same day, "debuting at the peak".
In the next three years, Nai Xue's tea has lost money continuously, and by 2023, the stock price has fallen to about HK$2.3.
Unlike Cha Baidao, Nai Xue's tea has always insisted on direct sales at first, but under the continuous loss blow, it also had to adjust its strategy and announced in July last year that it would open its franchise to the main brand.
This time, the Hong Kong stocks listed on Chabaidao, which is mainly based on franchise business, rushed to the hot search on the first day of the entry of "1 hour fell and lost 3 years of net profit", which is really surprising.
At the moment, if you interview the managers of several new tea brands waiting in line for listing, it is estimated that everyone's hearts are cold.
Listing is not optimistic, there is no way out if it is not listed, where should it go in the future?
In fact, whether to be listed on the Hong Kong stock market, the crazy J&T Express once gave an answer, and the rookie Cai Chongxin also gave an answer.
Not long ago, the rookie decisively withdrew the application for listing on the Hong Kong stock market, and Tsai Chongxin publicly stated:
"There is no point in pushing hard".
He believes that at this stage, Hong Kong stocks have no way to give good support to the brand, and the failed listing is not as good as not.
As for J&T, it can be regarded as a relatively good performance in all aspects recently, and the stock price is only about 5% off the issue price after listing.
An investor once joked:
"If the boss wants to list on the Hong Kong stock market, he will break his legs. ”
It shows the danger of the current Hong Kong stocks.
As a result, it is inevitable that some people will ridicule when they see this:
The current Hong Kong stock market has reached an era where you can't even digest a cup of tea.
Of course, in addition to the problems of Hong Kong stocks themselves, there are also problems with Chabaidao.
Capital is never stupid and has a lot of money, investment is for returns, there is no core competitiveness and growth advantages, how to attract investment?
In the past few years, Chabaidao, which has stepped on the wind, has just ignored these when it uses franchisees to expand frantically.
Once the income was completely dependent on the franchisee, and the franchisee is now under great pressure, who can be counted on in the future?
It can be seen from the information on the prospectus of Chabaidao that there are fewer and fewer new franchisees, and only 142 new franchisees will be added in the whole of 2023.
This number is not only not comparable with its own previous years, but it is also a group of competitors in the same period, less than 1/10 of Gu Ming.
How can the tea Baidao, who is "unrighteous and helpless", get the blue eyes of capital.
Getting back to the point, where will the next tea hundred ways go?
Obviously, if there is still no strong supply chain of its own, relying on franchisees and financing, it seems that there is no future as a tea brand.
"People gather wealth, wealth scatters, people scatter. ”
To make money from franchisees, you must know that they are their food and clothing parents, and you must put yourself in their shoes.
Since the business is based on franchise, only let the franchisee make money and make it happy, which is a win-win way for both parties to make money.
Building an upstream raw material supply chain is by no means a day's work, and with such a huge number of franchise stores, the challenges that Chabaidao will face have just begun.
Resources:
World online business: "With an annual income of 5.7 billion, Chengdu milk tea shop is about to IPO, and the net worth of the post-80s couple may exceed 10 billion"
China City Daily: "Tea Baidao Bell Ringing Encounters "Shu Road Difficulty": Net Profit Lost in 3 Years in One Hour of Listing
Chief Business Wisdom: "The post-80s couple earned 5.7 billion yuan in a year in a low-key manner, opened more than 8,000 stores, and went to IPO to ring the bell"
Internet Wind Monster Thief Group: "From the Sharp Break of Tea Baidao, Look at the Current Situation of the Hong Kong Stock Market"
Author: Sun Nier
Editor: Lu Yao