Author丨Nei Sanjun
Editor丨Tangerine
On February 27, Qiaqia Food released its 2023 performance report, at which time "the news of recording a negative annual net profit growth for the first time in six years instantly "exploded" in the industry. In the industry, there is a general consensus that the fluctuation of the Spring Festival time will have an impact on the quarterly performance, so some industry insiders said that if the performance of Qiaqia Food in the first quarter of 2024 is outstanding, it means that it is really affected by the Spring Festival period, otherwise it is not.
On the evening of April 29, the performance report of Qiaqia Food for the first quarter of 2024 was released. On the day of the announcement, the company's stock price rose by more than 5%, and a group of netizens shouted on platforms such as Xueqiu - "Exceeding expectations"! All the data showed a positive trend. Specifically, during the reporting period, Qiaqia Food achieved an operating income of 1.82 billion yuan, an increase of 36.39% year-on-year, a year-on-year increase of 35.15% in net profit, and a net profit growth of 55.8% after deducting non-recurring gains and losses...... To a certain extent, Qiaqia has used clear data to hit back against the so-called "lower" rhetoric in the market. As a leading enterprise in the industry, Qiaqia has gone through decades without impatience, and its "stability" can withstand scrutiny.
Accurately cut into the CNY track, and multiple scenarios to drive sales
There is a popular saying in the consumer market: "Brands will eventually grow old, and consumers will always be young". In recent years, with the rise of Gen Z consumers, their demand for healthy diet intake and emotional consumption has gradually risen, and traditional FMCG products can no longer meet the higher demands of modern people for products. As the "first stock in China's nut industry", Qiaqia seems to have always maintained a vigor that keeps pace with the times and continues to create surprises for the consumer market in the new era.
At the beginning of this year, based on consumers' increasing attention to the ritual sense of New Year's goods and the outbreak of concentrated consumption during the Spring Festival, CNY gift boxes and related industries took off. In this context, Qiaqia Food linked online and offline to open a new marketing method for the Year of the Dragon. During the Spring Festival, Qiaqia cooperated with well-known IPs such as Happy Pop and Shanhaijing to launch a variety of New Year's gift boxes and handy bag packaging.
Offline, the brand's New Year's Festival KV, Nut New Year's Festival TVC, and 3D rendering images with the theme of "Negotiate Nut Gifts, Send Health for the New Year" appeared in various media such as Focus Group, high-speed rail, large screens in business districts, subways/buses, etc. Online, Qiaqia linked all kinds of nutritionist KOLs, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Weibo bloggers, etc., and bound the concept of "sending health during the New Year" to the brand concept of Qiaqia nuts, which significantly enhanced the market attractiveness and consumer purchase experience. In the sinking market, many merchants reported to the media that the sales of Qiaqia nut gift boxes performed very well, and some wholesalers even sought distribution everywhere to replenish their stocks.
Through a series of interesting interactions, Qiaqia Food effectively grasped the first wave of "consumption flow" in the New Year. The performance of the first quarter exceeded expectations, and the credit of CNY gift box should not be underestimated.
It is worth noting that, according to the latest "2024 China New Year Gift Box Consumer Behavior Insight Report" released by iiMedia Consulting, in 2024, nut products will rank first in the type of Chinese New Year gift box consumers plan to buy (46.3%), and are gradually replacing traditional candy gift boxes. Moreover, the demand for nuts in the market is still rising, and the nut formats such as Three Squirrels and BESTORE are also showing a trend of improving performance.
In fact, as early as 2017, Qiaqia Food officially entered the nut market, launched a small yellow bag of daily nuts positioned as "daily nutritional necessities", and through continuous "education" of the market, it has improved consumers' awareness of the nutritional value of nuts and daily consumption habits, and found a positive anchor for new growth. According to Qiaqia Food's 2023 financial report, the operating income of its nut products has gradually increased in recent years, with an increase of 8% over the same period in 2022, and the gross profit margin has also achieved a year-on-year increase of 1.02%.
While continuously consolidating its new product line, Qiaqia Food is also actively exploring and expanding diversified consumer experience scenarios, and continues to reach its target audience in a more life-oriented way by cooperating with well-known tea and catering brands such as Mixue Bingcheng, Lele Tea, Wallace, and Xiaolongkan. In addition, Qiaqia has also crossed over into many fields such as games, fashion, and beauty, and has launched character packaging melon seeds with Honor of Kings, co-branded snack blind boxes with unicorn RICO, and customized co-branded "melon seed face mask" with Bloomage Biotech.
These collaborations not only enrich Qiaqia's product line, but also make it closer to the preferences of young consumers, further consolidating the user stickiness between the brand and new consumer groups.
Overseas revenue has gradually increased, and the expansion of mass sales channels has accelerated
If it is said that bringing forth the new and opening up a diversified development path is a compulsory course for Qiaqia Food to enrich its wings, the expansion of its business territory is like a stage, and it is necessary to lay a broader camp for product display.
Nowadays, due to the saturation of the domestic consumer market, many food industries have begun to seek opportunities to go overseas, and Qiaqia Food has seized the opportunity as early as the beginning of the 21st century. After 16 years of overseas market expansion, its products have been exported to nearly 50 countries and regions in Southeast Asia, Europe and the United States, not only have 10 factories in the world, but also establish a reasonable regional distribution of export network, and more than 100 foreign dealer customers have established cooperative relations, becoming one of the national brands with the most export countries and the widest export area.
In 2023, the overseas revenue of Qiaqia will be nearly 600 million yuan, and the proportion of total operating income will increase by 7.58% compared with 2022. In the 18th Asian Brand Festival in 2023, it won the "2023 Top 500 Asian Brands", with a brand value of 46.868 billion yuan.
In October 2023, under the guidance of the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Provincial Cyberspace Administration of China and the Central Radio and Television International Online hosted the "Transparent Factory" event of overseas influencers entering the "Transparent Factory", and ten international Internet celebrities from many countries revealed the quality process of the "source of happiness". It is reported that Qiaqia is the first company in the industry to propose a transparent factory open day activity, which can attract a number of overseas big Vs to come, which just confirms that Qiaqia has emerged internationally as a national brand.
Behind the success of the overseas strategy is Qiaqia's keen insight into localized marketing strategies. In overseas markets, Qiaqia adapts to local conditions according to the characteristics of different regions, such as adapting to local food safety regulations, making product composition adjustments, adopting Chinese, English, Thai, French and other languages on packaging, and customizing design styles that meet the characteristics of various countries, and launching products that meet local tastes, such as coconut, curry, coffee and other flavors in Southeast Asia...... Over the years, these measures have gradually broken down the cognitive barriers of international consumers for melon seeds, allowing "Qiaqia" to form a unique brand memory. It has also become a Chinese business card, which continues to convey culture and friendship in the interaction.
On the other hand, in recent years, the domestic mass sales channel has expanded on a large scale, and the FMCG commodity distribution channel has ushered in a new pattern. Although in this module, Qiaqia is not at the forefront of the tide like going to sea, but it is quite a bit of a latecomer.
At present, it has cooperated with a number of mass merchandising platforms such as Snack Very Busy, Zhao Yiming, Snack Youming, and Hao Xiang Lai, and launched a number of customized products that meet the channel attributes, such as thug melon seeds, wake up watermelon seeds, nut crisps, and mother's daily nuts. In December, Qiaqia achieved sales of about 30 million yuan through the snack mass sales channel, and by January 2024, this figure has increased to nearly 50 million yuan.
At the beginning of this year, Qiaqia Food said in a public interview that the company will continue to increase the layout of snack wholesale channels, develop new products, and continuously improve the penetration rate of snack wholesale channels.
Check the whole industrial chain of quality, and build strong competitiveness in the upstream and downstream
As of the first quarter of 2024, Qiaqia Food's distributor network has expanded to 1,479, including 1,358 domestic and 121 foreign. It has deployed sales channels such as traditional large retailers (KA), special channel group buying, e-commerce and overseas markets, covering about 600,000 end customers...... Behind this huge business network, it is not a simple expansion strategy.
As a leading enterprise in the industry, Qiaqia Food has always adhered to the principle of quality first and persistently pursued strict control of the whole chain for more than 20 years, which has provided a solid and powerful guarantee for the company's steady development. In the upstream of the industrial chain, Qiaqia Food has adopted the innovative model of "company + base + cooperative + farmer", starting from the research and development of high-quality sunflower seeds, and formulating a series of procedures such as terminology, classification, quality standards, inspection methods, and inspection rules. To the large-scale establishment of nut raw material planting bases in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Gansu and other regions, the in-depth tracking of production management has been realized, and it can be said that in order to ensure the quality of raw materials and the stability of the supply chain, Qiaqia has truly reached out to the field.
In terms of quality management and fresh-keeping treatment in the production process, Qiaqia Food has also established a set of food safety management system based on international standards such as ISO 19001, ISO 22000 and HACCP, covering comprehensive supply chain management, incoming raw material testing, online testing in the production process, strict testing before leaving the factory and continuous monitoring in the market sales stage, etc., each link strictly follows the quality management standards.
In the short term, the extremely redundant full-chain ecology will indeed bring pressure on the growth of enterprises "not flexible enough" and "not light enough", but for enterprises that want to be sustainable in the long run, relying on a single model may face problems such as weak bargaining power, revenue is vulnerable to market fluctuations, and it is difficult to ensure stable output and quality. Today, Qiaqia has completed the transformation from "a snack company" to "a whole industry chain enterprise".
Some people in the industry say that looking at the development of an enterprise is like looking at a person's growth. There will be setbacks and ups and downs along the way, and no one can always have smooth sailing. Therefore, it is especially important to pay attention to its core.
Since its establishment, Qiaqia Food has continued to lead the trend of the food industry with its innovative marketing strategy and unremitting pursuit of quality. The company continues to bring forth new products, bringing a steady stream of vitality and innovative products to the market, and has won wide recognition from consumers and the industry. Looking ahead, with the continuous evolution of the market and the increasing diversification of consumer needs, how will Qiaqia Food continue to maintain its leading position in the industry, and how will the company use its deep industry experience and innovation capabilities to bring more exciting surprises and value to consumers?Let's wait and see......