Eating melon seeds, as a popular way of leisure, can be eaten at family gatherings or small talk with friends. Double 11 is imminent, and in the face of the delicious melon seeds and increasing prices of snack brands, consumers are shouting "I can't move".
The legal representative of the new company is from the "Department of Midea".
According to the enterprise investigation, recently, Guangdong Qiaqia Food Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. was established, the legal representative is Hu Xiaoyan, with a registered capital of 10 million yuan, and its business scope includes supply chain management services, food sales (only sales of pre-packaged food), food Internet sales (only sales of pre-packaged food), unprocessed nuts, dried fruit sales, etc. The equity penetration chart shows that the company is wholly owned by Qiaqia Food Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Qiaqia Food").
Due to the relatively short period of establishment, Guangdong Qiaqia Food Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. has less public information, but it is worth noting that the company's legal person Hu Xiaoyan is from the "Department of Midea".
Source: Qichacha
Specifically, Hu Xiaoyan was born in January 1982, Chinese nationality, no right of permanent residence abroad, bachelor degree, Chinese certified public accountant (non-practicing member), senior accountant. From 2006 to 2012, he served as the financial accountant and financial supervisor of export sales of Midea's refrigerator division; Since 2012, he has served as the overseas financial manager, tax manager, manager of the financial management department, financial manager of the sharing center, deputy chief accountant of the financial center and deputy general manager of the financial center of Qiaqia Food Co., Ltd., and is currently the chief financial officer of Qiaqia Food Co., Ltd.
As a leading enterprise in the home appliance manufacturing industry, Midea has unique experience and advantages in supply chain management. Behind the selection of Hu Xiaoyan as the legal person of the supply chain company, it remains to be seen whether there is a consideration of learning the management of Midea.
Among the other company executives, Liu Rongjuan, the head of finance, and Xu Jun, the supervisor, both have financial backgrounds, and only the manager Luo Jinzhou is from a sales background. Salespeople often have greater insight into understanding market demands, consumer behavior, and competitive dynamics. If the executive team is too focused on finance, it can lead to a weakened connection to the first-tier markets and consumers, making it difficult to accurately capture market dynamics and consumer feedback.
Fluctuating costs, in a hurry to break the game?
In 2020, Chen Xianbao, chairman of Qiaqia Food, said that the company would achieve tax-included sales revenue of 10 billion yuan in 2023, but the reality was very skinny.
In the end, in 2023, Cha Cha Food will only achieve operating income of 6.806 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.13%. The profit performance is also unsatisfactory, with a net profit of 803 million yuan in 2023, a year-on-year decrease of 17.93%, and the strategic target has not been achieved.
According to the financial report, in 2023, the operating cost of Qiaqia will be 4.985 billion yuan, an increase of 6.44% year-on-year. Among them, 83.64% was direct material costs, reaching 4.169 billion yuan, up 6.77% year-on-year.
In this regard, Cha Cha Food has said that the procurement cost of sunflower seed raw materials has risen rapidly for two consecutive years. Due to the increase in the cost of raw materials for its flagship product, sunflower seeds, the operating costs of its sunflower seed category increased by 5.85% year-on-year, and the gross profit margin of the category slipped to 25.23%. This is also the main reason for the decline in the revenue of this business in 2023.
In fact, as early as 2022, Qiaqia Food gave a solution to the rising cost of raw materials - a price increase, but the economic benefits of the price increase are very limited.
Entering 2024, the cost pressure on the procurement of sunflower seed raw materials has eased, and the purchase price of sunflower seeds in February has decreased by about 10% compared with the high point of the purchase price in April and May 2023. In the first half of this year, its gross profit margin has recovered to 28.60%.
Source: Chacha Food
In August, Qiaqia Food disclosed its semi-annual report, and the company achieved operating income of 2.898 billion yuan in the first half of the year, a year-on-year increase of 7.92%; net profit was 337 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 25.92%. It cannot be ignored that the year-on-year growth of performance is based on the decline in Qiaqia Food's revenue in 2023.
In the past year, keywords such as "raw materials", "cost" and "purchase price" can often be seen in the record of Qiaqia Food's investor relations activities. The root cause is that the imperfection of the construction of the food industry chain has led to many fluctuations in product costs.
Chen Xianbao once said at the performance meeting that the company will increase the cooperation of order agriculture, increase the proportion of direct procurement, and establish strategic cooperative relations with excellent suppliers, in order to reduce the cost of raw material procurement and improve the stability of raw material quality; The company will continue to carry out cost optimization of the whole industry chain and continuously improve the efficiency and effectiveness of operation and management.
Supply chain management is crucial to the food industry, which involves raw material procurement, production and processing, logistics and distribution, and sales. Establishing a supply chain management company will help Qiaqia Food better integrate these links and improve overall operational efficiency. In this context, it is not difficult to understand why Chacha Food is "in a hurry" to set up Guangdong Qiaqia Food Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd.
Looking for the third growth curve
With the vigorous development of the snack food industry, competing products continue to emerge, and three squirrels, BESTORE and Laiyifen have all launched melon seed products. In the face of multi-party competition, it is not surprising that the "king of melon seeds" just food has encountered a growth bottleneck.
Previously, sunflower seeds were once the "trump card" product of Qiaqia Food. Since 2017, in order to change the problem of single product structure, Qiaqia Food has successively launched a series of products with nuts as the core, such as daily nuts, original nuts, flavored nuts, and nut cereals, creating a second growth curve.
Recently, Cha Cha Food said in an institutional survey that the company is planning its strategy for the next 3-5 years and is also looking for a third growth curve. It may be launched in due time in 2025, but this must have a market scale, at least a category whose own turnover can reach 2 billion to 5 billion in the medium and long term.
Source: Black Cat Complaint
In addition to looking for the third growth curve, Cha Cha Food, as a food company, should also pay attention to food safety issues. At present, on platforms such as Black Cat Complaints, there is still no shortage of consumer complaints about Qiaqia Food, involving many aspects such as "melon seeds are spoiled and moldy", "false publicity", "eating insects" and so on.
The pre-sale of Double 11 is imminent, and Qiaqia will launch activities such as "October Carnival", "Discount on Shopping Money" and "Joining the Club" in a timely manner, but it is destined to be a tough battle to achieve the goal of "10 billion income".
Source: Chacha Food's official flagship store
(Popular News · Fengkou Financial Trainee Reporter Su Tong)