Zongzi is Chinese indispensable products for the Dragon Boat Festival, every year to the Dragon Boat Festival, the merchants who sell Zongzi are indispensable to make a lot of money, and when it comes to the big guys in the Zongzi circle, people can't help but think of the old brand of Wufangzhai.
Today, Wufangzhai has more than 474 stores across the country, of which a total of 169 directly operated stores, but even if it is a long-established brand, in this era of fierce competition, it is inevitable to fall into a dilemma. In order to stand up the chest to fight, the Wufangzhai that sells rice dumplings is actually going to be listed this year, and throughout its development history, we see the glory and struggle of a century-old brand.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="49" > the prosperity of centuries-old brands</h1>
In 1921, Zhang Jinquan, a lanxi merchant, opened a zongzi shop called "Rongji Wufangzhai" in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, which became the predecessor of Wufangzhai .
Jiangsu and Zhejiang area is the land of relatively wealthy fish and rice, Jiaxing is one of the birthplaces of rice in the world, with more than 7,000 years of rice farming history, zongzi has a good quality from raw materials, but also naturally let the locals develop a more "biting" mouth, and Zhang Jinquan sells zongzi, because of the exquisite selection of materials, unique flavor, the shape is also very different, recognized by the locals.
Zongzi shop business is booming, zhang Jinquan also made a fortune. Later, the Zongzi shop was funded by three people to form Wugu, named Wufangzhai (五芳斋), which means "Wugu Fangxin". In the 1940s, there were three Wufangzhai in Zhangjia Lane alone, and the competition was fierce, all boasting that they were old and authentic, so each family continued to improve in terms of ingredient selection and glutinous rice quality, and the taste was loved by everyone.
In 1956, under the policy of public-private partnership, "Rongji", "Heji", "Qingji" three Wufangzhai and "Xiangxiangzhai" into one, named "Jiaxing Wufangzhai Zongzi Shop", the reputation in Jiaxing has been very good, during the Dragon Boat Festival, the queue in front of the store has to turn several bends. Its rice dumplings are "sticky but not paste, fat but not greasy, fragrant and delicious, salty and sweet", well-known in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and are also known as the "King of Zongzi" in Jiangnan.
Today, in the old black-and-white photos, you can still see the original Wufangzhai hanging a sign with a large gold character and black background, and the people who buy in front of the door are endless.
However, such an excellent old brand also has a time when the business concept is conservative and the means of operation are lagging behind, so it is good that it can catch up with the transformation of technology and marketing methods later, and keep this golden signboard. In the 1980s and 1990s, the business of Wufangzhai Zongzi Shop became bigger and bigger.
In 1985, the operators of Wufangzhai carried out a large-scale transformation of Zongzi stores, from production appliances, technological processes to factory structure, store image, Wufangzhai has carried out bold changes and innovations, since that time, Wufangzhai's daily output of Zongzi has exceeded 20,000, the product category is also more diversified, in addition to being sought after in China, it is also exported to Japan, Southeast Asia and other places, which is beyond the reach of many Zongzi stores.
In 1992, on the basis of the original Zongzi store, Jiaxing WufangZhai Zongzi Subsidiary was established. Six years later, Wufangzhai reformed and established Zhejiang Wufangzhai Industrial Co., Ltd., which is now the listed entity. Since 2001, Wufangzhai has carried out the transfer of state-owned shares, and began to gradually transform from a state-owned enterprise to a private enterprise.
In 2004, Wufangzhai was recognized as a well-known trademark in China by the State Trademark Office, ranking among the first batch of Chinese time-honored brands and becoming a city card in Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province; in 2010, Wufangzhai seized the opportunity of a once-in-a-century opportunity to walk into the Shanghai World Expo to show itself on an international platform and enhance its brand image; in 2011, the production technology of Wufangzhai Zongzi was included in the list of national intangible cultural heritage protection.
2021 coincides with the centenary of the establishment of Wufangzhai and for a hundred years, Wufangzhai has indeed been making rice dumplings in a down-to-earth manner. With high credibility and good brand, Wufangzhai can sell 400 million zongzi a year, with a turnover of more than 2 billion yuan, ranking first in the Chinese zongzi industry and is the industry's leading leader.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="60" > facing a dilemma</h1>
Although it is a long-established brand with a high national popularity, Wufangzhai also has a dilemma that it has to face.
Selling rice dumplings alone, the profit margin is really not so big. After all, Zongzi is a seasonal food, although in some southern regions, Zongzi is a food with a high degree of recognition, people can use it as a breakfast or staple food, but consumers in most areas will only think of buying Zongzi during the Dragon Boat Festival.
Moreover, in the vast northern region, the recognition of Zongzi is not so high, the business of Wufangzhai actually relies on East China, Zongzi is difficult to digest, high in calories, and easy to be replaced. Relying on the revenue of the Dragon Boat Festival, even industry giants such as Wufangzhai are difficult to support in the long run, so if you want to have better development, you naturally have to seek ways to break through the difficulties.
In addition, in this era of fierce competition, after seeing quanjude, dog disregard and the same century-old brand, word of mouth, performance, capital continuous collapse of the previous lessons, Wufangzhai can not help but feel anxious. Affected by the epidemic in 2020, Wufangzhai revenue was 2.421 billion yuan and net profit attributable to the mother was 142 million yuan, down 3.44% and 12.9% year-on-year, respectively, while the profit data in 2019 was also down compared with 2018, and the sales volume of zongzi also fell from 400 million to 365 million.
Wufangzhai Group's original plan was to increase the production of 100 million rice dumplings per year, but the sudden epidemic in 2020 made the 100 million rice dumplings increased in production fall short, bringing a lot of losses. Among the 169 directly operated stores in Wufangzhai, nearly 100 have negative profits and varying degrees of losses. In some debt disputes, Wufangzhai also "lost" the two shareholders, Zhu Chuanlin and Huang Dejian.
The Zongzi business is the main source of income for Wufangzhai and while creating performance, it will also bring risks to zongzi because of its seasonality. Wufangzhai Zongzi is a product recognized by consumers, but because the industry threshold is not high, almost all the food industry will not fall behind zongzi when expanding its business in other fields.
As a result, the competition in the industry is getting bigger and bigger. In the face of such difficulties, Wufangzhai is also working hard to break through the shackles of the industry to expand its business to alleviate its own problems.
Wufangzhai also makes cakes, moon cakes, tangyuan, salted eggs, eight treasure porridge and other products, but it has not been recognized by consumers, and sales are not good. Since 2008, Wufangzhai has begun to expand into the catering field, the main purpose is to drive the sales of rice dumplings by opening restaurants.
However, compared with many internet celebrity restaurants now, Wufangzhai seems to be Buddhist and unintentional in this regard. In terms of decoration, Wufangzhai is a decent Chinese restaurant, the logo at the door is white on a black background, and the inside is also a pure wooden table and leather chair, the color is simple and monotonous, and it is not eye-catching.
Zongzi is still the main product of the restaurant, the others are mainly noodles, flour, chaos, rice bowl, roast sale, etc., there are also drinks and desserts, rich products, diverse types, but it is impossible to see which one is the main one, and has not formed a better product structure. Approachable is that the price of restaurant products is not high, ranging from twenty to forty yuan per person per person, but despite this, it cannot meet the new needs of consumers. Therefore, the restaurant business of Wufangzhai is not very good-looking, and it is also reasonable.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="71" > listed against the wind and dare to innovate</h1>
Many long-established brands have fallen into a dilemma in recent years, first the dog ignores the bun and retreats from the Beijing market, the dog ignores the food from the new third board, and then the Quanjude roast duck suffered the first loss in 14 years of listing in 2020, there is a kind of "the former wave died on the beach" sadness, and in this situation, Wufangzhai submitted a prospectus at the time of the Dragon Boat Festival in 2021, that is, the centenary of its establishment, and planned to be listed on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Wufangzhai this is undoubtedly to go public against the wind, and whether it can be successfully listed, whether there is more room for development after the listing, whether it will be the next dog to ignore, Quanjude, these are many people in the industry are very concerned about the problem.
Expanding the field is not an easy task, and Wufangzhai seems to have not explored the way out in recent years. This year is the third time that Wufangzhai is planned to be listed, and the first two have failed to be listed, so it will attract special attention. But at a time full of opportunities and challenges, Wufangzhai seems to have never given up on moving forward.
The best thing Wufangzhai has done is that it has not given up its original intention, has always insisted on making high-quality products, has a good historical precipitation, maintained a good reputation since then, and can understand the needs of young people in the era of rapid development, mingle with young people, and strive for innovation.
In terms of products, Wufangzhai has invited two non-hereditary people to join hands with six zongyi masters to create a six-flavored craftsmanship gift box, extending a high-end gift route for themselves. In addition, it also learns the joint name of Internet celebrities, cooperates with international big IP such as Marvel and Disney, and customizes the theme Zongzi gift box, so that the name of Wufangzhai frequently appears in the vision of young people, and its product image is more in line with the aesthetics of contemporary consumer groups.
This year, Wufangzhai also cooperated with Yuanqi Forest to launch a series of "full score high dumplings" at the college entrance examination to cheer for college entrance examination students; cooperated with the glory of the king to launch a new package with the image of the game character; and even cooperated with Hema Xiansheng to launch the spicy snail lion powder flavored rice dumplings, which were very popular among young consumer groups.
Wufangzhai's marketing ability is no less than today's main innovative Internet celebrity brand, in early 2018, a novel, elegant style of advertising short film came into view, the attraction is not the advertising picture, but his literary and artistic style of copywriting. Volcanoes and dawns, 4.3 billion sunsets, vinyl records, alpha dogs, flounders of the Mariana Trench...
These images, which seem to appear only in literary works, appear in an advertisement, more like a text with anatomical value, but without the kind of fabrication that disguises literature and art, but is full of cold humor.
The advertisement uses a certain imagination to describe the "journey of a glutinous rice", thus reflecting the high quality and quality control of the selection of Wufangzhai zongzi, so that people can see that each glutinous rice in his family is carefully selected or even one of the thousands. Such advertisements are neither vulgar nor brainwashed by a single slogan, which is contrary to the communication routines of traditional food advertisements.
We have to admit that Wufangzhai is very good at playing, but also dare to play, such a communication method, in fact, is more in line with the aesthetics and tastes of contemporary young people, in marketing is more acceptable.
Wufangzhai, which actively embraces the new era, is praised by the outside world as "the oldest brand that can do things the most", and some people also said: "It is difficult to imagine a 100-year-old brand bursting out of such a big vitality." Because of this, Wufangzhai has won a lot of favor among young people.
Live streaming with goods is one of the popular sales methods in contemporary times, and the anchor with strong ability to carry goods may be enough to complete the turnover of the merchant for one week. Old brands such as Wufangzhai have not adhered to the rules and have been laid out on e-commerce channels for a long time.
Not only stepping up the layout on major e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com, keeping up with the footsteps of shopping carnivals such as Double Eleven and 618, but also carrying out live sales with head anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya, as well as stars such as Qi Wei, to expand sales channels online and offline, of which the proportion of e-commerce channels in direct revenue increased from 20.12% in 2018 to 28.89% in 2020.
Opening wufangzhai's Tmall flagship store, the number of fans reached 1.26 million, far more than Quanjude, Southern Black Sesame and other long-established brands. On the occasion of Labor Day, Wufangzhai also made a hundred posters of the names of a hundred rice dumpling workers to pay tribute to every worker in the company, and once swiped the screen on the Internet.
I have to say that as a long-established and large enterprise, Wufangzhai does not have a little shelf, but is approachable and respectful of every worker, which is probably one of the reasons why it can have a good foundation.
As early as a few years ago, Wufangzhai tried to open a digital restaurant and a smart restaurant to keep up with the pace of the times. In 2018, Wufangzhai opened the first unmanned wisdom restaurant in Hangzhou, where consumers placed orders through mobile phone software, and the dishes were processed and put into the dining cabinet, and the consumers picked up their own meals.
A month after the opening of this unmanned smart restaurant, the turnover increased by 40%, which made Wufangzhai very happy, continued to expand the business of unmanned smart restaurants in various cities, and expanded this model to the highway, implementing 24-hour all-day operation.
For a hundred years, Wufangzhai actually never fell behind the times. On the foundation, the sign of Wufangzhai is there, there has been no scandal or serious quality problems in so many years, although the performance has declined in recent years, it is still a leader in the industry, and it is still a company that is not bad money.
In the face of difficulties, Wufangzhai dares to break through itself, boldly innovate, and while maintaining the original quality, it constantly integrates into the young group and pursues hot spots with young people.
In business, Wufangzhai is not a pedantic old man, but constantly explores the path of diversified development and tries to break through the bottleneck. The road of Wufangzhai is not easy, but we have to give it some time, and we will still wait and see how the future development is.