No one can save it easy

@新 新 新

Author 丨 Kai Kai

Edit 丨 Monthly

In the past two years, under the trend of "consumption upgrade", and everyone pays more attention to their own health problems, convenient massage instruments have also ushered in a dividend period for development. Many massage instrument brands have launched high -value and intelligent portable products to meet the personalized needs of different consumers, such as the pursuit of intelligent technology, and the need for soothing pressure.

However, with the weakness of the consumer market in the past year, the portable massage instrument industry seems to have begun to say goodbye to the era of easily "lying". Taking "the first share of smart portable massage" as an example, it has a profit of almost 100 million in 2021, but this year has fallen into losses for two consecutive quarters.

According to a relaxed semi -annual report, it achieved revenue of 459 million yuan in the first half of 2022, a year -on -year decrease of 15.65%, and a net profit loss of 35.458 million yuan, a year -on -year decrease of 185.72%. Not only that, its stock price has continued to decline since its listing in July last year, and has fallen by more than 75%. In the first half of this year, R & D expenses increased by 38.77%year -on -year, but marketing costs were still 7.5 times that of R & D costs.

In addition, Chen Qing, the relaxed core technical personnel and director of the planning department, "moist".

On August 21, when the report was released on the day of the release, he easily disclosed Chen Qing, the company's deputy general manager, core technical personnel, and director of the planning department, and recently applied to resign from the company's related positions for personal reasons. Chen Qing joined in November 2017 for more than four years as the director of the planning department. He focused on the planning, innovation and design of smart portable massage products, leading the company's product planning team, which is mainly responsible for product line planning and pre -research. R & D work.

Product profits but difficult to make money

Established in 2000, it is an innovative enterprise integrating design, research and development, production, sales and service. During the period of 2018-2020, there was also a period of "high-speed running" dividend period, and its revenue and net profit attributable to the mother have maintained a year-on-year increase in double digits.

Behind such a relaxed "lying", in addition to because of the high prosperity of the consumer market, one of the important factor is that the comprehensive gross profit margin is very high. From 2018 to 2021, its gross profit margin is 58.19%and 60.93%, respectively. , 58.36%, 56.73%, such high gross profit margins can be described as a few in the hardware industry.

As early as the beginning of the listing, it announced the cost data of the product. The unit cost of a head massage instrument was only 343.45 yuan, but the price was as high as 1295.15 yuan/set. Most of them are around 1,000 yuan.

The premium and hairy profit are so deep, how is it easy to reach the point of "losses"?

First of all, objectively speaking, the outbreak and economic downturn did have a great impact on the consumer market. In 2022, the entire massage industry was declining. In addition to relaxed, the revenue and profits of another health massage equipment listed company Ao Jiahua also declined year -on -year, and the profit decreased by more than 90%year -on -year.

For ease, the impact of the epidemic also exists. The most important of which is the significant decline in the people under the epidemic. Due to the easy offline direct business stores, it is mainly distributed at the airport and high -speed rail stations. This has led to its first half of the year. Offline sales revenue dropped sharply by more than 30 %.

Secondly, the relaxed strategic adjustment reaction is too slow. As early as 2020, the epidemic had brought a devastating blow to many offline entities, but despite the previous experience, the adjustment of its online and offline sales channels still did not seem timely.

Data show that although the ease of online channels have already started, the scale of online and offline sales has not been large. Before 2019, the sales scale of offline distribution+direct sales is still greater than the online scale, until until the online scale, until until the online scale, until until the online scale, until the scale of the online scale is still greater than the online scale. The emergence of the epidemic in 2020, the ease of online sales began to speed up. Although it is in the period of high -speed development of the Internet, it seems that it does not seem to catch up with this "high -speed train".

Moreover, after the impact of the decline in offline traffic due to the epidemic, it did not quickly adjust the online and online channel strategies. In the easy prospectus, it still mentioned that half of the fundraising costs were used for offline store construction. It was not until this year that the news that it easily closed the losing offline stores.

But more focused on the online also brings new problems for easyness. As of the first half of 2022, the proportion of ease of online channel income accounted for 68.41%of operating income. It also changed.

In the past, the target consumer groups of the airport and high -speed rail stations were mainly based on business travelers. Most of them had pain points that urgently relieved physical fatigue, and they were relatively sensitive to product prices.

In the education platform for many years of e -commerce platforms, online users have long been used to being discounted and impressed. They often pay more attention to cost -effectiveness and are more sensitive to prices. In a downward trend, from 56.73%last year to 52.96%in the first half of this year.

In general, due to the high price threshold of such portable massage instruments, the perception of the economic environment will be more sensitive. In addition, as long as the machine is not bad, the general consumers will not purchase multiple times. The repurchase attributes of the product are not strong, which will also bring certain restrictions on the development of the industry scale. The market cannot grow rapidly, and the degree of onlineization is not enough. It is no wonder that the economic downward impact brought by the epidemic situation is also easy to start to "cross the robbery". "Hu Xunhe" cannot stand scrutiny

In addition, like most online celebrity brands, it has always been trapped in the controversy of "heavy marketing and light development". The "moat" of the product is not deep enough, which is also an important reason for its difficulty to maintain vitality in the market adversity.

Starting from submitting the prospectus easily, its marketing costs have been criticized by the market. Data show that from 2018 to 2021, the easy sales costs were 183 million yuan, 287 million yuan, 333 million yuan, and 485 million yuan, respectively, accounting for 36.02%, 41.35%, and 40.31%of the current operating income, respectively. , 40.76%.

During the same period, the easy R & D expenses were about RMB 25.78 million, 40.656 million yuan, 36.891 million yuan, and 47.205 million yuan, respectively, accounting for 5.04%, 5.86%, 4.46%, and 3.97%of the current revenue. Taking 2021 as an example, the easy sales cost is about ten times that of its R & D expenses.

By the first half of this year, the easy sales costs were 228 million yuan, a decrease of 5.18%year -on -year; the R & D expenses were 30.31 million yuan, an increase of 38.77%year -on -year. It can be seen from the "one reduction and one increase" of the two expenses that it is easy to adjust the company's attributes consciously, but the current R & D cost is still less than the zero marketing costs.

The huge marketing costs are mainly the continuous exposure of the brand. On the one hand, the company has signed a contract star Xiao Zhan for two consecutive years as the brand spokesperson. He also invited Liu Tao and other heads to carry out goods to publicize, and sponsored multiple variety shows such as "The Life 4" and "My Little Two". The public exposure has not been low.

In addition, Dai is also easy to plan various marketing activities. For example, in April this year, it was announced that the boring apes were "118 early sleep health officials" and led the user -style punch -in early sleep. In the first half of this year, the easy advertising fee and The total promotion fee is as high as 66.8 million yuan.

However, behind the "fancy propaganda", not all consumers are willing to buy it. For a long time, the controversy about whether the Easy Massage instrument is "IQ Tax" has continued.

First of all, as a listed company that landed on the Science and Technology Board, its "science and technology attributes" have always been questioned. In addition to the low investment in R & D, its patent "gold content" is also slightly insufficient. As of the first half of this year, although the company, the company, although the company Cumulative patents have been obtained, but most of them are more easy to obtain a practical new patent and design patent, and the proportion of invention patents is relatively low.

Secondly, because it is easy to use the OEM foundry model, for most consumers, the quality of foundry products is not as impressive as its own products. From the actual production perspective, foundry also often means that products may have problems such as unstable quality and failure to iterate.

In the end, it seems that the easy -going product review seems not so good. Earlier, the Guangzhou Consumer Council had done a market survey and a complete test of the 24 massage instruments on the market. The results showed that only two stars were obtained by the relaxed head massage, and the last one of the last category was ranked. Essence

In addition, since its establishment, the concept of "Chinese Medicine X Technology" has been put forward, but in the e -commerce platform purchase of the e -commerce platform of Easy Products, many users have said that the products have not been promoted. It is also a controversial topic.

On the black cat complaint platform, its product quality and after -sales service have also received many consumers. In June 2020, the "3D kneading massage shawl" produced by the Masaki Subsida's mindfulness and intelligent production was fined 8.9 yuan by the Dongguan Market Supervision and Administration Bureau because the product quality did not meet national standards.

How can it be easy to optimize the layout?

The predicament that is easy to sort out is mainly concentrated in two aspects: First, in the process of easy development, its dependence on marketing promotion has always been high.

In the early days, it set up experience stores at many airports to fits the brand's focus on the positioning of high -end business people. At the same time, it can also enhance the brand image. However, in these transportation hubs Not much out.

After entering the high growth period of the Internet, it is easy to easily start trying "traffic play", such as inviting celebrities to endorse, settle in social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, and participating in e -commerce live broadcasts. New burden.

Second, under the blow of the epidemic, the consumer market has continued to weaken, including many new consumer brands proposed "product price reduction". In the context of the increase in costs, how to maintain the net profit of the product has become Easy to make an issue that needs to be explored.

The answer is inseparable from two big points. First, it is the adjustment of sales channels. Due to the particularity of massage instruments, consumers mostly need to "experience first and then buy." Therefore, for ease, offline channels, as the nursery of online traffic, will be an important part of the entire sales link, which is intermittent and cannot be completely cut off. However, compared with SKG, the two have different players in the offline channels. The former is mainly based on direct -operated stores, and the latter is mainly franchise stores. The two methods have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Adhering to joining as the main degree can reduce channel costs to a certain extent, but from the easy data, the gross profit margin of franchise stores is significantly lower than the overall level of the company. It further aggravated the burden of funds, and the easy -to -increase directly operated stores after the listing, which directly led to its losses in the first quarter of this year.

At present, SKG has chosen to go to direct operating, and to boost profit by reducing costs, while easily chooses to close some transportation hub stores to reduce losses, but the number of overall stores in the first half of this year still increases. Although the strategic direction of the two is different, the author believes that the core of channel changes cannot be separated from "cost reduction and efficiency", and shrinking winter will be an important direction in the industry.

Secondly, it is still critical to continue to improve the core competitiveness of the product. Although portable massage products are not new categories, because there are no uniform standards in the early market, the vicious competition between many small and medium -sized brands is fierce, and the phenomenon of the product is frequent, which leads to the decline in the industry's word of mouth.

Therefore, for ease, how to continue innovation and research and development is the focus of the company's future development. With the core "black technology products", we can face the challenges of the industry. Judging from the easy semi -annual report, even if the losses expanded in the first half of the year, its R & D investment "does not decrease but increase". To a certain extent, this also represents the company's attitude of "getting rid of the truth".

It is undeniable that it is easy to bet on a good track. From the perspective of nearly 10%of the annual compound growth rate of the industry, although the growth rate is not high, the industry has been growing steadily and has a certain growth.

However, the current industry includes ease, and is facing the stage adjustment under the epidemic. The competitive pressure in the industry is also intensifying. And re -adjusting channel strategy to quickly adapt to the uncertain economic environment will be the key to whether it can reverse the situation in the future.

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