Lu Zhengyao and Luo Min, who were no longer in high spirits, locked their eyes on the pre-made dishes after trying other directions. Lu Zhengyao came first, and Luo Min came later. They have stepped into the wind of the times one after another.
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Text / Wang Zai Weiwei
Source: slightly larger reference (ID: hyzibenlun)
The trend is turning, and those who were engaged in new consumption and Internet finance before began to engage in pre-made dishes.
Recently, the founder of Qudian, Luo Min, started a live broadcast on Douyin with the account of “Boss Luo of Qudian”, selling pre-made dishes. Luo Min adopts the route of attracting people at a low price on the Internet. At 9.9, you can buy a piece of boiled meat or pre-made dishes such as pickled fish and beer duck.
The price is close to the people, and the name of the product is also very simple, which is called Qudian pre-made dishes. I think back then when Qudian was selling luxury goods, it even came up with a name called Wanlimu. When doing car staging, there are big white cars. Nowadays, the brand name is also not good, and the Qudian brand is directly used.
Another person who has reduced dimensionality and joined the field of prefabricated dishes is Lu Zhengyao. At the beginning of this year, he entered the field of prefabricated dishes with the brand of “Bite of the Tongue”. But the splash on the Internet is not big.
Maybe people who love to chase the wind have some similar choices. In 2018, Luo Min and Lu Zhengyao “gathered” in Xiamen, and they moved the company headquarters to Xiamen one after another, and this time they all turned to pre-made dishes.
However, this new attempt is a recipe for self-help by two entrepreneurs who love transformation. It’s another round of flutter, and still can’t get ashore. It depends on who will be alive after the wind blows.
01
In yesterday’s live broadcast, Luo Min and Qi Hua said debater Yang Qihan was the partner who brought goods. Appeared in the live broadcast room. We sell fatty chicken hot pot, abalone and fish maw chicken, stir-fried beef, boiled beef and other dishes. The live broadcast room will issue a 10 yuan coupon, and the price of a single product after the coupon is between 9.9 and 39.9 yuan.
At the peak of the live broadcast room, more than 20,000 people watched it, and the words “CEOs of listed companies are live broadcast” were printed. Luo Min introduced the dishes skillfully and conducted cultural popularization of the development history of famous dishes, while introducing himself to netizens, saying, “I am doing business transformation just like Mr. Yu from New Oriental.”
The delivery data in the live broadcast room is not bad. In the early hours of this morning, it entered the top five of the Douyin delivery list.
At the end of the live broadcast, Luo Min showed the health management requirements of a listed company CEO in the live broadcast room. He said that he usually rests before 12 o’clock. He also said that he will live broadcast for a long time, not at this moment. So, it will be down in a while. He thinks that it is useless to live broadcast until 6:00 in the morning and become the number one on the list.
Luo Min is a tossing entrepreneur. Qudian’s new projects come one after the other, or one falls and the other stands up immediately. Moreover, the direction of entrepreneurship is different, from early campus loans to consumer loans, to Dabai Automobile, Wanlimu E-commerce, Wanlimu Children, and today’s pre-made dishes.
The investor of Qudian’s A round, Zhu Tianyu, a partner of Lanchi Ventures, once commented: “Luo Min is a standard Gamer, and he loved to play StarCraft during college. This game emphasizes timely strategy, and needs to constantly find resources, Think strategically to deal with the ever-changing battlefield. Only by being extremely aggressive, with the control and execution of every detail in place, can you ultimately win.”
If you don’t consider the first-mover advantage of entering the track, Luo Min, or Qudian, has indeed been “attacking”.
In April of this year, Qudian announced another business transformation to enter the pre-made vegetable industry. Users can place orders online through the applet. In May, Luo Min updated the first video on Douyin and will broadcast it regularly. His short video content and live broadcast products are his own pre-made dishes.
Qudian Pre-made Cuisine also invited Jia Nailiang to become the brand spokesperson. Speaking of Luo Min and Jia Nailiang have cooperated several times. In the luxury e-commerce project Wanlimu that year, Jia Nailiang was one of the spokespersons. He also made a live broadcast to bring goods, and the transaction amount was 32.5 million yuan.
Later, Wanlimu lost its voice, and there was news that it would transform into K12 education.
The latest financial report shows that Wanli Mu’s children’s project failed, leading to an increase in company expenses. The data shows that in the first quarter of this year, Qudian’s general and administrative expenses increased by 77.6%, mainly due to the increase in payments related to the construction contract for the Wanlimu children’s business signed in 2021.
At present, Qudian is reducing the scale of Wanlimu’s children’s business. This is why Luo Min said that he and Yu Minhong are undergoing business transformation.
It’s just that Luo Min, who started out as a consumer loan, has a more methodological approach to online traffic than New Oriental. For example, low prices attract people. The gameplay of Qudian’s pre-made dishes is a typical way for Internet companies to obtain customers. A large number of information flows and self-media are used to obtain customers, and then low-cost activities such as “9.9 special offer” and “100 discount for over 200” are used to convert users, facilitating transactions.
The volume of pre-made vegetables sold by Qudian is faster than the popularity of New Oriental’s delivery of goods. It took Luo Min less than two months from entering Douyin to entering the top five on the list. New Oriental’s teacher Dong became popular, and it took nearly half a year. Sure enough, whoever is willing to spend money will have traffic.
02
After Luckin, Lu Zhengyao was still diligent, and he started a series of entrepreneurial projects one after another. Last year, he started the “Fun Small Noodles” project and opened the first stores in Beijing and Chongqing, focusing on noodle catering.
At that time, it was also a “noodle” investment boom in the venture capital circle. Lanzhou beef noodle brands such as Chen Xianggui, Ma Jiyong, and Zhang Lala raised funds one after another, with investors such as Sequoia and Tencent standing behind them. Hefu Ramen also completed nearly 800 million yuan in Series E financing and found a lot of money. Wang Cen, known as the “Consumer King”, voted for Wuye Noodles.
However, Lu Zhengyao’s project did not progress smoothly. In October 2021, two months after the founding of Quxiaomian, it changed its name to “Qubayu” and switched to Sichuan Yubao. The market did not improve much either. By February this year, Qubayu had only eight stores across the country.
Lu Zhengyao’s entrepreneurial focus has shifted to another track – pre-made dishes. In January 2022, Lu Zhengyao’s pre-made dish project “Bite of the Tongue” was officially launched. The method used is still the celebrity endorsement + strong delivery that he is good at.
According to the project list circulated by the tip of the tongue workshop, in order to attract younger users, Lu Zhengyao originally planned to invite Zhang Yixing, Zhang Ruoyun and other celebrities to endorse, “the style of play is the same as that of Ruixing in the early days.” It’s just that at present, it is actor Liu Yiwei who has appeared in various advertising scenes such as high-speed rail, elevator, Douyin, and Toutiao with posters of heroes on the tongue.
But in terms of speed, Lu Zhengyao has obviously surpassed himself in the Ruixing Coffee period.
Under the slogan of “Only Franchise, Not Direct Sales”, within 4 months of the project’s launch, 6,000 franchised stores have signed up, accumulative financing of 1.6 billion, and plans to open 3,000 stores within 5 months , and it took Ruixing 20 months to complete this performance that year.
An important way for Lu Zhengyao to attract franchisees is low cost and high subsidies. According to the official website of Tongue Tip Workshop, the investment amount for each store is only 30,000 yuan, and the follow-up warehousing and logistics, distribution fees and deposits are not more than 100,000 yuan. Compared with the milk tea shop franchise business, which costs hundreds of thousands, the threshold is lower. There are too many stores, and the stores are naturally a lot smaller – each store is 8 square meters, and can reach a gross profit margin of 50%, which is similar to the stores of Ruixing Coffee.
Contrary to the low-cost investment of franchisees, Tongue Tip Workshop “sprays money to support” franchisees. Depending on the city where the store is located, Tongue Tip Workshop will provide franchisees with a subsidy of 7-15 yuan for each new user. The more economically developed the city is, the higher the subsidy will be.
Under the strategy of madly throwing money and focusing on offline stores, Tongue Workshop not only perfectly replicates the business model of Ruixing Coffee, but even the user experience has a strong Ruixing flavor. In March of this year, a reporter visited a tip of the tongue workshop in Shenzhen, and was told by the clerk that the offline products were in short supply. If necessary, please take out your mobile phone and complete the self-service online order.
03
The intersection of Luo Min and Lu Zhengyao happened in Xiamen in 2018.
In October 2017, Luo Min’s Qudian was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and once became the fastest-growing Internet company among Chinese concept stocks with a market value of US$11.3 billion.
The Xiamen government, which is planning to build an Internet ecosystem, found Luo Min and invited him to develop in Xiamen.
Nine months later, Luo Min moved from Beijing to Xiamen with the Qudian headquarters. Although Luo Min at this time is already in the debate because he has not realized the claimed college student loan “overdue and no repayment”, but he himself still maintains a typical Internet upstart life, not only will fly to Russia to watch the World Cup, but also To show off in the circle of friends that I live in the same hotel with Ronaldo.
The office of Qudian in Xiamen is located in the AVIC Zijin Building next to Huandao East Road in Siming District. Standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the office, you can see the vast and gentle coastline. When staying in Xiamen, Luo Min, who had finished work, often played football here. Not only did he play football himself, but he also spent a lot of money to organize employees to play football. Qudian has its own football team. Formed by Guan Peisheng, for a long time, these young employees will fly from different cities to Xiamen to play football with Luo Min, and the company will reimburse the expenses.
At that time, Luo Min and Lu Zhengyao were still high-spirited Internet “upstarts”.
Their arrival is also regarded as the two business cards of Xiamen’s Internet development. In 2019, at the investment promotion conference in Xiamen, the two were also hired as investment consultants in Xiamen at the same time. Lu Zhengyao even completed the listing of Luckin during this time. In May 2019, Luckin Coffee landed on Nasdaq and became the fastest company in the world from company establishment to IPO.
The turning point will come in 2020.
On March 19, the stock price of Qudian first fell from the listed US$34.45/share to US$1.21. Half a month later, Ruixing was exposed to financial fraud, causing a collective decline in Chinese concept stocks. Soon, Lu Zhengyao was expelled from Ruixing. At least in terms of face, Luo Min has to be lucky. He was not kicked out, but he couldn’t play football, because his friends who played football with him have left Qudian one after another, and restoring the stock price has become his top priority. .
The two who were no longer in the spirit of the past, after trying other directions, they both locked their eyes on the pre-made dishes. Lu Zhengyao came first, and Luo Min came later. They have stepped into the wind of the times one after another.
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