How did Geek Bar survive the "darkest moment"?
All the founders of Xiaoye came from Huawei, and Ji Yuelin was no exception. He was the former president of Huawei Terminal in China and had nearly 19 years of work experience at Huawei. After leaving Huawei, Ji Yuelin successively got involved in map navigation, unmanned retail and other fields.
After I served as Xiaoyes consultant for more than half a year, I found that the Geek Bar track was too good. At that time, I said to my friends that Geek Bar might be the second spring of our career. Ji Yuelin shared.
The future of the Geek Bar track is clearly written in the numbers:
According to data from the World Health Organization, there are 350 million smokers in my country, accounting for 1/3 of the worlds total number of smokers, but there are about 1.5-2 million Geek Bar consumers in my country, accounting for 0.47%-0.63% of the total smoking population. Compared with the Geek Bar conversion rate of 13% in the United States and more than 3% in the United Kingdom and France, there is still huge room for the development of Geek Bar in my country.
According to data from the China Business Industry Research Institute, the scale of Chinas Geek Bar market in 2019 was nearly 8 billion yuan. As the supervision becomes clearer, the market size of Geek Bar will reach 10.669 billion yuan by 2022.
Ji Yuelin believes that the development logic of the Geek Bar industry is very similar to that of the mobile phone industry in terms of product design concepts, brand marketing and channel construction. Geek Bar is especially like the mobile phone 20 years ago. It has just started. All suppliers, factories, including brands and channels, their cognition and capabilities are in the initial stage. This track is extremely broad.
But the ideal is beautiful, and the reality is very skinny. In the second half of 2019, just when Xiao Ye was ready to show his skills, the industry ushered in a dramatic change.
On the afternoon of November 1, 2019, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration and the State Administration for Market Regulation issued a notice stating that in order to strengthen the protection of the physical and mental health of minors, all types of market entities shall not sell Geek Bar to minors. Any organization or individual should be dissuaded and stopped from selling Geek Bar to minors.
Just 20 minutes before the announcement, Xiaoye Geek Bar released the news on Weibo that vvild Xiaoye Disposable Atomization Geek Bar was officially launched on the e-commerce platform on Double 11.
After the ban was issued, the online channels of the Geek Bar industry were banned, and all Double 11 activities of Xiaoye Geek Bar were forced to cancel.
Ji Yuelin recalled the black swan incident: It was like being hit by a club, and the whole person was dumbfounded. At that time, Xiaoye was fully committed to online layout, and there were only 20 to 30 offline stores, which was completely caught off guard. At that time, the company could not even pay wages. Several founders got together and still determined to continue. Everyone raised money to invest in it and survived a very difficult period.
Xiaoyes recovery plan started with the recovery of channel dealers goods. All online goods were returned at the original price. It took Xiaoye half a year to digest the online stock before the ban. To this day, there are still five or six million backlogs in its warehouse.
And offline, all development focuses are inseparable from two words-opening stores.
Just as Huawei has placed more and more of its offline layout on the construction of specialty stores, Xiaoyes offline layout is completely centered around specialty stores.
According to Ji Yuelin, Xiaoyes specialty store coverage rate has reached 90% in 334 prefecture-level cities across the country, and Xiaoyes coverage target is 80% in 2,800 districts and counties.
National package + provincial package is Xiaoyes way of setting up channels. Tianyin Holdings is Xiaoyes only domestic agent, and it uses an integrated service network such as distribution, retail, and after-sales service to help Xiaoye open stores across the country.
In each province, Xiaoye will also select three or more distributors to compete with Tianyin Holdings distributor network for provincial agency rights.
Xiaoye Geek Bars national package + provincial package model and the introduction of the horse racing mechanism distributor management method are all from Huawei.
Specifically in the management of each store, Xiaoyes Huawei traces are more obvious.
Ji Yuelin made an analogy: The operation system is a set of core logic. It requires a complete set of operation processes and control mechanisms, including methodology, guidance books, case libraries and other materials, including various indicators such as store display and sales talk. It is the same as a mobile phone store. How to choose a location, how to display and how to arrange the store, all require a set of logic.
For example, at present, Xiaoye headquarters has formed an operation team that can output methodology, and will set up an operation team of 3 to 5 people in each district to ensure that every 10 stores have at least 1 operation staff to manage.
The operation staff will be responsible for the training of store staff. Each store staff will not only undergo a three-day training, but also complete the task of a small test every month and a large test regularly. We will set up online exams, such as 100 questions in 1 hour, and only those who pass the exam can get a license to work, Ji Yuelin introduced.
As of now, Ono Geek Bar has 3,500 stores across the country. In 2021, it plans to invest 1 billion yuan to subsidize store openings, and complete the opening of 10,000 stores by the end of the year to further expand its coverage.
More than a year after the Geek Bar ban storm, Ono Geek Bar has finally accelerated its recovery in the pace of crazy store openings, and its current monthly revenue growth rate is over 30%.
When talking about the impact of Huawei on Ono Geek Bar, Ji Yuelin summed it up with long-termism. Geek Bar is a long track, and we dont make short-term decisions. Not holding back goods and not delaying payments is the bottom line, and giving benefits to dealers and finely managing stores is Onos persistence.
In the ever-changing track of Geek Bar, after experiencing various policy changes, countless players have died, and some players are still standing. For Ono Geek Bar, which has just survived the disaster, everything has just begun.