Source of this article: Times Weekly Author: Li Jing
"This thing ( pre-made dishes ) is different from all my previous entrepreneurship. I don't think today we are still an Internet company. We are a food company, and we first sell vegetables." On July 18, at the "Qudian Pre-made dishes" brand strategy press conference, Luo Min, founder and CEO of Qudian Group (QD.N) said.
, a "sequential entrepreneur" who has done cash loans, auto retail, luxury e-commerce, and children's education, has now shifted its goal to pre-made dishes, and is determined to be a "vegetable seller".
Luo Min even listed his jaw-dropping targets.
According to Luo Min's plan, users of Qudian pre-made dishes can join the Qudian Pre-made dishes physical store for free. This kind of free franchise physical stores will reach 10,000 this year, 50,000 next year, and 200,000 by 2024.
The day before the press conference, Luo Min performed a 19-hour live broadcast on the Douyin account "Qudian Luo Boss".
According to the data released by Qudian, the live broadcast on July 17 totaled 95.87 million viewers. Indicators such as sales order volume broke the historical peak of Douyin. The Douyin account "Qudian Luo Boss" has accumulated a total of 3.97 million fans in a single day, ranking first in the Douyin live broadcast room list for 15 consecutive hours.
"The pre-made dishes in Qudian are still the Internet game, and they are the game of capital." Jin Yuelong, partner of Bailian Technology, a Douyin e-commerce brand service provider, said in an interview with a reporter from Times Weekly.
Jin Yuelong said bluntly that the traffic investment cost of Qudian live streaming is huge, mainly including purchasing advertising traffic, high-frequency and high-priced interactive prizes in the live streaming room, ultra-low-priced welfare products, inviting top celebrity carnival experts to visit the live streaming room, and going to the Oriental Selection Live Room to browse the "carnival" to create public opinion topics and other series of operations.
html lost 5 million in 05 minutesThis time, Luo Min became more determined and directly positioned Qudian as a consumer company.
is similar to the entrepreneurship statements in the past. Luo Min said that he chose to make pre-made dishes because he wanted to save an hour a day for 10 million people and have more time to spend with his family. At the same time, we must support his users and fans to start businesses, and we will work together to make people's lives better.
(Luo Min’s lecture in 2018 Photo source: Qudian Group)
On July 17, Luo Min started a long live broadcast to sell goods. Also standing in the live broadcast with Luo Min are Jia Nailiang and Fu Seoul .
1 snatch a pre-made dish for cents and give out an iPhone in 5 minutes. This "loss" subsidy has attracted the attention of consumers. Jia Nailiang, who partnered with Luo Min, mentioned during the live broadcast that 200,000 yuan orders 1 cent sauerkraut fish , and after deducting logistics and costs, Mr. Luo lost 5 million in 5 minutes.
(Photo source: Luo Min Douyin account)
Jin Yuelong said, "After Oriental selected the circle, the industry favored the form of live streaming and selling goods. Qudian wants to promote Qudian's new pre-made dishes through live streaming and selling goods, and later develop franchisee agents and other products to gain greater commercial value, and it is also reflected in the stock price."
htmlOn July 18, Qudian's stock price also ushered in pre-market surge, and the stock price doubled from US$1.19 that closed the previous day to US$2.43.It seems that in order to maintain the popularity for a longer time, Luo Min even showed a wave of presence in the Oriental Selection live broadcast room.
htmlOn the evening of July 18, Luo Min walked into the live broadcast room of "Oriental Selection" and successively presented Dong Yuhui with a "carnival". However, he was repeatedly advised by Dong Yuhui: "Don't give gifts. This is a live broadcast room for goods. If you have money, you can buy our agricultural products and give them to employees and family. I believe you can." htmlOn July 19, Luo Min posted a video on Douyin with a grievance, revealing that he was blocked by Dong Yuhui and explained that he just thought that Teacher Dong's live broadcast was very hard and never wanted to cause any misunderstandings.In Jin Yuelong's view, "they have prepared funds, teams, operation strategies, etc.."
According to Qudian, since choosing to take root in the pre-made vegetable industry, Qudian has a team of hundreds of people who have conducted more than 200 days of in-depth research on products and focused on product research and development.In early 2022, Qudian Group established 15 pre-made vegetable production and processing factories in 15 cities including , Xiamen, , Wuhan, Shenzhen, etc. In order to do a good job in pre-made vegetable business, Qudian Group has integrated upstream and downstream resources and cooperated with leading agricultural enterprises.
"The core of making pre-made dishes is in research and development. It is still difficult to grasp the standard of taste of traditional Chinese dishes." Jin Yuelong said that Luo Min still faces many challenges when choosing to make pre-made dishes.
Familiar taste of burning money
39-year-old Luo Min's life experience is quite meaningful of grassroots counterattack.
On his personal Douyin account, Luo Min described himself like this: From 2004 to 2017, he went from a small town in Jiangxi to , New York Stock Exchange .
"If you don't work hard, you will be ridiculed by others, you will be ridiculed by teachers, and you will be ridiculed by all kinds of people, you will have to work hard." Luo Min once said in an interview with the media in 2018.
Public information shows that Luo Min was born in a small village in central Jiangxi Province. He graduated from Jiangxi Normal University in 2004 and was preparing to take the Peking University graduate student, but he finally chose to start a business to prove himself. After
, Luo Min held her breath and started her business continuously, doing many projects, but unfortunately they all ended in failure.
It was not until 2014 that Luo Min discovered a new battlefield - college students' installment consumption, and it ushered in the highlight moment later. The entrepreneurship progressed very smoothly. In 2017, Qudian was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and Luo Min rang the bell.
(Qudian’s bell ringing site)
But the campus loan career made him a controversial center. At that time, campus loans were expanding wildly, and many vicious incidents such as violent collection of campus loans occurred frequently, and the outside world's doubts about Qudian were also overwhelming. Since 2016, domestic regulatory policies have begun to tighten, and institutions without permission cannot engage in campus loan business.
This time, Dong Yuhui's explanation in the live broadcast room also seemed "everything is indifferent". Dong Yuhui said: "Oriental Selection is the company's account and has nothing to do with me personally. The director has just graduated from university and sometimes has some personal grudges. He wants to block it. I think it's quite reasonable after listening to it."
(Dong Yuhui explains the reason why Luo Min was blocked in the live broadcast room Picture source: Live video)
No matter what, from the perspective of the capital market, Luo Min undoubtedly came to the peak of his life in the year when Qudian was listed. However, after Qudian went public, its stock price plummeted and its market value shrank sharply with controversy.
Luo Min does not seem to be planning to stop starting a business.
"He is very confident and real, and he explains his advantages and shortcomings and the degree of his ability to do clearly. Compared to working for others, he is better at being on his own." The founder of Meihua Venture Capital Wu Shichun once commented on Luo Min like this.
"We are always ready to do some projects with opportunities." Luo Min once said in an interview with the media: "The company is always testing three or five projects, and any projects that can be combined with the Internet and have high growth will be tested."
From cash loan business to today's pre-made dishes, Luo Min's entrepreneurial field spans Internet finance , e-commerce, education, and food. These "uncomfortable" industries, Luo Min is happy to devote herself to it, and she has invested a lot of money in it.
In January 2018, Luo Min held a press conference to announce the layout of the new automotive retail business ( Dabai Auto ), and also announced that he would invest more than 100 million yuan in the field of live answering questions.
By 2020, Qudian's luxury e-commerce "Wanlimu" was launched in a high-profile manner, and five celebrities, including Zhao Wei, Huang Xiaoming, , Lei Jiayin, , Zheng Kai, , and Jia Nailiang, endorsing them, and "10 billion subsidies" crazily spread money to consumers.
In January 2021, Qudian bet on children's quality education , focusing on comprehensive quality education for children aged 0-9, and opened the "Wanlimu Children's Growth Center" in many places. Compared with Luo Min's passion, these projects did not bring equal returns to Luo Min.
According to relevant media reports, in September 2018, "Dabai Auto" was exposed to large-scale store closures and layoffs; in April 2021, Qudian announced the end of Wanlimu's e-commerce business, and the WeChat official account was suspended after May 1, 2021; on March 5, 2022, Qudian once again announced plans to significantly reduce Wanlimu's children's business.
In the eyes of many people, Luo Min always takes advantage of the trend to rise up in a high-profile manner, and then ends up sadly, falling into the cycle of "making money, starting a business, failing, and starting a business again".
Where does the money come from?
"We keep doing a lot of projects, and the reason for doing these projects is that I want my team to do better." At the press conference, Luo Min also talked about his entrepreneurial experience, decades of entrepreneurial experience, especially our ups and downs, which made us realize more.
In Luo Min's view, there are a thousand reasons to start a business. But in the new project, Luo Min's starting style is still very familiar. Celebrity platform, spending money to subsidize, big marketing...
In short, Luo Min always uses money to gain popularity.
(Qudian Pre-made Cuisine Brand Strategy Press Conference Photo source: Luo Min Douyin Account)
He is not afraid of losing money. "Don't worry about how much money we will lose. I won't say how great this project will become in the future. We lose less than Ideal Auto , which is a small matter compared to them, but I think as long as what we do is correct, we are listed companies, we will definitely not be short of funds." Luo Min said.
Where does Luo Min’s money come from?
Qudian, which started with cash loans, has always been its business support, and most of Qudian's past revenue came from credit business. Although revenue and net profit continue to decline, overall profit is still profitable.
Wind data shows that Qudian's revenue has been 8.86 billion yuan, 3.688 billion yuan and 1.666 billion yuan from 2019 to 2021 respectively. Net profits were RMB 3.264 billion, RMB 959 million and RMB 589 million, respectively.
Qudian's financial report shows that as of March 31, 2022, its unaudited total assets reached 13.61 billion yuan, a decrease of 581 million yuan compared with 14.091 billion yuan at the end of last year. cash and cash equivalents alone had 2.245 billion yuan. However, as of the end of the first quarter, Qudian's total unaudited liabilities were 1.234 billion yuan.
By 2022, the situation in Qudian will be even less optimistic.
According to Wind data, in the first quarter of 2022, Qudian's revenue was only 202 million yuan, a decrease of 60.87% from the same period last year. At the same time, net profit also turned from profit to loss, with a net loss of 143 million yuan, a year-on-year decline of 129.85%.
Qudian stated in its financial report thatQidian has significantly reduced its credit business and may gradually close the business in the future. In this situation, Luo Min also forced to step up her search for new growth points for performance.
But for Luo Min, who "All in" pre-made dishes, it is much more difficult to make the pre-made dishes industry than a live broadcast.
As of the close of July 21, Eastern Time, Qudian's stock price fell back to $1.37.
