Starting from shared bicycles, China's sharing economy is booming. According to data disclosed by the State Information Center, in 2022, the transaction scale of China's sharing economy market will be about 3.832 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of about 3.9%.
Although it belongs to the sharing economy, it is different from some shared bicycle companies marrying "rich families" and getting out of the whole body. At present, many shared charging treasure companies seem to be stuck in the "long season". This is mainly due to the fact that it is difficult to achieve positive cash flow in the pure shared power bank business, and many shared power bank companies are seeking transformation. For example, in 2022, Jiedian will enter the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging industry and launch shared electric bicycle charging pile products, trying to open up a new growth curve.
Source: Street Electric
The choice of Jiedian actually has strong enlightening significance. Under the background of the traditional shared power bank business being in trouble, closely following the development trend of the times and the advantages of platform resources, and making a forward-looking layout, it is likely to realize the "upgrade of the business" ". And this may also show that shared charging treasure companies must speed up the pace of diversified layout.
Shared charging treasure battlefield "lost focus", business orientation differentiation of leading enterprises
At present, the smartphone market is huge. According to data, domestic smartphone shipments will reach 264 million units in 2022. In the face of huge market demand, the shared power bank business that provides charging support for smartphones has emerged as the times require, and has a broad market potential. development space. According to data, the number of users of China's shared power bank is expected to increase from 92 million in 2017 to 755 million in 2025, with an average annual growth rate of 16.93%.
From the perspective of competition pattern, the market concentration of China's shared power bank industry is relatively high. According to data from the Toubao Research Institute, in the first half of 2022, among the market share of China’s shared charging treasure companies, Zhumang Technology, Monster Charging, Xiaodian Technology, and Meituan accounted for 39.5%, 21.3%, 15.4%, and 39.5%, respectively. 14.7%, CR4 is 90.9%.
Source: Toubao Research Institute
Although there is a market, but due to the lack of rigid demand for products and channel dependence, most of the current shared power bank companies are still hampered by losses.
For example, Xiaodian Technology once sprinted to go public in 2021. According to the prospectus, from 2018 to 2020, Xiaodian Technology achieved net profits of -36 million yuan, 137 million yuan, and -104 million yuan respectively, reflecting greater performance pressure . At present, there is no news about its listing process, but at the beginning of 2022, news about Xiaodian Technology's layoffs came out, and was interpreted by the outside world as "reducing financial pressure and increasing profitability."
In fact, behind the company's losses are often high operating expenses. Unlike shared bicycles, which occupy almost zero-cost public resources, shared charging treasures need to be connected to a power supply in a busy city to operate. Therefore, shared charging treasure companies need to share a share of offline stores before they can settle in. Due to fierce competition in offline spots, in order to seize the market, major manufacturers have fully offered up profits, which also forced them to bear high sales and marketing expenses. According to the prospectus, during the reporting period, the one-year entry fee of Xiaodian Technology soared from 141 million yuan to 302 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 114.5%, and the proportion of expenses also increased from 13.4% to 20.5%; the sharing fee increased from 574 million yuan Yuan increased to 710 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.7%.
Based on this, in order to balance revenue and expenditure, many shared power bank companies have adopted price increases, but this has correspondingly weakened their attractiveness to users, so they are still facing a loss. However, there are always more solutions than problems. At present, most shared power bank companies are exploring new operating models.
For example, in June 2022, Zhumang Technology, which was merged from Jiedian and Sodian, stated to the outside world that the company will launch consumer hardware products in the future, including mask machines, body temperature monitors, etc., and hopes to make shared power banks an offline The entrance is based on this point, and the horizontal e-commerce and merchant-side service business expansion is carried out.
Coincidentally, Xiaodian Technology has also launched a vending machine called "iCool Xiaoshuang", and launched a "premium membership service", that is, consumers spend 169 yuan to buy a special edition power bank. Free replacement of fully charged charging treasures at Xiaodian Technology’s offline stores within one year, and free access to nearby Xiaodian stores across the country.
It can be seen that most of the shared power bank companies have seen the irreconcilable contradiction between the cost and income of the shared power bank business in a pure sense, so they began to combine their own resource advantages and the trend of the times to increase the realization rate of the shared power bank channel.
Unfortunately, the transformation of many shared charging treasure companies has not achieved remarkable results. For example, Xiaodian Technology's automatic cigarette vending machine "iCool Xiaoshuang" has ceased to exist.
On the whole, at the moment when it is difficult to achieve a greater leap in smartphone battery technology, the instantaneous and scene-based demand for shared power banks is extremely acute. But on the one hand, not everyone has the need to rent power banks. On the other hand, the cost of shared power banks is difficult to lower, which also determines that the purely shared power bank business suffers from constant losses.
Therefore, the task currently facing most shared power bank companies is to continue to consolidate the basic business of the shared power bank business, and to fully tap the value of shared power bank channel resources and downstream traffic, thereby turning losses into profits.
It is also against this industry background that Jiedian chose to enter the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging market, trying to find a new breakthrough point in addition to the shared power bank business. But how effective will this move be?
The pain points of charging two-wheeled electric vehicles are obvious, and Jiedian wants to have multiple "engines"
The reason why Jiedian aims at the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging market is largely because of the high number of two-wheeled electric vehicles in China, but users generally have the pain point of limited charging.
According to data from the China Bicycle Association, in 2021, the number of two-wheeled electric vehicles in China will be 340 million. This means that, on average, there is one two-wheeled electric vehicle for every four Chinese people. Moreover, China's two-wheeled electric vehicle market continues to grow. EVTank data shows that in 2022, China's overall output of electric two-wheeled vehicles will be 59.04 million units, a year-on-year increase of 8.5%.
Although the market is booming, there are certain risks in charging, and the current policy explicitly prohibits two-wheeled electric vehicles from being charged in residential buildings. For example, the "Regulations on Fire Safety Management of High-rise Civil Buildings" clearly stipulates that "no one is allowed to park electric vehicles or charge electric vehicles in public foyers, evacuation corridors, stairwells, and safety exits of high-rise civil buildings."
This also provides a certain opportunity for the development of the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging market. According to the data of Toubao Research Institute, from 2017 to 2021, the compound annual growth rate of China's two-wheeled electric vehicle shared charging pile market is 43.2%. It is estimated that in 2026, the relevant market size will reach 22.13 billion yuan.
Source: Toubao Research Institute
Although charging treasure and two-wheeled electric vehicle charging business seem to be completely different from each other, the two businesses have a strong connection in terms of supply chain and channels.
According to official data, Jiedian and Sodian have a total of 1 million+ online store locations and 30,000+ cooperative customers, covering more than 95% of cities across the country, covering a large number of residential and office buildings and other channels. Downstream, Jiedian and Sodian also have more than 500 million registered users.
The main application scenarios for charging two-wheeled electric vehicles are residential buildings, office buildings, industrial parks and other places. Street Electric’s existing channel resources can provide accurate coverage at low cost and high efficiency. At the same time, since there is no similar layout in the industry, Jiedian has formed a first-mover advantage with its huge traffic pool and operational capabilities.
In fact, Jiedian has achieved certain results in the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging track. In 2022, Jiedian has successively won two awards, "2022 China's Top 10 Most Valuable Brands in China's Charging and Swap Industry" and "2022 China's Top 10 Smart and Safe Charging Pile Brands" issued by the Organizing Committee of the China International Charging and Swap Industry Conference.
According to official data, Liu Qi, the agent of Jiedian in Guangdong, not only successfully promoted the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging business to Shenzhen, Guangdong, Dongguan and other cities within three months, but also achieved a monthly turnover of over 1 million. From this point of view, the previously accumulated channels and traffic resources have become the unique endowment advantages of Jiedian's entry into the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging track.
Obviously, Jiedian's entry into the electric vehicle charging track has a strong enlightening significance for the shared power bank industry.
Previously, players in the shared power bank industry mostly saw the inherent difficulties in the single shared power bank business, so they began to explore the operation mode of "one channel, multiple charges" around the shared power bank. Although this can increase the realization rate of the shared power bank channel to a certain extent, it is difficult to achieve a balance of income and expenditure after all.
Jiedian did not stick to the shared power bank track, but directly cut into the brand-new two-wheeled electric vehicle charging track. Because the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging industry is in the ascendant, and Jiedian has considerable channels and traffic resources, it can naturally seize the dividends of the two-wheeled electric vehicle charging industry in the first place.
This enlightenment for the shared power bank industry is that one should not limit their sights to the front of the shared power bank, but can explore new industries along the previous channels and traffic, and revitalize the previous resources through new businesses, and then realize Business upgrade.
Overall, in the face of the reality that income is difficult to balance huge expenditures, it is very important for shared power bank companies to explore new development models if they want to achieve sustainable growth. In this regard, based on the prospects of the two-wheeled electric vehicle industry, Jiedian has promoted the development of electric vehicle charging business, and has achieved results, which explains to a certain extent that this is a feasible path, and may provide a useful reference for the entire industry.
Author: Tianyu
Article source: Songguo Finance