Relying on the old to sell the old doesn't work. The dog ignores the foreign coffee hand in hand.

On January 21, Tianjin GouBuLi Group announced that it had successfully won the permanent right to use Colorado, Australia's largest coffee chain, in China, and is expected to open 200 new chain stores in the next five years. However, many people overlook the fact that fast food giants McDonald's and KFC have successively started selling soymilk. So, eating steamed buns with coffee is also a commendable attempt.

Data show that GouBuLi Group is an enterprise group with multi-industry formats such as catering, food industry, logistics and distribution, with a business income of about 1 billion yuan in 2014, and its "GouBuLi" brand has a history of more than 150 years. As early as 2012, GouBuLi Group applied for listing to be stronger and bigger, but in July 2014, it was included in the IPO application termination review list by the Securities Regulatory Commission. The reason has not been disclosed yet. Some brokerage analysts believe that, "if you only sell steamed buns, the imagination space for investors is limited after all." For any company that intends to log on to the capital market, it needs to improve its business layout through acquisitions, cooperation and other ways, and raise its valuation by telling stories.

Steamed buns sell well, why introduce a foreign brand? In fact, GouBuLi as a time-honored catering enterprise, the degree of marketization is low, the sense of competition is weak, its main product is not dinner, can only rely on brand awareness to attract tourists to consume, but this can not increase the long-term stickiness of customers. Enterprises listed in China, in addition to profitability and other requirements, but also need to have growth requirements. There is a view that the dog ignore hand-in-hand coffee foreign brand, may be to pave the way for its re-listing.

It is understood that the reason why GouBuLi joined hands with the company, in addition to the brand value of Gloria, but also saw the good prospects of the coffee market. Data show that China's coffee consumption is about 70 billion yuan in 2012 and will exceed 150 billion yuan in the next five years. According to public data, Colorado Coffee originated in Chicago in 1979 and was founded in Australia in 1996. It is the largest coffee chain brand in Australia and one of the top five coffee chains in the world.

In this regard, Li Guangdou, founder of the brand competitiveness school, said: "this combination of Chinese and Western is a mixed blessing for GouBuLi: the happy thing is that the Chinese time-honored brand has found a new direction outside the steamed buns; the worry is that the grafting of the two brands does not have any advantage." He said that at present, China's coffee industry is in winter, and it remains to be seen whether Gouli can find a clear profit model. However, there are also people in the catering industry who say that steamed buns and coffee belong to two completely different consumption categories. If the conflict between the two works well, they will strongly complement each other and achieve an effect of 1: 1 greater than 2.

Relevant data show that at present, there are more than 2000 "Chinese time-honored brands" in China, which are distributed all over the country. The decline of a large number of these time-honored brands has similar characteristics, such as the reduction of fixed customers, the traditional interpersonal communication and marketing, and the gradual aging of business staff, which makes it difficult for time-honored brands to walk in today's "wine smell is also afraid of deep alleys". Not only GouBuLi steamed stuffed bun, many time-honored enterprises are mired in the quagmire of transformation. Quanjude has also taken some transformation measures in the past two years. For example, some stores try to sell breakfast and buffets, while others go to the community. This still does not open the way out.

For these Chinese time-honored brands, the brand is undoubtedly a long-term accumulated wealth, but facing the new market environment and consumption habits, it has become a burden. If time-honored brands want to develop, it is no longer feasible to rely solely on the old to sell the old and stick to the tradition. With the change of people's living habits, whether the reform and innovation means of time-honored brands can win the favor of the new generation of consumers to the maximum extent still needs to be tested by the market. Time-honored brands should not only speed up system innovation, but also reverse misunderstandings and cultivate new consumer groups such as young people. With the competition brought by the globalization of the market, only by distinguishing the positioning and forming the misplaced operation can the national brands form the high-quality route in the transformation. (reporter Zhao Jianying)

Source: workers' Daily