Breaking Through The Online Children'S English Market: Matrix Playing With Fish

During this year's summer vacation, schools are competing for tutors. From the offline subway, bus station, elevator room, to the online variety show, wechat circle of friends, shaking tone and other short video platforms, teaching and training institutions have no soft hand in promoting and launching. Industry statistics show that the summer promotion budget of the four online education institutions alone, including ape tutoring, XRS online school, homework help, and who to learn from, add up to 4.5 billion yuan.

At the same time, the price rise has become a unique phenomenon this year. Oriental Securities research shows that the average price of Summer online courses of various teaching and training institutions fluctuates between 10% and 80%. Among them, the operation group increased 85% year on year, the largest increase. XRS online school rose 22% year-on-year, and ape guidance rose 17% year on year. At the same time, it is the first comprehensive price increase in the five years since the development of online education industry.

According to an industry insider's analysis of the 21st century economic report, on the one hand, the collective price increase of the summer online courses is due to the increasing demand for online courses under the catalysis of the epidemic situation, and students and parents are increasingly recognizing the effect of online courses and have a certain tolerance for price increases. After all, compared with offline courses, online courses are still relatively cheap. On the other hand, they need to raise the level of their own profit through the long-term training.

As a new entrant in the field of children's English online education, companion fish has gone out of a differentiated growth path. Almost no special promotion of children's English business has been carried out by the company, but low-cost customer acquisition is formed through the drainage of product matrix.

It is understood that companion fish was founded in 2015. Since it entered the children's English track in 2017, it has created a series of products, such as picture books with fish, children's English with fish, natural spelling with fish, intensive reading class with fish and so on. In the product matrix of the whole scene, companion fish picture books absorb young users with enlightenment education to form a user flow pool. Therefore, it is very easy for children to get profits from other products such as fish.

This matrix style of playing allows companion fish to develop rapidly and maintain a healthy financial model. It is understood that companion fish has now covered 328 cities in China, with a cumulative user volume of more than 35 million and a revenue growth rate of 1340%. At the same time, companion fish has obtained investment from SIG, jifuya and Hejing capital in history. It is revealed that after the tens of millions of US dollars of C round financing at the end of 2019, companion fish will soon complete a new round of financing.

Self owned product flow matrix

Since this year, affected by the epidemic situation, many offline training institutions have closed down due to their inability to operate normally. The online transfer of training demand catalyzes the rapid development of online education industry.

Zhai Lei, head of the company's marketing department, told the 21st century economic report that the rapid growth of the industry's overall user volume does not mean that all online training institutions are doing well. Because of their own problems, some online institutions eventually went bankrupt. At the same time, in the process of competing for online users, the cost of acquiring customers is also rising, and institutions may not be able to make profits from it.

From 2017 to now, the company has been developing at its own pace. We have made a full year development plan in January this year, and it has not changed because of the impact of the epidemic. " Zhai said.

It is understood that from the beginning of the year to now, the number of employees with fish has increased by about 30%. In the past two years, companion fish has grown from a team of more than 100 people in 2018 to nearly 1900 people now. When the reporter went to the office of companion fish near Madian Bridge on the third North Ring Road at more than 4 p.m., more than 10 candidates were still waiting for interviews in the corridor corridor.

Why can companion fish continue to expand and develop? Zhai Lei said that compared with other children's English training institutions, companion fish entered the industry late, but it has formed a unique advantage - product matrix ecology.

In the vertical field of children's English, a large number of institutions attract students through advertising, which leads to the problems of high cost and low gross profit. However, companion fish has gone out of the road of differentiation. The company forms its own flow pool through enlightening products, and then allows the children's English business to expand its business without customer acquisition cost.

It is understood that companion fish picture books and companion fish children's English are the two initial projects of the company, which form complementary relationship. Companion fish picture books attract young users with enlightenment education, and the cost of acquiring customers is about 10 yuan per registered user, which forms a natural flow pool at a relatively low cost. Companion fish children's English is mainly engaged in one-to-one English business. The company has not done any special online promotion for the project, and all the students come from internal transformation.

This year, companion fish also focuses on the promotion of two new projects: natural spelling with fish and intensive reading with fish, so that users can have more diversified choices in the course experience. Zhai Lei said that picture book products are free to hundreds of yuan per customer price range, one-on-one children's English needs thousands more, and the course cost of these two new projects is about 2000 yuan, meeting the learning needs of users in the middle.

After deeply ploughing the children's English track, seeking horizontal development in the future

In terms of specific revenue, the revenue of one-on-one English course for children with fish has already exceeded 100 million yuan, the revenue of picture books with fish has reached thousands of yuan, and the revenue of natural spelling with fish and intensive reading with fish has reached 10 million.

"Our overall gross profit level is relatively high, for companion fish, the current demand for growth is far greater than the realization of profit." Zhai Lei said. At present, the business of accompanying fish picture books has basically realized the balance of revenue and expenditure, and the children's English business is in a profitable State. As the other two new products are in the promotion period, they are still making large-scale use of revenue and profit. At the same time, the company still has no clear listing plan in the past year or two.

For the future development of the company, Zhai Lei said that companion fish has been deeply involved in the children's field for two or three years. First of all, he hopes to improve its products, models and matrices on the English track. The company will seek vertical development in this field, but it may not expand into other fields such as vertical thinking. In addition to the one-to-one class, there may also be one-to-one classes.

Will companion fish choose Offline layout? Zhai said the company will not open offline courses for at least two or three years. The company does not rule out the possibility of opening one or two experience stores, but 99% of the courses are still online. "Our team is from the Internet, and all the structure and configuration of the company are mainly based on the Internet. It's a bit of putting the cart before the horse when the online field is not perfect to expand offline. " He said.

First of all, Zhai Lei said that for the people, there is still a prospect of investment in education in the future. Second, the proportion of the overall education industry in online education is still small. But with the application of 5g and 3D holography, online education is becoming more and more competitive. At the same time, the factors of this year's epidemic also catalyze the change of education ecology.

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