Can Pathfinder Find The Right Way In A Snowstorm?

This article comes from wechat official account: lazy bear sports

"Mountaineering and business management are two completely different things, but they are no different in terms of achieving the goal of" climbing. "

This is a sentence written by Wang Jing, chairman and President of Pathfinder, in her autobiography "quiet mountain". Now the book is also in the flagship store of Pathfinder Wukesong, which costs 98 yuan a copy.

If you just watch Pathfinder's flagship store in Wukesong, the tall stores, the polar bear statue at the door, and the exquisite design and decoration in the store, your understanding of this domestic outdoor equipment listed company may be very good.

On the other hand, on August 28, this year, Pathfinder released the first half of 2020's financial report. The financial report showed that the brand's revenue in the half year was 297 million yuan, down 56.99% from 691 million yuan in the same period of last year; the net profit was - 145 million yuan, 277.27% lower than that of 81.8559 million yuan in the same period of last year.

This half year's revenue is less than 7% of Pathfinder's annual revenue, and the net loss has exceeded the loss for the whole year of 2017.

The financial report gives some explanations for these figures - the impact of the epidemic, the decline in the income of the main business; the withdrawal of tourism services such as e-tourism; the reduction of tourism revenue, etc. However, since the peak in 2015, the revenue and net profit of Pathfinder have been in a state of fluctuating decline. In 2018, it even fell by 34%, and the net profit loss was 182 million yuan.

The Pathfinder, who just recovered briefly in 2019, is now in a state of sharp drop in revenue and severe net profit loss. One can not help but wonder whether it is the temporary loss caused by the epidemic, or will it fall into the difficult situation before 2019 again?

Either way, it is undeniable that pathfinders are hard to climb on the mountain of outdoor products industry, and even like climbers, they are always facing the impact of snowstorms.

What's the problem in 2020?

This year is undoubtedly a very difficult year for major sports brands. The impact of the epidemic situation, the cancellation of sports events and the sharp reduction of outdoor sports activities. As an outdoor sports brand, Pathfinder seems to be "unable to return to the sky" in the face of such external environment.

During the epidemic, many explorers did. After the "prosperity" of live broadcasting with goods, Pathfinder also held many live broadcast activities, such as the first live show of shuoyin by Pathfinder and Wang Feng, 618 live broadcast by Zhang Chaoyang, CEO of Sohu, and live broadcast of Everest elevation survey base camp in May 2020. In addition to live broadcast, Pathfinder began to try more joint name and new activities. For example, in June, Pathfinder became the designated equipment support for the public welfare action of "walking power"; in September, it launched the "people's Pathfinder" program jointly with people's sports of people's.

However, these attempts failed to bring great changes to the brand in a short period of half a year. What's more, the status quo of brand management is not only related to the change of external environment.

According to the financial report data released by Pathfinder, the sales channels of toread's outdoor products in 2017 were mainly department stores, professional outdoor stores and network channels, of which the sales of department stores accounted for 63%. Three years later, in the environment of consumption upgrading and industrial chain transformation, Pathfinder's sales channels and store settings have not fundamentally changed. In the first half of 2020, Pathfinder opened 57 new stores and closed 125 stores, while most of the remaining stores were franchise stores. By the end of June 2020, the main brand of Pathfinder has 929 chain stores, including 101 Direct stores and 828 franchise stores.

In the field visit of lazy bear sports in Beijing, it is found that most of Pathfinder's stores in Beijing's major business districts are located in older department stores, except for the newly opened Wukesong flagship store in 2019 and the stores in Wanda shopping mall, which are already a little "behind" the positioning and planning of outdoor brands in this era.

Whether it is Xidan or Wangfujing, these two business districts with high passenger flow, Pathfinder's shops are somewhat "local". It mainly sells old functional products with low price and high discount. The price after discount is generally between 100 yuan and 500 yuan. In the two shopping malls in Xidan, the sports brands on the same floor with Pathfinder include Jordan sports, new barlun, Feiyue and other brands, or ordinary men's wear brands. The functional classification of clothing and shoes is not clear enough. There is only one experience counter to inform users about the outdoor functions of Pathfinder. The situation of shops in Wangfujing business district is different. The products are almost in the state of "clearance", and the price of some clothing is even as low as 60 yuan.

Today's flagship stores are not different from those in the future in terms of positioning and pricing.

Pathfinders also reflect on this situation. The financial report mentioned the current retail management problems. In addition to introducing the online trial during the epidemic, it also mentioned in particular that the offline store channel will focus on the front-line consumer demand, optimize the core shopping malls, shopping centers, outlets and other high-quality business circles, continue to open up stores, and increase efforts to actively close those with poor profitability and poor image Inefficient stores.

From the present point of view, this kind of "push the new in addition to the old" for the stores still needs to make considerable efforts. This hard half a year may also give the Pathfinder more time and opportunities to think about the current Pathfinder and what the problem is.

21 years of exploration, steep peaks

If we want to explore and reflect on the changes of Pathfinder's revenue and net profit in recent years, the first thing to observe is the change of the whole outdoor products market in China.

According to the outdoor products market survey report released by outdoor products branch of China Textile Business Association (COCA) in recent years, the growth rate of outdoor products industry scale has been slowing down since 2011, and slowed down to the "bottom" in 2016. Li Chang, vice president of coca, said in 2016 that the decline in growth rate may last another year or two.

In fact, Li Chang was "conservative" at that time. Until the "China outdoor products 2019 annual market survey report", the growth rate of China's total retail sales of outdoor products continued to slow down, and the initial growth stage after 2017 that they expected came a little later.

In the case of a deep plough brand, the market is inevitably affected by the downturn. However, from the financial report, although Pathfinder's outdoor brand business has been declining from 2015 to 2019, this part of the business has always been the mainstay of the brand, with revenue always above 1 billion, which is the most stable among the three business sectors of Pathfinder.

Founded in 1999, Pathfinder has gone through 21 years. According to the China brand power index (c-bpi) brand ranking and analysis report released by brand rating agency chnbrand, by 2020, Pathfinder has been selected as the first brand power of China's outdoor equipment industry for five consecutive years. From the perspective of domestic outdoor brands, Pathfinder can be said to be the recognized leader in the industry and the real "Pathfinder".

But this Pathfinder will also encounter dangerous peaks.

2015 is a year for Pathfinder to adjust its business. Since the end of 2014, Pathfinder has successively purchased asiatavel, an online travel platform in Singapore, and wholly owned the outdoor forum greenfield and polar travel booking platform "jizhimei"; in March 2015, it invested 230 million yuan in e-Travel world international travel agency, holding 74.56% of its equity.

The Pathfinder hopes to form its own "outdoor ecosystem" by spending a lot of money on tourism products. The idea is beautiful, but the reality is a bit of a bone. After the data of tourism products business was officially included in the financial report of 2015, the revenue of tourism business came to a peak, and the tourism business got 2.008 billion yuan of revenue. However, the company's net profit did not achieve positive growth, but fell by 10% year-on-year.

In the next few years, the steady increase in revenue and net profit since Pathfinder went public was completely broken. Revenue is soaring, net profit is down. It is not difficult to find that tourism business has brought considerable water to the company in the early stage, but it is a huge bubble only when we want to put it into practice. This time, the Pathfinder did not seem to be on the right track.

With the net interest rate falling year after year, Pathfinder seems to have to give all shareholders an account. Mr. Lu, one of the former CMO's founders, resigned as the chairman of the company in June 2017.

Pathfinder is also determined to put down this illusory bubble and start to return to the main business. At the same time, Pathfinder also announced that the company will return to its main business in the next three years. By adjusting product structure, brand strategy and integrating product development into science and technology, toread aims to return to a growth rate of more than 10% in 2019.

He proposed a series of "new" transformation of Qiang Wei, who only sat in the position of president of pathfinder for half a year. In November 2017, he left Pathfinder, and returned to the company as the president of Sheng Faqiang's wife and another founder of Pathfinder, Wang Jing. Qiangwei failed to give Pathfinder timely help, and the new transformation route was shelved. The loss of Pathfinder's net profit in 2017 also seemed to indicate another failure of Pathfinder. But this time the founder's return seems to mean that pathfinders will return to the road they first insisted on.

Get rid of the burden and start again

After facing a net profit of - 185 million yuan in 2018, Pathfinder finally "survived" from two consecutive years of net profit loss in 2019. Although the total revenue still fell, it has recovered to make money. The net profit increased by 162.16% year on year in 2018, reaching 113 million yuan * * *.

This year, pathfinders tried to make a difference. The first step is to cut back on your travel business. In 2019, Wang Jing, when accepting the daily economic news, said that since 2017, the company has gradually laid down other businesses and focused more on its main business. In November of the same year, Pathfinder also made a decision to sell 29% of its shares in Yiyou Tianxia travel agency.

The effect of timely stop loss is obvious. Compared with the 2 billion tourism business revenue in 2015, the tourism revenue in 2019 is only 233 million yuan, but the overall net profit of the company has also recovered to a positive number.

In 2019, Pathfinder also strengthened the scene and conceptual characteristics of its outdoor main business. At the beginning of the year, Pathfinder cooperated with the Chinese mountaineering team and said that it would provide professional outdoor equipment support for the Chinese mountaineering team and the Tibet Himalayan Mountaineering Guide school for five consecutive years. In June, Pathfinder became the sponsor of the outdoor equipment brand of the movie climber. "Climbing" is an important positioning of Pathfinder. Through such cooperation and co branding, the label of this positioning in the hearts of users is constantly strengthened.

In addition, in July 2019, Pathfinder established its first polar concept store in Beijing's Wukesong business district. Pathfinder has invested a lot in this concept store. It is set up in a position that can be seen from the subway station and the food area. It also stands opposite the adidas Wukesong flagship store. Pathfinder undoubtedly has a high positioning for this store. Both the concept of convenient and outdoor shopping is to create a new concept and a more convenient and convenient shopping mode for consumers.

What lazy bear sports first felt in this flagship store is also what Pathfinder hoped when setting up the concept store - fashion. The store plays Korean wave songs that many young people love, and the brand series is more comprehensive, including the main brand products, DX series products, and even the latest "Walker" series products. The "new" elements of the main brand products and several products co branded this year all appear in the store, and many products pay more attention to design and comfort, and add more skin friendly cotton materials in addition to the pure "quick drying" and other functions. The design is also moving towards the trend and fashion.

But there are still problems in the flagship stores. First, the partition is not clear. When entering the store, most of the main brands are placed on the leftmost wall, while DX products and the latest traveler series are more on the exhibition stand and aisle of the visual center. However, the distinction between the two series is not obvious enough and can only be obtained through the recommendation or inquiry of the shop assistants.

Secondly, the utilization of facilities is not in place. There are two smart screens at the entrance and inside of the flagship store. The screen has two functions, namely "beauty measurement" and "product selection". However, the "beauty measurement" function is only for entertainment, and the "product selection" function is turned on, but only one garment is displayed on the full screen. If the flagship store purchases the smart screen and wants to use it to interact with the consumers who come to the store and generate a diversion for the products, the functions of these two screens are still unqualified at present.

The Pathfinder in 2019 is moving forward in a good direction - the burden of travel products has been basically removed, and the main business focused on is not bad. From the number of financial reports, we can feel that the company's adjustment of its own brand has had an effect.

However, only half a year later, in the face of the fierce epidemic situation, Pathfinder encountered "blizzard" again on the way to climb. After completely deducting the revenue and profits of travel products business, pathfinders are facing a bigger hole than in 2017 and 2018.

This epidemic situation makes Pathfinder face the same difficult period as all brands, and exposes the hidden problems of Pathfinder again. But the Pathfinder, who has made up his mind to get rid of the burden, may cut off the side branches thoroughly before the trunk can absorb more nutrients. The scar on the tree trunk may be temporary. The Pathfinder takes away the revenue from the tourism business and shows his determination to concentrate on outdoor activities.

Although there are still many problems in offline stores, Pathfinder has started to layout online since the beginning of 2020. In the second half of 2020, Pathfinder is still carrying out more scene exploration and cooperation. In July, Pathfinder launched the live broadcast of tianwen-1 Mars exploration, and then reached a cooperation with "space innovation" brand of China Aerospace Science and Technology International Exchange Center to provide clothing support for the Long March 5 experimental reactor; In September, Pathfinder co signed with China Youth Daily and began to try the Guochao route. These co branded products have also appeared in Wukesong's flagship stores. In the first half of the year, the latest X Series (Walker Series), which was invested with 17.7542 million yuan in the first half of the year, began to gradually launch its products offline in September.

How many new trends have these explorers brought to the market.