The Net Profit Of Pathfinder Continues To Decline: The "Post Disaster" Of Pformation

Under the hot background of the concept of ecological circle,

The layout of outdoor ecosystem is also expanding. Its sports investment section is laying out new investment funds, and tourism business is also undergoing pformation.

But industry competition is growing.

We have cut into the field of outdoor sports, and foreign brands are sharing the market together.

At present, although the Pathfinder revenue growth and business expansion, but in its bright appearance is the fact that net profit is declining.

The layout of travel service and sports plate consumes a lot of resources, and it will take longer time and money to prepare for synergy with outdoor products.

Objectively, the Pathfinder's situation reflects many China.

After going through the bonus period, the brand is confronted with various practical problems, such as the strategic pformation of enterprises and the reshuffle of the industry.

For all Chinese clothing brands, pformation is imperative, but how to pform and how to experience the throes of pformation must be considered carefully.

Who is the Pathfinder?

For a long time, in the consumer's cognition, Pathfinder is an outdoor sports brand.

Sheng Faqiang, founder and chairman of the Pathfinder, has said that if 2011 is the watershed, before 2011, the Pathfinder is to develop products, establish channels, strengthen brands and expand financing, and take a road of entrepreneurship and rapid expansion.

After 2011, Pathfinder has been undergoing pformation and pformation.

After the pformation, the Pathfinder is more like a simplified version of music vision, trying to create an ecological circle around the three major business sections of outdoor, travel and sports.

The traditional outdoor sector is still its cornerstone business, mainly based on the sales of outdoor brands such as Pathfinder, Discovery Expedi-tion, and arkanno. After a series of acquisitions by the Pathfinder, such as easy to swim, green, beautiful, Asia Travel and many other enterprises, it hopes that the travel sector will become an entry to the user traffic and an important contributor to the sales revenue; the sports sector is in the nurturing stage, and the early stage will be operated through investment funds.

In fact, when the brand develops to a certain stage, layout related format and ecological circle are a trend.

Min Guangya, chief consultant of Guangzhou blue Olympic retail consulting, believes that at this time, the brand wants to achieve greater development in two directions: first, to make the industry more refined and deeper, and constantly expand the scale and profitability of the brand; the two is to extend the influence of the existing brand to the related ecological circle, and promote each other with the industry related to the main business.

"More is the combination of the two, which is also a good choice."

Min Guangya told reporters that if the ecosphere business objects are the same group of consumers, this group of consumers also have consumer demand.

Then, the form of ecosystem can better satisfy the needs of consumers, and it is good for consumers, brands, enterprises and markets.

However, like other companies that are undergoing pformation pains, Pathfinder has not yet achieved synergy even though they have been laying out for many years in the outdoor ecosystem.

Since 2011, the growth of Pathfinder's operating income has decreased year by year, which is 73.64%, 46.68%, 30.74% and 18.67% respectively.

Since 2013, the gross profit margin of Pathfinder has also declined.

Zhang Chengceng, a pathfinder manager, attributed it to the competition of outdoor products market in the white hot stage. A large number of famous sports brands such as Adidas, Lining and Anta have been involved in the field of outdoor products, and the market competition is more intense.

According to the performance forecast issued in July 12th this year, in the first half of 2016, the Pathfinder expected net profit of 94 million yuan, down 24% compared with the same period last year.

Pathfinder needs to bear both the growth rate of sales from outdoor products and the dual pressure of net loss and contribution to travel services.

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Future trouble

As the first share of the domestic outdoor products industry, the Pathfinder has been listed since 2009, and its operating income has increased from less than 300 million yuan to more than 3 billion 800 million yuan, which is obvious to all.

But since 2015, its successive decline in net profit has also become normal.

In 2015, the sales revenue was 3 billion 808 million yuan, which was nearly 121.99% year-on-year, but the net profit was 263 million yuan, and it was reduced by 10.5% over the same period.

In the first quarter of 2016, the Pathfinder achieved a total revenue of 514 million yuan, an increase of 33.87% over the same period, a net profit of 72 million yuan, a decrease of 23.9% compared with the same period last year, and a cash flow of -1.3 billion from operating activities.

Pathfinder expects net profit in the first half of this year to drop 24% to 94 million yuan, compared with 164 million yuan a year ago.

However, the mentality of Pathfinder to throw money into the outdoor ecosystem has not wavered.

At the beginning of last month, the Pathfinder announced the completion of the increase. The 1 billion 270 million yuan will be used in the Pathfinder cloud project, the green field outdoor travel O2O project, the outdoor goods vertical electricity supplier project and so on.

The outdoor goods sector, which has maintained two digit growth for many years, is also not satisfactory.

In the first half of 2016, the revenue growth was only 1%. With the increase of inventory handling efforts, the gross profit margin was slightly digested.

There are also fierce competition and uncertain profitability in tourism services and sports sectors.

Many online travel service providers are still hard to get rid of the current situation of heavy losses, and although there are many opportunities in sports field, they still can not see relatively mature profitability.

Obviously, the Pathfinder is changing to a service platform, but the three plates are still fighting against each other.

From the business level, the "green country China" plan of 300 million of the travel service sector investment will support key clubs to train more outdoor operators in vertical subdivision areas. The sports sector will complete the fund-raising of the first phase of the sports acquisition fund by 110 million yuan, and invest in ice world, Fit Time, Ogilvy health and other projects, but the synergy between different sectors is still unknown.

Reporters learned from the website that the Limited by Share Ltd of the Pathfinder holding group has invested 13 companies abroad, of which 3 involved sports plates, 2 involved travel services, and 8 involved outdoor sectors, including Shanghai Pathfinder outdoor products Co., Ltd.

Insiders also admitted that the mentality of Pathfinder's internal management is not clear, and now the interior is also thinking about how to develop in the long run.

In April this year, Mr. Chang Zhang pointed out that the company's performance was not up to standard in the past year.

From the board members, there are 8 members of the Pathfinder, of whom 3 are independent directors.

Sheng Faqiang, the founder of 5 directors, is the soul of the founder of the Pathfinder company. His wife, Zhang Jing, is also a director of the company and a mountaineering enthusiast. The other 3 directors, Peng Xin and Zhang Chenghe Jiang Zhongfu, have made achievements in the fields of sales, finance and store.

It is not difficult to find that the core members of the Pathfinder board are from the traditional outdoor products sector, and do not involve tourism and sports. The board of directors of the Pathfinder is limited in strategic capability and relies more on the personal power of the strong.

Min Guangya told reporters that from the current situation, the Pathfinder should not have found the best combination point of the three, to integrate the three aspects of the existing customers and potential customers better. The three plates can not be organically combined, nor have they found ways and breakthroughs that can promote each other.

Challenge

Basically, after a rough and low-quality bonus period, China's clothing brand ushered in a new era of shuffling. It is only by digging up the main business and digging out the value chain in the industry that we can find the placement and execution power in the ecosystem.

"It is normal for the ecosystem to fail to do so. The key is to consider how to link up, such as tourism services, and ultimately to do the main business. The most important supporting point is the main business, that is, outdoor products."

Cheng Weixiong, general manager of clothing industry senior observer and Shanghai Liang Qi Brand Management Co., Ltd. believes that in order to make outdoor products more valuable or more extensibility, they can travel to tourism services or sports fields, but there must be primary and secondary products and eventually return to outdoor products.

Yi you has independently developed and upgraded the B2B e-commerce system ETS (Electronic Trading System) with independent intellectual property rights to help small and micro travel agencies develop.

At the same time, easy to travel the world began to B2C pformation, B2C business mode average gross margin level will be around 15%.

The experience center of Yi you world was officially opened in May. At present, the distribution proportion of easy to travel income is slightly larger. In the second half of this year, it will intensify efforts to develop its own outdoor stores to achieve direct sales of B2C (including community business).

In the first half of 2016, the Pathfinder carried out the inventory optimization plan, greatly reduced the futures purchase, strengthened the inventory clearance, and further optimized the terminal store's display, product mix and other operations management.

At the same time, we plan to strengthen stock optimization in the second half of the year, consolidate the operation capabilities of quick turnover, replenishment and flexible supply chain, and hope to complete the target of reducing inventory by 25% by the end of this year.

Previously, Pathfinder also said that we should continuously strengthen product research and development input, innovate the product category according to the needs of consumers, and continuously enhance the user experience, so as to better meet the needs of different categories of outdoor enthusiasts.

The industry said whether the effect is obvious depends on whether the management team and the team have better executive power to land, and how the team should cooperate.

In the same situation, there are far more than one Pathfinder. Many domestic clothing brands are also facing such a challenge as consumption upgrading and industry reshuffle and multiple challenges.

Cheng Weixiong said that although the overall growth of garment enterprises is weak, why there are many new brands rising every year? Because there is still room for the market, but many enterprises forget or do not have the ability to excavate and stretch effectively in the industrial value chain.