In mid-April, the sports social platform keep was rumored to be planning to file a prospectus with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) at the end of the month, or go public in July this year.
At the same time, keep is facing a decline in traffic, commercialization transformation failure and other difficulties. As a unicorn with the same “tool” origin, the development path of keep, which is mainly a “fitness economy”, seems to be following the curve of Meitu, which is mainly a “beauty economy”. After the latter was listed, it was caught in the competition of smartphone manufacturers and a host of super rivals such as Shake and Fast Duo, and its share price, traffic and performance fell again and again, only to pull up a little bit of market value this year by virtue of the titillating operation of speculation. But in the era of “beauty economy” being bottomed out by cell phones, its main business has few chances to turn around.
During the epidemic, the cloud fitness concept is popular, bringing a rare wave of growth to keep, which can benefit more than one platform, hardware players Xiaomi, Huawei, short video players shake, fast duo are riding the wave and rise. The transformation is trapped, surrounded by strong rivals, one has to question whether it will not also be difficult to escape the curse of listing that is high light.
The familiar “taste” of diversification
In the era of mobile Internet, most of the tool applications focus on a distinct pain point for users to break the game, such as the past WiFi key to solve the user’s network speed, network costs of the pain point to rise, beauty to solve the user, especially female users “love beauty” mentality and popular, including the mobile era of 360 antivirus. They are simple and direct because of the function, have been the user to hundreds of millions of scale. But with the change of the external environment or competitors’ descending blow, all become yesterday’s “yellow flower”.
At the end of 2014 keep was officially born, its founder, Wang Ning, because the fitness process found a variety of online fitness knowledge “cluttered”, the idea of creating a mobile fitness APP, in order to meet the needs of similar users scientific arrangement of fitness plans. At that time, there were many users with similar worries on the mobile Internet, keep a quick popularity, online 105 days to harvest 1 million fans, share keep running track to the circle of friends, was a very popular thing among the Internet white-collar crowd.
Since its launch, as a fitness APP it has reached a total of 300 million users, with a monthly activity of more than 30 million, and now the circle of friends can still sporadically see keep running punch card screenshots.
Benefit from the birth of the earliest, and along with the industry to grow. keep like the year of the beauty and beauty, WiFi key and network, has been deeply bound to the concept of fitness.
Eight years, keep naturally not willing to just be a “tool man”, with the new business on the line, it gradually from the tool application to the platform application transformation. Now its business map involves live streaming, e-commerce, offline and many other lines, like the Meitu that had a lot of star products such as Meitu Xiuxiu, Meipai and Meitu Mobile.
Today Meitu Xiuxiu’s monthly activity has only grown slowly by 11.6% in five years. Meitai short video traffic in 2019 directly appeared “waist cut” type decline, Meitu cell phone also experienced sold and recovered on the verge of death state.
In a few years, keep is experiencing even worse diversification dilemma. The first impact was on the offline experience store Keepland, which had a low-key trial run at the end of 2018 at the China World Trade Center in Dawanglu, when it was difficult to find a class. A short year later, keepland closed a store in Beijing. Last year, keep also closed three stores in Shanghai, and gradually withdrew from the Shanghai market, only a few stores remain in Beijing “fire”.
In addition to offline stores, which require large investments and benefit from a long cycle, keep also entered the more flexible and faster commercial transformation of fitness catering, but in August 2020, a consumer in keep konjac chili noodles ate black meat worms, directly to build up the reputation “destroyed”. November, a high-fiber protein shake in part In November, some of the vitamins in a high-fiber protein shake were measured to be below the standard value. A series of problems, so keep to take advantage of the flow of the strength of the fitness restaurant brand strategy is blocked, now in keep tmall flagship store can not be retrieved in the food and beverage products.
The hardware and software layout, keep also similar to the rhythm of the metropolis, the launch of intelligent dynamic bicycle C1, keep walking machine W1, keep smart bracelet and other smart fitness, smart hardware category goods. With Peloton’s “smart hardware + content” business model in the foreground, the pace of hardware brings a lot of new imagination for keep. You know, Peloton to sell fitness equipment as the core revenue, accounting for more than 70%. But with Xiaomi, Huawei and even OV and other smartphones striding into the field of big health smart hardware, keep hardware breakout pressure is much higher than Peloton.
Moreover, the price of the bicycle and treadmill sold by Peloton covers US$2,000 to US$4,000, and the profit of the hardware product itself is very high. And keep main several products, the minimum hand ring 99 yuan RMB, fitness equipment price point is also in the upper and lower 2000 yuan RMB, coupled with the general sales, temporarily can not support keep the weight of commercial conversion.
The current keep in the e-commerce achievements are quite good, many goods to achieve good sales, but the frequent quality problems, but also consuming the potential of the business line. 2020 June 17, Jiangsu Consumer Protection Commission informed 10 sports APP, according to the report, Keep Mall sales of accessories such as sports bras, running socks for men, magic headband and other products instructions do not meet the standard situation more .
The three-stage rocket of tool-community-hardware may be the path of keep, Meitu, etc., which is difficult to escape from the development of tool applications by a single point of breakthrough, and from the early years of 360, the effectiveness of this three-stage rocket model in the mobile Internet era began to wane. Nowadays, Meitu has long worn out its “ambition” and indulged in speculation on the “road of no return”.
The younger keep is serving up a similar flavor of diversified transformation drama, when the traffic can not be safely realized, leaving less and less time for keep.
Users who are continuously diverted
Since the commercial transformation has repeatedly failed, keep why do you want to rush to IPO? According to Sina Finance, insiders revealed that Keep has appointed a CFO and recruited an investor relations director in multiple channels.
As a company founded in 2014, now keep is not young, and later founded Poundland has been ranked in the array of industry head giants. If you can’t achieve a breakthrough in commercialization, listing may be another way out for keep to land early.
In mid-January 2021, Keep announced the completion of $360 million in Series F financing, valued at around $2 billion. Since its inception, keep has raised a total of eight rounds of financing, from which it received $600 million.
A series of commercialization exploration although dumb fire, but keep is still the fitness APP NO. 1, according to the official data announced by Keep, as of March 2021, it has accumulated 300 million users, 6 million DAU, 40 million MAU. internal and external factors, keep seems to be the only way to go public as soon as possible, otherwise it is likely to follow the dust of WiFi key, impression notes.
For keep, commercialization is not yet the number one problem, unstable traffic is the first hurdle it has to face. You should know that the fitness thing will not become a regular demand of consumers, most people will only at some time “surprise”, such as young men and women in love, or by the doctor’s warning of middle-aged people, but similar needs will be in the success or failure of the fitness program on the “hidden The majority of so-called fitness programs are “hidden” by a variety of factors.
Most so-called fitness programs “die” within a year for a variety of reasons, and those who are able to continue their fitness programs for more than three or five years are likely to be the strongest in the population with “devilish” perseverance.
There is nothing more representative than what happened to Keep’s daily activity during the epidemic. According to QuestMobile’s survey report, during the peak of the epidemic, Keep’s daily activity user scale rose 60% to 6.13 million. One year has passed, and according to the interview with Keep staff, the number of daily users is still 6 million at this stage. With the recovery of work rhythm and the return of the “fitness desire” brought by the epidemic, it is understandable that the daily activity of Keep has slightly fallen back.
The real crisis in the head of keep is that the fitness function is being integrated by various smart hardware on the bracelet, watch, APP and even content ecology. From Jitterbug continues to squeeze the development space of small and beautiful short video applications such as Meipai, Seconds, and Xiaojiaxiu, the super APP is a major trend, which leads to the vertical applications focusing on a certain point, will continue to lose users under the continuous squeeze of the upstream content APP.
In terms of Meitu, beauty is becoming more common in this era. However, Meitu, which started this wave, has lost ground due to the “popularization” of the beauty function in smartphones and the widespread use of beauty filters in short video applications.
Now, whether Huawei, Xiaomi or OV phones, the system camera comes with a variety of special effects, and beauty is just one of the countless functions. In Jitterbug, Racer APP, pictures, video class beauty effects are also continued iteration, the user reliance on the beauty tools APP represented by Meitu Xiuxiu is becoming less and less. This industry trend of playing low from high is very unfavorable for Meitu, for keep.
Keep basic plate of fitness content, is also facing such a dilemma. Such as last year Apple’s first new product launch in the fall, the launch of fitness services as the core of the new service Fitness + (monthly fee: $ 9.99), integrated fitness, health testing, intelligent plans, music and many other functions. At present, Xiaomi has also gradually launched a number of fitness hardware-related products through its own brands and eco-chain companies, such as Mi Walkers, Xiaomi Bracelet, Xiaomi Watch and NEXGIM Exercise Bike. Xiaomi Sports App has also been one of the main applications to achieve human-computer interaction with Xiaomi bracelets at present, with about 10 million monthly active users.
Other technology giants, are also coveting the business potential hidden in the big health and fitness category of soft and hard ecology, and the general stickiness of the users they acquire will be higher. To the bracelet, watch close to the “collection”, a large amount of data deposited in these platforms, keep is difficult to dig away from such users.
The most critical thing is that keep’s basic plate is the industry’s most downstream unprofitable thing, which further aggravates the weakness of its defense against rivals. It is reported that Keep’s revenue mainly comes from four parts, including sports product revenue, advertising revenue, APP membership, Keepland sports space.
According to Keep vice president, ecological business leader Liu Dong’s previous disclosure, consumer products have contributed more than half of the revenue for Keep, close to the annual 1 billion a year. Among them, smart hardware accounted for 35%, training equipment accounted for 40%, food accounted for 25%; revenue contribution of the second is the membership; followed by advertising; revenue accounted for the least is Keepland. however, although the consumer goods revenue accounted for more than half, but the actual profit margin is not high, the highest profit margin is the advertising business.
Now keep fitness this market why no giant sent a big effort to kill into, the main reason is also because the cake is too small, just like the beauty of the economy, once the commercial realization of the model is mature, in the field of the upper reaches of the giant, can easily tear the mouth into. Even now the fitness market cake does not attract the attention of the giants, but a variety of bracelets, watches with their own fitness class function, has greatly diverted the original keep users.
Keep accumulated 300 million users, the daily activity is only 6 million, in addition to many users “use that is gone”. Many keep users ran to other platforms is also one of the reasons, and this trend will be a norm.
During the epidemic, the fitness netizen Pamela, nicknamed “Devil Pamela” by her fans, has gained a lot of fans who love fitness, but these fans are not keep a platform to come. On Keep, there are more than 8.5 million monthly followers, and on the B site, the world’s top fitness netizen has a single video with a maximum play count of more than 3.46 million.
4G brought a big trend of high-definition images, which was an “opportunity” for Meitu, but the savage invasion of smartphone majors, Jitterbug and the short video duo of Racer, not only buried Meitu’s bright future, but also diverted the huge user base it had accumulated. After the epidemic, people’s concern about fitness will reach a new level, which may not be good for keep.
The inescapable fate of “toolman”?
The beauty of the economy set off by the beauty of the picture, now almost every cell phone camera comes with a beauty function, as the originator but fell to the fate of constant marginalization. There is also 360 antivirus, now all cell phones are also in the cell phone manager / antivirus function, as the PC era of the dominant, the current mobile Internet world, more and more users no longer need a 360.
Including the red-hot WiFi key, it seems to be unable to escape the spell of “toolman”.
The company’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive range of products and services to the public. Nowadays, when you browse the keep community, a large number of female users update their pictures, which is really pleasing to the eye, but also because of the existence of this phenomenon, many outside people question the suspicion that keep has “soft pornography”.
The actual fact is that the actual web site is a lot more than just a few of the most popular and also the most popular. The 2019 full-year performance data announced by Meitu shows that Meitu users have only 7.057 million monthly activities.
One can see a pattern that most of the communities derived from such tools do not have a long enough life span. The real reason is that, as a seed user, the community is only a secondary function, and the platform is faced with a dilemma. Either lose the tool attribute, or be abandoned by ordinary users because it is too niche.
In the case of Meipai, for example, while Jitterbug and Raptor are frantically “living” transformed, the mainstream content of Meipai is still focused on dancing, singing and makeup due to the beauty gene. As users were attracted to the richer content of fast shake, Meipai had to increase the “dose”, and in mid-2018 Meipai APP was taken offline for 30 days and underwent a complete overhaul, since then there was no chance to turn around.
Keep is facing a similar dilemma, the basic function fitness professional course is becoming a smart hardware normal content, all kinds of bracelets, watches and smartphone manufacturers are forming similar communities, for most white users, the latter simple and direct content is more easily accepted by them. And keep want to build around the fitness of all kinds of graphic, video, live class and other PUGC, UGC content, but also facing the impact of comprehensive short video platform.
For example, videos on the topic of “Jitterbug Gym” on the Jitterbug platform received 510 million plays, and many of them were related to fitness games. During the epidemic, the platform also invited fitness experts and celebrities such as Wang Dongcheng, Jiang Mengjie and Chen Yibing to call on users to do exercises at home, which harvested a wave of attention and traffic.
During the epidemic, Racer also joined hands with fitness experts and well-known organizations to jointly launch a number of “cloud fitness” activities. For example, “Living Room Gym” and “Racer Gym” have invited dozens of fitness experts, and even Olympic champions, through online live teaching, and more than 20 sets of series of sports courses, leading hundreds of millions of old iron “cloud fitness The “cloud fitness”.
Under this combination, keep also began to actively respond, such as this year’s sponsorship of the fifth season of the Spitting Image Conference, and invited stand-up comedian Hulan and female group star Chen Zhuo Xuan, etc. to exercise with users on the platform. Last November, keep even invited Ouyang Nana as the vigorous wake up officer, appearing in Keep Shake Live, using celebrity popularity to help keep out of the loop.
The result is obvious, keep daily activity is not because of the epidemic of “dividends” and continue to rise, and even to use the celebrities and the flow effect of the Jitterbug platform, to continue to break the circle to get attention. This means that fitness content is difficult to keep build a solid moat, once the fast shake or even video number smell the potential of fitness content, easy to power, you can instantly suck away this part of the traffic.
Moreover, the fitness thing for the core users, is something that requires very scientific planning. But for a larger base of white users, simple and effective content is what they really need. And now, keep not only in the fitness program content more and more to professional depth, the community ecology of beautiful men and women, but also invariably to the platform of ordinary users psychological pressure.
In contrast, the fitness hardware comes with the APP content is more concise and direct.
The brand slogan of keep is “self-discipline gives me freedom”, straightforwardly pointing out the essence of the fitness thing, whether the user is self-discipline is far greater than the effect of an app’s complicated content. For most users, the value of keep is just a screenshot shared by their circle of friends, just like a good friend of mine, who hardly uses any of the functions on keep, the screenshot of the track after his morning run is the only motivation for him to use the platform.
From the repeated setbacks in commercial diversification, to the continued diversion of traffic by various rivals, keep is touting 300 million users behind the huge crisis approaching. Before the collapse of the Meitu empire, keep can reverse the fate of the world? The answer may not be optimistic.
Recent Comments