Post-00s generation abandon Xinyang, upstream protests against low prices, Jensen Huang gets slapped in the face again.
As a beneficiary of "appearance anxiety," SoYoung also faces its own anxieties.
According to SoYoung's recently released annual report, its revenue in 2023 reached 1.498 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.1%; net profit was 21.3 million yuan, turning a loss into a profit compared to the previous year. However, this was only due to the low base of the company's performance in 2022 and does not indicate a recovery in SoYoung's business performance.
According to the 2023 annual report, SoYoung's traffic has peaked, with MAU declining year-on-year for four consecutive quarters; its booking service revenue was 20.6 million yuan (approximately $2.9 million), a further decline of 21.3% from the already low base of 128 million yuan in the same period last year.
SoYoung's CEO Jin Xing once predicted that "medical aesthetics will inevitably become a lifestyle for the entire post-00s generation." However, judging by the platform's user numbers, in 2023, SoYoung's quarterly mobile MAU declined year-on-year for four consecutive quarters, with Q1-Q4 MAUs at 3.4 million, 3 million, 3.1 million, and 2.7 million, representing year-on-year declines of 22.73%, 14.29%, 20.51%, and 32.5%, respectively. SoYoung's traffic has peaked, and its core business operations are not optimistic—it seems the post-00s generation is abandoning SoYoung.
This report card did not elicit a warm response from the capital market. SoYoung's market value has evaporated significantly, dropping from a peak of $2 billion to less than $150 million. As a beneficiary of the "appearance anxiety" trend, SoYoung's founder Jin Xing must also confront multiple anxieties related to performance, market value, and strategy.
As the largest online medical aesthetics service platform in China, SoYoung's founder Jin Xing is actually a tech-savvy straight man who has worked at several well-known internet companies and founded China's earliest social shopping-sharing community in 2007. Against the backdrop of consumption upgrading, Jin Xing targeted the "appearance economy" trend to establish SoYoung.
Later, SoYoung went public on the Nasdaq Stock Market, becoming the first global internet medical aesthetics platform to list.
Jin Xing has repeatedly stated at various events that he aims to change the chaos in the medical aesthetics industry. In his view, the medical aesthetics industry is a "technology-driven" sector. Although the overall scale of online transactions is still relatively small, issues such as information asymmetry and safety hazards have created significant uncertainty for the industry's future development.
Jin Xing believes that the essence of the medical aesthetics industry is medical delivery. Only by truly entering the industry and restructuring production factors such as doctors, institutions, and medical equipment can the industry's medical delivery standards be improved.
However, SoYoung has recently been repeatedly criticized by upstream manufacturers for its low-price promotions disrupting market prices. Among them, Jinbo Biotech publicly "blasted" SoYoung twice, accusing it of "illegally promoting its Wei Yi Mei products at low prices and disrupting market prices." This also directly contradicts Jin Xing's announced strategic direction for SoYoung in 2024.
In SoYoung's 2024 strategic layout, it will focus on the differentiated needs of medical aesthetics users, with three major strategic businesses—SoYoung High-End, SoYoung Premium, and SoYoung Elite—officially upgraded. Specifically, it will launch a high-end customized e-commerce business targeting high-end medical aesthetics users to help institutions improve service quality and escape price dilemmas.
Although SoYoung no longer separately discloses the number of paid medical institutions, according to its financial reports, the number of paid medical institutions on the platform saw significant declines in Q4 2022 and Q1 2023, nearly halving in just half a year. Moreover, a considerable number of medical aesthetics institutions rely on "low-price" products to attract customers, with the criticized low-price sales of Wei Yi Mei products being a typical example. Jin Xing's new 2024 strategy for SoYoung is facing significant skepticism from the medical aesthetics industry.
As the first listed internet medical aesthetics platform, SoYoung's former glory has faded. Does it still have a compelling future story to tell?
Author | Mumu
Layout | Cathy
Supervisor | Yoda
Producer | No.2 Research
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