Wen/He Jipai Editor/Chen Xiaoping
"Eyes are the window to the soul". In the hot A-share market, eyes are great opportunities for investment.
The representative company, formerly Aier Ophthalmology, has been listed for 11 years, and its market value has increased to 19 billion yuan, an increase of more than 27 times; There is an existing "Opcon", which went public in early 217, and its market value soared more than 1 times in three years. As of July 13, its market value has climbed to 4 billion yuan.
In 219, Opoconvex's revenue was 65 million yuan. The gross profit margin of its main product "Orthokeratology Mirror" reached an astonishing 91%, and the net profit margin was as high as 47%, which just matched Maotai.
The younger myopia has given birth to a lucrative business behind the eyes.
The magical OK mirror is not bad at all.
Opus Vision is located in Hefei High-tech Zone, Anhui Province. Its founder is Tao Yuequn. He is the first college student after the resumption of the college entrance examination, and his major is very high-nuclear physics. He went to the United States to study in the 198s and became the first batch of registered network engineers in California.
In 21, Tao Yuequn, who was in his early forties, raised $5, by himself and returned to China to start a business. Instead of choosing the promising Internet, he plunged into the small business of "Orthokeratology", which was rare for nearly 2 years.
Orthokeratologylens, commonly known as "OK lenses", are a kind of hard contact lenses. Their principle is to temporarily change the curvature of the cornea, so as to correct vision. Users usually wear them when sleeping, take them off after getting up, and keep clear naked vision during the day. The frequency is one to two years.
Tao Yuequn is very careful. He found that the myopia rate of teenagers in the United States is not high, and OK glasses are given a cold shoulder. Teenagers in China are a high myopia group, so he has a lot of room for judgment.
I never thought that the company had just registered and recruited people, and the exposure of OK glasses at CCTV's "3.15" party triggered mass adverse reactions, and some users even went blind. The industry instantly fell into a trough, and Op was implicated. Tao Yuequn once thought about giving up and finally chose to hang on.
The product parameters of OK glasses belong to non-standard products, which are determined according to patients' vision correction needs. Eye examination and standard fitting are necessary processes, and the requirements of technology research and development and production technology are high.
It was not until 25 that the team spent four years researching and developing, and the core product "Dream David" was granted the product registration certificate of orthokeratology mirror, and the business was on the right track. It took another four years for the company to turn losses into profits.
In the meantime, the OK mirror market was very depressed. At one time, Tao Yuequn had to start his old line of IT engineering and even set foot in the real estate field to make money and subsidize R&D..
it was not until around 21 that the OK mirror industry ushered in rapid development, and the performance of optronics rose. From 212 to 219, the company's revenue jumped from 68 million yuan to 65 million yuan, and its net profit increased from 3.9 million yuan to 37 million yuan, with compound annual growth of 32% and 28% respectively. The gross profit margin of its main business, orthokeratology lenses, reached an astonishing 91%, comparable to that of Maotai, and the company firmly grasped the pricing power of products.
In 217, Opcom was listed on the Growth Enterprise Market. According to Tao Yuequn, the company originally had more than 2 million monetary funds on its account, which was "not bad money" at all, and went public "to make a big advertisement".
Because OK glasses are a new industry, in the past, there was only ophthalmology, but there was no optometry (a new interdisciplinary subject that used modern optical principles and technologies to solve visual impairment). The optometry glasses recognized by the public were very simple, and little was known about Opal's products. "We rarely ask the government for policies until we go public, and many people know our existence." Tao Yuequn said.
lenses with a unit price of 1,1 cost more than 1 pieces
Opcom's "myth of making wealth" is related to the high barriers of products.
OK mirror is in direct contact with eyes, and it belongs to the national third-class medical devices like heart valve and heart stent, and is managed according to the medical devices with the highest risk level.
The clinical use and verification of this kind of medical devices must be examined and approved by the drug supervision and administration department of the State Council, and the time period for registration and approval is quite long. The experience and service network of clinical fitting service also need time to accumulate.
the number of players who "work with certificates" in China is very limited. After Opcom won its first "license" for 14 years, it was the only domestic manufacturer with a production license for OK mirrors. The second domestic manufacturer, Ebonord, did not obtain a product registration certificate until 219, during which only a few imported enterprises were approved.
Up to now, there are only 8 approved OK mirror manufacturers in China.
Tao yuequn also flexibly adopted two core strategies: one is to optimize products, and the other is to strengthen channels.
according to the eye characteristics of domestic teenagers, he transformed the traditional OK glasses, and the product optimization is reflected in the correction range, personalized customization and the comprehensive performance of the materials used.
The most important thing is the degree of correction. The developed tear-balanced hydrophilic OK lens allows myopia to decrease by up to 6 degrees, while similar products in the market are usually 5 degrees or less.
The price strategy is also more people-friendly. The price of imported products is usually 1,-15, yuan per pair, while that of domestic products is 5,-12, yuan per pair, which is cost-effective and attracts price-sensitive users.
Even so, OK mirror products have not earned less, and the gross profit margin is still above 9%. In 219, the average unit price of a hard mirror was 1,15 yuan, and the average cost was only 17 yuan/piece.
Tao yuequn also insists that the products should be updated and iterated. "You can't fight all your life by one kind of product", which is a word he often talks about.
The "Dream David" series is the company's core product line. In order to expand the customer base, in 218, the brand of DreamVision was newly launched, aiming at high-end. In the first half of 219, the DreamVision series of daily contact lenses, DreamVisionGP, was released, and in the second half of the year, the same series of circular design lenses were pushed non-stop to attract users with personalized requirements.
Opcon has also developed a number of distributors with medical device business licenses, authorizing them to sell products to specific regions or specific optometry service institutions, and simultaneously sell products directly to hospitals.
since 214, the company has successively acquired or built its own sales channels, established a product marketing network and after-sales service system, and its products have entered more than 9 medical institutions nationwide, with a cumulative user of more than 9,.
in order to expand the business volume, Opcon is also expanding the supporting and peripheral products of contact lenses and building a complicated product matrix.
In 219, the activities were particularly intensive. We registered "Hard Contact Lens Care Liquid", developed cold and hot atomized eye masks, and promoted "wearing glasses holders". We even dabbled in smart wearing and monitoring equipment, hoping to know the wearer's eye state through App. Recently, we set up a drug research and development group to start the research and development of drugs related to myopia prevention and control.
27 million nearsighted young people, the vast blue ocean
2 years of precipitation, Opcon is embracing a broad market.
The number of nearsightedness in China has exceeded 6 million, which is becoming more and more popular. In the age structure of nearsightedness patients, the total number of nearsightedness among teenagers is about 27 million, ranking first in the world. The myopia rate of junior high school students and senior high school students has remained above 7% all the year round.
"On the one hand, the pressure of entering a higher school forces children to spend a lot of time reading, doing homework and practicing examination questions, and the time spent using their eyes at close range increases; On the other hand, more and more technological products (smart phones, tablets, etc.) make children often stare at electronic screens for a long time, which leads to a great increase in their eye intensity and a decrease in blinking frequency, resulting in decreased vision. " Opcom pointed directly at the current education method in the financial report.
The huge business opportunity of myopia correction comes with it.
The mainstream myopia correction methods in the market include frame glasses, contact lenses, surgical correction, medication and so on. The advantage of OK mirror is to effectively curb the deepening of myopia, and it has non-surgical characteristics to avoid potential postoperative risks. In 218, National Health Commission's "Guide to Prevention and Treatment of Myopia" included orthokeratology.
The market for prevention and control of myopia among teenagers has expanded, and the public's awareness, acceptance and ability to pay for OK glasses have been continuously improved. Limited by technical barriers and strict examination and approval, there are only a few people who have been approved to enter this blue ocean market.
Opcon naturally ushered in a good time.
The outbreak of the epidemic in COVID-19 affected the original "peak season" of winter vacation sales, and the income from product orders and optical services was once greatly reduced.
At the annual meeting of the company five years ago, Tao Yuequn set a goal to be "Huawei in the field of optometry" and judged that there would be more than 1 large-scale enterprises focusing on optometry in China. He was interested in pushing forward the "domestic substitution" of OK glasses.
There is a detail in Opcom's prospectus. In April 216, the relevant state departments issued a certificate of reinstatement, allowing Tao Yuequn to resume his nationality in China. Before that, he held an American passport.
However, compared with Huawei's generosity in R&D, some people criticized Opcom for its continuous decline in R&D. In 219, R&D expenditure was only 16 million, accounting for only 2.5%.
In recent years, the focus of Tao Yuequn's work has gradually turned to screening targets and searching for suitable investment opportunities. "The era of a company leading the industrial chain from beginning to end has passed." In May this year, when he was interviewed by the media, he thought that the single enterprise of optometry in China was too small, and "it can be combined by reorganization and merger to give play to the effect of 1+1 > 2".
"In the United States, the scale of eye health industry is far larger than that of eye disease treatment industry, with a ratio of about 7: 3. For Chinese optometry enterprises, there are new opportunities every day, and a good product can often support an industry." Tao Yuequn said.
As far as OK glasses are concerned, perhaps the first thing to be thankful for is that there are so many nearsighted teenagers in China.