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Text |Retail Business Finance, Author |Zhang Yunqing, edLearned.The rapid expansion of the fresh market has attracted a group of "entrepreneurs", and at the same time, the commercialization exploration of express delivery companies has never stopped.
Recently, Zhongtong, a leading enterprise in the express delivery industry, has aimed at the local life market and stepped up its efforts to enter the field of fresh foodOffline community fresh food stores "Zhongtong Selection" and "Zhongtong Youmi City Outlet"**
The former SF community O2O project "Heike" failed miserably, and the fierce competition and multiple shortcomings faced by express delivery companies in the field of fresh food are behind. As for whether Zhongtong can successfully achieve the expansion target of 200 selected stores in the first half of this year, it also depends on the maturity of the single-store model.
On January 12, Zhongtong selected the country's first fresh food store officially opened in Golden Dawn Apartment, Shangcheng District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang. The Golden Dawn Community, where the store is located, is located in the Jianqiao section in the east of the city, with a volume of nearly 1,500 households.
Zhongtong Selection Source: Zhongtong Yuncang Technology***
The first store area of Zhongtong selection is less than 100 square meters, compared with traditional supermarkets and fresh stores, the product category of the store is slightly cramped, and the number of SKUs is only more than 100. The store mainly sells room temperature foods such as milk, eggs, rice, flour, grain and oil, and fresh products such as vegetables, fruits, and fresh meat, but the proportion of fresh products is relatively small, and more are room temperature foods.
According to the staff in the store, the product categories and brands will be flexibly adjusted according to different regions and consumer groups.
Zhongtong Selection Source: Zhongtong Yuncang Technology***
In terms of **, in order to increase user stickiness, the store has discounts, seckills, recharge and other ** activities during the opening period, and the daily ** of the product is also more cost-effective, such as egg 99 yuan 10 pieces, remove the root of green garlic 15 yuan, 1 white radish6 yuan, and the packaged net vegetables** are less than 5 yuan.
According to the store staff, the store's fresh products belong to the form of direct procurement from the origin, mainly relying on the warehouse distribution network and agricultural product circulation network of Zhongtong Yuncang Technology, and plans to build a digital urban distribution platform, open online distribution business, and realize online and offline integrated operation.
Dong Zeyong, head of the cloud distribution division of Zhongtong Yuncang Technology, once said that the cloud distribution sector of Zhongtong Yuncang Technology focuses onCirculation of agricultural products, to provide first-class warehouse, two-stage distribution, one-stop procurement warehouse sales and distribution of agricultural products circulation solutions.
As a brand of Zhongtong, Zhongtong Yuncang Technology and Youmi Technology have begun to try the layout of offline stores, the former launched the "Zhongtong Selection", and the latter launched the "Zhongtong Youmi City Outlet" in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province** The store is located around Shijiazhuang Liberation Square, with an operating area of more than 5,600 square meters, and is the first super discount brand operation center in Hebei Province.
Zhongtong Youmi City Outlet Source: Youmi Network***
According to a previous report by Beijing Business Daily, Youmi Technology has operated a lot of e-commerce businesses in Zhongtong in recent years, such as community**, live broadcast, shopping guide e-commerce, etc., and has also accumulated certain merchant and customer resources in the operation of the private domain of the community.
It is understood that the "Zhongtong Honey City Outlet" project will also accelerate the expansion of the city. At present, there are more than 20 platform-based digital industry operation bases in Youmi, including Xi'an, Nanchang, Changsha and other bases. In the future, regional boutiques or cities will be opened around these bases
In addition, Zhongtong recently upgraded the Rabbit Xi convenience service applet to Rabbit Life +, adding local life services such as takeaways, catering**, and movie tickets to the original express delivery service, and its main business resources come from Ele.me and Meituan.
Rabbit Happy Life+ Source: Screenshot of WeChat applet, 58.com.
Whether it is testing the waters of Zhongtong's selection of fresh food stores, launching the "Zhongtong Youmi City Outlet", or upgrading the local service of "Rabbit Happy Life+", Zhongtong will take a three-pronged approach at the beginning of 2024, and its "ambition" in the field of local life is clearly revealed.
On January 22, the State Post Bureau released data that China's express delivery business volume in 2023 will be 1,320700 million pieces, a year-on-year increase of 194%。Although it has rebounded from the single-digit growth in 2022, it has been slightly weaker than the business growth rate of more than 30% in previous years.
Source: Xinhua News Agency.
The growth rate of the industry has slowed down, and the major express delivery companies have fought a first-class battle in order to compete for this few increments. According to the data of the State Post Bureau, the average of the express delivery industry in 2023 is **9about 15 yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 41%, a new low. The problem of express delivery companies increasing revenue but not increasing profits will be more obvious.
In August 2023, SF Express and Cainiao were listed on Hong Kong stocks successively, and J&T Express was also listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on October 27, and the competitive landscape of the express delivery industry has undergone new changes.
Before the Messi incident (Messi is the spokesperson of J&T Express), as of February 15, 2024, the total market capitalization of J&T was 121255 Hong Kong dollars, the total market capitalization of ZTO is 1139HK$6.4 billion. Obviously, without the impact of the Messi incident, the momentum of the latecomers of J&T will be even more violent, which has brought great pressure to Zhongtong.
Source: Internet.
The express delivery industry is gradually heating up, and the business volume of Zhongtong will exceed 30 billion in 2023, and it is becoming more and more difficult to achieve new increments at the business volume level. Therefore, Zhongtong urgently needs to seek new growth through the second curve, and the layout of the local living market with trillions of space has become a new choice for Zhongtong.
Zhongtong gives full play to its own logistics network and user base advantages to enter the field of local life, and diversifies its operation can not only bring more benefits to the enterprise, but also bring "traffic" to the main business of express delivery, and further enhance the competitiveness and market position of the enterprise.
It is reported thatZhongtong Selection has set a goal of opening 200 stores in the first half of this yearThe scope of stores is mainly concentrated in core cities, including cities covered by fresh distribution centers and related agricultural products, so as to realize the upgrading and transformation of effective business extension.
Express delivery companies layout retail industry, Zhongtong is not the first to eat crabs. Ten years ago, the defeat of SF's "Heyke" convenience store was still heartbreaking, can Zhongtong avoid following in the footsteps of its predecessors?
Ten years ago, O2O was a new wave, and SF Express built its own community convenience stores, and in 2014, it launched "Heyke" convenience stores nationwide, and the number of stores reached nearly 3,000 during the peak period. However, soon, in 2015, there was a wave of store closures in various places, and since then, SF Express has merged "Heike" into the fresh food e-commerce platform "SF Preferred".
Source: Internet.
SF Express chose to divest the loss-making "commercial sector" before listing, and it was disclosed that the sector lost a total of 16 in the first nine months of 2013-20150.6 billion yuan, the reason for the loss is that SF Commercial (SF Preferred and "Heike" convenience stores merged) concentrated on laying offline stores in 2014.
In 2020, SF Express tested the waters of the community** and sold fresh products such as vegetables, fruits, poultry and meat on the mini program platform. In the following year, the community ** platform "Fenghutai" was launched, which opened up the production area and the community store, and sent the origin directly to consumers on the other hand, so as to grasp both ends of B and C.
After that, express delivery companies such as YTO and Yunda also began to get involved in the field of fresh food, but SF's "Hey Ke" case was the first, and they rarely got involved in offline stores, but built an e-commerce platform with an asset-light model. For example, Best Express, which was acquired by J&T, had previously entered offline retail by providing one-stop data management services and acquiring convenience store brands, but the business later suffered operating losses and was abandoned by Best Group in November 2020.
Express delivery companies have tried the waters of fresh retail several times without success, which shows that it is not easy to express cross-border fresh food.
According to iiMedia Consulting, the market size of China's fresh e-commerce industry in 2022 will be 3637500 million yuan, an increase of 16 percent year-on-year7%, and it is expected to maintain high growth in the next few years. In the competition in the fresh market, Zhongtong Selection is facing huge opportunities and challenges at the beginning.
* In the competition in the field of fresh food, Zhongtong Selection not only has to compete for seats with traditional farmers' markets and fresh stores, but also competes with head brands such as Hema and Dingdong Grocery with their own traffic, and must gain a firm foothold in the field of fresh foodThe long board is protruding, and the short board is not short.
As one of the major express delivery companies in China, the biggest advantage of opening a fresh store lies in logistics.
Zhongtong Yuncang Technology now has more than 270 warehouses across the country, and its distribution scope covers 99% of the districts and counties and 94% of the townships in China, which will provide strong support for Zhongtong's selection of fresh stores.
However, being able to do a good job in logistics does not mean that you can do a good job in fresh retail, after all, logistics is only a part of doing fresh retail. The construction of the whole system of commodity production, product selection, procurement, store operation, and ** chainIt is the key to doing a good fresh food store.
Such as:Fresh LegendsWith its own brand, it has developed differentiated products such as prefabricated dishes, "farewell knife" series of fine cabbage products, pastry food and other differentiated products to attract customers, and has a number of direct procurement and planting bases to provide supply, which can ensure low price and high quality on the one hand, and on the other hand, it can also form a brand effect and improve consumer trust.
Source: Wang Wei, founder of Fresh Legend, Circle of Friends.
Another exampleFreshippoWith a mature chain system, it has established more than 300 fresh food chains across the country, and has built 9 chain operation centers across the country, integrating agricultural product processing, finished food research and development, semi-finished product frozen storage, kitchen, and cold chain logistics and distribution.
Figure: Hema Southwest ** Chain Operation Center.
Not only that, Hema also has its own delivery team, which can deliver goods to consumers within 30 kilometers, improving delivery efficiency and meeting consumers' high-quality needs.
Source: Logistics Fingertips.
Whether it is Hema or Fresh Legend, brands that have been deeply involved in the fresh food field for many years usually have rich experience in store operations. From site selection to the configuration of people and goods yards, to the promotion and drainage strategy, old fresh food stores often have a set of mature standardized operation strategiesIt can achieve rapid replication and expansion, and occupy the market first.
For the first time in the field of fresh selection, because the express industry has been in the retail downstream, not only in the professional procurement and investment shortcoming, but also has no right to speak on the product, in today's main "hard discount" in the fresh market, but also lack the advantage of product pricing bargaining.
In addition, although Zhongtong Express has natural advantages in cold chain logistics, fresh logistics is not completely equal to cold chain logistics. The former pays more attention to the packaging and transportation method of the goods, while the latter pays more attention to factors such as the temperature and humidity of the goods. In terms of fresh logistics, Zhongtong still needs to do its homework.
Finally, compared with the "fresh veterans", * at the e-commerce level,Express delivery companies like Zhongtong often lack Internet thinking；**In the next store, due to the limitation of time and space, the store needs to improve the efficiency as much as possible, so the operational efficiency is very importantStore operation is precisely the shortcoming of Zhongtong Selection that is difficult to improve in a short period of time
Zhongtong Selection Source: Zhongtong Yuncang Technology***
It can be seen that Zhongtong cross-border fresh food is difficult to ensure scale and quality in a short period of time, and there is no advantage in terms of supply and quality, so it is naturally more difficult to operate and develop.
But fortunately, at present, Zhongtong has realized its shortcomings in professional procurement and investment promotion. In 2023, Zhongtong Rabbit has launched the Rabbit Xi Business Investment Conference in Guangxi, Hebei and other places. In the field of fresh food, Zhongtong has also successfully helped hundreds of special agricultural products from dozens of places across the country, such as Korla fragrant pear, Luotian chestnut, Yunnan Pu'er, Mengyin peach, Yunnan avocado, Shaanxi kiwifruit, etc., to the national market.
If Zhongtong Selection wants to occupy a place in the field of fresh food, it will face more tests. Whether it can overcome the shortcomings and create a successful sample for the express industry to expand into the field of fresh food will take more time to verify.