This is the 1424th original article of the spirit animal.
The emergence of new ideas is precisely the charm of the retail industry.
Author Oriental.
id/lingshouke
New stores are accelerating, and competition is intensifying
Membership store opening accelerates! The right direction, speed is key! Yuan Bin, general manager of the M Club Business Division, said at the online opening of the M Club Changshu store on January 26.
Not only RT-Mart, but Costco and Sam's have also accelerated the pace of opening stores.
In 2024, in addition to the Shenzhen store, Costco will also have a new store in Nanjing. According to the plan, in the first half of 2024, Costco will have at least 7 stores across the country.
In addition, Walmart China revealed that Sam's is also accelerating the opening of stores, and it is expected that 6 to 7 new stores will open every year in the future.
At present, Sun Art Retail M Club has opened 4 stores in Yangzhou, Changzhou, Nanjing, and Changshu, and with the next Wuxi store, Jiangsu has become the base camp of M member stores.
Lin Xiaohai, CEO of Sun Art Retail, said that in the next 2 to 3 years, Sun Art Retail's M member stores will also expand around Jiangsu and Zhejiang, focusing on their own first-class chain radius and advantageous areas. In the next fiscal year (ending March 31, 2025), at least 5 M member stores will be opened.
In addition to first-tier cities becoming a must for super supermarkets, urban supermarkets have also begun to advance to second- and third-tier cities.
Yonghui Supermarket, which has been constantly seeking transformation, plans to open more than 10 stores in Jinan, Shandong, Hefei, Anhui, Baotou, Inner Mongolia and other places before the Lunar New Year. In the first three quarters of this year, Yonghui Supermarket opened 5 new stores, and more than 100 stores have been contracted and not opened.
In addition, AEON, as a large-scale integrated retail and service conglomerate in Asia, officially opened AEON MALL Wuhan Jiangxia Shopping Center on November 1 last year, and currently operates nearly 400 stores of different formats in China, and will open three new shopping malls in Changsha and Hangzhou in the next two years.
Foreign-funded supermarkets are accelerating their entry into China's sinking market. Industry insiders said to "Spirit Beast". For example, AEON MALL Wuhan Jiangxia Shopping Center chose to open in a suburb far from the city center; Lawson has successively stationed in Taizhou, Zhejiang, Dandong, Liaoning and other places; Sam's Club stores have successively opened new stores in Kunshan, Jiangsu, Dongguan, Guangdong, Jiaxing, Zhejiang and other places.
According to Toshiya Goto, chairman of AEON (China) Investment***, the logic of continuing to open stores is that China still maintains a steady economic growth rate, and the middle-income group will also grow in the future. "This means that our target customer base will also grow, and we are optimistic about the opportunities in China. ”
For some foreign-funded enterprises, in addition to being optimistic about China's development opportunities, more importantly, the local government is now attracting foreign-funded retail enterprises and giving quite preferential policies. For example, a company like Costco is no less than the welfare conditions when Carrefour entered China. An industry insider revealed to "Spirit Beast".
In the next 2024, under the urgent need for the accelerated sinking of foreign capital and the transformation of traditional business formats, a new wave of store opening boom will be ushered in again.
The distinctive local character has become the highlight of the new store
At that time, a sentence of "new retail" set off a major consumption upgrade in the industry.
In 2016, Freshippo's king crab entered the store, consumers can taste steak and lobster in the store, high-end goods enter the supermarket, and Freshippo's own riders can also complete the home service.
Jingdong started online high-quality development, BESTORE was built into the Hermes of the snack industry, high-quality ** and flat ** became high-frequency words at that time, and ** grid also became a gimmick on behalf of consumption upgrading.
Of course, this is also inseparable from the background that the Chinese market was in the midst of repeated speculation in housing prices at that time, and the income of the first-line middle class was relatively stable. This has also led some retail companies to mistakenly believe that China's economy must enter the illusion that ordinary people eat king crab every day.
Sure enough, the illusion gave the punishment. Next, the losses of each family are the best evidence.
Coupled with the disruption of the epidemic in recent years, retail companies have begun to return to reality.
Nowadays, this wave of new stores has begun to pay more attention to intensive cultivation in terms of site selection and assessment of ping efficiency ratio, serving consumers with cost performance and quality-price ratio, and has distinctive local customization characteristics.
She Xianping, the relevant person in charge of the M member store, said that the M member store fully excavates local characteristics. For example, the customized dinosaur dolls sold in the Changzhou store, and the local specialty products such as salted duck pizza, Qinhuai River building blocks, Meiling porridge, and duck blood vermicelli soup in the Nanjing store are placed in a prominent position.
On January 15, Yunnan Kunming Century Jinyuan Shopping Center opened the first Yonghui supermarket Yunnan *** with distinctive local characteristics. For example, regional agricultural and sideline fresh products such as Yunnan ham, beef ganba, and gastrodia with local characteristics, as well as Yonghui channel-limited new flavors and new packaging products developed for local consumers in Yunnan, have all been arranged to be put on the shelves one by one.
The addition of additional service areas such as customer rest areas, drinking water areas, and charging stations also reflects Yonghui's focus on providing services around consumers.
It is understood that in 2023, Yonghui Supermarket will successively announce the Sunshine ** Chain Guidelines and Store Optimization Strategy, while retaining the commonality, it will adopt the customized transformation of "one store, one discussion" according to the characteristics of different regions, so that the store will have a more experience, atmosphere and fireworks.
Of course, Yonghui Supermarket's new store 'one store, one discussion' strategy may be refreshing in the replacement of stores, but to truly achieve 'one store, one discussion', many goods will not be standardized, and it is also a very big test for the first chain end. Perhaps local characteristics can be added to the fresh food, and some local food stores can be introduced, which has formed the 'one store, one discussion' strategy proposed by Yonghui. In fact, Yonghui's change pain point is not in this, but in the change of organizational structure. An industry veteran told "Spirit Beast".
However, benefiting from the results of omni-channel digital transformation, Yonghui Supermarket's operating efficiency, profitability and gross profit margin are steadily improving, and the company's net profit in the first three quarters of 2023 is 05.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year turnaround.
In addition, brick-and-mortar stores, such as shopping malls, are also actively seeking change.
Tatsu Hashimoto, the relevant person in charge of AEON Supermarket, also said that after the epidemic, consumers' demand for self-satisfaction is increasing, and AEON MALL Wuhan Jiangxia project has made innovative attempts to create a green retail scene, and is committed to building a "shopping center that pays attention to people and the environment".
The proportion of private brands has increased
There is no opportunity without change, and a fast-changing market means opportunity. In Hashimoto's view, with the changes in Chinese's population and consumption structure, there is still a large demand space for silver, health, leisure and other fields.
Sales of AEON's private label products in the Chinese market are also on the rise.
Today's young people are no longer confined to consignment brands, but pay more attention to quality and cost performance, which is a great change, and also prompts us to increase our efforts to develop our own brand products. Toshiya Goto said.
At present, on the one hand, global retail companies are actively innovating and expanding new business formats while opening stores; On the other hand, in terms of commodity innovation, it will integrate the global ** chain, directly purchase goods from the world's best depressions, and accelerate the development of its own brands.
Since launching its first private label product in December 2022, Sun Art Retail now has 300 private label products, "hoping that the sales revenue of its own brand will have the opportunity to reach 1 billion yuan in 2024." Lin Xiaohai said.
According to Yonghui Supermarket's 2023 semi-annual report, in the first half of 2023, Yonghui's own brand achieved sales of 19500 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 152%, accounting for 464%。
According to the TOP100 Chinese supermarkets released by the China Chain Store & Franchise Association from 2019 to 2022, the proportion of private label sales of the top 100 enterprises is increasing year by year; In addition, some retail companies have developed from simple imitation to R&D and innovation to provide consumers with differentiated and high-quality private label products.
In the era of low-cost retail, in addition to the development of its own brand, how to truly achieve low prices for similar products is a common issue faced by retailers.
When "Spirit Beast" visited the Nanjing store of M member store, the price of the 150-day Black Angus beef sold was basically the same as the 100-day one on the market, and the trick of how to achieve low prices was to "make the best use of everything" - buy out and eat the whole cow.
M member stores will buy the whole cattle that meet the 150-day grain feeding standard for segmentation, and make full use of all parts, such as beef rolls, sausages, etc., to maximize the value of the cow in the true sense, and extend the value of each beef category, so that good quality can be presented through "reasonable **".
Of course, each family has its own recipe. However, self-owned brands, product differentiation, scale advantages, and product selection capabilities are all aspects that all parties focus on building.
The retail industry has been evolving, and it still is, so there are plenty of new ideas. As Charlie Munger said, investing in the retail industry is very difficult. The reason behind the difficulties lies precisely in the continuous evolution of the retail industry.
This is precisely the charm of the retail industry. (Original work of Spirit Animal Media).