**: A5 Entrepreneurship Network.
Five years have passed since SF City officially became an independent corporatized operation on March 1, 2019. In 5 years, the instant delivery industry has changed significantly. From "delivery of takeaways" to "delivery of everything", under the influence of consumers' demand for "buy and get on demand", the advent of the era of "everything at home" has reshaped the ready-to-match track. In addition to convenience and timeliness, the "upper limit" of the service capacity of each instant delivery platform is being deeply explored.
As an independent third-party company, SF has been continuously bringing "professional and warm" "instant gratification" services to merchants and consumers in the past five years. Especially in the past year, in the face of the outbreak of instant retail, SF City has continuously improved its full-scene, full-distance and full-time service capabilities, built an "infinitely close" service base and value core around merchants, consumers, riders and partners, and continuously consolidated its position as a leader in the industry.
Perhaps, in the second half of the white-hot competition in the distribution industry, SF City has taken the lead.
Technology empowers, efficiency first, "cut" the distance between time and space.
In 2023, instant retail of "online ordering, delivery within 1 hour or half an hour" has swept all kinds of online and offline merchant brands. On the left, it is the practical need of consumers for the "buy now" distribution model of the new consumption life of "instant enjoyment"; On the right, it is the transformation demands of traditional retail and traditional e-commerce in the face of new marketing scenarios such as live broadcast and private domain. The consumption logic of "watching the live broadcast and placing an order at any time" and "buying at any time when you arrive at the destination" makes the distance between merchants and consumers need to be infinitely close.
Therefore, instant delivery has become the basis for the popularity of instant retail, and at the same time, it has continuously strengthened the investment of online and offline merchants in the instant retail model. The empowerment of the instant distribution platform for merchants in terms of service efficiency and performance guarantee has become the key to whether the latter can enjoy instant retail dividends.
For example, Jintao Seafood, a seafood merchant in Shandong, chose to cooperate with SF Express in the same city in the transformation process of "live e-commerce + instant retail", and achieved long-distance fulfillment of "1-2 hours of delivery up to 15 kilometers". This cooperation not only established a business channel of "content live broadcast - instant sales" for Jintao Seafood, but also realized the offline expansion of 30 directly-operated stores in Shandong, Henan and Hebei, and it is reported that the annual turnover has reached 10 million.
Over the past five years, SF Express has become the core competitiveness that can actively respond to the challenges of instant retail, whether it is the continuous penetration of local catering, intra-city retail, near-field e-commerce, near-field services and other scenarios, as well as the repeated optimization of its own on-the-spot distribution capacity network.
Among them, it is inseparable from its self-developed CLS intelligent real-time logistics system, which has strengthened the ability of real-time deployment of transportation capacity and chassis and operation monitoring by injecting digital technology into SF City, making order fulfillment more efficient. At the same time, with the blessing of "four-wheel capacity" and "drone capacity", the overall transportation system has a diversified ecology of "heaven, earth and people", which not only adds scientific and technological genes to SF City, but also makes the service matrix of multi-point delivery, shuttle delivery, and half-day delivery form a multi-capacity scenario and multi-business model integrated scheduling, which realizes flexible coupling in the effective business district and greatly improves the performance efficiency.
According to the financial report for the first half of 2023, the timeliness achievement rate of SF Express's intra-city network has reached 95%, and even during peak hours such as holidays, the timeliness achievement rate does not fluctuate by more than 25%。
In addition, SF City has also been exporting its experience in capacity scheduling to cooperative merchants to help improve operational efficiency. In November last year, SF Express cooperated with 21cake, a well-known bakery brand, to build a capacity management solution for the latter through the "Fengpeiyun" real-time logistics system, realizing one-stop intelligent scheduling of omni-channel orders, helping it to reduce costs and increase efficiency while seizing the instant retail outlet.
In the first half of 2023, the revenue of multiple categories such as pharmaceutical, beauty, and maternal and infant products increased by more than 100% year-on-year; During the 618 period, SF's beauty orders, which had the most significant growth in the same city, increased by more than 259% year-on-year; During the Double 11 period, the number of SF Express delivery orders for all categories in the same city reached a new high, of which the number of beverage delivery orders increased by more than 4 times year-on-year.
Shortening the distance between time and space and getting closer to consumers is also reflected in the "last mile" delivery service provided by SF Express in the same city. Through multiple business models such as "pick-up", "half-day delivery" and "hourly delivery", as well as door-to-door pick-up and delivery, SF Intra-city has made up for the shortcomings of terminal operation efficiency for SF Group and other traditional logistics companies, helping them to upgrade in an all-round way. According to the data, in the first half of 2023 alone, SF's intra-city "last mile" business revenue increased by 53% year-on-year8%。
Personalized customization, service bonus, and actively "occupy" the mind.
The advent of the instant retail era has accelerated the overall "involution" of the ready-to-match industry. "Everything at home" has made instant delivery a part of consumers' daily lives, and at the same time, it has also given various merchant brands enough space to implement service "bonuses" in order to occupy consumers' minds. Therefore, it is very important for all kinds of merchants to create customized and personalized distribution solutions for the refined needs of different industries.
This may explain the internal motivation of SF Express to explore customized services extensively in the past five years, especially for some KA merchants. For example, last year, in response to the capacity demand of Luckin Coffee's popular product "Sauce Latte" during peak order hours, SF City provided Luckin stores with sufficient coverage, dynamic and flexible capacity support through the multi-rider structure of "resident + business district + whole city", and also joined hands with Bawang Tea Ji and Jasmine Milk White to carry out "SF City Tea Delivery", and opened a "one-stop" hot pot delivery program with quality and freshness. Personalized and customized merchant delivery service solutions can accurately connect merchants and consumers at the level of intimate and convenient experience, which not only brings consumers a unique and warm service experience, but also adds color to the user-friendly brand of the merchant brand.
In addition to food and beverage distribution, SF City also provides a full-link fulfillment service system such as warehousing direct distribution, store allocation, and terminal distribution for non-catering merchants in different formats such as supermarkets, fresh food, medicine, digital, and convenience stores, so as to optimize all links in the distribution process and accelerate fulfillment. For example, last year, SF City and Rainbow's Quality Life Supermarket sp@ce jointly explored a new mode of pre-warehouse express delivery, and the surrounding 3-kilometer living circle can be satisfied with the timeliness of 30-minute fast delivery. In response to the upgrading needs of digital medical services, SF Express has also created a pharmaceutical distribution solution of "24-hour delivery on the whole platform, warehouse distribution and direct delivery to stores".
For C-end consumers, SF City has not only continuously extended its business territory such as "helping to pick, buying, queuing and business countersigning", but also strengthened its investment in value-added services such as "Safe Delivery" and "Pioneer Rider". During the door-to-door delivery process of SF City Riders, neat clothing and courteous service attitude ......can be a bridge to consolidate emotions between consumers.
In the first half of 2023, SF's annual intra-city individual active users increased by 50% year-on-year to 18.5 million, and personal business revenue increased by 25% year-on-year4%, from which it can be seen that the professional, fine and warm ready-to-match service has a broad market prospect in the C-end.
In addition, SF Tongcheng also launched a more on-site and ceremonial "festival-making" special delivery service for various consumption hotspots and festival times last year, such as joining hands with Tencent Smart Retail to open a Chinese New Year's Eve dinner area during the Spring Festival, and cooperating with more than 100 big-name restaurants across the country, so that consumers can enjoy a gluttonous feast without leaving home. Post-holiday data shows that this move increased the number of orders for the Spring Festival in SF Express by 63% year-on-year.
Embracing talents, centripetal cohesion, knights are "also" users.
Recently, the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the High-quality Development of the Instant Delivery Industry" was officially promulgated, which clarified that the protection of employees' labor rights and personal safety, together with the career advancement and life demands of instant delivery riders, has become a topic that all instant delivery platforms must face after a period of rapid growth. How to re-examine and protect the value of knights under the reality of deepening user needs and fission of consumption scenarios not only reflects the "people-oriented", but also becomes the focus of the core competitiveness of the ready-to-match platform.
In August last year, SF City released a mid-year performance report showing that its active riders increased to 860,000, which is not difficult to see how attractive SF City's platform is to ready-to-match practitioners. In 2023, SF will invest nearly 200 million yuan in security funds to further improve the security system for rider welfare.
For example, in terms of daily care, SF Express has set up more than 3,000 fully functional "Knight Stations" in the same city** to provide riders with support such as vehicle charging, temporary rest, document envelope collection, emergency rescue, and vehicle maintenance.
In terms of delivery experience, SF City provides targeted personal protection, such as the distribution of heatstroke protection kits in summer, cold-proof materials and cold-proof gift packages in winter, the development of third-generation safety smart helmets and reflective clothing, and the launch of customized products such as rider two-wheeler dash cam and smart car management mobile service system.
In addition, in order to strengthen the knights' corporate identity and sense of collective belonging, SF Express not only carried out knights' symposiums, birthday parties and various festival activities, but also provided online psychological counseling services to the riders. For the health and career advancement of riders, SF City provides a comprehensive welfare system for riders on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has launched the "Ten Thousand Lights Guarantee Plan" and "Rider Growth Plan". For female riders, SF City is the first ready-to-match platform in the industry to launch the "Female Rider Growth Plan".
It is worth noting that September 17 of each year is shaped as the "Knight's Day" by SF City, which will update and release new measures such as knights' rights and interests and career growth, so that what knights say, think, see and understand can be heard, understood, empathized and recognized.
Work together to create, highlight value, and prosperity is matched with "ecology".
According to the data of the Ministry of Commerce, the market size of instant retail is expected to reach 15 trillion, the huge blue ocean has attracted many merchants and instant distribution platforms to actively enter the game.
As an independent third-party positioning for a long time, SF City's operation logic of providing services without business flow not only allows other merchants and platforms to have flexible and active cooperation space, but also enables SF City to have a firm development baseline and write a unique long-term value.
Furthermore, "not only to do services, but also to do ecology", such actions in SF City have been particularly prominent in the past few years.
It is easy to see that in the cooperation with other online e-commerce, live broadcast and other platforms, SF's "circle of friends" in the same city is getting stronger and stronger. Especially in the last year, we have been working even more closely. For example, SF Express and Douyin have carried out capacity cooperation with Douyin for home services such as "** delivery", "hourly delivery" and "live e-commerce", and deeply integrated with Alibaba in multiple scenarios to ensure Tmall supermarket's hourly delivery and half-day delivery services. In addition, SF has also connected to a number of WeChat ecological products, and worked with WeChat to build a new ecology of local life services.
With the entry of multiple traffic giants into the instant retail market, many small and medium-sized brands and offline physical stores and retail stores have also chosen third-party distribution platform support, which is not only to avoid the first business flow of a single public domain, but also has multiple considerations such as brand remodeling, multi-channel layout, and private domain construction. However, SF does not have its own business flow platform in the same city, and the value of a neutral, open, fair and trustworthy platform has become the key to the cooperation between the platform and merchants.
This may also be the reason why SF City can quickly sink to third-tier cities and below, and has a high degree of trust among small and medium-sized merchants. When the right to choose and customize services is returned to the merchants, the cooperation between SF City and them becomes extremely simple, and SF City will only charge for the form of ready-to-match services selected by the merchants, but there is never a conflict between the traffic conversion and order fulfillment effect of the merchant platform, that is, "the autonomy of operation will be returned to the partner".
According to the 2023 semi-annual report of SF City, as of June 2023, the revenue of sinking cities and counties increased by 20% year-on-year2%, and the annual active merchants were 380,000, a year-on-year increase of 27%. The sinking market may become another strategic flashpoint for SF in the next five years.
Finally, let's look back at a set of data from SF's 2023 semi-annual report: revenue in the first half of 2023 is 574.9 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 288%；Gross margin increased significantly to 67% and gross profit of about 38.3 billion yuan, achieving a net profit of 0300 million yuan, turning losses into profits for the first time, and both hit a record high.
SF City has been a corporatized company for 5 years, and has become "the first share of instant logistics profitability" from "the first share of third-party instant delivery". How to break through the "upper limit" of the ready-to-distribute service, SF City gave its own answer.
With the service concept of "infinite closeness", we will continue to solve the key problems in the service process of instant delivery, and embed the requirements of "high quality" into the genes of platform development.
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