With the development of live e-commerce, community group buying and other industries, many physical supermarkets have suffered losses or even closed their stores. Under this node, the latecomers are still investing.
On December 22, Zheng Feng, President of seven fresh food supermarket of Jingdong, disclosed the latest business strategic plan of seven fresh food, saying that in the next stage, seven fresh food will accelerate the national development layout and supply chain construction, and the goal is to enter the first camp of China’s chain retail industry in 5 to 7 years. Zheng Feng said that at present, the first echelon of China’s physical supermarkets is still China Resources Vanguard, Yonghui Superstores Co.Ltd(601933) and Wal Mart.
2021 is the fastest year for seven fresh foods after its establishment. Up to now, Qixian has 47 stores nationwide, operating in 13 cities across the country, including Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Wuhan. Zheng Feng said that in the future, seven fresh food stores will mainly develop in Beijing Tianjin Hebei and Dawan district. From the operation data, Qixian has achieved rapid growth this year. In April this year, the Gmv of Qixian supermarket increased by more than 36% year-on-year and more than 85% year-on-year in August. In terms of profitability, Zheng Feng said that whether a retail supermarket can achieve profitability within three years is usually used as a measure. At present, Qixian supermarket, which has been established for more than three years, has achieved profitability. In 2022, Qixian plans to promote “store warehouse integration”, shorten the moving line of the picker by re combing the picking process and designing the picking environment, and realize 60% to 70% of the orders in less than 30 meters of the channel, so as to improve efficiency.
Qixian plans to expand on a large scale, but from the perspective of overall physical retail, the industry is entering the winter. According to the third quarter financial report, the net loss attributable to the shares of listed companies reached 1.095 billion in the third quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 726.56%.
On the other hand, the recent controversy over the live broadcasting industry has gradually become white hot. Chen Hudong, a special researcher of the Online Economic and social e-commerce research center, previously said that compared with the real economy, the service improvement or employment improvement brought by the virtual economy will do great harm to the real economy. As a new business form of current e-commerce, live broadcasting is gradually “draining” the blood of the real economy, such as pit fee, flow fee and lowest price, to the point where rectification is necessary.
In this regard, Zheng Feng said in an interview with the first financial reporter that the live broadcast itself does not need a label. As long as it can promote circulation and improve the efficiency of the overall retail supply chain, it is worth supporting. All innovation should be based on improving efficiency, rather than simply pursuing traffic and Gmv. If you don’t pay attention to improving efficiency, the direction may deviate. For the development of physical retail, Zheng Feng said that physical retail is still the main force of commodity circulation and has strong vitality. Only in the iterative process, there is an invisible market to promote Shangchao to improve efficiency. If it loses for a long time, it means that the efficiency has not been improved.
Wang Pengbo, a senior analyst in the financial industry of Broadcom consulting, told the first financial reporter that offline retail is a battleground for traditional e-commerce. The reason is that there is a peak crisis in online traffic, and as a bridge and link connecting users, physical stores still have drainage value, including direct experience and user interaction value.
Secondly, from the fresh food industry, giants and hot money continue to enter this market. Wang Pengbo said that the fresh retail industry has broad potential. It belongs to medium and high-frequency consumption of clothing, food, housing and transportation. Users have high viscosity and have the function of driving their own brands, which helps to occupy the minds of users. Therefore, giants continue to layout offline retail and fresh industry to expand the border. In addition to Jingdong’s continuous layout of seven fresh foods, Shunfeng’s unmanned retail project “fenge foot food” obtained round a financing in September this year. The specific amount has not been disclosed. The registered capital of its main operating company, Shenzhen Fengyi Technology Co., Ltd., has been changed from 60 million yuan to 96 million yuan.
Wang Pengbo said that Qixian, as a latecomer, is facing great market competition pressure. For offline retail, if the scale is too small, it is of little significance. Therefore, new entrants need to expand the scale in the early stage, and then make back-end efforts after having a certain scale, so as to reduce costs in the follow-up. As a latecomer, Qixian has to invest first in the early stage, so the biggest risk still comes from the cost. In addition, the back-end supply chain, quality control and other factors need to be considered. The future development of physical retail not only needs to improve the service quality, but also needs to improve the overall digitization.
(First Finance)
