Unmanned retail, once referred to as “pseudo tuyere”, has made waves recently.
Recently, Shunfeng’s unmanned retail project “Feng e foot food” has completed financing, and Softbank, CICC and Shenzhen Venture Capital have become its shareholders. Among them, Softbank holds 25%, becoming the second largest shareholder of “fenge foot food”. In fact, as early as 2017, SF entered the unmanned shelf battlefield after Jingdong, hungry and boxed horse were fresh.
According to the reporter’s observation, since this year, many enterprises have picked up the concept of “unmanned retail shelf”. Just recently, Ruixing coffee launched the unmanned coffee machine “Ruixing Rui instant purchase”; In the middle of this month, it was reported that Yuanqi forest was preparing to lay 100000 smart shelves nationwide by the end of 2022; Earlier, aunt Qian launched the unmanned container “food bar”; Daily Youxian also further increases the business of “convenient purchase smart cabinet”; Baiguoyuan also announced strategic cooperation with rabbit mall, a provider of intelligent unmanned container solutions.
After a lapse of four years, how far can unmanned retail shelves get financing and bring the industry back to the spotlight?
01. Survivors in the tide of bankruptcy
Feng e foot food is an unmanned retail project hatched by SF in November 2017. It aims at the fragmentation scene, gradually extends from the focus office to the outdoors, and provides retail food for white-collar workers in first and second tier cities in the form of unmanned shelf terminals. At present, the business covers 28 cities in China, with more than 60000 offline terminals and more than 10 million users.
Fenge foot food official said that in December 2018, the monthly single user exceeded 1 million; In November 2019, there was no profit at the retail business level; In November 2020, the number of unmanned retail terminals exceeded 50000; At present, the sales volume of unmanned retail business and enterprise business has exceeded 100 million yuan per month.
In fact, in 2017, many players emerged in the unmanned retail outlet. However, in less than a year, many players failed, and the fierce war situation gradually calmed down. The survival of fenge food depends on two key turning points. The first point is to adopt intelligent operation and algorithm rules from the second half of 2018. Through the big data system, realize the whole chain insight, including users’ consumption habits and point-to-point labels, so as to continuously stimulate users and combat fatigue. The second point is to adopt the mode of “full-time shopkeeper + front warehouse” from May 2019. It is understood that at present, the full-time shopkeepers of fenge food account for about 85% of the total operators. On average, each shopkeeper can achieve a Gmv revenue of 100000 yuan, covering the management of 30 shelves.
02. Invisible “high threshold”
The outlet of unmanned retail began with the first unmanned convenience store “colorful fruit” opened in Shanghai in 2017. Soon, players from all walks of life entered the market, including Internet giants such as jd.com and Alibaba. At that time, unmanned retail was no different. According to statistics, there were 93 financing events in the field of unmanned retail in 2017.
However, the good times were not long. In only one year, unmanned retail ushered in a “wave of bankruptcy”. Since the beginning of 2018, star enterprises such as Guo Xiaomei, scarlet convenience, Gogo small supermarket and seven koalas have been exposed to losses and layoffs one after another, and the capital has also left the market, leaving only chicken feathers. Both capital and entrepreneurs began to re-examine the new format of unmanned retail, and made such a judgment for the industry: they neither saved costs, improved efficiency, nor created demand. Nobody retailed and became silent.
Some insiders pointed out that there seems to be no threshold for the unmanned shelf. In fact, there are high requirements for the supply chain management of goods and the efficient management of goods on the shelf. It is difficult to manage well without a strong “internal skill”. Moreover, the problems faced by unmanned shelves are far more than profitability. In the process of development, they will encounter a lot of competition, commodity supply chain problems, capital problems and other problems. In addition, due to the relatively low threshold of the industry, it may usher in the disruption of giants at any time, and small players can be eliminated at any time if they lose to giants.
Shan Xinning, co-founder and COO of fenge foot food, once told the media that the difficulty and complexity of unmanned retail are far more than previously thought. This industry seems to have a low threshold, but in fact there are many complex requirements, which is a great test for the comprehensive quality of logistics supply chain, commodity management, operation efficiency and so on.
03. Resurgence of epidemic
Why is no retail “resurrected” now? The epidemic situation is a very critical opportunity.
According to the reporter’s observation, after the epidemic, many enterprises began to pick up the once discarded concept of unmanned retail. For example, Ruixing coffee released the intelligent unmanned retail strategy and launched the unmanned coffee machine “Ruixing Rui instant purchase”; Recently, it is reported that Yuanqi forest is preparing to enter the Bureau of unmanned retail. At present, it has formed a number of teams and internally set the goal of laying 100000 intelligent containers nationwide by the end of 2022; Earlier, aunt Qian launched the Unmanned Container Project “food bar” and opened nearly 100 outlets in Shenzhen and Guangzhou; Daily Youxian also further increased the business of “convenient purchase smart cabinet” and cooperated with nearly 700 enterprises in Chengdu; Fruit retail giant Baiguoyuan also announced a strategic cooperation with rabbit mall, a provider of intelligent unmanned container solutions.
After the epidemic, unmanned retail became lively. Some analysts pointed out that this is because the epidemic has cultivated people’s habit of “contactless” shopping, and some changes have taken place in consumers’ concept because of the epidemic: first, choose places with close distance and few people to shop; Second, buy and go, or pick up goods online and offline; Third, minimize transaction time.
However, whether it is traditional retail or unmanned retail, practitioners are more and more deeply aware that “unmanned” is not the ultimate goal, but a means to reduce labor and reduce costs, and “retail” is still the same essence. For SF, its offline retail layout has not stopped. First, it launched the “Hey guest” online service community store in 2014 to seize the community entrance, but finally closed the store and left due to huge losses caused by blind expansion; Later, it launched “SF preferred” in 2016 to enter the field of fresh and cross-border imported products, but it was difficult to escape the fate of closing the store in the end.
But this time, fenge foot food not only did not die prematurely, but also survived the tide of bankruptcy without retail. However, according to Feng e foot food, the largest expenditure cost is still labor cost. According to the prospective industry research institute, the relevant technologies of the retail industry will be more and more perfect, which will accelerate the “unmanned” of the whole retail industry. How the future will be “unmanned” and how the labor cost will be reduced will be a big test that fenge foot food will face next.
(Securities Times · venture capital exchange)
