In 2021, when traditional hypermarkets shrink and retreat, membership supermarkets rise against the trend.
New consumption Daily reporter: according to public information statistics, in the past year, China has added 5 Sam member stores, 3 HEMA member stores, Costco member stores, 18 Metro member stores, 1 Carrefour member store, 1 Fudi member store, Jiajiayue Group Co.Ltd(603708) 1, Yonghui Superstores Co.Ltd(601933) 1.
At present, paying member stores are mainly distributed in first tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Among them, Shanghai is the most competitive and has gathered almost all member brands in China.
With the official settlement of HEMA club, Suzhou will become the second city in China with Sam, Costco and HEMA head member brands in addition to Shanghai.
For a time, the quiet Suzhou has become a new position for member supermarkets.
The “Three Kingdoms kill” of the member store: Sam, HEMA and Costco gather in Suzhou
At the end of December, with several orange cold wave warnings, the minimum temperature in Suzhou fell below zero, but the weather was still sunny.
In the sunshine and low temperature, HEMA Club officially opened trial business for surrounding users (members and non members). Although shopping is not open and fresh shelves are not full, Starbucks coffee experience classes, oyster tasting, and opening activities such as sending flowers by members have still attracted many residents to watch, and there are an endless stream of people queuing on site.
It is reported that the property transformation of Suzhou HEMA x member store is from the original Carrefour supermarket, covering an area of 18000 square meters, with 3000 SKUs in the store, and its own brands account for about 40%.
Among them, “HEMA Max” brand accounts for nearly 30%, including a large number of products from direct mining bases. The store will serve customers within 5km of the surrounding area, and continue to expand the service scope through the self-service store of HEMA in the city.
HEMA said that the membership store is the second growth curve of HEMA, which has changed from a “single” fresh store model to a “multi format collaborative development model”. In addition to China’s fresh and base direct collection products, the imported goods in the member stores account for about 30%, covering mother and baby, health care, wine, leisure food, home and other categories.
The reporter of new consumption daily also observed that in the member stores on the upper and lower floors, the commodity categories such as toys, scarves, blind boxes and clothing have been expanded. The three-party pet chain stores and glasses stores owned by Shanghai stores also appear in Suzhou at the same time.
Just 30 minutes away from the HEMA x member store, Suzhou Costco, located on the unfinished subway entrance of line 6 in Suzhou New District Hi-Tech Industrial Co.Ltd(600736) District, is also a shopping scene.
Compared with HEMA x member store, Costco still retains the traditional “warehouse member store” placement form to a certain extent. The storage function of Costco member store with a total area of 50000 square meters and a business area of more than 14000 square meters is more obvious: on most shelves, unopened inventory is stacked to the ceiling.
It is reported that Costco’s Suzhou store has about 4000 SKUs, with 10 ~ 20 SKUs on each shelf. Most of the goods are sold in full boxes, and trial eating of goods can be seen everywhere.
In the most popular meat, fruits and vegetables and food areas, customers who stop to buy often block the channel.
According to the on-site observation of the reporter of the new consumption daily, most of the customers who came to Costco for shopping were families of three, young men and women, many of whom came by car, and some families took a taxi. Statistics show that at the beginning of opening on December 8, the number of new members has reached 70000.
According to the on-site salesperson, since its opening, there has been a lot of traffic on weekends, and there is less traffic on weekdays and Thursdays only.
Lao Zhang, who lives nearby, told the new consumption daily that when he first opened, there were too many people and he needed to make an appointment to queue up to enter. He also opened a membership card at the urging of his wife; Most of the food we buy are roast chicken, cake, bread and so on. We are not interested in foreign brand daily necessities and organic vegetables.
Interestingly, Sam’s old store 40 minutes away from Costco is generally popular.
The reporter of new consumption daily first visited the Sam’s club store Linrui Plaza store opened in 2013. The store is divided into upper and lower floors. The decoration style is the same as Costco. The unopened inventory has been stacked to the ceiling, and there are a lot of tasting activities.
Unlike Costco, Sam’s club does not sell fresh vegetables and eggs. Dairy products are mainly stored yogurt. In addition, it also provides one hour delivery service within 3km around.
The reporter also noted that the customers in Sam’s club store are also a family of three, mainly young men and women, and most of them buy cakes, roast chicken, food material combinations made on site in the supermarket, as well as daily commodities such as roll paper and fruit.
Sam’s club store Mudu store, which has a larger store scale, is still the favorite of customers. In order to buy smoothly, it often needs to wait in line for dozens of minutes. In addition, Chinese brands such as Xi tea and Li Ziqi also appear on the shelves, and the average unit price is 20% ~ 40% cheaper than the retail price.
traditional retail collective layout “member payment”
In 2019, with Costco officially settled in Shanghai, the profit making activities such as affordable Maotai and low-cost luxury goods greatly stimulated the nerves of consumers in the early stage of opening.
For a time, there was fierce discussion on the Internet about whether it was necessary to pay a membership fee of hundreds of yuan and whether it was necessary to buy goods with large weight.
Sam’s club, which entered China as early as 1996, also took this opportunity to catch fire. Strawberries, Swiss rolls, American roast chicken and cakes in the store have become the top ten must buy commodities of online red.
Inspired by this, the Chinese hypermarket brands, which are suffering from internal problems, quickly changed their strategies and began to focus on the paid membership model.
As the parent company of Sam’s club, Wal Mart is the most urgent to transform. Over the past five years, Wal Mart has been shrinking the size of its stores in China.
In early December, just before and after the opening of Costco’s Suzhou store, Wal Mart successively closed four stores in Shenzhen, Wuxi, Chongqing and Taiyuan. In 2021, Wal Mart has closed 31 stores in China, including Wal Mart’s first store in China.
At the same time, Sam’s club announced that there are 36 stores operating in China, and the number of paying members in China has exceeded 4 million. Among them, the number of Sam excellent members with the highest fees in 2021 is twice that of the same period last year, and the paid member system has been widely recognized by consumers.
As early as the end of 2020, Wen ander, vice CEO of Wal Mart China and President of Sam’s club, announced that by the end of 2022, the number of Sam’s club stores in China will reach 40 to 45. According to the number of stores opened in 2021, it is estimated that Sam’s club will open 4 ~ 9 new stores in 2022.
HEMA is no less enthusiastic about membership supermarkets than Wal Mart.
In the middle of 2021, HEMA said publicly that the first member store had achieved profits within two months of opening, with a customer unit price of 1000 yuan and a maximum daily revenue of more than 10 million yuan. With the support of performance, HEMA accelerated the opening of the store.
The information shows that a new member store will be opened in Shanghai, Suzhou and Nanjing on January 1 and 14, 2022.
It is reported that after the popularity of the first store in Shanghai, Costco successively signed landing intention contracts in Pudong, Suzhou, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and other places in Shanghai. But two years later, Costco is still difficult to expand, only opening a second store in Suzhou.
In addition, Metro and Carrefour also said that they would transform their existing stores into member stores to provide better goods and services. Carrefour even proposed to open 100 more member stores within three years, with the goal of “consumers will have a Carrefour member store in 15 minutes”.
Fudi, Jiajiayue Group Co.Ltd(603708) and other “new faces” are also eager to try. However, some online comments said that the new member supermarket brand has many products that imitate Sam, Costco and 7fresh fresh. The selection advantage is small, but the member fees are more expensive and lack their own characteristics.
membership supermarket “blocked and long”
Zhang Qing, chief purchasing officer of Sam’s club, once said that “member first” sounds very traditional, but in the membership business supermarket, it is the essence of this business model.
According to Costco’s financial report data, Costco’s total sales reached US $166.8 billion and net profit reached US $4 billion in fiscal year 2020. In the proportion of revenue contribution, membership fee income reached US $3.54 billion, which was consistent with the final net profit of the fiscal year.
Some analysts pointed out that from the perspective of figures, Costco’s sales of goods and services have gone through a flow, covering the management expenses. Consumers’ Renewal of membership cards is the contribution to Costco’s year-end profits.
According to the financial report data, in fiscal year 2020, the renewal rate of Costco in the United States and Canada was as high as 90%, and there were more than 58 million paying members worldwide.
Therefore, some netizens joked that Costco only needs to serve its members and wait for membership dues no matter what goods it sells. What it earns is not money for goods, but money for services. Costco can eat a lot of “try” links, which is also considered from the perspective of service.
However, it is not overnight to gain the trust and affirmation of customers. Maintaining a stable service level for a long time is the difficulty of the sustainable development of stores.
According to the Boston Consulting Report, China has 67 million middle – and high-income families. With the improvement of the consumption level of more and more families, Chinese people have higher and higher requirements for commodity quality, cost performance and service quality.
Public comments show that the poor comments of Sam’s club in Suzhou mainly come from the poor service attitude of the salesperson and the poor experience of non member open day activities.
Recently, some netizens found that Sam’s Club quietly removed all Xinjiang commodities, and its customer service reply was suspected of avoiding the important and taking the light. This has aroused the anger of many netizens. Netizens who have opened members said they would return their card or refuse to renew it.
However, before the outbreak of China’s membership supermarket, in addition to considering improving the member experience, various forces have launched fierce competition in the supply chain.
At the end of October this year, Carrefour Shanghai member store encountered supply problems on the first day of opening, which affected the consumption experience of some consumers.
That night, Carrefour officially issued a “letter of apology”, pointing to the contradiction that competitors forced suppliers to “choose one from two” and suspected of unfair competition. The person in charge of HEMA member store also said that he had suffered “supply interruption” for a long time. Sam’s club, which is accused of participating in it, quickly sent a document to get rid of the relationship.
People related to HEMA member store told the new consumption daily that HEMA mainly relies on fresh food to attract consumers, and the affected part is small. Such situations are encountered only when expanding new categories. At the same time, HEMA also mentioned that if it relies too much on intermediate suppliers, there may be supply chain difficulties.
It can be predicted that before the real hand-to-hand battle of the membership supermarket track, the supply chain will be the focus of each player’s layout in 2022. The new consumption daily will continue to pay attention.
(Financial Associated Press)
