Text | understand notes
Delaying service, protecting employees’ rights, breaking the capital chain, and executives’ "running away" ……
From the end of July, the "originator" of the fresh-food home model — — Fresh food every day has always been a negative rumor. A series of "tug-of-war" triggered by its "broken arm to stop bleeding" and the closure of the Speedmaster business have also been staged in many places: gossip, media reports, corporate rumors, and overwhelming news.
On August 9th, according to official website news of Beijing Consumers Association, Daily Youxian was interviewed by Beijing Consumers Association on the afternoon of August 4th because of "unable to operate normally and causing a lot of consumer complaints". Although the official platform gave a notice of service change: "the delivery time is the fastest delivery the next day", the interview also confirmed the rumor that it was "in trouble".
Some analysts pointed out that the three modes in the fresh e-commerce industry — — Pre-warehouse (fresh food comes home), warehouse-store integration, and community group purchase, the pre-warehouse model itself is the most difficult to make a profit, and it is also a heavy cost, which has also become the main reason why the daily fresh food is in trouble; Some analysts believe that there is nothing wrong with the daily excellent "urban sorting center+community pre-warehouse" secondary storage system itself, but discount subsidies and excessive involution in staking, which makes it difficult to return after losses.
Looking at it from another angle, is it a tragic "pit avoidance guide" for other players in the field of fresh food?
Is the so-called pre-warehouse mode of fresh e-commerce a pit?
Take a look at the recent situation of another player in the industry. In addition to fresh food every day, it seems that the previous days were not easy. As early as June, it was reported that under the continuous loss, Ding Dong bought vegetables and withdrew from more than ten cities to survive.
According to the relevant financial report of Ding Dong’s grocery shopping, most of the company’s net loss of 6.429 billion yuan in 2021 came from the front positions in the second and third tier (cities). Therefore, it has to shrink its network channels and close its business in cities such as Tangshan, Langfang, Xuancheng, Chuzhou, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Qingyuan, Jiangmen, etc., mostly sinking the market in the third and fourth lines.
Although the financial report for the second quarter of 2022 (as of June 30) released by Ding Dong recently saw the dawn, it was only a staged victory: the total revenue of Ding Dong’s grocery shopping in the second quarter reached 6.63 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.8%; Non-GAAP’s net profit was 20.6 million yuan, achieving phased profit for the first time. The data shows that the net loss of Ding Dong’s grocery shopping in the same period in 2021 was 1.7285 billion yuan.
So, what is the biggest challenge for fresh food to reach the home market in the future?
"I feel that the more the market sinks, the more difficult it is to do the mode of fresh food."
In 2021, in order to take care of the sick family, Huan Jie (pseudonym), who worked hard in Shanghai for more than three years, resigned and returned to his hometown in Wuhu. He applied to be the operation manager of the local "warehouse-store integration" site, which is regarded as continuing to connect with the "Internet" in this manufacturing-oriented city.
During his work in "Magic Capital", Huan Jie was used to buying fresh products through fresh food. However, after working as a store manager in his hometown for more than a year, he found that the mode of fresh food coming home in small cities was almost difficult to improve.
"In order to seize the market, the price of the fresh platform is cheaper than that of the vegetable market, but few people buy it." He told him that he knew how to take notes. Although the store was located in the city center, the daily order volume of users was less than a quarter of that of a store in the suburbs of Shanghai, and he was losing money almost every month.
In his view:The sinking market "doesn’t catch a cold" about the mode of fresh food coming home, which has nothing to do with the price of products and the local consumption level, but is closely related to the consumption habits of residents. More precisely, it is the "aging" problem of sinking market, which hinders the development of fresh food in small cities.
"It’s not the same as when I was a child. Today, there are many middle-aged and elderly people on the streets of Wuhu, and there are very few peers." As for the reason, Huan Jie explained that, like many third-tier cities, "the siphon effect of big cities has caused local young people in Wuhu to flow out." When communicating with his classmates, he found that the problem of "aging" in Wuhu city is actually quite good, and some cities are more obvious.
According to the statistics of CBN, 149 cities in China have entered the stage of "deep aging". Eleven cities, including Nantong, Ziyang, Taizhou and Zigong, have fallen into the stage of "super aging".
Almost all of these cities are small and medium-sized cities, and they are also "sinking markets" among the Internet population. Huan Jie told those who understand notes that compared with young people who pay attention to convenience, it is difficult for middle-aged and elderly people who don’t like to be "arranged" to accept the mode of buying food fresh at home.
Even if middle-aged and elderly people have learned to buy "industrialized" products with uniform quality on the e-commerce platform, they still insist on the pursuit of freshness of meat dishes. As for the young people in small towns who are used to eating "home cooking", naturally they will not worry about buying food and eating like their peers in first-tier cities.
According to the survey data of iResearch:Among fresh e-commerce users, the proportion of people aged 45 and under is as high as 87.7%, among which consumers under 35 account for 57.7%. It can be seen that no matter what segmentation mode of fresh e-commerce, the main consumers are young users..
As for the mode of returning home with heavy stores and heavy pre-warehouses, in the sinking market with serious "aging", it is completely the rhythm of "persuasion".
Obviously, this is also the reason why when the mainstream fresh food platform "breaks the wrist to stop bleeding", it is the reason why the business in small cities is closed first.
"It is difficult for fresh food to gain a foothold in small and medium-sized cities. These big platforms are not unclear."
Talking about the topic of "sinking the market" when fresh food comes home, Chen Yu (pseudonym), who used to be the regional operation manager of a fresh food platform, believes that the chicken feathers left by the fresh e-commerce industry are the result of excessive competition and blind profit-seeking of capital in the industry in recent years.
Under the influence of the epidemic, the fresh e-commerce industry, which was almost "cool" a few years ago, started a new round of expansion in Zhang Zhilu, which was originally "rolled up" in the big platforms of first-tier cities, and all of them sank to the third-and fourth-tier cities after 2020 to tap new incremental users.
"At the end of last year, our platform planned to fully deploy third-tier cities. At that time, after a series of market research with my team, I felt that it was not suitable, so I suggested suspending the plan. But in the end, the top management decided to rush to more than a dozen small and medium-sized cities. " Chen Yu said that at that time, competitors were constantly sinking, and the boss naturally couldn’t sit still.
Regardless of whether there is an "aging" problem in small and medium-sized cities and whether there is sufficient demand for the home-based mode of fresh e-commerce, all kinds of entrepreneurs and platforms are rushing to small and medium-sized cities, scrambling to burn money subsidies, just to cultivate new consumer demand. Behind this, there is the fuel of capital, and there are also operators who are blindly optimistic and eager to race before the formation of new consumption trends.
"At the peak of industry expansion, like the third-tier cities like my hometown Qingyuan, there were four or five fresh e-commerce platforms, of which two were fresh at home, which was to fight with the community group buying platform at low prices." At that time, the fresh "bubble" and false data created by burning money will only make investors more excited.
The Beijing News reported that as of February 2021, there were 17,000 fresh e-commerce related enterprises in China, mainly distributed in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong and other regions. Among them, the number of fresh e-commerce enterprises in Guangdong Province is 4,495, ranking first in the country.
Chen Yu told me that she knew how to take notes. Because the company’s fresh food platform sank in small and medium-sized cities in an all-round way, the sales performance was not bad. At an internal meeting, the company’s senior management accused her of "not doing a solid job in the previous market research", which almost made the company miss the sinking market blue ocean, which made her very speechless.
"In the previous field of fresh e-commerce, no matter whether it was a group purchase in the community or a fresh home, almost all of them were making money at a loss. Everyone wanted to win a bonus hunter. As long as the price was low enough and the subsidies were embarrassing enough, users of any age would flock to the queue to take advantage of it." It can be said that low prices and subsidies are the magic weapon for fresh e-commerce to open the sinking market, but at the same time they are also the shackles for realizing profitability.
In Chen Yu’s eyes, compared with the community group buying mode that only one community leader can open up the market, this fresh-food home-to-home mode, which relies heavily on "warehouse-store integration" or "pre-warehouse", is the least qualified to participate in the low-price war of fresh-food e-commerce industry.
"Although the front warehouses and front stores can join and cooperate, in order to ensure the quality of fresh food to the greatest extent, the platform should fully guarantee that the front warehouses and stores in the core of the city are self-operated, which is a huge investment. There are few self-operated warehouses and franchise warehouses every day, and all the food purchases are self-operated, and everyone’s burden is very heavy. "
Obviously, fresh food with high operating costs has no chance of winning in the battle between sinking market and community group buying.
Then, can we save ourselves in the crisis of survival by giving up the platform of "stopping bleeding with broken arms" in small and medium-sized cities?
Different from Daily Youxian, which is riddled with negative news, Ding Dong, who has bought food in advance, has shown that its income growth rate has not declined in the last two quarters, while its losses have steadily narrowed.
Some analysts told me that knowing how to take notes was the result of "optimizing operational efficiency". From the previous fight for scale, grabbing the market and fighting for subsidies to the optimization of regional layout, the operating cost has just been reduced.
However, in the eyes of some people in the industry, even if these platforms "stop bleeding" and return to rationality (for example, the daily fresh food is changed to the "cloud super sale" mode), and the main energy is focused on the first-tier key cities, it is still not a simple matter to turn losses into profits.
Especially in the current situation that the supply chain system of community group purchase and fresh food to home platform is mature and perfect, it is almost impossible to squeeze out more profits in the supply chain. Therefore, each platform can only increase the premium of fresh products, thus increasing the gross profit margin.
"Our company’s current practice is to emphasize the quality advantage of the home-to-home model in publicity, thus opening the gap in positioning with the low-cost community group buying model and attracting high-net-worth users who have higher pursuit of life to use our home-to-home service."
Moddy is the city manager of a well-known fresh food delivery platform. He told me that he knows how to take notes. In recent years, the trend of "getting worse and worse" of fresh food delivery and "the originator of pre-warehouse" has sounded the alarm for many colleagues.
Because the "natural" operating cost of fresh food is high, we can’t blindly fight for low prices with community group purchases that operate with "light assets". In his view, the big platform should still take advantage of the good quality of fresh products and high delivery timeliness to deeply cultivate the middle and high-end user market in first-and second-tier cities. This view can also be glimpsed in relevant industry reports:
A report released by Guotai Junan shows that in 2019, before the epidemic, the pre-warehouse was fresh at home, and the unit price of users was above 50 yuan; "Warehouse-store integration" mode, the unit price of customers is as high as that of 65 yuan. The unit price of community group buyers is usually between 30 and 50 yuan.
Relevant survey data released by iResearch show that when shopping online for fresh products, users in first-and second-tier cities and users in low-tier cities have quite different factors: users in first-and second-tier cities pay more attention to fresh quality while consumers in low-tier cities pay more attention to product price.
However, it is not easy to re-establish the "high-end" reputation and attract high-net-worth users to consume quality at once. Especially in the past one or two years, the field of fresh e-commerce has fought a low-price war, and some home-to-home platforms are limited by price and cost, which has continuously reduced the quality of products, which has had a negative impact on the fresh-to-home model.
"In the eyes of many mass consumers, community group buying is no different from fresh food, depending on whose price is low. In the eyes of high-net-worth users, the home platform that grabs the market at low prices is not necessarily high-end, and the results are not pleasing. " Moddy admits that there is still a long way to go before the fresh-to-home model can regain the favor of high-end users.
Judging from the only remaining types of players in the industry at present, the daily freshness of fresh food in the front warehouse is declining, and the grocery shopping and the food shopping in the United States (some cities) are steadily and steadily; The representatives of "warehouse-store integration" are Boxma Xiansheng, JD.COM Qixian, Wal-Mart, etc., which are still step by step; Community group buying representatives, if they buy more food and prosper, seem to be eroding the space left by daily fresh food.
The battle of fresh e-commerce is still unclear.
Some analysts believe that the "rout" of daily fresh food lies in the pre-warehouse mode, and some even completely deny the "asset-oriented" operation of fresh food to the home mode. In fact, the most controllable fresh food comes home in terms of product quality and distribution efficiency, and there is still room for exploration in the business model in the future.
The "decline" of fresh food to the home market is largely related to enterprises blindly striving for scale, sinking the market and blind subsidies. A large number of ineffective costs and expenditures eventually drag down the normal operation of the platform. Perhaps returning to rationality and regaining its position is the ultimate way out for fresh food.
