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A news of the disbandment of Daily Youxian spread widely in the afternoon.
An employee social platform posted a message saying that (Daily Youxian) the company was disbanded in situ, and the internal communication software Feishu and VPN have been disabled. In an online recording of the meeting, a staff member of Daily Youxian said that the time was too rushed, and there was no way to fully communicate sufficient information. Most of them work as of today. The social security provident fund in July is borne by the company to pay, and from August everyone will have to take care of the social security provident fund by themselves.
Prior to this, it was reported that the daily 30-minute speed delivery business of Youxian was shut down nationwide, and only the next-day delivery service remained.
After the news came out, Daily Youxian dived before the market, and once fell more than 40%; it was previously reported that Daily Youxian financing failed to deliver successfully.
All the news was still suspended in the air and waited for the landing. Soon after, Daily Youxian responded to the rumors of “dissolution”, saying that due to business adjustments, some employees resigned. Under the big goal of achieving profitability, the company adjusted its business and organization. Businesses such as next-day delivery, smart market, and retail cloud will not be affected. Due to business adjustments, some employees have resigned. The company is currently actively seeking all possible solutions to protect the rights and interests of employees to the greatest extent.
But there is no doubt that the listing myth of Nasdax is being repeatedly frustrated.
Since the second quarter of this year, Daily Youxian, once the “first fresh food e-commerce stock”, has hit a new low in its share price, which has fallen below $1, which is only 1% of the peak period. In June this year, Daily Youxian officially received the “delisting” notification letter from Nasdaq. In order to supplement its working capital, Daily Youxian has just received 200 million yuan of “life-saving” from Donghui Group through equity financing. money”.
Coincidentally, the current stock price of Dingdong Maicai, a player on the same track, has dropped from the peak of $36 to $5, and it has been shrinking its front lines and withdrawing from many cities one after another. Some analysts believe that the external “blood transfusion” is seriously insufficient, and it is difficult to maintain liquidity.
What’s wrong with the fresh delivery of fresh food that has been broken one after another?
The rain is coming, the wind is filling the building
Daily Youxian and Dingdong Maicai, the first fresh food duo to go public, not only did not enjoy the dividends of the financial market in recent years, but first experienced capital operation failures.
At the end of May, Beijing Chaoyang District People’s Court filed a case against Beijing Daily Youxian E-Commerce Co., Ltd. for compulsory execution of 5.3295 million yuan. Among them, most of the complaints about suppliers come from settlement issues. Some suppliers said: “There is no violation in the business process, but from last year to the present, the payment for goods has not been settled, and the deposit will not be refunded. Fresh contacts can’t get in touch either.”
At the beginning of June, Daily Youxian again revealed that it is likely to leave the Nasdaq in 180 days. In order to ease the tight liquidity and boost the stock price on the line, Daily Youxian recently signed an equity transfer agreement with Shanxi Donghui Group to obtain 200 million yuan in life-saving funds from the latter.
Ding Dong in the Two Swordsmen is also facing struggles.
Not long ago, Dingdong Maicai App announced the “Service Adjustment Announcement” on some user interfaces, the announcement stated: “This site will stop the delivery service, and the community of your site will also be disbanded… From now on, if your account recharge balance If the consumption has not been finished, please use it as soon as possible; if there is still a balance in the account or the green card membership has not expired, you can contact customer service for assistance in refunding or refunding the card.”
The author contacted Dingdong Maicai customer service, and the other party responded, “This is the company’s strategic adjustment, optimizing some urban sites, and the three places of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai are still delivering normally.” At present, Dingdong App shows that there are still 30 operating cities, but its business in Xuancheng, Anhui, Langfang, Hebei and Tianjin will be closed one after another. The actual number of normal operating cities should be 27.
A number of media have previously reported that “from June 15, Dingdong grocery shopping will be withdrawn from Tianjin” and “Daily Fresh’s products cannot even be searched for ordinary products such as chicken wings and pork stuffing.” On social platforms, there are more and more Tucao posts about Daily Youxian and Dingdong Shopping.
After experiencing the neighing of war horses, the story of dazzling and winning came to an abrupt end, and the support of big capital also fell into the sand, leaving only the users who developed the buying habit and shouted “infatuation and wrong payment”.
For example, Xiao Ke, a Tianjin user, recharged the value and accumulated points for the purpose of “smashing wool”, and it became meaningless when Dingdong bought vegetables withdrew from the Tianjin market. The habit of buying groceries online has long been cultivated, how do we break it now?
Today, the double-edged swords of fresh food e-commerce have encountered bottlenecks, and they have to shrink their fronts and retreat to coastal cities. Where did they go wrong?
How a good hand breaks down
In 2017, the new retail concept gave birth to the fresh delivery of “online sales and offline experience stores”. After nearly two years of development, this online + offline operation model has gradually taken shape. It takes the fun of buying chai rice oil sauce vinegar tea in a physical supermarket in the past to version 5.0 – the joy of unboxing, covering all the necessities in life, whether it is fruit, ice cream, or nut snacks, or even steak, salmon. .
The three words “don’t wait” not only meet the needs of young people in various consumption scenarios, but also solve the attachment of household users to “fresh” products. Behind the huge market is the subtle influence of the fresh food platform, which makes consumers form such a consumption habit like “boiled frogs in warm water”.
However, when the major fresh food platforms scrambled for the beach, and the operation was as fierce as a tiger, after taking stock of it, I was dumbfounded: no money! Why does a good hand end up being a poor hand?
[1] Insufficient user stickiness
This is the focus that the fresh food platform does not dare to slack off. However, even if the market size is large enough, consumption habits have been formed, and fresh food platforms increase discounts, they still cannot prevent users from “chasing three and four” in the face of larger discounts on other platforms.
The original target user group of fresh food e-commerce is the white-collar workers who are busy with work and have no time to buy vegetables. This group pays attention to the quality of life, and fresh food delivery can just meet their needs for online ordering and instant delivery. However, as the young generation Z has become the main consumer, their consumption concept is changing. The unstable purchase frequency and the diversity of consumption scenarios are affecting their purchasing decisions and consumption habits on the fresh food e-commerce platform.
【2】Distribution and warehousing costs remain high
In order to satisfy consumers’ pursuit of the word “fresh”, many fresh food e-commerce platforms represented by Dingdong Shopping and Daily Youxian have adopted the pre-warehouse model. Through the large-scale layout of front warehouses close to residential areas, with a radiation range of three kilometers, the “last kilometer” delivery can be completed within half an hour after receiving the order, so that fresh products can be delivered to users in time.
However, after several years of practice, it has been found that the biggest cost of fresh food e-commerce comes from the front warehouse.
According to statistics from the Northeast Securities Research Report, the performance cost of the front warehouse model is about 10-13 yuan per order, and the unit performance cost exceeds the traditional central warehouse e-commerce business by 7-8 yuan per order, and the community group purchase is 9-11 yuan per order. Platform-type e-commerce 5~7 yuan / order.
In 2021, the performance cost of Dingdong grocery shopping is as high as 7.272 billion yuan, including storage rent, quality control, labor wages and other expenses, accounting for 36.14% of operating income. To do a simple conversion, based on the performance of 100 million orders, Dingdong Maicai will bear the cost of 72.72 yuan for each order delivered.
And this 36.14% proportion was achieved after Dingdong Maicai tried its best to increase the unit price to about 60 yuan. In 2018, Dingdong Maicai’s performance costs accounted for about 50% of its total revenue.
The gross profit margin of fresh food sales is usually less than 20%. If you want to continue to reduce the performance cost and increase the unit price of the customer, although it is an effective way, it is not easy. Moreover, the labor cost of distribution is continuing to rise. At present, it seems that Dingdong buy The pre-storage dilemma of Caihe Daily Youxian is still unsolved.
【3】Contradiction between customer order quantity and customer price
In the specific operation process of the fresh food e-commerce platform, the number of customers and the price per customer are also a pair of contradictions that are both tempting and irreconcilable.
From the data point of view, taking the warehouse of Dingdong Shopping in Shanghai as an example, the daily orders for a single warehouse are about 1,000 orders, and the unit price of each order is about 50 yuan. . Obviously, in order to amortize the operating costs of the front-end warehouse and maintain a certain profit, increasing the unit price or gross profit margin is the key.
However, in the fierce competition, not all fresh food platforms can balance the contradiction between “customer order volume” and “customer order price”. Platforms that focus on customer order volume blindly pursue orders for fear of missing every user. quantity. From warehousing, sorting to distribution, in pursuit of speed, distribution costs remain high. The increase in unit volume and the rise in labor costs bring about the consequences of “diseconomies of scale”. For example, Dingdong has a unified delivery fee of 0 yuan for grocery shopping.
This “gathering less into more” sales model failed to bring the desired effect. On the platform that focuses on the customer unit price, Youxian strictly controls the free delivery line to start at 50 yuan every day. Even for new customers, under the premise of discount, they still need to reach the 50 yuan after the coupon, otherwise the customer will pay an additional 5 yuan. Shipping fee.
To achieve a single profit, the number of customers cannot be guaranteed, and it will also bring the risk of a large number of customers losing. This model of locking the unit price of customers, due to the raised threshold, the future sustainable development situation is not optimistic, and the platform risk is increased.
【4】Intensifying competition with rivals
Even if it is backed by a big tree and its vitality is as tenacious as Hema Xiansheng, it is also facing the threat of community group buying.
Like guerrillas, community group buying comes and goes without a trace. It is neither easy to investigate nor predict. In community group buying, the leading role of the group leader as a consumer leader cannot be ignored. There are many shopping groups established by them, and they can deeply reach consumers through the temptation of low prices. Mengmeng, a Shanghai-based buyer, said that she followed different group leaders in the community to buy a certain brand of quick-frozen goods at great discounts, “almost all the flavors.”
In fact, in addition to community group buying, there are many competitors in the fresh food track, and this group of consumers has long been spoiled by merchants thanks to the fierce competition. For example, in Shantou, Guangdong, small vendors in the local vegetable market keep pace with the times, providing customers with one-stop service from killing fish to placing plates, and then to door-to-door delivery.
Undoubtedly, as time goes by, more new competitors will emerge.
The thorns on the road still need to be overcome
As early as 2016, when the concept of “new retail” was proposed, the “leading battle” of fresh food distribution had already begun. However, in the past six years, fresh food distribution has developed from a stage of dazzling and winning to a stage of reshuffling. The question is, can the era of innovation and innovation still come? Let’s look at the underlying models first.
Daily Youxian’s strategy is (A+B)×N, which is (front warehouse+smart platform)×retail cloud service. It seems to be tall, but at present, the game is still a concept. The key question is how to break the profit model? Still don’t understand.
The strategy of Dingdong grocery shopping is to focus on the target customer group and serve these high-quality customers well. It also took aim at the hottest pre-made dishes nowadays.
Hema Xiansheng is following the path of Meituan, but Hema, which is frequently experiencing “store closures”, has the money to continue hoho? In addition, the anti-monopoly law will be implemented from August, and the situation is not optimistic. It seems that the top three giants are all caught in a puzzle, and the other followers who blindly rush forward can’t find the north. So, is there still room for fresh food e-commerce?
Relevant research shows that the frequency of Chinese consumers buying fresh food is 3 times a week, and the demand for fruits and vegetables reaches 4.48 times a week, which is more than 2.5 times higher than the global average consumption frequency, which is similar to Asian consumption. It is closely related to the needs of readers for the word “fresh” to penetrate into the bone marrow. The market consumption scale of fresh food e-commerce continues to expand, which shows that there is still room for development.
However, “new retail” has become an old routine. The fresh food industry is advancing by leaps and bounds, but it is still only possible to use the same quality and low price method to play discounts, from regional customer groups to specific community customer groups, using the oldest method to find the newest customers. After the aura of technology faded and venture capitalists calmed down, fresh food e-commerce companies were found to be swimming naked.
Capital failure affects not only the business itself, but also the customer base that relies on and trusts the platform. As mentioned at the beginning of Xiaoke, it represents the voice of most users. It is indeed “not easy” to be a fresh food platform, but we can also see from the lessons learned that the users are still there, and there are still opportunities. First- and second-tier cities There are still a lot of blank markets worth continuing to explore.
For example, shrinking the front line, focusing on target users, setting up the front warehouse scientifically and rationally, and setting it up for the concentrated area of users in the city and the gathering area of elite white-collar workers. The selection of dishes has been changed from broad to precise, to ensure reasonable profit margins.
In addition, technological development has provided a strong back-up for the new retail fresh food, and big data can obtain the real needs of consumers, making the platform operation even more powerful. Fresh food e-commerce, which is just choked by cash flow, is suffering “life and death”. Whether there is still a chance to find a new balance and bright spot remains to be seen later.
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