Replay after defeat: When Daily Youxian puts on red dancing shoes

Interview | Li Shiyun Su Zihua
Text | Wei Shijie Li Shiyun
Editor | Wei Shijie

On July 28 this year, the first fresh food e-commerce company Daily Youxian, which has raised more than 14 billion yuan, officially announced that it will close the instant delivery business with over 95% of its revenue. At the same time, Daily Youxian faced a delisting warning, owed more than 2 billion yuan in payments due to suppliers, and about 900 employees were suddenly informed that the company was “dissolved in situ”.

After reviewing the development process of Daily Youxian, you will find that the company has always stayed in the mental model of “capital chips for the market” – since its establishment, Daily Youxian has been unable to stop using coupons and discounts to exchange for users. – This behavior continued for many years.

The founder Xu Zheng seemed to believe that as long as he had enough chips, he could burn through a market, build a large-scale model, and crush all opponents in one fell swoop.

Even in the era of abundant capital, this is a road that cannot be turned back. Over the past few years, Daily Youxian seems to have put on the pair of “red dancing shoes” in Andersen’s fairy tale, constantly repeating the cycle of burning money, lacking money, relying on data financing, burning money again, lacking money again, and seeking financing again. It couldn’t get rid of it until it went public.

This not only caused the entire local fresh food track to panic, but also became a footnote to the end of an era in terms of entrepreneurial methodology, a classic case worthy of a profound review.

01 $450 million in “chips” and winning tickets

Looking back now, employee Chen Qinglin felt that the weak foreshadowing of the strong man had long been buried.

It was the second half of 2018, and fish and shrimp delivered by Dingdong Maicai began to appear on the tables of Shanghai citizens. The cold chain of aquatic products has always been a difficulty in the fresh food industry: high loss, difficult storage, and higher food The risks that may arise from safety standards – these have always discouraged the daily fresh food; while the taste of the city of Shanghai has always favored aquatic products, Dingdong shopping has well met this demand.

Not only that, “Ding Dong” was born in Shanghai, and it understands the psychology of the citizens here. The platform will give away a handful of onions or garlic after the user places an order. Although the value is small, it greatly meets the daily needs of users and improves the performance. Experience, creating a good impression of the platform. “(These) may be precisely the thing that sets the (competitive) scale.”

In contrast, Daily Youxian, which has been very successful since its birth, is much more “simple” in terms of user operation logic: from beginning to end, “Youxian” has always attracted customers with high subsidies and discounts, and even at its peak There is an intensity of 100 minus 199.

This is not unrelated to the genes of Daily Fresh. In fact, since birth, Daily Youxian has never struggled to get money. It pioneered the front-loading warehouse model, that is, the warehouse is built closer to the consumer, and the fresh food can be delivered in 30-60 minutes. Co-founder Zeng Bin recalled, “At that time, I didn’t even have time to do the PPT, and the entire investment was negotiated in 10 days. In the following three years, Daily Youxian has completed five rounds of financing of about 3 billion yuan, including Tencent, Lenovo, The most star investment institutions such as Tiger Fund.

At that time, the company did not have a decent opponent, and it was recognized as the first place on the front-loading track. Founder Xu Zhengmei’s resume, fresh food experience in the agricultural project “Joy Wo”, and Tencent’s lead investment have all won more financing than its peers.

In contrast, the financing process of Dingdong Maicai was much more difficult – the founder Liang Changlin had met more than 150 investment institutions within 6 months, and none of them were willing to invest. He was born in the military with firm will and a tough style. He hung a portrait of Zeng Guofan in his office – to imitate his spirit of “building a strong fortress and fighting a dull war”.

get?code=OGM3ZmRkNTViNzJhMDViZTk2OGYyNjV Comparison of the financing process of Daily Youxian and Dingdong grocery shopping | Drawing: Geek Park

Soon, Dingdong Maicai developed rapidly in Shanghai. In the second half of 2018, many investment institutions began to follow up, including the well-known institution Sequoia, and Tiger Global Fund, which had invested in Daily Fresh.

If it is said that Daily Youxian only “despised strategically and attached great importance to Dingdong grocery shopping” before, but now, the latter has begun to be regarded as a real rival by “Youxian”.

Ammunition is in place at this point. In September 2018, Daily Youxian received a $450 million D round of financing led by Goldman Sachs, Tencent, and Times Capital. Chen Qinglin recalled that at that time, Xu Zheng hoped to use this huge financing to “quickly eliminate” Dingdong.

This is strategically understandable. In 2019, Daily Youxian has more than 5,000 front-end warehouses covering 20 cities. In addition, the front warehouse has also been upgraded to version 2.0, the area has been expanded to three or four hundred square meters, and the SKU has been tripled to more than 3,000. The most important thing is that in terms of cash, Dingdong Maicai has only been financed in the A round at this time, with only more than one billion yuan in hand. In Xu Zheng’s view, this is the best time to eliminate the opponent.

A number of interviewees told Geek Park that Xu Zheng himself likes poker, and once said that “junior players only look at winning or losing, and masters look at their chips.” The arrival of the $450 million financing gave him a very advantageous bargaining chip. In March 2019, Xu Zheng personally went to Shanghai to “supervise the battle” and confronted Dingdong head-on. In essence, it was a price war with a budget of 1 billion yuan.

Xu Zheng has received positive feedback on this style of using funds to suppress his opponents. In 2017, the unmanned shelf project “Convenience Shopping” hatched by Daily Youxian eliminated its opponents and won the market by investing a large amount of money.

Following Xu Zheng’s “Ding Dong” order, Daily Youxian hired Jack Yang, the former vice president of growth of Mobike, to serve as CGO (Chief Growth Officer). At that time, Daily Youxian launched large-scale social media and huge subsidies at all costs – this was shown as an unprecedented high loss in the later prospectus.

But this time, Xu Zheng’s high and high fight not only failed to bring the imaginary “disaster” to his opponent, but he got himself into trouble. In July 2019, the daily order volume of Dingdong Maicai in Shanghai steadily exceeded that of Daily Premium Fresh, and indicators such as contract performance efficiency and repurchase rate were better than Daily Premium Fresh. By the first quarter of 2020, Dingdong’s revenue began to be significantly higher than that of Daily Fresh. At the same time, after burning a huge amount of funds, Daily Youxian began to retreat to Shanghai and reduce subsidies. Until April of this year, industry insiders told Geek Park that Dingdong had achieved an absolute share of Shanghai’s share, and “Daily Fresh Fresh can be ignored.”

At the age of 15, he won the first prize in the Mathematical Olympiad. He was recommended to study mathematics at the University of Science and Technology of China in the second year of high school. At the age of 28, he became the youngest general manager of Lenovo’s business unit. At the age of 33, he founded Daily Youxian and was favored by capital. Even if the other party has no relevant business background – for example, let Wang Jun, a CFO from finance, be the head of East China Region, and let Sun Yuanzhu, COO from an investment bank, be responsible for innovative business.

“The problem is that he thinks the elite can do everything,” argues one executive. The advantages of the elite lie in “strong strategy, clear communication logic, and good at summarizing methodology”, but the weakness lies in “lack of practical experience, lack of understanding of business, and even lying if you don’t know the data” – in the “deep water” fresh food retail In the field, such a weakness can be fatal.

The above-mentioned management believes that, for example, the offline retail field is prone to corruption, so managers need to be “grounded” enough, understand the business, and at the same time be open enough (listen to opinions) and meticulous (see problems); On the other hand, managers also need to have enough “responsibility”, which is reflected in not bullying the superior or flattering the inferior – “Some senior officials are good at creating beautiful figures to communicate with their bosses, but they don’t care or even care about practical problems.”

Chen Qinglin has worked in many Internet companies and thinks he is familiar with the rhythm of the Internet, but he also admits that even among many Internet companies, the frequency of changes in the organizational structure of Daily Fresh is still “very fast” – especially in the later period , the decision from the upper level “changes every few days”, and the middle level immediately follows it. This reflects the indecision of management across the company.

In a downwind environment, capital is like a tide, which can cover up the problem. Once the tide receded, problems emerged like a reef.

02 It is hard to ride a tiger

The time has come to the beginning of 2020, and the new crown epidemic has brought new vitality to the online fresh food e-commerce that has already cooled down.

Previously, the industry mainly believed that self-operated fresh food e-commerce could not be accounted for – after deducting the cost of goods for an order, there are still high performance costs (warehousing, sorting, logistics, etc.) and management costs (personnel expenses, etc.) , sales expenses (ground push, etc.) – and fresh food is extremely perishable, and may be lost in the process of transportation, storage, distribution, and return. This makes it difficult for the UE model (single economic model) of this business to be positive.

In fact, as of 2020, the UE models of Daily Youxian and Dingdong Shopping are both loss-making. Dingdong Maicai has an average net loss of 16 yuan per order, and Daily Youxian has a net loss of 21.1 yuan.

“Originally, the capital circle has already been sentenced to death, especially the pre-positioning model. But after the epidemic, the capital circle has become hot again.” An investor told Geek Park.

But at the moment when it should be exerting its strength, Daily Youxian has no cards to play.

Employee Chen Wei recalled that throughout 2020, Dingdong Maicai and Meituan Maicai were greatly subsidizing and expanding offline, while Daily Youxian “actually did nothing.” The reason is that in the whole year of 2019, Youxian Daily lost nearly 3 billion yuan, basically spent the money raised in the previous year, but did not get financing for a whole year. In contrast, Dingdong Maicai received three consecutive rounds of financing this year.

“The rounds of the two are different.” Chen Wei pointed out that in 2020, Daily Youxian has already entered the D round, which is an unfavorable timing compared with its opponents. “After the D round, investors began to consider profitability and operation, and Dingdong is the stage to build scale.” On the other hand, Daily Youxian’s valuation was close to $3 billion that year, “the market can catch Capital is limited.”

Another important reason is that the daily excellent fresh performance itself is not good. Since the GMV reached 7.6 billion yuan in 2019, the GMV of Daily Youxian has stopped growing, and the number of active users and orders have both declined during the same period. By 2020, with the blessing of capital, the GMV of Dingdong grocery shopping (13 billion yuan) will nearly double that of Daily Youxian (7.6 billion yuan).

get?code=ZDc5OTRhMjI1YTc2ODVlMmE3Y2YwOGQ (Comparison of GMV of Daily Youxian and Dingdong Shopping)

A Gome investor who had negotiated with Daily Youxian confirmed this to Geek Park: After reading the model data of Daily Youxian, he believed that it could not outperform. And compared with Dingdong, the overall data of Daily Youxian is even worse.

But the epidemic still “saved” Daily Fresh. During the Spring Festival of 2020, the number of daily orders for Youxian has more than tripled compared with the previous month, and the unit price has risen from 80 yuan to more than 120 yuan. An insider said that was the closest the company has come to profitability since its inception.

With the help of the epidemic , Xu Zheng turned to overseas and state-owned assets when the dollar fund on the market was almost impossible. In July of that year, CICC Capital, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA, from the United Arab Emirates, the world’s third largest sovereign wealth fund) and Suzhou Changshu Government Industrial Fund jointly invested US$495 million. In December, Qingdao Guoxin, Sunshine Ventures, and the Qingdao Municipal Government Guidance Fund invested 2 billion yuan in the Daily Excellent Fresh strategy.

Geek Park learned from the employees of Daily Youxian that on January 1 this year, some employees received a notice from the company asking them to transfer their labor contracts to Daily Youxian Qingdao Branch. As early as when Qingdao state-owned assets entered, in exchange, Daily Youxian promised to set up a national headquarters and branch in Qingdao. The Qingdao Municipal Government, which originally hoped to become the “Internet City” through Daily Youxian, failed to wait for glory, but suffered heavy losses – not only did the transaction price per share drop from US$15.8 to US$0.2, but also received a wave of imminent Employees applying for labor arbitration.

In retrospect (which is also disappointing), CEO Xu Zheng did not seem to have a real reflection from the serious damage to his vitality caused by the previous high-profile fight, but repeatedly demonstrated his love for “ALL IN” gambling. Sexuality – After receiving two “life-saving money” in 2020, Xu Zheng led the “three major battles” in South China, North China and Central China, and once again geared up for “burning subsidies”.

The company has not invested major funds in its own products, and still relies on issuing coupons and discounts to consumers in exchange for users. After the discounts stopped, the unit volume dropped again—for a few years, Daily Youxian kept repeating the cycle of burning money, lacking money, financing, burning money again, lacking money again, and seeking financing again.

Meng Lei, an employee of the daily excellent fresh product line, believes that the daily excellent fresh organization does not have a feedback mechanism. He told Geek Park that the daily premium regulations cannot cross-level reporting. “(So) if you give feedback (problems) to your own leadership, you will be killed.”

Several employees said the company has many experienced retail industry veterans. However, in the eyes of the above-mentioned people, their expressive ability is not good enough to be loved and reused by the upper management. This leads to the implementation of all the receipts regardless of whether the decision is correct or not. In the end, what is reported to the manager is a beautiful “number”.

Chen Qinglin pointed out that in the process of pulling new growth, he noticed that the phenomenon of fraudulent orders was serious. The most serious of them are the Shenzhen and Tianjin markets. “Later the company discovered that many users were zombie accounts and killed many people internally.” It is reported that Yang Yujie, who was in charge of growth, was later transferred to the head of the region and left in April 2021. .

In the view of some managements, the later managers did not fail to discover the existence of problems, but at this time they had already “riddled a tiger”: if the data was destroyed, it would inevitably lose capital support, which would in turn lead to blood loss and make the company more dangerous. situation.

03 “Integrity”

For a startup that has suffered huge losses and has already raised funds in the primary market, going public is the last option if it wants to continue its development. But listing is far from the end, and to some extent, it may also mean tearing off the last fig leaf.

On April 30 this year, it was originally the deadline for Daily Youxian, as a listed company, to submit the annual report of the previous year to the SEC, but Daily Youxian stated that it “couldn’t submit it on time” because “the independent audit committee of the company’s board of directors. “Internal review on certain matters””. For this reason, Daily Youxian received a delisting warning from the SEC.

It is reported that PricewaterhouseCoopers, as the auditor, found abnormal data of Daily Fresh in the audit at the beginning of the year, and refused to sign the audit report for this reason, and it has been delayed until now.

On July 1, in the investigation announcement issued by Daily Youxian, the review of the financial data was disclosed, and it was mentioned that there were “suspicious transactions” in the transactions of the next-day delivery business in the previous fiscal year; “suppliers and There are undisclosed relationships between customers; different customers, suppliers have the same contact information, and some transactions lack logistics information.” The end result is that it has inflated the first three quarters of 2021 by 156 million, 256 million and 263 million in revenue. In the announcement, Daily Youxian specifically emphasized that the company’s management was unaware of this.

The announcement also announced the results of the handling of the matter:The individual employees of the Next Day Delivery Business Department responsible for conducting suspicious transactions have been identified. All employees have given notice of resignation before the end of the review.”

Financial professionals pointed out that “this has been suspected of financial fraud in essence.”

Searching for public information, it is not difficult to find that in terms of data disclosure, Daily Youxian has more than one case of “not being truthful” : in July 2020, the former CFO of Daily Youxian, Wang Jun (who has resigned), was interviewed by the media. Indicates that the company has achieved full profitability in 2019. However, the prospectus released in 2021 shows that the GMV of Daily Youxian in 2019 is only 7.59 billion yuan, and the loss is as high as 2.902 billion yuan.

At the same time, as the lead investor of the E round, Xiao Feng, president of CICC Capital, also said that Daily Fresh has achieved positive operating cash flow nationwide for six consecutive months. However, according to the prospectus and financial report released by Daily Youxian, the daily operating cash flow of Youxian in the first half of 2020 was -745 million yuan.

A securities analyst commented on Daily Youxian, “Whitewashing and covering up the truth is a common method used by many people, but they don’t know that this approach will erode the trust of every shareholder and creditor, and will make you look like a self-deceiving liar. ”

In fact, there have been some financing rumors that are not conducive to Daily Fresh in the venture capital circle in the past two years. “Several institutions originally had intentions, but after due diligence they all gave up (investment).” The above-mentioned person said. According to media reports, in July 2019, DST, a Russian investment agency, sent five people to contact Daily Youxian and met at Daily Youxian’s Shanghai headquarters. But after due diligence, DST did not invest in Daily Fresh, but instead invested in Dingdong Grocery.

It is worth noting that according to the prospectus of Daily Youxian, Qingdao State-owned Assets originally planned to invest an additional 1 billion yuan at the price of the F round of financing within half a year, but finally gave up the subscription right on May 29, 2021.

“The money in the secondary market is not so easy to get.” The above-mentioned person pointed out, “After the listing, the data cannot be whitewashed. If you lose money again, investors will have less confidence.” A listed company CEO once told Geek Park, Going public can only add to the icing on the cake. If there is a problem with the company’s operation, going public will not only fail to solve the fundamental problem, but will only bring more pressure.

Wei Yun, a fruit supplier, said that after Daily Youxian went public, he raised the deposit from the supplier to the platform from 5,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan, but he still defaulted on the payment. At that time, the suppliers he knew basically stopped supplying Daily Fresh. When suppliers run out of stock, consumer orders continue to decline, operating income continues to decline, and a vicious circle of increasingly tight capital flows.

Perhaps it is due to the financial pressure of public announcement after listing, or the company is still seeking financing for blood transfusion and needs data endorsement. There are some signs that Xu is starting to pursue a more short-term business strategy. In the second and third quarters of 2021, Daily Youxian will launch a large number of promotion activities again, aiming to attract new and revive users.

Chen Guo, the regional head of Daily Youxian, remembers that around June, the company set its goal to “build more stores with thousands of singles” – “strive to achieve thousands of orders in each store (front warehouse).” When they were in the store, Chen Guo saw that the ground pushers were delivering eggs, soy sauce and vinegar to users. At that time, the customer service also called silent users to send coupons, “so there were a lot of orders at that time.”

In October, the ground push stopped. Once again, orders fell back as the subsidy ended. This “thousands of single stores” brought about a 58% year-on-year increase in the loss in the third quarter, reaching 974 million yuan. However, this was completely within the expectations of the management. In the previous announcement, Daily Youxian had expected a loss of 3.737 billion yuan to 3.767 billion yuan in 2021, much higher than the 1.589 billion yuan in 2020.

Chen Guo witnessed the sudden change of daily premium freshness from prosperity to decline. In his perception, “it went out of control all the way after the listing.” He remembered that in May 2021 (one month before the listing), Daily Youxian also built a three-story office building in Wangjing Street. In October, the fourth floor was also renovated. But by this time, layoffs had already begun. The fourth floor was sealed. “Afterwards, there were only half (seats) left on the third floor.”

04 Layoffs

The earliest large-scale layoffs began in the third quarter of 2021. Chen Guo revealed that at that time, the production and research teams that did not directly generate business value and had higher salaries had the largest percentage of layoffs. Subsequently, the company started multiple rounds of layoffs in the fourth quarter and early 2022. From February to May this year, all departments of Daily Youxian began to lay off staff according to indicators and costs. “For example, the labor cost of this department was originally 500,000, and it needs to be reduced by 10%.”

As a result, the company reduced its staff by more than one-third, from 1,500 to 900.

Excessive layoffs began to eat back at the company’s business. “I originally thought that by laying off some people, the ‘data’ would meet expectations, but (I didn’t expect) the turnover would also be low,” Chen Guo said.

He found that the order volume of the late front warehouse was even less than 20% of the previous regular order volume. For example, the front-end warehouse with the largest order volume in Beijing could handle up to 2,000 orders last year, but less than 500 orders later.

get?code=OTlkOGM3NjYwMTQ5NzFhMGQ0MTE3ZDd (Schematic diagram of front warehouse mode)

The supplier, Chen Da, told Geek Park that from the end of 2021, the daily premium payment will be slower and slower, and the cycle will be longer and longer. As early as last year, some purchasers with a good relationship with suppliers have secretly told suppliers: stop supplying daily excellent fresh – “The employee said very plainly, the company has no money. There is a way (suppliers) ) has been stopped long ago, and it’s okay to still suffer losses, some suppliers believe in the company, or in order to get back the long-standing arrears, they can’t stop the loss, and they have been supplying until something goes wrong.”

Entering the second half of 2022, Daily Youxian’s office will be moved from Wangjing to Shunyi. The company began to encourage stores to transfer the goods originally stored in the normal temperature warehouse to the vegetable and fruit warehouse (cold chain warehouse). “One less warehouse, one savings.” Chen Guo said. (Isn’t it impossible to put it down?) “I can put it down. Because there are few orders, there are few goods.”

Beginning in June, the company requires all stores to bear the cost of wear and tear of medium and long-term warranty products (with a shelf life of more than 21 days). Previously, this cost was borne by the company. Regardless of whether the goods are damaged or deteriorated, or the number is uneven, once the store manager reports damage, the company will ask the store manager to pay. “(It is equivalent to) forcing the stationmaster to not have any losses. But this is simply impossible. Many store managers have to pay one or two thousand dollars every month, and even a few hundred yuan.”

Chen Guo’s work should have included on-the-spot inspection of the operation of each store. But in the later period, this job gradually lost its meaning – “There is no business in the store, there is no one, there is only one sorting in the store, and one or two riders don’t even have riders.”

In the second quarter of 2022, with the outbreak of a new round of epidemics, Daily Youxian became a guaranteed supply unit, but at this time, Daily Youxian’s capital chain was already extremely tight. Chen Da said that Daily Youxian stipulated a 1:10 payment collection rule to suppliers, that is, if the supply of goods of 10,000 yuan is guaranteed, the previous payment of 100,000 yuan can be recovered, but it was stopped just two days after the implementation. It has become a 1:2 return payment. When it comes to the actual settlement, it becomes a 1:1 payment.

At the end of June, Daily Youxian closed the Speed ​​Delivery (pre-warehouse) business in 9 cities within 3 days. On June 30, Suzhou and Nanjing were closed; on July 1, Hangzhou, Qingdao, and Shenzhen were closed; on July 2, Guangzhou, Jinan, Shijiazhuang, and Taiyuan were closed.

As of July this year, only three cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin, still provide express service.

05 The meeting was dissolved and the account was cancelled

Most employees have no perception of the company’s situation and can only guess the company’s situation from the company’s announced decisions.

At around 3:00 p.m. on July 28, without prior notice, the Feishu group of various business departments of Daily Youxian urgently launched an online meeting. At the same time, all 900+ employees of the company received the same notification:

The company ran out of money, and the original 1 billion yuan investment of Shanxi Donghui Group failed to arrive. The employees were dismissed on the spot, “the work ends today.”

It was the payday promised by the company. The company should pay wages and performance for June, which was delayed on July 10, and should also pay compensation to employees who were laid off in May. The day before, employees were notified that the company had asked to work from home, citing “air quality”.

Before they could respond, employees could only leave messages to ask the most crucial question: what about wages? Will Social Security end? Why use email to contact the company? Since the company’s top management did not attend the meeting, the host said that he did not have the authority to answer key questions.

Just when more questions began to emerge in the comment area – “Our communication today, come here first.” The speaker ended the meeting.

20 minutes later, the employee found that his Feishu account had been cancelled, all the company’s office communication software had been cleaned up, and he could no longer log in.

“We are all mentally prepared,” said employee Zhang Wei. According to media reports, as early as June at an internal meeting, Xu Zheng asked the employees present to “spread more good news and ignore bad news.” Zeng Bin encouraged employees to have confidence in the founding team. As long as the company is profitable by the end of 2022, the company can survive. But the employees knew in their hearts that there was no good news left.

Then, on July 10th, the wages did not arrive on schedule.

18th—Xu Zheng and Zeng Bin resigned as the main personnel of Daily Fresh Company.

The evening of the 27th – the company decided to close the speed business.

28th—All 900 employees of the company were laid off. On August 8, at the Labor Arbitration Bureau of Chaoyang District, Beijing, in Wangjing, Chen Guo, an employee of Daily Youxian, was queuing up at the window to go through the formalities. During the chat, he laughed and laughed at himself: After working for so many years, this is the first time I have had such a situation. ‘s “adventure”.

Wang Ruolin, a senior lawyer at Beijing Zhoutai Law Firm, told Geek Park that if the company’s operation and management encounter serious difficulties, it can be used as a reason for the company’s dissolution. However, the company must set up a liquidation group within 15 days, and use the company’s property to pay liquidation costs, employee wages, social security, statutory compensation and taxes owed. If the property of the company is not enough to pay off the debts, it shall apply to the people’s court to declare bankruptcy, and then the people’s court shall take over the liquidation expenses.

Lawyer Wang Ruolin speculated that Daily Youxian did not follow the normal bankruptcy liquidation process. The above-mentioned investors speculate that Daily Youxian may also hope to take the initiative to privatize and delist. At present, the company received the delisting letter on June 4, and there are still 4 months before the 180-day adjustment period. If you can find a consortium and complete the acquisition within 4 months, you can choose to take the initiative to privatize and delist.

Daily Youxian still insists that the company has not closed down. The company said that next-day delivery, smart vegetable market, retail cloud and other businesses are still retained.

In the eyes of employees, this is a “deception”. These businesses appear to be retained, and employees are actually laid off. What’s more, they account for less than 10% of the entire company’s revenue, and they cannot turn the tide.

According to the data provided by the suppliers, as of June 30, the accumulated arrears of suppliers payable by UFresh every day reached 2.24 billion – even if the investment of Shanxi Donghui Group is received, it is still a drop in the bucket and insolvent.

Regardless of whether Daily Youxian meets the legal requirements for filing for bankruptcy, in Wang Ruolin’s view, lawyers should face up to the current financial situation of the company and try to make up for the losses of all parties within the legal framework – instead of claiming that everything is fine, but putting everyone in the dark At risk, it is the practice of more mature commercial companies.

The day after the dissolution incident, hundreds of employees of Daily Youxian gathered at Chaoyang District Labor and Personnel Dispute Arbitration Institute. It lasted for three days.

Vegetable supplier Xiao Ruizheng entrusted a lawyer to the Chaoyang District People’s Court to sue Daily Youxian. Since December last year, Daily Youxian has owed him 5 million yuan in payment for goods, which has not been repaid yet.

The failure of capital has repeated itself again. After the collapse of Daily Youxian, there has been heated discussion in the industry about the rationality of the self-operated fresh food e-commerce model. Generally, according to industry estimates, a pre-warehouse site needs at least 1,000 orders to achieve profitability. Daily Youxian Chen Guo, the person in charge of a certain area in Beijing, said that Beijing’s front-end warehouse is normally six or seven hundred orders, while a small city like Shijiazhuang only has more than one hundred orders a day at most. This means that in addition to the core first-tier cities, other Cities are hard to run through UE models.

Take Dingdong grocery shopping as an example, only in Shanghai, its UE model is turned positive, and other cities are still difficult.

get?code=NjBkYTBmZjQxMTM2YmIzMDNmYmZhZmE (Comparison of the UE models of Daily Youxian and Dingdong Maicai. Data source: Zheshang Securities)

And Ding Dong shopping for food is also breaking his arm to survive. Since May this year, Dingdong Maicai has also begun to withdraw from the city on a large scale. At present, it has issued a “stop service announcement” in more than ten cities such as Tianjin and Tangshan. However, whether the business contraction can further improve financial indicators remains to be further tested by the market. After all, it is indeed very difficult to directly operate fresh food e-commerce. Even if it is recognized that Pagoda is extremely mature in terms of supply chain and operation, the profit is only one or two percentage points.

For the past two weeks, Daily Youxian’s executives have refused to be interviewed by Geek Park. Most of them have left the company and are starting their own businesses.

Daily Youxian investors also declined interviews. An early investor said, “The media does not pay too much attention to the company at this moment, it is to help the company.”

“Our company has caused you trouble.” After being dismissed, Zhang Wei apologized instead of the company. He was a technician in the supermarket business and joined at the height of the company’s heyday, when the Internet was in full swing. It seems like the story can go on forever.

“At that time, whether it was attracting investment (externally) or the internal environment, (the company) was in a positive state.” He recalled that at that time, he hoped to help Daily Fresh to become better and bigger. Employees at that time also generally believed that “how much effort can be rewarded as much.”

A week before the dissolution, Meng Lei met Xu Zheng at the company. At that time, Xu Zheng was on the phone, and there seemed to be nothing “abnormal”. He didn’t dare to come forward to talk. No one knew then that a week later, the company would say goodbye to employees in this way.

He desperately wanted to draw something from this experience, otherwise it would be too much to say – but in the end he believed that this can only be an “experience”, not an “experience”. “Because you don’t have a way to influence (events) and you don’t have enough information.”

“If you can really see (why the company has become like this),” Wang Fei joked, “you shouldn’t be doing these things here (the Court of Arbitration), right?”

However, he still hopes that he can learn to better observe the state of a company so that this situation will not happen again.

“You think it’s good when you don’t know (the true state of the company),” he said, adding that when people are extremely optimistic about something, it can turn out to be pessimistic, “as it is now.”

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