Unmanned shelf as a new wind mouth, this year in the capital to promote the red sea, Jingdong, Ele. me, Hema xiansheng and so on have entered the bureau. For now, economically developed cities are still the main battleground, and they are expanding their territory. As an early stage entry, Feng e Food clearly faces many challenges.
First, strong enemies, how to gain a firm foothold?
For SF Express, the first thing to face into the game is a few industry mountains, guoxiaomei has merged with Tomato convenience, small convenience has also acquired 51 snacks. Although the market of unmanned shelves in developed cities is still some time away from saturation, compared with the industry leaders such as Small Convenience and Fruit Beauty, SF Express needs to make a decision on whether to start small or have decided to start spending money to challenge these young industry giants.
Foothold is a long process, for the other is the layout of thousands or even tens of thousands of empty shelves rivals, by merging, layout related forms, may have gradually produce scale effect, scarlet convenience so far has more than 30000 no shelves, and are strive to build a perfect ecological supply chain, intensify efforts to promote technology can assign the proportion, And Guoxiaomei just obtained more than 300 million yuan financing, is in the expansion of the limelight.
In this period of time to enter the field of unmanned shelves, Feng e Foot food assumes only the role of pursuer. On the one hand, SF Express should increase capital investment to catch up with these predecessors in scale by continuous expansion. On the other hand, SF Express has to constantly adjust its model to optimize costs as quickly as possible so as to reach the threshold of profitability earlier.
In the retail industry hit a wall for many times sf Express, can also feel at ease to burn money to fight this tough battle. For the industry strength players such as Small Convenience and Guomeii, their current main strategy is to squeeze the living space of rivals, in order to form their own barrier advantage as soon as possible. Motion as a fledgling intern, I’m afraid to face the unknown difficulties is far more than now, besides many head players in the industry has entered into the second and the third phase of the development of motion in the primary stage to how much potential, will be clutching his pockets and then consider how to get the next step.
Ii. The model is preliminary. Can Fengezushi take the road of differentiation?
Micro unmanned shelf field, driven by capital, the industry model has moved to different directions of development, began to form a diversified development pattern. For example, Yiguo Fresh cooperated with Hami to sell fresh food in the office, and broke the range of traditional retail FMCG products in SKU to further expand the market. For white-collar workers, differentiated selection is consistent with the upgrading of their consumer demand, such as crayfish and other hot products.
After the merger of Small Beauty and Tomato Convenience, they began to expand the scene outside the office, and convenience peak also stepped onto the road of unmanned shelves from convenience stores. Recently, it is a high-profile recruitment of BD, city manager and other positions, with great fanfare. Unmanned shelf field has ushered in a more diversified development situation under the agitation of major entrepreneurs.
And abundant e sufficient food in this magnificent performance show quietly opening, in the mode obviously a little inadequate. According to the introduction of SF Express, the mode of ABUNDANT Food has no particularity. It does not embed intelligent technology like Tomato-based convenience, nor does it have the support of surrounding convenience stores like Hema Fresh Life. It is just a simple O2O transaction process. The pattern is not special, which means it is difficult to escape the existing costs, including labor, supply chain, cargo loss risk, etc.
For example, in terms of manpower, SF Little brother is to use extra time to operate unmanned shelves, or exclusively operate unmanned shelves. If you want sf little brother to squeeze time to operate unmanned shelves, out of stock phenomenon really does not exist? Especially after embarking on the road of rapid expansion, SF Express’s human resources may not be able to withstand such pressure. Once the service fails to keep up with the lack of user experience, SF Express is likely to fall behind.
If it is an exclusive operator, SF Express has embarked on the same human trajectory as other shelves. If it wants to make service differentiation, the cost is relatively higher according to SF express’s service standard. This is obviously not a favorable factor in the early stage of development. So either way, the replenishment model is highly relevant to the user experience.
In addition, other shelves are also starting from the perspective of technology empowerment, such as the development of smart shelves, while Feng E Food is still a blank sheet of paper. If these problems cannot be solved in the early trial run, Feng e Food may soon face development bottlenecks.
Three, lessons from the past, can the conservative thinking of eating enough e be successful?
The experience of SF Express in retail is not satisfactory, from Heke to SF Home and sf preferred, SF Express seems to have failed to grasp the real needs of consumers in the retail development. In the O2O era, SF Express chose a wrong route, which also caused a three-year loss of 1.6 billion.
Now, entering the retail industry, SF Express has paved a new retail road for feng E foot food, or follow suit, still adhering to the “once bitten, twice shy” character? Yan Limin, the founder of Guoxiaomei, once said: To play a good first half of the battle to move quickly, do not hesitate, entangled margin.
Apparently, SF express is extremely cautious, only announced in Shenzhen first unmanned shelves for trial operation. This also shows that SF Express is not full of confidence in unmanned shelf, even if there are two very obvious positive factors in the unmanned shelf field. First, the market is not saturated, and there is still a lot of space for development, especially in the second-tier and the following cities; Second, other unmanned shelf enterprises have walked out of a distance on this road, which can be said to have reduced the cost of trial and error throughout the industry.
If we follow the layout logic of shared bikes, the latecomers are strongly backed by capital to enter the market. However, behind the conservative development, SF Express may indicate that it has not formed a systematic development plan. Or, SF express is still skeptical of the unmanned shelf model, and this entry is just a “trial and error”.
If we look at it from another perspective, at the moment when unmanned shelves have not yet explored a clear profit model, SF Express’s conservative development choice may be the best choice. If it fails, the loss is only skin deep, and if it sees a brighter future, it can lay the foundation for further expansion, at least better than the others.
Four, borrow force doubt, feng e foot food can not have a higher starting line?
Sf Express holds the no.1 position in the domestic express industry, and its advantages focus on the high quality of service is well known. Sf Express ranked first with a score of 84.6, according to the 2016 Express Service Satisfaction Survey results released by the State Post Bureau. And SF Express reported the highest profits in the industry in the third quarter, far ahead of Stone one.
If we summarize the advantages of SF Express logistics, it is fast, safe and good service. If it comes to specific hardware and software, SF Express has advantages in warehousing and transportation. For example, SF Express recently spent 320 million yuan to bid for two Boeing 747 freighters.
But these naked advantages of unmanned shelves may not be too cold. If SF Express’s delivery boys can still smile at door-to-door service, the indifferent replenishment style of unmanned shelves may not make the service advantage play out. Consumers’ focus on unmanned shelves mainly has two aspects: first, SKU strives for diversity to meet the various needs of consumers, small convenience, fruit and beauty have extended the shelf selection range, such as involved in fresh and refrigerated food, which means just the same; Secondly, the price factor, reasonable not exaggerated, so as to form a high cost performance will become a very powerful competitive weapon.
It can be seen that sf Express may not directly bring a positive impact on the layout of unmanned shelf business even if it has the advantage in supply chain layout. Moreover, replenishment of unmanned shelves is equivalent to terminal distribution, which is a recognized difficulty in the express industry, and SF Express will strive to overcome it.
Five, the first Wolf sweep, feng E sufficient food can harvest how much new retail dividend?
Each layout unmanned shelf reached a consensus is: the line flow of harvesting easy. Due to the advantages of unmanned shelves, it has captured the white-collar workers in the office in terms of distance and innovation of transaction mode, and has gathered many users online through O2O trading process, forming a new traffic gathering place.
For the abundant e foot food, unless the location, selection of goods on the alienation of business strategy, otherwise in the flow of the battle, falling at the disadvantage is inevitable. What’s more, the situation is far from ideal, and after offices in first-tier cities have been swept up by “alpha wolves”, there may be few sweet spots left. That’s not good news for Feng e Foodie, which needs to experiment and grow.
The offline traffic of the office may have been in the pocket of other first entrants. In the field of unmanned shelves in the early stage, consumers have even formed fixed consumption habits. For the newly unmanned shelves of Feng E Foot Food, the increase in learning costs may prevent them from continuing to contact new things.
This, of course, is the worst case scenario for a full e-diet. There is also a good case, that is, successfully harvest the unstable flow in the office through differentiation strategy, so as to accumulate a certain amount of online flow and lay a certain foundation for the following layout.
But the timing of entry has always been ingrained in The GENES of E-Full, and the battle to harvest new retail traffic could be worse than the cautious blueprint on e-Full’s development plan.
At the very least, however, the emergence of FSF proves that the company is brave enough to still want to move into retail. For SF Express, the best case is to repeat the “Jingdong under the world ali broke the shell history”, the worst case is to wipe the mouth and leave without leaving a trace, like stripping SF e-commerce, continue to do their own express to go.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110