High cost of fresh electricity business can only make money: Squeeze into the corner of the spring

In order to maintain the "fresh", the electrical business to carry a complex supply chain, high logistics costs, not open market cultivation.

For fresh food, production, storage transport, sales, consumption before the various links in the prescribed low temperature environment, must adopt a "high matching" cold chain logistics.

A love of tomatoes, an inspirational oranges, entrepreneurs, electric business platform, a squeeze into the fresh field, the market appears to be crowded. However, the end of a "1.5 million for transfer" news, a "life of the failure of a fresh electricity dealers experience sharing", opened the health of fresh electricity dealers difficult predicament.

After the spread of the article, the founder of the Ding Jingtao to face the most problem is 1.5 million of the transfer price is not too low? You can't even buy 50 flat houses in Beijing. He has seen dozens of of people in and out of the industry, "it's hard to find someone who is determined to be fresh."

He had a good idea when he started his business. "Like delivery of milk," the goods will be sent to the community, and then through the electric tricycle sent to thousands of households, through the food box to achieve no surface distribution, not "people and other vegetables", but "food and other people." Take the food box can play an uninterrupted advertising effect, reduce customer development difficulty, and increase customer stickiness, a region completes, quickly copy.

"All of this, in the eyes of my it people, is very beautiful, but the complexity of the fresh problem makes this venture a disaster." "2012 Excellent vegetable network users close to 20,000, customer price only 40 yuan, the annual turnover of 3 million."

Fresh is the soul of food, fresh and upright plants, and difficult to replace the smell of sweet fruit, almost the endorsement of quality of life, and in order to maintain "fresh", the electric business to face a complex supply chain, high logistics costs, not open market cultivation. Now, the vertical electric business life and Death line, big platform of the big guys on this difficult problem also helpless, Jindong clearly said, "In addition to fresh class, suning sell anything." And in Ding Lei announced pig Place has been implemented, Liu said, if you can solve the problem of fresh, must let ding lei pig in Jingdong Mall starting. But in the face of Taobao, Amazon, Shun Fung, as well as a tight layout of the vertical electric business, Liu can't wait to "ding lei pig" surfaced, then a section of tomatoes triggered the "love story" opened the fresh channel of the veil.

"Even in large shopping malls or supermarkets, in most products to be self-employed, the raw products of the pallet is also rented out, the fresh industry in the traditional areas are not standardized, how can it be standardized on the internet?" "Electric business observer Ruzenwang judge," The cost of fresh electricity is much higher than offline, so this industry is difficult to attract people, make a little money is no problem, but the dream of the IPO is too difficult. ”

Loss before placing an order

"High-match" logistics drag down the electrical business

"The moment the product is picked up, the countdown to the tension begins. From picking to warehousing generally for 1-2 days, they can be stored in the library for up to 2 days, that is, the entire inventory turnover of 2-4 days, which is already a limit. "Originally Life Network Marketing manager Han Xiaolong introduced, even more easily preserved milk, fresh-keeping period is only 9 days," in the inventory placed to the 5th day, it must be disposed of. Distribution will be delayed 1 days, consumers buy if placed 1-2 days, milk will be broken. ”

Procurement, warehousing, delivery of the entire link must be controlled in the freshness period, these links include fresh picking, transport vehicles to the cold storage, cold storage, consumer orders, order regionalization processing, inventory delivery, the consumer received seven major steps of the product.

For fresh food, production, storage transport, sales, consumption before the various links in the prescribed low temperature environment, must adopt a "high matching" cold chain logistics. And the cold chain logistics cost than ordinary logistics to be several times higher. Backed by nine City group Tuo Tuo 27 million completed the whole cold chain home distribution system, including fixed assets, manpower and other costs, tuo tuo workers each distribution of an order cost as high as 50 yuan. In other words, each distribution of a single, Tuo Tuo work Club will lose at least 20 yuan.

The traditional raw and fresh retail links are many, among them 80%~90% profit is occupied by intermediary channel quotient, originally life net gross profit margin is only 30%, lower than traditional retail.

In fact, the US market, which started earlier than Chinese electric dealers, has had a trial-and-error experience in fresh areas. As early as the late 1990s, two online fresh electricity dealers adopted different operating modes. Peapod's approach is to work with supermarkets around the internet, there is no inventory, from the network to obtain orders from the company's delivery staff to the nearby supermarket procurement, and then to customers. Because the purchase cost of the commodity is very high, cannot make the profit in the commodity sale and purchase price difference, Peapod earns is the dues and the service charge. And Webvan is the study of the Amazon strategy to spend a lot of money from building warehouses, inventory and electrical business system, the establishment of two years later declared bankrupt.

Ding Jingtao in this "entrepreneurial disaster" brewing another possibility of development, that is, localized fresh platform, the Platform for specialized division of labor, the base to grow vegetables, the electrical business only to develop users and service users, the platform is responsible for IT solutions, logistics outsourcing to professional fresh logistics enterprises. Only specialization division of labor can truly make each link efficiency to achieve the highest. This is also the direction of the transformation of excellent vegetable network.

Even in large shopping malls or supermarkets, in most products to do the premise of self-employment, fresh products are also rented out of the pallet.

Difficult to control the supply chain

Production base Many helpless

Buy pork, Jiangsu Yurun in Taobao one day sold 7 tons of pork, the sale of "electronic hostages", yurun in such a way to achieve the line under the closure. For food manufacturers, backed by investment billion pig breeding base, from planting, breeding to finished products, do the whole control, the network is a new sales channels. But for the electric business, supply chain upstream supplies is the most difficult to control the link.

Because of the supply chain control is insufficient, excellent vegetable network has to move from high-end organic positioning to ordinary vegetables.

"Suppliers to us are not all organic vegetables, shoddy phenomenon is serious, so decisively stopped cooperation." In addition to find an organic base to find that the problem is more complex than we think, often out of stock, the category too few. "Ding Jingtao said.

Go to ordinary vegetables, excellent vegetable nets like most of Beijing's vegetables, like the new hair from the purchase. New problems with the emergence of new-made vegetables accounted for 90% of Beijing's vegetables, all kinds of quality dishes have, excellent food procurement time limited to the early morning 3~5 point, many times this time period can not buy the vegetables in line with the procurement criteria. Customers receive good and bad vegetables, experience a great discount, resulting in the loss of customers.

From planting, breeding to finished products, vegetable growers, processing companies, agents at all levels, fresh supply chain has a large number of participants, for quality control standards are different, for food sales bring potential risks. The electric dealer must carry on the quality control, most chooses cooperates directly with the production base or the upstream supplier.

In contact with the production base, Ding Jingtao also saw their helplessness, "the base should focus on vegetables, but the reality is they have to put the main focus on marketing, very small base to grow a lot of vegetables." "To the consumer end, the product can not be standardized," we can guarantee that the sale of TV, air-conditioning is the same, but you can guarantee that every fish, every shrimp, every pumpkin is the same? How do you convince users that what you have given to him is not the best thing to have a fixed standard? ”

The raw and fresh industry in the traditional field is not standardized, do standardization on the Internet is not easy.

The orange with the story

Food sellers Sell Lifestyles

By contrast, higher-end raw freshness is more likely to be standardized than the average student.

"A box of high-priced apples can be very similar in size, with less sales channels and more demand for online purchases." Although high-end imports of fresh positioning and price restrictions on the size of consumer groups, but it is facing the upper-middle-level consumers, high customer price. Especially for consumers who like to pursue food quality or petty bourgeoisie, they are more willing to try. "Yong-Hui supermarket (601933, shares) fresh procurement director Zhang Daibin think.

To excellent vegetable network and positioning high-end fresh electricity business, as an example of the original Life network, the former customer price of 40 yuan, the latter average of 300 yuan. Zhang Daibin judge, "Electric dealers do raw and fresh market segmentation after the main import organic and other high-end products, itself has a higher profit margin, plus a higher single turnover, or profitable." "More than 10 20 yuan postage compared to hundreds of thousands of dollars per transaction, the stimulus to consumers is less obvious."

Between ordinary and high-end, there is also an important difference, the ordinary dishes to meet the basic needs of life, and high-end sales is a way of life. Originally live online Before the line, has a small range of experience invitations, said above, "We do this website July 17 officially online, just hope that everyone can eat like eating, a look at the life should have a look." Let food become the transmission of values and ideals of the media, is the original Life network of the entrepreneurial team to give food value-added.

November 2012, carrying the "Tobacco King" 80-year-old entrepreneurial self-help story of the Chu Orange attack. 3 times, 2 times off goods, 10 kg heavy orange 138 yuan, less than one months, local life net sold 80 tons of oranges, other products are also pulled, the site orders to reach the previous three or four times times.

Another idea of a fresh electricity dealer is a further step in the user's needs. Just won a new round of 20 million U.S. dollar investment in the German electric HelloFresh, which provides a weekly order form, users can be in advance from the HelloFresh Weekly selection of the menu to choose their favorite dishes, the site will be the ingredients of these dishes and ingredients are sent to you. According to the recipe given, the user can do a meal in half an hour. The weekly order avoids the problem of inventory or out of stock due to an order float, and reduces the cost of operation.

80%

The traditional fresh retail links are many, among them the profit of 80%~90% is occupied by intermediary channel trader.

2-4 days

The moment the product is picked up, the countdown to the tension begins. From picking to warehousing generally for 1-2 days, they can be stored in the library for up to 2 days, that is, the entire inventory turnover of 2-4 days, which is already a limit.