Quick schoolbag for sale, what's the problem?

Fast Schoolbag CEO Xu Zhiming recently on Weibo on the public "Hawking" Fast schoolbag, in the industry has caused great repercussions. The start-up company, founded in 2010, has tried to become an "online 711" and a "one hour arrival" distribution service is known. But right now, the quick bag's capital chain is close to breaking, Xu Zhiming is seeking to sell the fast schoolbag.

Fast bag set up the first year, the main selling books, the company's own logistics and warehousing, and the implementation of free shipping. In the 2011, the fast schoolbag on Weibo on a cannon and red, thereby saving a large amount of marketing costs. Since its inception, the fast bag has melted about 20 million yuan, however, these funds did not allow the fast schoolbag to support the last.

Not so long ago, Instacart, the same "one-hour" American grocery delivery start-up, raised 210 million of billions of dollars and valued more than $2 billion trillion. Instacart and fast schoolbags are also "fast", but the outcome of the two is vastly different. So, what exactly is the problem with the fast schoolbag? Is "one hour delivery" a pseudo demand?

Fast school bag at the beginning of the line, the main book category. It is clear that books are standardised products that can be well matched, but the mishap of this category is that the profits of the books are lower than those of other categories. Even after the bag began to turn its eyes to imports of food and commodities, it launched the "Love Grab" project, but apparently missed the best time.

In addition to the low profit of book category, more importantly, the person who buys the book is not so sensitive to delivery time. Consumers do want books to be delivered as soon as possible, but they prefer to get cheap prices. In other words, the "one-hour service" Requirements for book distribution is not very appropriate.

On this basis, fast schoolbags take the form of a warehouse to provide one-hour distribution, which means that the company needs to set up a distribution station in the unit area to provide logistics services. However, there are not so many bestsellers in the market to maintain high sales volume, the user density of the unit area can not support the cost of the self-built storage, and users outside the region can not order. In this case, the human resources of the distribution station can not be effectively utilized. Regardless of whether there is an order, the distribution staff pay.

Moreover, there is no freight revenue, plus the gross profit and the customer unit price does not go, is caused by the lack of funds for fast schoolbag reasons.

It should be said that the one-hour delivery of the fast schoolbag does solve some problems, is an idealized business model. However, this model is too demanding for human and services and can only be applied to the regional market. "One-hour delivery" looks a bit too much speed, which for transport costs, warehousing costs and even the entire supply chain costs, have brought no small pressure.

Xu Zhiming once said on Weibo, "the fast bag from the production of goods, self-built warehousing, self-built logistics, one hour arrival mode, may be a wrong direction." One hour arrival demand, such as rainy days umbrellas, before dinner maotai and other urgent items, but the focus of these needs, supporting the rapid growth of the entire website, it is really difficult. We are trying to dig out more products with this trait, but we haven't found enough in four years. "It is understood that the fast schoolbag in the past few years mainly compensate in the manpower, each year to paste 3 million yuan, five years total loss of 15 million yuan."

Unlike the fast schoolbag, Instacart, the American start-up company, has not chosen a single category as a breakthrough from the outset, but has chosen daily groceries as the focus of its operations. The groceries are instacart from local retailers, from farm products to cooked food, wine, snacks and cosmetics, and are only released via mobile phones.

It is well known that many individuals and household consumers often produce immediate demand for certain foods and spices, such as the inability to make a tasty pizza without a certain brand of ketchup. As a result, consumers have a strong demand for one-hour service, and are often willing to pay for the immediate service. The big difference between the category and its corresponding user needs is one of the reasons why fast schoolbags and Instacart have a different destiny.

And in logistics and human resources, Instacart also try to become very "light". It is reported that once the user through the Instacart order, the program will inform the shopping distribution, tell them where to go to the store, the purchase of goods taste in which shelf aisle on which shelves. To improve efficiency, each shopper purchases items at the same time on several orders, and usually buys sixty or seventy items at a time. If a customer orders the merchandise from three stores, then Instacart will send three shopping distribution staff to the three shops, and let them meet after the shopping, and then combine the goods they purchased together door-to-door.

Of course, this distribution service is not free. If the consumer asks the Distributor to deliver in one hour, an extra 9.99 dollars is required, and a further $3.99 will be paid if it is expected to be delivered within 3 hours. At present, the distribution fee is the main income source of Instacart.

It is not hard to find that the advantage of Instacart is that there is no warehouse, no stock, no truck, everything depends on software to integrate the parties, so its cost is very low.

From this point of view, the key to the development of efficient distribution service is its operational efficiency and the ability to match the needs of users. While the need for an "one-hour service" exists, many times users are unwilling to pay more for this "quick" premium. In most cases, the user needs the right time, the right place and the right service, therefore, the enterprise should consider to provide more logistics solutions for users to meet the needs of different scenarios. For the "small but Beautiful" network retailing model like fast schoolbag, how to find the difference of logistics and the scale of differentiation is the core of its sustainable development.