Convenience store industry: full-time, convenient for bees to stand out, different situations because of this.

On May 1 1, a notice from a convenience store caused a lot of discussion: the official account of full-time convenience store WeChat announced that its Beijing store would be closed on May 20, 2020. Although this notice was quickly deleted, the public began to pay attention to those convenience stores in the streets.

When the full-time convenience store is "waiting to take over again" because of the capital chain crisis, the convenience store upstart convenience bee has ushered in a new bright moment. It is reported that convenience bees have raised a total of $654.38+0.5 billion after a new round of financing.

It is reported that Convenience Bee has opened more than 1500 stores in 20 cities across the country, including more than 500 in Beijing, more than 200 in Tianjin and hundreds in many cities in East China. In February 2020, Convenience Bee also opened its first store in South China in Shenzhen. This is less than three years since it opened its first store in Zhongguancun, Beijing. Compared with the convenience store family with the largest number of stores in China, the whole family has opened 2500 stores 16 years.

Running a convenience store is no small matter. The COVID-19 epidemic also led to the closure of a large number of stores, and the brand loss of convenience stores was huge. Why can convenience bees stand out under the competitive and unfavorable conditions of the industry?

Today, DataHunter talked about the things behind the convenience store industry, and made it clear whether the driving force of convenience bees can help other convenience stores achieve higher performance. In this process, data can play four major roles.

First, the current situation of domestic convenience store industry

1. Domestic convenience stores have low penetration rate and great growth potential.

Relevant data research shows that convenience stores can enter the peak period of development when the per capita GDP of a region reaches 6000 dollars. According to the history of the United States, Japan and other countries, the full development of large supermarkets will usher in the climax of the development of modern chain convenience stores.

The first modern convenience store in Japan, 7- 1 1 the first Japanese store, 1974 just opened. China's current GDP per capita is close to 1 10,000 USD. If compared horizontally, China's big cities and eastern coastal areas basically have the purchasing power of Japanese society in the 1960s and 1970s. At the same time, the development of large supermarkets has entered a comprehensive recession nationwide.

However, judging from the radiation quantity of a single store, the penetration rate of convenience stores in China is still low. According to the statistics of China Chain Store & Franchise Association, the radiation number of a single convenience store in 26 key cities in China is 6.5438+0.2 million, compared with about 2,500 in Japan and Taiwan Province Province of China. In cities with priority in industry development, such as Guangdong and Shanghai, the density of convenience stores in the two places has reached a stage of fierce competition. In addition, the convenience store market in other cities is generally in the initial stage and initial growth stage.

Population radiated by a single convenience store in China, Japan and Taiwan Province Province.

2. The financing of local convenience stores is rising.

In recent years, compared with the sharp decline of department stores and hypermarkets, local convenience stores have mushroomed, and the enthusiasm of capital has been ignited. According to incomplete statistics, industrial capitals and VC/PE institutions such as Ali, Tencent, Gaoyou, Sequoia, Today Capital and Source Capital have been launched one after another, and local convenience stores are in the ascendant.

Not only that, internet giants and real estate companies also regard convenience stores as fragrant cakes. JD.COM and Suning are building their own JD.COM convenience stores and Suning stores; Poly owns Ruobi Neighborhood, Greentown buys Good Neighborhood Convenience Store ... There are many players on this road.

3. Competition and "bankruptcy tide"

As an independent format, convenience store is finally recognized as an important part of urban life infrastructure. On the other hand, the whole industry has also been greatly impacted by the epidemic, and at the same time, with the fierce competition, the industry has also attracted a large number of closures.

In 20 18, the capital chain was broken due to the thunder of the shareholders of the convenience store next door, and all the stores in 168 were closed overnight; In September of the same year, the employees of 13 1 convenience store were dismissed due to capital turnover problems, and the founder lost contact; Full-time convenience stores closed more than 90 stores in June 165438+ 10 the year before last, and closed down and split up in February last year ... These convenience store brands that closed stores one after another were only a few years old and were surrounded by capital, but now they come to an abrupt end after the capital was broken.

Second, why is it so difficult to operate convenience stores?

Although the convenience store is small, it is the most complicated form of all retail formats. As a convenience store, the back-end supply chain, customer operation, product research and development, warehousing and other links need refined management. At the same time, the operator must be a sociologist and have a deep insight into the consumption habits, population structure, policies and regulations of the city where he lives. Convenience store management difficulties are generally caused by the following aspects:

1. The required funds are large, but the net profit is low.

For the operation of convenience stores, the issue of funds is very important. The production cost of convenience stores is the highest in retail industry. Generally speaking, the larger the store area, the higher the rent, electricity, decoration and other expenses, and the more stores you open, the more funds you need. According to the China Convenience Store Report (20 18) issued by China Chain Store & Franchise Association, the operating costs of the convenience store industry have risen rapidly in the past year, including rent cost 18%, water and electricity cost 12%.

Song Yingchun, the founder of today's convenience store, once felt that "convenience store is the happiness of bending down to pick up a steel shovel". Although the average price of convenience stores is 15% higher than that of traditional supermarkets, and the gross profit margin is mostly in the range of 20%~30%, the net interest rate is hard to exceed 5%, and the investment return period is long. Actually, it's hard business, hard-earned money.

2. Stores are difficult to standardize.

The profitability of single stores in different regions is influenced by many factors, such as site selection, product sales, store decoration, etc., and it is difficult to standardize stores. For example, both 7- 1 1 and Rosen have very standard shop templates in Japan: 100 square meters, with a standard square area. There are ready-made standards on how to choose store types, how to display shelves and how to construct them.

However, this method is difficult to apply in China. Because the construction of shops in China is not standardized, the building materials and structures of each shop may be different. In China, if there is no standard template, every store needs to design more than a dozen drawings, which is very expensive. Based on this situation, due to the inconsistent placement of shelves in different stores, how much turnover can be achieved needs to be dynamically calculated again.

3. The management cost is too high after scale.

In China, the development of retail industry needs scale, which can be solved through direct operation or joining, but this will lead to high management cost. Needless to say, direct marketing is the same for franchisees, because fundamentally, it is difficult to unify the interests of brand owners and franchisees in China.

The important underlying logic of franchise mode is to stimulate the consciousness of active operation of franchisees. However, in the food industry, this awareness of taking the initiative to maximize profits may become a violation of food hygiene and damage to brands. For example, expired food is not discarded, and the label is secretly changed ... Secondly, the per capita quality of franchisees in China is far behind that of Japanese, and their academic qualifications are not so high, and their ability to optimize operations is not so strong.

4. If the single-store model is not established, you can't pursue scale.

Convenience store is a single store model. Generally speaking, a city must have at least four modes: business circle store, community store, campus store and transportation hub store, but different cities have different changes. For example, Shenzhen also needs factory stores. Different single-store models must have different profitability. Therefore, only by cultivating a mature single-store model, and then planning and copying, can we intensively open stores in a certain area and minimize the logistics, supply chain and operating costs. This is also the reason why many convenience store brands are very successful in some areas, but they cannot achieve scale in the whole country.

Third, what did the convenience bee do to win the highlight moment?

According to the law of the industry, it usually takes seven years for a convenience store to make a profit, but it is rare for convenience bees to make a profit in only three years in Beijing. There may be three reasons:

1. Layout the supply chain in advance

Despite the "Internet label", convenience bees are loyal believers in Japanese convenience stores. In Japanese convenience stores, fresh food and private brands are the main sources of profits, and they are also the biggest advantages compared with local convenience stores.

In North China and East China, Convenience Bee has invested in a number of fresh-keeping factories, including the 7-ELEVEn fresh-keeping cooperative factory in Beijing, Ami Ami. In February this year, Convenience Bee also successfully obtained the right to use 30 mu of land in Tianjin and built a fresh supply base. In terms of its own brand, Convenience Bee has realized nearly 200 SKUs in two years. Last June, 5438+065438+ 10, Convenience Bee launched its own brand-"Bee Quality Selection". According to the official statement, the proportion of fresh and private brand revenue of convenience bees is basically the same as that of the three major convenience stores in Japan. ?

2. Algorithm recommendation

"Algorithm recommendation" is the biggest difference between convenience bees and traditional convenience stores. Because of this, convenience bees spend a lot of money on the computing power, data collection and algorithm iteration of the central system. Convenience bees even launched bicycle and unmanned container business in the early stage of development. It is reported that it is to obtain online data of users and guide convenience bees to choose a place to open stores.

For example, the convenience bee once did an experiment to make 10 the most experienced 7-ELEVEn store managers work with all the data for a week, reducing the number of goods in a store by10% SKU; ; The results show that the sales volume drops by 5% every other day. The resumption of computer selection also reduced the SKU by 10%, and the sales volume only decreased by 0.7% every other day.

3. Digital management

Almost all the decisions of convenience bees are determined by data and algorithms, and all the business decisions formed by the central brain are the basis for the actions of relevant personnel. All personnel in the business chain only need to follow the strategy suggested by the software. This means that the burden on people is greatly reduced and the operating efficiency is greatly improved.

This extreme quantitative management naturally has its advantages. First of all, the period of employee training is greatly shortened. It takes 2-3 years to train a store manager in the convenience store industry, and only 45 days to 6 months for convenience bees, because most of the decisions that need to be made by the store manager in the traditional convenience store model are replaced by algorithms and become automatic management. This is very important. If we follow the traditional training cycle, we can't keep up with the speed of convenience bees opening stores.

On the other hand, the digital management of production and circulation process can ensure product quality control to the greatest extent and realize standardization; Based on the sales data, the success rate of choosing the goods sold in each store is much higher than that of manual selection.

Fourth, convenience store management, what role can data play?

1. Realize real-time monitoring of supply chain.

For the supply chain, data can help to monitor, digitize and online the whole process from the source of production to logistics and distribution to store sales, so as to ensure the controllable product quality and realize standardization to the greatest extent.

For example, taking food safety as an example, in order to ensure the safe distribution of processed ingredients to stores, GPS and Bluetooth thermometers can be installed on the cold chain logistics vehicle, and the temperature inside the vehicle can be monitored in real time in the background, and automatic alarm can be realized if abnormalities are found. Secondly, the data can also be used to monitor whether the goods have expired, which can block the manual omissions to some extent and effectively solve the food safety problem.

2. Solve the site selection problem through data.

The first key to the success or failure of all physical stores is site selection. Future site selection must be based on big data. For example, Meituan and Hungry have very good data. You can develop such products at any time and directly tell you the consumption demand, annualized return on investment and so on in which parts of the city. Therefore, site selection must be based on reliable business data decision.

3. Using data to realize digital management of commodities

The choice of convenience stores needs to integrate many factors, such as turnover rate and distribution of gross profit margin, and consider the minimum order quantity, consumers' inertia brand, local product bonus, popular elements of social networks, people without me, people with me, commodity rotation, centralized purchasing advantages at different stages or single brand purchasing or subsidies, etc., all of which depend on real-time comprehensive calculation and the design of internal indicators.

For example, Japanese merchants in convenience stores can be divided into: Japanese merchants = Japanese merchants with mobile customers+Japanese merchants with fixed customers = (group store population+mobile passenger flow) * conversion rate * customer unit price, so data such as different customer unit price, order structure and conversion rate of different categories need to be distinguished and maintained for a long time.

For the simplest example, convenience stores are prone to "empty SKUs that are easy to sell". Based on mathematical statistics and correlation analysis, the fitting degree between the sales forecast and the actual situation is likely to be higher, which will eventually reduce the loss of goods.

4. Insight and management of user needs

For example, the smart camera of the store can identify the user portrait of the store customer, and tag the user through the user's purchase behavior data, thus realizing insight into the user's needs.

At the same time, the analysis of user behavior data can also push back the goods and management operation of the store. In addition, users can be managed at different levels, the unit price of customers can be increased, and finally the operation efficiency of the store can be improved and profits can be realized.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) abstract

In the future, the development speed of convenience store industry in China will continue to expand, and the number of convenience stores in China will also surge. In the increasingly fierce competition in the industry, how to improve their ability to resist risks will become the key to the next competition.

In China, in addition to imitating the mature model of Japanese convenience stores, we should also combine the special consumer market environment in China to do a good job in the operation of stores. For example, domestic e-commerce is more developed than foreign countries; Consumption classification makes the consumption level in the same city more diverse and complicated, and the supply of retail channels is generally in a state of excess; The community culture of second-and third-tier cities is also different from the business circle culture of first-tier cities.

But generally speaking, only by relying on digital capabilities to ensure the front-end and back-end operations, combining channel and store management and improving the efficiency of decision-making and management, can we finally realize the ultimate model of "thousands of stores and thousands of faces" and constantly promote the iteration and upgrading of business models.

* References:

1 "Will convenience stores come to an end? It's still early, angel. 36Kr.

2 "Convenience store, after all, is the canteen business | Lee"? Liu Ge? Lee's business review

3 "Convenient Bee Farm Chen Chao: People are Inefficient, and we use algorithms to expand on a large scale"? What about Zhuang? Notebook man

4 "The epidemic situation tests the internal strength of convenience stores and how to facilitate the rise of bees against the trend"? God quotient? Deep ring

5 "Others are laying off employees, why can convenience bees raise their wages?" Uncle Ni? Ni Shu's Thinking about the Dark Ages

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