Wen Zi Han Lei
Editor Zhou Aiping
A sudden epidemic has a great impact on the whole social economy, especially on the physical retail industry at the forefront of the market.
This time, unlike any previous crisis, every previous impact was gradual and orderly, and this time it was a "blow to the head", which directly hit manufacturing, supply chain, logistics and transportation, shelf sales and other links. It can be said that it is multifaceted and all-round, and there is even a "bankruptcy tide" in some areas.
Taking sports brands as an example, Adidas' financial report in the first quarter of 2020 showed that its net profit decreased by 19.2% and 95 1% year-on-year. The spread of the COVID-19 epidemic led to the closure of a large number of stores, the passenger flow of commercial stores decreased significantly, and the sales data began to pick up at the end of the first quarter.
And we also see that the physical retail industry is facing difficulties, trying to find various ways to seek self-help and breakthrough.
Distance 20 16 It has been four years since Ma Yun put forward the concept of "new retail" at the Yun Qi conference. There are many discussions and controversies about offline physical retailing.
This wave of epidemic has made traditional retail and new retail present a situation of ice and fire. On the one hand, it is the difficult persistence of traditional retail entities, on the other hand, it is the expansion of Internet thinking for new retail.
Let's first look at a vivid example of traditional retail being forced to transform into new retail and achieving success.
Lele's parents run a traditional rice and rape shop in the Pearl River Delta region. The epidemic suddenly came and the store could not be opened. "The warehouse is full of new year's goods." In the case of being forced, Lele began to help her parents sell goods through WeChat.
First, she quickly added a group of owners of major residential areas in the city through friends, and then sent graphic price explanations of her own goods in each group. In order not to let others dislike Lele, she will send a wave of red envelopes before the advertisement.
Slowly, the customer placed an order "Solitaire" on WeChat, and Lele pulled the customer alone. In this way, dozens of customer purchasing groups have been pulled, each group has dozens or hundreds of people, and the goods in their own inventory are also selling quickly.
When it was generally closed in February, Lele was still ordering. She also mobilized her sister and brother-in-law to drive to help deliver goods to the community. Some popular goods, such as eggs, sell better in stores than usual.
In March, the market gradually picked up. After the opening of the physical booth, the orders of WeChat began to decline, but many customers still chose WeChat to place orders. "The main reason is that some customers are used to the convenient door-to-door service."
Lele said that his parents' rice shop has been operating for nearly 20 years. In recent years, they have also felt the impact of the Internet, but they never really expected the crisis to come so quickly.
In fact, in the last two years, large Internet companies have been in full swing in the field of fresh food. Boxma Xiansheng, JD. When you get home, you are optimistic about this "cake" every day.
From such a small sample, we can feel that the epidemic is just an accelerator, and the crisis of traditional retail will come without the epidemic.
According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the transaction scale of online shopping market in China has grown at a high speed with a compound annual growth rate of 27.4% in recent five years, far exceeding the growth rate of 8.0% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods in the same period.
With the promotion of many preferential activities on the platform, convenient commodity selection and gift, and comprehensive commodity categories, the total shopping amount of consumers is increasing, and consumption habits are further migrated online.
Xicha, an offline store, was launched in Tmall flagship store on April 2 1. Unexpectedly, Xicha doesn't sell milk tea online, but sells products around Xicha. Including products such as "Tea-loving Food Laboratory", "Inspiration Joint Name" and "Inspiration Surrounding", as well as newly-launched cheese sandwich biscuits and tea-loving brand Greek yogurt.
As a star enterprise of new tea, the flagship store of Naixue Tea was registered in Tmall in March, and the flagship store has a gift card of 600 yuan and a variety of Naixue Tea gift boxes.
At the same time, on the evening of April 1, she went to Tik Tok for her first live show in Luo Yonghao. Driven by Lao Luo, she sold 9. 18w Zhang Naixue Tea X Luo Yonghao Custom Gift Card, with a sales volume of 807.84w These seemingly "idle" joint funds and peripheral products brought huge additional benefits on the one hand, and seamlessly connected with offline stores on the other.
After the resumption of work, the policy level has accelerated the digital transformation of physical stores with the help of technology. Alipay coupons, which started in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, quickly spread to all parts of the country and landed in 50 cities within 30 days. More than 90% of the beneficiaries are small shops.
The business recovery of small and medium-sized retail stores in China is also on the bright side. Over ten million small and medium-sized businesses won the "Precision Drip Irrigation" in this coupon relay race.
Stimulated by Alipay coupons, since late April, an average of 6,543,800 small enterprises, such as self-employed and mom-and-pop shops, have applied for payment codes in Alipay, opened new stores or sought digital transformation.
Webcast has become another technical weapon for physical retail to save itself under the epidemic situation.
As early as March, when the physical store was not fully liberalized, many stores took the lead in trying live broadcast and online delivery in Tik Tok because of the backlog of goods, rising rents and rising labor costs.
There are a large number of merchants in hangzhou sijiqing, Guangzhou and other 13 lines to participate in the live broadcast of clothing, because clothing is more visual and experiential, which is very suitable for the live broadcast sales model. Other different types of entities followed suit after seeing it, and for a time, there was an upsurge of watching live online shopping at home.
On April 1 day, Luo Yonghao, the founder of the original hammer technology, known as the first generation of network celebrities, joined Tik Tok to bring goods, which became a landmark topic.
20 19 is the year when 5G was officially commercialized. As the goal of digital infrastructure construction, it has become a national strategy. The application of this technology will inevitably bring about the transformation and upgrading of business intelligence and the take-off of retail industry. This is an opportunity not to be missed.
Famous brand products, mainly based on the chain model of affordable consumer goods, have more than 4,200 stores around the world, and the epidemic has not escaped the impact.
Ye Guofu, the founder of the famous brand, said in an interview with the media that in the early stage of the epidemic, stores could not open their doors for work. At the worst, stores closed 50% and orders dropped 95%, which was almost a disaster.
Famous products adopt the strategy of building a nearby customer base centered on stores, allowing shop assistants to participate in marketing, fully embracing the community marketing that was excluded in the past, fully understanding customer needs, and providing personalized services such as door-to-door delivery.
During the epidemic, social media represented by "friends circle" was called "window with goods". Friends who are physical retailers may be embarrassed to "bring goods" in the past, but it is most important to "survive" in the face of epidemic attacks, which is also an attempt to realize private domain traffic.
There are also various flash shopping groups and group buying groups, which have almost become a good channel for shopping in this special period. Administrators send product information, promotion information and provide on-site service every day to provide customers with more accurate and personalized services.
Gome, which has been somewhat silent in the past two years, is also transforming from a retailer to a service provider with the help of "community+live broadcast". Whether it is community access or live broadcast with goods, it is essentially a better and more humanized service provided by Gome for consumers. "Community+Live Broadcasting" is a new model and wisdom that Gome has contributed to the industry and consumers.
Channel sinking and consumption degradation are important trends in the last two years. Under the trend of increasingly saturated consumer markets in large and medium-sized cities, small towns and villages along the third and fourth lines have become battlegrounds.
From June 20 19 to June 2065 438+0-2009, urban consumption and retail sales increased by 7.9%, but the growth rate in rural areas was 9%. According to the data of Ali in the first quarter of 2020, 70% of the new users come from the low-end market, and the market potential for retail growth is obvious.
E-commerce giants represented by Tmall Premium, Suning Retail Cloud and JD.COM Computer Digital Store are particularly active in market sinking, taking "integrating local home appliance retailers" as the main chain development strategy.
For individual retailers, although they can't have the strong capital of head e-commerce, perfect supply chain and standardized store management, individual retailers can still deepen their own communities and spread their channels to local advantages.
The failure of supply chain in emergencies is the problem exposed under this epidemic. The supply chain problem under the epidemic situation is more due to temporary emergency policies, such as restrictions on logistics, and the personnel-intensive manufacturing industry cannot start. However, the expansion of diversified sources, the supply of sources and the optimization of shelves are the long-term efforts of physical retail.
Under the influence of the epidemic, not only the "fragile" small and medium-sized enterprises, but also the full-time convenience stores under the Hua Fu Group.
"Full-time should be Hua Fu's best asset, which is not enough, let alone anything else." A former employee of Hua Fu said.
On May 20th, all full-time convenience stores in Beijing closed. As one of the largest convenience store brands in Beijing market, the full-time convenience store established at 20 1 1 was once an important retail business of Hua Fu Holdings.
2065438+February 2009, Hua Fu transferred Beijing-Tianjin full-time convenience store to Beijing Shanhai Blueprint Commercial Co., Ltd., but Shanhai Blueprint still suffered the fate of closing the store after taking over for more than one year. Full-time related personnel said that it was because of the strategic adjustment and contraction caused by the epidemic, but the operational difficulties faced by full-time employees were caused by the change of hands after the capital chain in Hua Fu broke last year.
Qiao Liu, dean of Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, said that the economic crisis caused by the epidemic was different from the past, affecting all enterprises to varying degrees, but the crisis for small and medium-sized enterprises was even greater. Enterprises should do a good job in capital reserve to ensure a healthy and orderly capital chain. He also called on the policy level to take SMEs as an important area of social employment and strive for better financing survival.
To tide over the difficulties and maintain the foundation of economic recovery.
Nana is the owner of an individual clothing store in the Pearl River Delta region. After the epidemic, she has closed down. Business has been poor since the store opened in March.
"I quit a young lady I invited before and didn't let her come to work. In March, there were basically no customers who came into the store to look at clothes. Everyone may be more wary of confined spaces. Later, there were customers every day, but it was still pitiful. "
Nana insists on opening the store every day, and the business hours are shortened to 165438+ from 0 am to 6 pm, and closed early when there are few people. In the meantime, she tried to broadcast live on Tik Tok, but she was "not very good at it and had no eloquence". She just briefly introduces the style or tries it on.
According to her, some people came in and left soon, while others stayed, but they didn't talk or communicate. "It should be isolated at home just to look at clothes to relieve boredom."
The live webcast didn't bring Nana an actual order, and it lasted aimlessly for several days. Nana carefully analyzed her own problems.
"My shop mainly deals with people nearby and regular customers. Although people who come online also have customers in the same city, people will not choose to visit our store. They may go directly to the Internet to place an order and mail it directly to their home. "
Nana's shop is located a little far from the central street. Usually, the traffic is not too much, and even less during the epidemic, so she decided to try her luck in the most primitive way.
She put the stall on Zhongshan West Road Pedestrian Street, the most prosperous area in this town in the past. With the promotion of resumption of work and production, the flow of people on the street gradually increased, and Nana's booth gradually got customers and began to have orders. "Because of the rain this month, the stall was only set up for 13 days, and the total income was 13370 yuan." Nana said she was satisfied. "The store's orders have been restored by 60% to 70%." Nana ended her stall and resumed the normal operation of the shop.
The retail samples of individual entities under this epidemic also have its reference significance.
Internet plus, online is not a good medicine to solve all the problems, but also make specific and flexible adjustment strategies according to different industries, categories and market environment. But it also shows the irreplaceable existence value of physical retail.
Undoubtedly, the epidemic has brought many negative effects, but there are also organic dangers, and new opportunities may be gestating.
As long as we continue to create value for consumers and provide customers with high-quality "goods+services+experiences", enterprises will never be eliminated. Retail is still the largest industry in China, with a growth space of 40 trillion yuan. How much share can retail entities get is unknown, but the competition is undoubtedly fierce.
Physical retailing is only a commercial link that we can see, and it contains a huge and invisible support system, including basic manufacturing, product supply chain, logistics distribution, product updating and shelving, intelligent management system, online sales system, customer operation, data and intelligent technology system and so on.
Physical retail is the capillary in our market, which is tiny but bears the task of transporting blood to the whole world, so it is very important.
If there is no result, whether there is an epidemic or not, physical retail must take the initiative to break through!