Japan today may be China tomorrow.

Probably no country loves vending machines more than Japan. Now this sentence should be rewritten! In the past, vending machines in China were like this:

20 17 vending machine style change: running all the way.

Source: Whale APP vending machine heat trend

What makes vending machines (self-service vending machines) that have been neglected in China for more than ten years become a hot potato in everyone's hands?

Some people say that it is because of the convenience brought by mobile payment; Some people say that it is because of the development of automation and intelligent technology; Some people say it's because of rising labor costs.

The three seemingly plausible reasons are actually not to the point.

There are about 5 million vending machines in Japan, and the ratio of Japanese population to vending machines is 23: 1, which is the highest density country in the world. Vending machines can be seen everywhere in Japan, but most Japanese pay in cash, especially coins, which is not what we take for granted. Although mobile payment does bring great convenience to unmanned retail, it is not the driving factor in the final analysis.

● Vending machines appeared on the streets, subways and airports in Beijing more than ten years ago, through automatic self-help shopping and picking up goods. This is nothing new, and there is no real breakthrough in technology.

● Unattended mode saves the cost of waiters, but it also increases the operating cost accordingly. The salary of the operator is obviously higher than that of the waiter. At the same time, large-scale promotion needs to occupy a point (resource bit), which also brings about an increase in operating expenses. In fact, labor costs have not decreased, but shifted.

There are two fundamental reasons that really promote the unmanned retail model in China to make a qualitative leap in 20 17:

First, bomb the capital.

Attracted by the capital leverage game of * * * enjoying the car, * * enjoying the bicycle and * * * enjoying the charging treasure, the VC institutions in China have obtained the return on investment of 10, 50 times or even more, so the capital began to spend money on the track that may form scale and flow. It happens that the unmanned retail sector is in line with the taste of capital: the imagination of new retail is large enough+the profit model that can be seen in a short time. On this track, you can use money to create a supermarket and a unicorn enterprise. So from 20 17, top venture capitalists headed by Zhenge, IDG, innovation works and Jingwei China began to enter crazily, and they entered this field tacitly according to the agreement.

Second, the influx of a large number of startups.

Since Jack Ma put forward the "new retail concept" at the Yun Qi conference last June, entrepreneurs have begun to rush into this "conceptual blue ocean market" just like discovering the new continent. This is a very important time node, because in June of 20 16, 10, six new companies were established in the field of automatic trafficking (data source: whale data), which is also the highest monthly data of newly established companies in the field of automatic trafficking so far. Hami Technology, which completed three rounds of tens of millions of financing in 90 days, entered the field of office self-service retail at this time, providing Rubik's cube containers for office. Employers include Yun Qi Capital, Yuan Jing Capital, Zhenge Fund and Lighting Fund.

Then, we saw the wonderful 20 17 venture capital market:

● In June, F5 Future Store won a 30 million A+ round of financing from Hechuang University innovation works, and then in July, Alibaba launched the concept of "unmanned convenience store" at Taobao Creation Festival;

● In August, Xinhuadu failed to acquire Youbao Online. Since then, Youbao has ended its six-year history of stumbling and began to enter the cusp period;

● In September, the former Alibaba and Department of Public Comment Si Jianghua entered the new retail market, which contributed to the announcement of the completion of angel round financing exceeding 1 billion yuan, which is the largest investment quota in this field so far.

At the same time, we began to see all kinds of interesting vending machine projects in Beijing. Every category has a living space for vending machines. Products sold range from food and drink to working lunch, from red wine to jewelry, to hot Lamian Noodles, coffee that can be spent, and sex toys that can be bought quietly. There are also various professional vending machines such as pizza, baguettes, vegetables, oysters and gold abroad. Not surprisingly, you will see more and more kinds of vending machines appear in the market.