I am a fresh e -commerce company in the Philippines and become "the best employer of Manila City"

The wave of going out of the sea has arrived, and global business opportunities have attracted more and more dreamers.

Xiaguang Society launched a series of "Xiaguang Ocean" series of plans, focusing on the unusual struggle stories of entrepreneurs, and recorded their challenges and gains in overseas market experience.

This issue is the second part of the series. In this issue, we will tell the entrepreneurial experience of Chinese youths to build an emerging brand of overseas fresh e -commerce and agricultural product delivery in Manila, Philippines.

MAX, the founder of Filipino online fresh e -commerce "Yeahfresh", told us: "The Philippine agricultural products have not yet formed an effective circulation, and the key to improving is to improve the efficiency of supply chain."

Author | Guo Zhachuan

Edit | Muji

On the evening of July 28, the daily flowers were rumored to be "dissolved in place". The news of "30 minutes of fast -speed business closed" rushed to the hot search, and the daily stock price fell to the bottom.

Picture source: Weibo hot search

Domestic fresh e -commerce tracks have always been crowded.

Since 2022, the domestic fresh -e -commerce brands have rumored rumors of layoffs, losses, and withdrawal of stores. Ding Dong buying vegetables, Tao Xianda, JD.com, Hema Xiansheng ... Whether it is the fierce competition of burnling subsidies, whether it is ahead of the front position, the commercial super distribution, the combination of the store's warehouse, and the community group purchase model. It is spared to fall into the "zero sum" situation with a slow profit.

Behind these huge fresh fresh e -commerce companies, most of them stand in the head of the head of the head with abundant funds. When the "giant" cannot escape the fate of falling down, for the small fresh e -commerce players who want to enter, they have nowhere to start and have difficulty.

So, when fresh e -commerce companies go abroad, can entrepreneurs see a new world that has not been reclaimed?

Can I walk to Southeast Asia?

Many people in the industry have fallen down the daily freshness and blame them as "front warehouse models".

The "front warehouse mode" is to establish a front warehouse stocking within 3 kilometers of the community to increase the time limit for the distribution of fresh products. Fresh e -commerce must bear the cost of building, land price rent, and a large number of inventory risks. Coupled with the fresh e -commerce app to get traffic and market share by burning money and subsidies, it is inevitable that it will inevitably fall into the vicious circle of "replace users with losses".

However, a Chinese entrepreneur who entered the Philippine fresh e -commerce market told Xiaguang Society that he "can make money every fresh before opening a fresh before opening."

Why is it in the country that is not in China, but can it be benefited in the small -scale experiments of Southeast Asian countries in the Philippines?

Max, the founder of the emerging fresh e -commerce brand "Yeahfresh" in the Philippines, has tried social e -commerce and group purchase apps to start a business in China, but the development of the project is not as smooth as imagined.

In the process of observing the overseas market, he found that Southeast Asia, especially the Philippines in the fresh distribution market in the Philippines, had great commercial gaps.

In the Philippines, it is difficult to find the "big dish market" we are familiar with. A large number of agricultural products and fresh fruits and vegetables do not have a gathering wholesale market.

"I found that people with weak local consumption have only eaten meat, and even a little bit conflict with fruits and fruits." Max said. Because the price of local meat is much cheaper than the price of vegetables and fruits, this peculiar phenomenon is caused.

Due to the large number of infrastructure construction from farmland to the market, the efficiency of fresh supply chain is low. Many fruits and vegetables are not priced in the hands of farmers in their origin, but because there are too many "middlemen earning differences", and most high -quality fruits are used as exports, which make the super fruit and vegetables in the Philippines very expensive. Essence

Under such circumstances, MAX believes that the local fresh e -commerce distribution that has not yet emerged will have great development potential.

The Philippine capital Manila consists of 17 different small cities. In less than three years, MAX has 4 of the four "small town" in Manila, which has four freshfall warehouses and one fresh physical business super.

MAX's freshly distributed brother, flying in the streets of Manila every day to deliver fresh vegetables and fruits for consumers. According to Max, Yeahfresh's current average daily order has exceeded 400 orders, and several front warehouses have reached the load limit, and he is busy using the new warehouse to select and decorate.

Fresh and predestined merchants. Photo source: 图 图 图 图 图 图

"In Manila, the turnover cycle of fresh freshness is very fast. Our warehouse is not too large, so the relatively cost is not high." Max told Xiaguang Society. And compared to domestic, Manila's overall area is limited, and the area is small and the population density is large. Merchants do not have to build a front position in order to shorten the delivery time. Each warehouse can be "fully used".

Long -term experience tells him: The core of solving everything is not to settle the front position, but the construction of the supply chain.

"Money has been earned by the middlemen. There are too many intermediate links from farmland to the middle of the table, causing too much difference in agricultural products. There are many places that can be improved." Max said, "It is very valuable after integrating maturity."

The way he adopted was to establish an acquisition station and small processing plant in the origin of fruit and vegetable origin, and then solved the problem of supply chain through the logistics system composed of its own truck. From the acquisition station to its own front warehouse, to the hands of consumers, there are not many links. The quality and price of fresh fruits and vegetables can be taken into account, so the profit is considerable.

In fact, the fresh delivery of the front warehouse mode is not a "flood beast." Whether this model can be successful often depends on the common role of multiple factors such as site selection, land price, freshness costs, supply chain, marketing costs, market saturation, and business models. Young consumer groups bring high -customer unit price

In the early stage of entrepreneurship, MAX also misjudged a business model.

He had done a good offline businessman for a while. At that time, his idea was that if the brand has offline stores, it will make local consumers feel more practical. But the price of Manila commercial real estate is 2-3 times that of Shanghai, and the high rent has doubled the cost. So during MAX's construction of the second store, due to the high cost of rent and the impact of the epidemic, the store was closed decisively after 7 months of operation.

"It was too optimistic about offline retail." Max said that after this incident, he got the lesson lessons of "not in place for industry analysis, do not rashly make decisions". Although this store has invested more than 3 million yuan in decoration and rent, MAX is still determined to "break the wrist".

It turns out that compared with the physical store merchants, the front warehouse has reduced the display cost of the product, and the establishment of the front warehouse in the Philippines is more effective than opening a physical store.

"Manila is a very young city, with a population density of 6 times that of Shanghai, and more than 70%of the population is young people under 30 years old." Max told Xiaguang Society.

Manila's urban environment. Photo source: 图 图 图 图 图 图

In the impression of many people in China, the Philippines market is "remote countryside", which is actually a big misunderstanding. In fact, the local area can be described as "half paradise, half hell": On the one hand, the gap between the rich and the poor is extremely large. On the other hand, although many locals have less than the country, they are willing to spend money on food expenses.

In the Philippines, whether it is a restaurant or a roadside stall, the price of food is not cheap. A simple food can even be sold for 5-10 times the price of similar foods in China. Even if it is a mango, banana, coconut and other fruits produced locally in the Philippines, the sales price is more expensive than in China.

Due to cultural differences, local young people are not keen to save money, but are used to consumption advanced consumption. The most important spending in their hands is diet, fun, party and so on. This is also reflected in big data, 70%of the Philippine GDP by consumption is driven, and domestic demand is very strong.

This group of young groups with strong consumption power also contributed the unit price of high -quality e -commerce companies for local fresh e -commerce companies. The two indicators of customer unit price and repurchase rate are essential for the fresh e -commerce industry. It is the key to ensuring that merchants get sufficient profits and achieve positive cycles.

Yeahfresh is basically the "Class A customer" in the MAX port. Most of these customers are young groups with high consumption. The unit price generates is relatively high, has high requirements for fresh fresh quality, and has higher requirements for product delivery.

From the perspective of the overall industry, there are actually 5-6 large chain supermarkets in the local area. Although their products are more complete, on the one hand, the price is high, and on the other hand The advantage of Yeahfresh.

The most important thing is that the download of the current yearfreshapp still depends on word of mouth. It does not burn money on a large scale for marketing and customer -winning coupons, so it also avoids the disadvantages of high marketing promotion costs.

Manila young people have strong spending power.

"Best Employer of Manila"

"Southeast Asia is the next economic growth pole. In the early days, many Chinese entrepreneurs started a business in Vietnam and Indonesia's" Copy from China Copy Domestic success model in Southeast Asia). "What makes MAX very happy is that the Philippines has one More loose business environment.

In recent years, the GDP of the Philippines has grown rapidly, especially e-commerce and online consumption, which is expected to become a rapid growth point in the next 5-10 years. The growth rate of the Philippine e -commerce market is the world's first and bonus. With the layout of logistics giants such as J & T and Flash, it has huge market space and rapidly growing e -commerce dividends.

E -commerce sales growth list, the Philippines ranked first. Source: Insider Intelligence

The local government is also encouraging electronicization. In recent years, young people in the Philippines have begun to use electronic wallets. Although daily transactions are still dominated by cash, small electronic wallet recharge is very common in the local area.

In addition, in order to take care of agricultural development and reduce food prices, the Philippine government is exempt from value -added taxes for consumer foods such as vegetables and meat. Consumption and services other than agricultural products must pay 12%VAT in the Philippines. Moreover, e -commerce business is also ranked in the Philippines that does not levy VAT.

After various inspections of upstream and downstream suppliers and market maturity, MAX is very optimistic about Manila's fresh e -commerce market. "The population structure here is a bit like Shenzhen in Shenzhen more than ten years ago. The e -commerce environment is like Taobao in China ten years ago. Fresh and agricultural products are not afraid of selling good goods."

Max believes that doing business in Manila "as long as it is a little better than others", you can harvest many customers.

However, in the actual operation of going to sea, many details need to be paid closely. For example, how the company manages local employees and how to communicate with local customers is very different from domestic. Yeahfresh's employees employed by the Philippines are all locals in the Philippines, and only several employees of the company are Chinese. Therefore, how to manage local employees and improve the efficiency of distribution and supply chain has become a problem that MAX must consider.

He summarized three management experience:

First of all, each employee must have a clear job responsibility and detailed SOP.

Because the flexibility of local employees is not strong, the ambiguous instructions such as "you look at it" are taboos in the local workplace. And in their minds, there is no "miscellaneous" position, so as a boss, it is not possible to take it for granted that they can let employees work at will.

Secondly, the locals value the boss's respect for themselves.

When building a meal in the foreign group, Max always chooses a restaurant with a long table, and everyone can sit together without a high distinction. At the order of ordering, they also let employees order their favorite dishes, not all of them.

"Many people who go to the sea will ignore it, and local employees care more about your" goodness to them "." Max said, "If you don't do it at this point, even if you add welfare employees, you may not be grateful to you."

The most important principle is to pay employees on time, and overtime pays for overtime.

Manila's salary system is twice a month. Therefore, the two -day "paid day", local merchants will launch discounts that encourage consumption, namely "Payday Promotion". As an employer, it is necessary to pay for salary on time, and it is best to pay in the morning to facilitate employees to spend on the same day.

In addition, timeout work is a very serious thing for local employees, which is also a point that many Chinese bosses are easy to ignore. The entire society of the Philippines must pay overtime pay for overtime, and even if it is paid overtime, it is best not to exceed 3 hours. If the employee works overtime for more than 3 hours, the overtime pay pay for the payment will be increased.

Local employees at work. Photo source: 图 图 图 图 图 图

Adhering to the respect for local employees, Yeahfresh not only gained a good reputation among employees, but also got the title of "Best Employer of Manila", and recruitment became much easier.

In addition, the fresh e -commerce company goes to the sea and the Philippines to consider the work efficiency of the locals, and it is not possible to habitually rely on "volume".

Local decoration materials procurement and business procedures are long. Even if it is just placing some basic shelves, cold storage, and hydropower, it takes 2-3 months under the time-effective work of work. These factors need to be incorporated into the scope of the business plan.

"Of course, business is one aspect. We want to open more positions in front positions, but still want to really reduce food prices at the supply chain." Max said, "While it is convenient for consumers, it is best to increase farmers' income. ","

Fresh e -commerce is essentially a market -oriented operation that accelerates the efficiency of agricultural product distribution. It is important to grasp the blank period of fresh e -commerce in overseas markets, but the key to maintaining brand competitiveness is also to truly find the pain points of the industry, realize upward cycle, and enter an orderly development model.

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