The shrinkage of Hema may have just begun

Author | Lan Binsheng

Edit | Sang Mingqiang

Regarding Hema, we have actually studied many times in the past, just like visiting Hailan House, and each time we have a new feeling. Before the founding of Hema, Hou Yi and Zhang Yong secretly reached a consensus: in the future, large -scale unicorn companies will definitely appear in the fresh fresh industry. However, with the group purchase of the "old three groups" in the same way, the food enjoyment meeting, and the Shihui group quietly fell. The daily fresh freshness of the first front position model also came out in recent days. Land -the more the methodology is more fantasy, the business is still not good.

Since the opening of the first store in Shanghai Golden Bridge in 2016, Hema has gone through 6 years. In the beginning of Hema, large stores are limited to the core business districts of first -tier cities, and gradually slowly extend to second- and third -tier cities: including but not limited to Hema MINI fresh shops, Hema small stations in front warehouse models, small catering formats Hema F2 and Hema Cai City. By 2019, Hema X member shop, shopping center forms of Hema Mali, breakfast shops in the form of Pick'n Go, Hema Market, Hema neighboring, Xingxian Ole and other formats also appeared one after another.

Hema's multi -format and applicable scenario map source Runwise

In the next game, Hema gathers more than 10 formats within 5 years, covering almost all retail business models. There were also analysts for him, thinking that Hema may eventually not just precipitate a few formats. But the good times didn't last long. Just one or two years later, now it is running well and lived well. It seems that there are only Hema Xiansheng, Hema X member shop, Hema neighboring and fresh Ole. The industry refers to "3+1 "model.

This year's Hou Yi is abnormal, no longer "mouth cannon" attacking his peers, and began to emphasize that "Hema wants to enter the stage of hard entrepreneurship" within the inside, and is independent of Ali and self -made Box Ma to learn to tighten the trouser belt to survive, but this year's industry The situation is cold as a whole, and many people start to lose patience for fresh retail that still needs high investment. According to Reuters in July, Hema is seeking financing of about $ 6 billion, and plans to raise funds of 400 million to 500 million US dollars from external investors. Compared to shrinking by 40 %, but more than a month passed, the financing was still unreasonable.

The front -end does not have absolute new ideas, the back -end bargaining ability has decreased. It is currently a predicament that fresh e -commerce is generally facing, and Hema is no exception. It is one of the target companies, an American fresh -e -commerce giant Instacart, has not been able to have a smooth time recently. It has lowered the valuation for the second time in less than four months. If the quantitative easing policy of the Federal Reserve in the past two years is included in the consideration factors, its actual valuation may be lower.

Back to the domestic fresh retail market, the running model, expansion scale, and brand shaping are the core directions of Hema in the past. Proficiency does not take the primary consideration, but adults have changed their time now. Today's consumer Internet or new retail, the underlying logic has changed. The model of the horse rowing circle has proven to be a high -pressure gameplay. Turning around, he demanded its own refined operations, from rolling competitors to rolling themselves. In this case, the effect was unknown but anxious but opened.

01 Daily Youxian Give the box and give a lesson immediately

In the hot July, the daily fresh shutters closed the "rapid" business accounting for 85%of the overall revenue. To some extent, the "first share of fresh e -commerce" was announced. In the first model, the feasibility of this model is now a big question mark by the market. Some people in some industries believe that the shock wave generated by the daily fresh "thunderstorm" will continue to spread throughout the industry, gradually weakening from similar to nearby.

Including Ding Dong, which competes with Daily Youxian in the same segmentation track, buy food, Park Park Supermarket, and Meituan. The latter two are mainly 500-800 square meters of large warehouse models. On the whole, the performance cost will be diluted to a certain extent. The intervention of Meituan allows the front warehouse to have more layers of value filters. On the other hand, the situation of the former is even more difficult. Not only did the pressure on the business model doubled, "Why should Ding Dong buy food?"

Starting from Hema's store position, it will be farther away from the war center, but for Hema, the warning brought by the daily prefecture is far more than the apparent model. After all, as early as 3 years ago, Hou Yi bluntly stated that the front position was a pseudo -proposition. At the beginning, there were three main reasons for denying the front positions: the customer unit price was not available, the loss rate was not available, and the gross profit margin was difficult to guarantee. Nowadays, the big players in the front position mode are the first to fall, and give a lesson to the players who stay on the court: they must first run the profit model and expand, not in turn.

The problem is that a successful profit model has not ran for so many years of fresh retail. Except for SYSCO, which has the efficiency of supply chain efficiency overseas, this may be related to the characteristics of the track itself: Talking about this problem in a research report, the performance cost of the front warehouse model is 3 times the traditional center's e -commerce, two times the platform e -commerce, and 6 times the community group purchase, but it does not match the high performance costs. It is the problem of low gross profit and high loss of fresh categories.

But this also means that for Hema, which is based on the combination of "online+offline", it will be more difficult to challenge. Because the area of ​​the front warehouse is generally 300 square meters, the relevant analysts believe that this means that this model will not invest too much in the early stages of first -tier cities, about 500,000 yuan. So it is also explained why players can quickly spread their scale. On the other hand, according to Hema, according to the new eye research, taking Hema Xiansheng Store as an example, it includes multiple areas such as retail, catering, and warehousing. Take Hema Xiansheng Nanjing Hongyang Square Store as an example. According to the demand area of ​​3000-5000 square meters of Hema Xiansheng, the monthly rent cost is about 60,000 to million yuan. According to the analysis of the Huaxia Times, the storage of fresh fresh and the normal operation of the catering area needs to purchase a large number of catering equipment and cold cabinets, coupled with the installation costs of the decoration, suspension chain, and conveyor line in the store, the cost of opening a Hema fresh life is as high as 30 million Yuan.

In addition to the cost of stores, Hema has also accelerated the pace of self -built supply chain in recent years. New eyes mentioned in "why Hema's Dead Supply Chain" that Hema is located in Wuhan and Chengdu with a total investment of nearly 2 billion yuan in total of nearly 2 billion yuan. The supply chain operation center is fully put into use, and it continues to extend to the upstream, creating its own brand represented by drinks and baking, and even raising shrimp in person. However, the long -term value brought by the deep drill supply chain is difficult to relieve the urgent need; and, the self -built distribution system of online orders has high investment and heavy models. It is also difficult to cover costs.

02 Withdrawing the city, closing a shop, optimization

"It is always a shame to make a company without making money." At the end of last year, Hou Yi changed the caliber of "losing money is an investment" at the end of last year. The dilemma of profit, from the cost side, generally has become the second way to retreat, so we can see that this year's Hema has been widely mentioned in refined operations.

After the Spring Festival this year, Hema ushered in an unprecedented closing store: March, Hema Xiansheng appeared in 4 cities to close 5 stores at the same time. Except for two stores in Nanjing, one store in Qingdao, Chengdu, and Guangzhou was closed. Pushing forward again. In November and April of this year, two business contractions also appeared in Hema neighborhood, which successively withdrew from Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan and other cities. As of now, Hema neighborhoods Only densely distributed in three cities in Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Nanjing.

According to the relevant data released by Hema's official website, Hema is currently in 28 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. There are a total of 329 stores. Among them, Shanghai is the most concentrated city in stores, with 73. However, the number of Hemamen stores at the end of 2020 was 246. In 2021, the number of Hema Stores exceeded 300 at the end of 2021. Now that more than half a year has passed. In contrast, the speed of Hema stores has slowed down significantly.

Under the shrinkage of business, layoffs are difficult to avoid. According to 36KR reports in March, the proportion of Hema layoffs reached 20%as a whole, of which market operations are the main posts of abolishing. In addition, employees above Hema P8 or above are as high as 30%. The decrease of 30%of the salary may be replaced with Hema options. By May, Hema opened a new round of layoffs, mainly concentrated in the procurement and operation departments of local regions.

This time Hema is not layoffs in accordance with the overall proportion, but optimizes and adjust the specific business departments and positions. According to a internal employee, in mid -May, the company interviewed the regional procurement and operating business team. Among them, the two teams of standard products procurement and 3R procurement were basically abolished, leaving only a small part of the personnel to transfer to the Shanghai headquarters. The procurement department has also been adjusted and merged. These laid -off business will be concentrated in the group headquarters for unified planning and management because "control costs, profit pressure, and emphasize the integrity of branches."

According to the internal employees of Hema Ma Ma, the Hema pushed a message through the employee system last month to cancel the dinner and supper subsidies. After 21 o'clock, the taxi was no longer free of charge. Of course, this is not just the anxiety of Hema. At the level of the group, multiple business segments have been reduced and adjusted to varying degrees this year. According to the quarterly financial report released by Ali recently, the number of employees at the end of June: 245,700 people, compared with the data of the previous quarter, 3 months, Ali's official employees have reduced nearly 10,000.

The days before were not good, but now the days are even more sad. In Hou Yi's view, there are two huge blue ocean markets in the domestic supermarket industry: one is "going up", making brands, represented by Sam, Costco, and Hema, and the layout of middle and high -end consumers; the other is " "Go down", be the ultimate cost -effectiveness that ordinary people want, similar to European cheap supermarket ALDI model. The streamlined "3+1" model corresponds to it: Hema Xiansheng and Hema X member shop "go up", Hema neighbors and Xianxian Ole "go down".

03 Visiting the top, touching the wall down

Although fresh fresh retail is a melting furnace, we don't have to be too harsh. Many things can be solved with their mouths. The situation faced by the helm is much more complicated than what we see. A real situation is that Hema is still a good investment target in the "new species" in recent years, because so far, it is the earliest player to announce profitability for new retail, although it is only a single store profit. However, the profit of Ningbo stores mainly stems from the narrowing of the cost of operation side and supply chain: the first is the store area of ​​2000-3000 square meters, which is lower than other standard stores. The system, secondly, the supply chain of Sanjiang Shopping itself has been assigned to reduce the performance cost of online orders, thereby squeezing profit. However, there is a limit of low cost. To a certain extent, this reflects the current profit model of Hema Xiansheng Store, which has not yet reached a very clear level.

Hema X Member Store Fresh Flowing Figure Yuanyuan New Eyes Shooting on the spot

In conjunction with Hema Xiansheng into the mid -to -high -end consumer market, there are Hema X membership stores. Take Nanjing Hema X member store as an example. The store is located in China Merchants Garden City, Qixia District, Nanjing, covering an area of ​​about 18,000 square meters. The increase in volumes and increases, the uniqueness is relatively lacking. The price of the bids of Sam, Costco, the Swiss roll and roast chicken are not much different.

Moreover, due to the amount of volume, the ceiling of the member store is relatively low. For the mid -to -high -end customer base for family shopping, the membership store can only be opened in first -tier cities. The maximum does not exceed 1 month. An interesting phenomenon is that in Taobao searching the Hema X member store, you will find that there is also a member rental industry chain behind the paid member system: 1 yuan can be rented by the members of the owner's QR code to enter the store. 5 yuan handling fee. Select the most sales of stores to check. Within less than one month, the number of borrowing and payment has been as high as 90,000 and more than 700 times, respectively. This strange membership format is a manifestation of a single consumption demand for sinking the market.

The upward space is narrowed, and the downward space is difficult to open up. Compared with other formats, the neighbor of the Hema neighborhood is much lighter, but if it is placed in community group purchase horizontally, the cost of stores and employees is still higher. According to the new eyes, the Hema neighboring and Hema Xiansheng share the same supply chain system, which is still not compared with the competition of the price war. For the fresh consumption of the community, the price is more affordable, and it also means Hema Malaysia. There is room for survival in the neighborhoods in the first- and second -tier cities.

In contrast, the value of Ole Store is to reduce the loss of Xiansheng stores, thereby increasing gross profit, and improving the profitability of the store. Ole Store will sell the time to the time of the date of the freshman store, the product that produces slight bumps in the transportation, and the Japanese fresh products that are not sold on the same day. Under the premise of ensuring quality, it is sold at preferential prices. Although in a formal point of view, Fresh Ole is a format that meets the needs of the sinking market, it has formed a strong binding with the location of the store from the beginning of the design.

Back to the beginning of the argument, in terms of the environment or the profitability of the internal format, Hema has become farther and farther away from the big expansion, but at the same time, it means that the real contraction of Hema may have just begun to start. , But this is not a bad thing. After all, from now on, it has won more than half to survive in the fresh retail market.

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