Reporter | Zhao Xiaojuan
Edit | Zan Huifang
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After the epidemic situation was repeated, Daily Excellent Fresh acquired an unmanned convenience service provider.
According to the Tianyancha APP, Beijing Downstairs Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "downstairs") has undergone industrial and commercial changes, the original shareholders have withdrawn one after another, and the new shareholder Beijing Daily Excellent Fresh Convenience Purchase E-commerce Co., Ltd., with a shareholding ratio of 100%.
Daily Youxian confirmed the acquisition information to Interface News, saying that it had been wholly acquired downstairs, and the two parties had completed the acquisition procedures. After the completion of the acquisition, daily excellent fresh convenience purchase layout in nine cities across the country, with more than 10,000 high-quality points.
According to public information, downstairs was established in 2017, and its business scope includes rental vending machines, food sales, etc. Zhang Ying, the founder downstairs, was the founder and CEO of Aixian Bee, and Aixian Bee was an early representative of the community OTO model.
Downstairs sales are mainly based on groups of unmanned vending machines, mainly set up in hospitals, schools and smaller communities, selling a variety of goods including dairy products, bread fresh food, marinated cooked food, beverages, snacks and so on.
Before being acquired, it received 4 rounds of financing downstairs, which occurred between 2017 and 2018, which was also the peak period of development for no one to facilitate. Since then, due to the high quality of the point, high operating costs and other factors, the unmanned retail format has declined rapidly. Until the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the concept of "no contact" was popularized, and the unmanned retail format once again attracted attention.
Financing the journey downstairs
In April 2020, Zhang Ying said in an interview with the media that "no one" can reduce costs and increase efficiency at a certain cost; after experiencing the epidemic, people have higher and higher requirements for the safety, health and traceability of goods, and commodities from cold chain warehouses, cold chain vehicles, cold chain warehouses to cold chain cabinets should be a full cycle of cold chain, which is also the future trend. Therefore, it is the epidemic that has accelerated the demand for this kind of unmanned retail, reducing the cost of customer acquisition and the cost of educating users.
According to the Beijing Business Daily reported in March 2021, in 2020, 200 new points were added downstairs, and the profit of a single point achieved a 217% increase. In addition, according to the information released on the WeChat public account downstairs, it vigorously expanded the franchise business in 2021, and a franchise information in November of that year showed that there were 600 stores and 1800 ATMs downstairs at that time.
Unmanned vending machine downstairs. (Image source: Dianping.com)
The acquisition downstairs is not the first time that Daily Excellent Fresh has ventured into unmanned retail formats.
Founded in 2014, Daily Excellent Fresh is mainly based on the pre-warehouse model, which is an instant retail e-commerce company that provides customers with fresh products through the pre-warehouse, and will be listed on the NASDAQ in the United States in 2021, known as the "first community retail digital stock".
As early as June 2017, Daily Fresh, which has high hopes for the unmanned shelf track, launched the Daily Fresh Convenience Purchase and launched it in office buildings, hoping to achieve the coverage of all user scenarios through the latter, and form a two-way strategic synergy effect with the home business. Daily Fresh Convenience Is Also One of the Few Survivors After the Last Round of Industry Reshuffle.
According to the daily excellent fresh financial report, in the second quarter of 2021, the other income of daily excellent fresh was 40.4 million yuan, an increase of 23.6% year-on-year, mainly due to the increase in sales of convenient purchase business products.
The growth of daily excellent fresh convenience shopping business has made daily excellent fresh have confidence in the development of unmanned retail format. The acquisition is downstairs, which is also in line with the strategy of daily excellent fresh to try to increase offline sales, and can also expand the sales scene of unmanned vending machines from office buildings to communities. Relying on its own "front warehouse", the daily excellent fresh layout of unmanned retail outlets has certain advantages in improving distribution efficiency and reducing distribution costs.
Regarding how to integrate thousands of goods downstairs with Daily Fresh in the future, Daily Fresh did not disclose specific details. However, increasing investment in unmanned retail business still poses challenges for Daily Fresh.
Fresh vegetables, fruits, meat and other products, often due to short shelf life, high loss rate, and become a fresh e-commerce difficult to pry category, the future product integration if involved in such goods, how to display these products in the downstairs unmanned convenience container, reduce loss and maintain a certain repurchase rate, may be no small challenge.
In addition, after the epidemic, community unmanned retail may also face the danger of being abandoned by consumers due to limited containers and inability to provide rich products.
A resident of a community near Guanzhuang in Beijing told Interface News that during the epidemic in 2020, he often shopped downstairs in the community, when many fresh products were difficult to buy, and popular foods such as dumplings and milk needed to be grabbed. But after the epidemic, various shopping channels resumed, and the products in the convenience cabinet downstairs were abandoned by her due to too few categories, unless she wanted to drink a drink at a particularly late time, she would go downstairs to place an order.
For the current Daily Fresh, the acquisition downstairs may also be a financial adventure.
In the environment of fierce competition in instant retail, heavy dependence on subsidies and high labor costs, the front warehouse track to which Daily Fresh belongs is currently in a state of general loss. From the third quarter of 2019 to 2021, the total loss of Daily Fresh was 7.6 billion yuan per month, and in the third quarter of 2021 alone, the loss of Daily Fresh was as high as 970 million yuan.