Wen 丨 BT Finance Aoyama Egret
Recently, Meicai.com has become a contradiction, and the news of going public in the United States and the news of large-scale layoffs have come at the same time.
In 2021, the news of layoffs was reported on the Uscai network, but what was not expected was that on January 12, 2022, the Uscai network reported the news of the big layoffs, and even the headquarters was relocated.
According to Phoenix Network Technology, some employees of Meicai Network said on social media that the scale of this layoff of Meicai Network was 40%, and even there were high-level directors at the director level. In addition, the headquarters of Meicai.com, which was originally located in Beijing Wangfujing Yintai Shopping Mall, has now been moved to the vicinity of Beijing Railway Station.
At about the same time, some media reported that Meicai.com decided to apply for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is expected to submit a public form in the first half of 2022, after Liu Chuanjun, founder and CEO of Meicai.com, has insisted that "it will not consider listing for the time being".
What happened to the Meicai network that was once able to compete with the daily excellent fresh and Dingdong shopping vegetables?
Meicai network frequently spread layoffs
Compared with daily excellent fresh and Dingdong to buy vegetables, it seems that the development of Meicai network has not been very smooth.
In September 2021, Meicai.com was exposed to lay off more than 50% of its employees at its Beijing headquarters, and the layoffs even shut down services in some cities for a time. According to interface previous reports, meicai's layoffs in 2021 involve technical departments such as product research and development in Beijing headquarters, business departments such as procurement and sales, and functional departments such as finance.
On January 12, 2022, Phoenix.com Technology reported that Meicai.com employees exposed that Meicai.com has been laying off employees, and some business directors and product directors have been laid off some time ago. The employee said: "The director-level employees are fine, and some basic business personnel are forced to terminate the contract and talk on the same day." ”
Media reports pointed out that the Chengdu R&D center of Meicai.com was abolished as a whole, some urban services were directly shut down, and some regional businesses were merged.
Generally speaking, it is very normal for companies to lay off employees, why has Meicai Network attracted so much attention from the market this time? The analysis pointed out that Meicai.com laid off half of the headquarters in 2021 and laid off another 40% in early 2022, which is extremely rare, unless the company has a big problem in operation.
According to the combing, in 2014, Liu Chuanjun founded Meicai.com in Beijing, building its own cold chain logistics network in the F2B model to connect vegetable suppliers and catering enterprises. As of 2021, Meicai.com has a business layout in more than 200 cities across the country, and has built 150 logistics centers with 35,000 employees.
According to tianyancha information, Meicai has obtained eight rounds of financing since its establishment, and the investors are all star capital, such as Hillhouse Capital, Tiger Fund, Shunwei Capital, CMC Capital, Yuansheng Capital, etc., with a total financing amount of 8.418 billion yuan.
However, since 2018, Meicai.com has not obtained financing, and the track where Meicai.com is located, the fresh track, is a famous money-burning track, if the three-year-old Meicai.com only burns money and has no financing, then the capital situation is not optimistic.
Some insiders pointed out that meicai network while spreading layoffs while going public, a large probability is because of lack of money, eager to list to alleviate the current financial difficulties, but even if it can successfully list the layoff storm will make capital prohibitive, I have to say that Meicai network is caught in a dilemma.
What happened to Meicai.com?
What is the current situation of Meicai.com? This can be seen from the situation of the entire fresh food industry. The whole fresh track in 2021 is not very peaceful, and the accompanying keywords are "burning money", "dilemma" and "bankruptcy".
For example, the daily excellent fresh that was recently listed in the US stock market lost 3.017 billion yuan in the three quarters of 2021, and non-head players such as Yiguo Fresh, Tongcheng Life and Dumb Radish have been declared bankrupt one after another.
Meicai network and daily excellent fresh, Dingdong buy vegetables and other platforms have a big difference, Meicai network genes determine its focus on the characteristics of the B-end, Meicai network predecessor is a main agricultural products and vegetables platform, when the e-commerce development momentum is fiercer, capital is also more optimistic about this track, so Meicai network on the east wind rapid rise.
But now, the B-end model of Meicai.com does not have much advantage over the C-end, and the upfront investment is large, so Meicai.com has not found a better profit model so far.
The F2B model adopted by Meicai.com is, to put it bluntly, one end is tied to farmers, the other is tied to merchants and consumers, through the self-built cold chain logistics network to open up the transportation link, such a model at first glance is no problem, but in the eyes of capital, such a model is not popular.
Because first of all, this model is relatively heavy, the investment will be particularly large, and secondly, this model does not open up the "last mile" problem that all fresh e-commerce values, the biggest reason why consumers will use fresh e-commerce is efficient and convenient, and opening up the "last kilometer" is the biggest competitiveness of all fresh e-commerce.
The B-end business has been greatly affected since the epidemic, and domestic restaurants, especially small and medium-sized restaurants, have been greatly affected. According to the data, there are 13,000 registered catering enterprises in the country, and from 2020 to 2021, 78% of them will lose more than 100%, and 9% of enterprises will lose more than 90%.
The catering industry has been greatly impacted, and the situation of meicai.com, which focuses on serving the B-end, can be imagined.
Since 2021, in order to break through in the dilemma, Meicai has had to shift its business focus to the C-end and increase the group buying business of Meicai Mall and community. However, the C-end business is completely different from the B-end business, Whether it is a team composition or a way of operation, Meicai.com also faces huge investment to adjust the business line, which is undoubtedly worse for Meicai.com, which is tight on funds, in addition, Meicai.com will also directly collide with the head of the daily excellent fresh, Dingdong buy vegetables and other platforms on the C-end, and Meicai.com has no advantages at all.
In the case of not obtaining any financing for more than three years, many executives of Meicai.com have left their posts, and the C-end business has not made progress in selling jd.com, which is how many rumors of large-scale layoffs have been reported by Meicai.com.
The analysis pointed out that the current tight funds of the Meicai network, the listing has become an important means of "hemostasis", because no longer have funds to enter the Meicai network may face a huge existential crisis.
In fact, since 2019, Meicai.com has been frequently rumored to be listed, and even the media has exposed specific details, such as Meicai.com's appointment of CICC, Citi and Nomura to be responsible for listing matters; in 2020, Wang Can, former CFO of Fosun Group, joined Meicai.com, which was also interpreted by the market as a prelude to listing, but Wang Can only worked for half a year before leaving from Meicai.com again; in May 2020, Meicai.com was once again exposed to plan to go to the United States for IPO, and then there was no movement.
Tang Fei, an industry researcher, pointed out that although Meicai has repeatedly denied the listing rumors, it can be seen that Meicai has a desire and urgency for listing.
However, Tang Fei also expressed an optimistic view of the Listing of Meicai.com: "Although Meicai.com is now plagued by layoffs, as long as it meets the listing conditions, Meicai.com can still be listed, and the purpose of listing is to alleviate the plight of enterprise operation, which is no problem." ”
From the industry's leading position to today's situation, in addition to the direct impact of the epidemic, there is no solution to the key problem of reliable profit model, if it cannot solve these problems, even if the prospect of Meicai's listing is very worrying. Nowadays, the fresh e-commerce industry as a whole is cold, and enterprises can only find a breakthrough point suitable for themselves if they are flexible.
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