Wen 丨 Bohu Finance, author 丨 Tang Bohu
Even as the New Year approaches, Dingdong groceries are still on the cusp.
A message of "Dingdong buying vegetables or will enter the field of shared bicycles" spread in the circle, due to the industrial and commercial changes in Shanghai Yibaimi Network Technology Co., Ltd., the operating company of Dingdong buying vegetables, which added a shared bicycle service to the business scope.
Is it difficult for the community group buying giants to also start disrupting the travel field?
Some time ago, Dingdong buying vegetables was reported to be layoffs, and the proportion of layoffs in core departments such as procurement, algorithms, and technology ranged from 20% to 50%.
Some employees even said that the total number of employees was reduced by tens of thousands compared with the company's peak.
Dingdong buys vegetables, what has you experienced?
Burn one's boat
Judging from the data of Dingdong grocery shopping in the past year, we can know a little bit about it.
In June 2021, Dingdong Buy Vegetables went on the market.
The closing price was only 2 cents higher than the issue price. On the second day of listing, the market value of Dingdong Grocery once broke through the $10 billion mark, but then the trend took a sharp turn.
As of January 26, 2022, Dingdong Buy's share price was $4.44, and it had not been able to rise back to the issue price.
In addition to the industry's common problem of "continuous loss", Dingdong buys food and has come out with bad news. A certified Dingdong grocery shopping employee revealed on social media some time ago that Dingdong buying food has started a major layoff, the specific proportion is 50% of procurement, 30% of the algorithm, 30% of the operation, and 10%-20% of the recruitment.
Before going public, Dingdong's grocery shopping valuation was around $5 billion, and now it's less than $2.7 billion.
Obviously, the lack of market confidence led Dingdong to take the initiative to reduce the scale of fundraising. Although this helped it to successfully complete the fundraising, it pushed itself into danger. Let the already stretched cash flow be under pressure again.
Dingdong, which has not yet developed to the stage of "economies of scale", is still losing money. Since 2018, a total loss of 11.726 billion yuan has been made, and the loss margin is still expanding.
In the third quarter of 2021, dingdong bought a net loss of 2.01 billion yuan, an increase of 142% compared with the same period in 2020.
At the same time, although revenue is also growing significantly, the growth rate of 111% still outperforms the growth of losses.
That is to say, even if the news of layoffs is officially debunked, the days of Dingdong buying vegetables are indeed not good.
(Source: Network)
Relying solely on the grocery business, it is obviously impossible to support this behemoth.
Different from the Meituan, Pinduoduo, and Shihuituan, Dingdong buying vegetables has not been relied on by "dry daddies" from beginning to end, nor has it accepted giant investment, which has led to the doomed Dingdong grocery shopping and giants are not a volume level from the beginning.
No matter how hard Dingdong buys vegetables, it is difficult to defeat the other side's forces.
Orange Heart Preferred is a living example.
In November 2020, Didi CEO Cheng Wei shouted the slogan, saying that he would invest in Orange Heart Preferred without a ceiling and strive to win the first place in the market.
In one year, Orange Heart Preferred invested no less than 20 billion yuan, no less than the other two number one players - Duoduo Buy Vegetables and Meituan Preferred.
But in less than a year, in August last year, orange heart preferred there were rumors of layoffs, sales, etc., and in mid-September, it was revealed that the whole country would be closed in batches, and the 9 major districts and 31 provinces were reduced to 3 regions and 9 provinces.
Orange Heart Preferred has become cannon fodder in the capital melee.
It is to see the orange heart preferred ending, Dingdong buy vegetables to speed up the run.
Players have their own explorations, and orange heart preferred to do wholesale business is different, Dingdong buy vegetables by making pre-made dishes to increase the unit price of customers, enhance the bargaining power of the brand.
Today, the anxious Dingdong grocery shopping is also trying to use travel stories to feed the fresh tree, so as to spread its branches and leaves.
Is this business sexy?
According to the previous statement, Dingdong buying vegetables is very likely to enter the field of sharing bicycles, then after Dingdong buying vegetables, or there will be a Dingdong bicycle.
Why does Dingdong buy vegetables to lay out this field?
According to Bohu Financial Analysis, the layout of shared bicycles is more to obtain high-frequency traffic that is just needed, thereby diverting the fresh plate.
According to the 2021 Q2 mobile Internet industry data research report released by Aurora, as of June last year, the monthly active number of Dingdong groceries was 9.535 million, and the number of daily excellent fresh monthly active users was 6.667 million.
Both losses, stock prices fell, in order to enhance the monthly life, Dingdong to buy vegetables is a fierce effort.
At present, the giants have their own tricks.
Pinduoduo, deep ploughing agriculture, through self-built supply chain, reduce intermediate links to control costs, empower more vegetables, and form a benign closed loop.
Meituan has integrated business systems such as preferred, fast donkey, and grocery shopping to improve the synergy of these three sectors.
Taocai cuisine has the highest proportion of head suppliers, such as RT-Mart and Hema, which not only do not outflow, but also ensure quality.
And Dingdong buy vegetables, because of the bulky front warehouse model dragging its legs, in order to expand the scale, Dingdong to buy vegetables in the supply chain of up to 79.1% of the fresh direct procurement, reducing supply chain costs.
At the same time, vigorously develop its own brand, that is, the pre-made dish mentioned by Bohu Finance, so as to enhance the operation of high-value commodities and increase the unit price of customers.
Pre-made dishes, which are seen as the main path for Dingdong to buy vegetables in the future, are not yet known for profit.
Dingdong must carry out strategic layout and make achievements in the field of local life like Meituan.
Does a community group buying giant have imagination in the business of sharing bicycles?
Looking back at the former shared bicycle players, Ofo, Xiaolan, Xiaoming, Youbai, etc. have withdrawn from the historical stage, and the remaining Hello, Mobike, and Qingju have also been invested and acquired by large factories as a small piece of the group's strategy.
In the past, the battle of a thousand regiments, in the end, only the three kingdoms were killed, and the market scale and users who threw money at these players could not avoid being cannibalized by the Internet giants in the end.
The red sea of the market and the occupation of giants have become the characteristics of the shared bicycle field.
Even if you know that this bone is difficult to chew, Dingdong buys vegetables to try.
Sharing bicycles, the most test is the operation ability, technology. To say that the operation ability, Dingdong to buy vegetables have a fight. When the community group buying was fierce, Dingdong bought vegetables and even mobilized tens of thousands of front-end staff to do ground pushing.
2020 is the time when community group buying is going crazy. The KPI of Meituan's one-day grocery shopping is at least 6 new ones, and Dingdong buying vegetables is 15.
(Dingdong buy vegetables to push, source: network)
Users download and register, complete the order, scan whose QR code is counted into whose performance, the QR code is valid for 24 hours.
Because the KPI of Dingdong grocery shopping is heavier, its push staff appears to be more wolf-like. Their uniforms are uniformly printed with the words "Iron Army", and in terms of words, they are full of tricks, "the wine is not afraid of the deep alley, the next APP good man is not afraid of waiting", "Send eggs under Dingdong, don't have to buy eggs for a month"...
Relying on a strong push team, intensive front-end positions and high new subsidies, as of September 31, 2021, Dingdong Grocery has 1375 front-end warehouses in 37 cities across the country.
However, these push personnel and the operators of shared bicycles are still different, and shared bicycles need to carry out refined operation and maintenance.
Collecting fixed-point homing, using big data to find, locate and repair "problem bicycles" and then put them on, this is the work that a shared bicycle operator has to do every day.
But relatively speaking, the threshold is relatively low, and Dingdong still has an innate advantage in buying vegetables to do this thing.
In terms of technology, now that the shared bicycle technology has long been mature, the most differentiated is to optimize the distinction between smart locks, bicycle cushions, bicycle baskets and other parts.
Bohu Finance believes that the most test of Dingdong buying vegetables is to cultivate user habits.
You want users to find a bike on a vegetable app, which is not an easy task. Compared with Meituan, Meituan is a local life APP, user habits have long been formed, and sharing bicycles is a convenient thing.
Unlike Dingdong buying vegetables, the front-loading warehouse model determines that it has no offline consumption scenario, and users can complete transactions by placing orders directly online.
A person who doesn't go out and just wants to buy a dish, when he needs to use a shared bicycle, will he think of opening Dingdong to buy vegetables?
The education market is often the hardest, and it also means higher input costs. You can burn money, how long can Dingdong buy vegetables burn? Compete with the giants, can you fight? Again, this is a problem.
On the traffic side, there are currently more than 9 million monthly active users of dingdong buy food APP, which means that there are more than 9 million potential active users entering the shared bicycle.
Compared with the sharing bicycle giant Hello, the number of registered users of Hello is close to 500 million, and the number of monthly active users is close to 70 million 2 years ago.
Want traffic, Dingdong to buy vegetables to hug the big factory. At present, there are green oranges on the WeChat side, hello and ofo on the Alipay side, but Dingdong buys vegetables without Tencent investment, and the second is a competitive relationship with Ali, and it is difficult to get these two traffic entrances.
Like selling vegetables, this seems to be a very heavy project, but I am afraid that Dingdong will not succeed in buying vegetables and diverting the flow but planted myself.
Dingdong buys vegetables and is in a dilemma
Nowadays, Dingdong is in a dilemma to buy vegetables.
Further, it means that the expansion of the territory requires a steady stream of funds. Taking a step back means losing the city, abandoning the previous achievements, and becoming cannon fodder.
Obviously, there is no way back for Dingdong to buy vegetables.
From fresh to pre-made dishes to shared bicycles, Dingdong buys vegetables and tries to make the fresh plate bigger and become a real fresh giant.
But at present, the roadblocks in front of Dingdong are still difficult to move. Unable to scale up, Dingdong can only increase the unit price of customers.
And prefabricated dishes, whether it is for raw materials, recipes, processes, or distribution, are tests, which obviously means that it is not easy to do well.
The story of Dingdong buying vegetables is being told humbly.
References:
1. Alpha Workshop: Dingdong buys vegetables: After burning tens of billions, it has not found a way out
2.IT Friends: Dingdong Grocery Shopping: A Battle of the Backwaters under Radical Expansion
3. Deep Burning: Crazy grocery shopping war