Reporter Xu Jie trainee reporter Wu Qi
From February 9 to 11, the Securities Daily reporter visited a number of offline flower shops, fresh e-commerce stores and flower trading markets, the lively scene before the Spring Festival is no longer there, but it is about to usher in February 14 "Valentine's Day", flower prices, especially rose categories ushered in the "highest in the past 20 years", which can be described as soaring.
The price of the flower is rubbing up The shopkeeper does not dare to hoard more goods
At the Beijing Flower Exchange Market in Beijing's Fengtai District, Ms. Wang, a wholesaler, complained on the phone while taking a record: "You didn't get more than yesterday, and now roses are one price a day." Subsequently, she told the "Securities Daily" reporter that the recent price of flowers has risen every day, and the price of 20 B-grade roses is also set at 120 yuan to 130 yuan because of the high price." This is more expensive than during the Spring Festival, and we dare not hoard goods for fear of not being able to sell them. ”
The owner packed flowers shoot / Wu Qi
In a retail flower shop in Chaoyang District, the price of a B-grade rose has also risen to more than 10 yuan. Mr. Shop Director said that "I dare not hoard too much". A consumer in the store said, "Recently, flowers are really expensive, but it is more important to buy one or two bouquets occasionally to make yourself happy." ”
In addition to Beijing, Ms. Ma, the owner of a boutique flower shop in Shenzhen, also said in a telephone interview with reporters: "In the morning, I entered 10 roses and used 2,000 yuan, before, the same money could enter 30 zha." ”
The contrast with the offline store is the shouting in the e-commerce live broadcast room: "Babies, next give you benefits!" 40 roses, send a handful of orange stems, 55.8 yuan, shoot it now, ship it tomorrow, send SF cold chain! ”
The reason why the price of e-commerce live broadcast rooms is so low is that the merchants are located in Dounan, Kunming. Kunming Dounan Flower Market is the largest cut flower trading market in Asia, known as the vane and price barometer of China's flower market, and 7 out of every 10 cut flowers in the Chinese market come from here.
Why is the flower market so hot this year? Hong Qianjin, a researcher at Zhongyan Puhua, told the Securities Daily reporter: "First, due to the new crown pneumonia epidemic and other reasons, the area of flower planting has decreased, and even some flower farmers have changed careers; second, the main production area of Kunming has continuous rain and low temperatures, resulting in the production and quality of roses being affected, and the supply has decreased sharply; third, the freight has soared and imported flowers are difficult to buy." ”
According to the data of the flower auction market in Kunming, Yunnan Province, since February 5, the price trend of cut flowers has been higher, and the market has entered the peak period of "214". "The market demand is strong during the Valentine's Day stocking period this year, but the supply of flowers has dropped by about 30% compared with previous years, and the price increase is naturally reasonable." The relevant person in charge of the flower auction center said.
(Data source Kunming International Flower Auction and Trading Center)
A new round of capital entered the flower track
As for the reasons for the soaring price of flowers, some insiders also pointed out that it may be related to capital entry. "As soon as the offer of the trading center came out, many people did not bargain at all, how much to collect. The price of A-grade roses has been the highest price in nearly 20 years. A boss who has been in the flower business in Kunming for decades said.
From 2003 to 2013, it is known as the golden period of rapid growth of Chinese flowers, and the annual sales volume rose from 7 billion to more than 20 billion.
Since 2013, there have been more than 50 financings in the field of flower e-commerce, reaching a peak in 2015, with a total of 22 financing incidents that year. At that time, the players in the track were mainly vertical flower e-commerce, such as Spend Time, Fauvism, Roseonly, etc.
After 2015, there were only a few companies that received financing in the track, until 2019, flower e-commerce only raised two financings in the whole year, and the amount of financing was only 38 million yuan. Following the termination of the listing of Aishang Flowers and Huaji.com in 2019 in the national small and medium-sized enterprise share transfer system, the financing in the field of flower e-commerce has fallen silent.
During this period, consumers complained that the quality of the "Weekly Flowers" sent by the platform was high and low, and sometimes the flowers were not easy to match.
Although the pain points are still the same, there are many people entering the game. Taobao, Jingdong, and Meituan intervened in different forms; Ben life network and daily youxian respectively launched their own brand "Ben Girl" and flowers fast; Ele.me used the advantage of distribution to launch corporate flower ordering services; Hema Fresh upgraded "Cabbage Flower Factory" to "Hema Garden"; even Uniqlo also started the "idea" of flowers... The Flower Track is reignited.
According to the "2021 Annual Consumption Trend Report" released by Dingdong Grocery, More than 180 million flowers were sent to 5 million families in 2021. At this time, its flower business has only been online for more than a year.
In the Hema and Dingdong grocery shopping APP, the reporter saw that the two opened a pre-sale mode for "214", and consumers can book in advance and deliver it on the same day on February 14.
As of February 11, Hema online pre-sales increased by 459% over the same period last year, with bouquet sales within 200 yuan being the most popular, and 99 red roses with 999 yuan / bunch of red roses in Shanghai and Hangzhou with the most reservations.
Dingdong buy vegetables "Romantic Valentine's Day" flower column category is mainly rose gift bouquets, there are 1 to 99 red rose bouquets of various styles, the price ranges from 88 yuan to 899 yuan.
(Flowers in Hema Shop, Photo / Wu Qi)
Yu Shui, head of the Dingdong Grocery Shopping Flower Project, said in an interview with the Securities Daily reporter: "According to the current booking situation, the sales of flowers for Dingdong Buying Vegetables Valentine's Day this year are expected to reach more than 10 times that of last year. It is reported that Dingdong Buy Vegetables and the head base of the main flower producing area in Yunnan have carried out order cooperation, locking 5 million flowers during Valentine's Day in advance to avoid the problem of shortage of Valentine's Day flowers and soaring prices.
The relevant person in charge of Hema Fresh replied to reporters, "We have a special team stationed in Yunnan, responsible for base sourcing, standard formulation, quality control, and at the same time build a cold chain logistics network from the place of origin to the whole country." According to reports, Hema has signed 30 direct procurement cooperation bases in Yunnan, built a flower warehouse, and created a complete flower supply chain.
From the base to the production warehouse, the sales warehouse, and then to the store, it can achieve direct procurement and direct hair, which means to a certain extent that the platform controls the supply chain.
"We found that the habit of users buying flowers in Hema is becoming more and more routine, and the habit of buying flowers like buying vegetables is gradually being formed." The head of procurement of Hema Garden told the Securities Daily reporter that from 2020 to 2021, the sales ratio of Hema bouquets and cut flowers has changed from 7:3 to 5:5, which shows that flowers have entered people's daily lives.
Who will be the "Champion of Tomorrow"?
"The market is shuffling, if you want to continue to develop, either go deep into the source to control the supply chain, or refine your skills to screen customers and take the best products." In the interview, the understanding of an industry insider can be described as thorough.
Ai Media Consulting data shows that 48.1% of Chinese netizens buy flowers 3-5 times a year, accounting for nearly 50%. The average number of people who buy flowers 2 times and 6-10 times a year is comparable, accounting for 17.9% and 17.3% respectively. The number of people who bought once and bought more than 11 times accounted for 6.3% and 6.5%, respectively.
Some research institutions expect that the size of the flower market will reach 194.365 billion yuan in 2023, which means that every player in the track has the opportunity to get a development dividend.
Zhang Yi, chief analyst of Ai Media Consulting, told the Securities Daily reporter, "Flowers have become an important symbol of Chinese consumers to improve the quality of life, which means that whether from the demand for flowers or the supply chain of flowers, such as production, circulation, consumption and other links, they have reached a stage of rapid development." "The development of the mobile Internet has more conveniently connected the supply and demand sides, objectively creating a huge market." Origin, quality, preservation, warehousing, logistics, price... Everything is about the speed of the runners in this race.
The person in charge of taking a little time revealed, "At present, we have expanded from a single online flower consumption business to a comprehensive supply from personal flower consumption to corporate flower supply demand. At present, we have also reached close cooperation with a number of community e-commerce and fresh e-commerce companies to provide them with high-quality flower products. ”
Hong Qianjin, a researcher at Zhongyan Puhua, told the Securities Daily reporter, "Because the fresh platform has basically built a 30-minute delivery system, even if it adds a flower category, it will not increase the logistics cost." In addition to logistics, fresh e-commerce also has store advantages. Taking Hema as an example, the number of stores and customer traffic are more than the offline stores of general vertical flower e-commerce. Therefore, take the time to reach a close cooperation with the fresh e-commerce platform to provide high-quality flower products for it, and jointly open up the 'last mile' of flower distribution. He believes that "the sale of fresh e-commerce flowers reflects the demand for mass consumption upgrading." Flowers have changed from serving specific customer groups to mass consumer goods sold by fresh e-commerce and supermarkets, which is the progress of the times. ”
"Who is the final player to 'hit the line', whether fresh e-commerce can complete this mission, it is still uncertain, it takes time to precipitate." Behind such a large industry, professional people are needed to do professional things. Zhang Yi said, "From the perspective of the entire industry deduction process, the current problem to be solved is to make the entire market bigger, the price of flowers needs to be closer to the people, the delivery speed should be faster, and the sense of experience should be better." ”
(Edited by Cui Man, Shangguan Monroe)