Text | Retail Business Finance, author | Wang Tuo, editor, | Crane Xiang
Retail Commercial Finance exclusively learned that the number of Fulujia convenience stores (hereinafter referred to as "Fulujia") founded by the "boss lady" of Mixue Ice City has reached 100 stores in Henan, and the average daily turnover of stores has reached 4,000 yuan. According to the strategic plan, after completing the goal of 1,000 stores in 2023, Fulujia plans to rank among the top ten in China's chain brand convenience store industry the following year.
Unlike the "lucky coffee" who fired the first shot of the coffee sinking war, the "kinship" relationship between Michelle Ice City and the Fulu family has not been made public, and it has always maintained a low-key and mysterious and seemingly independent relationship that has nothing to do with it. In fact, Mi Xue Ice City fully supports Fulujia, whether it is the supply chain or the location of the store.
A person familiar with the matter revealed: "Fulu's family is made by Mixue Ice City, which has long been an open secret in Shangqiu, Henan, the hometown of Zhang Hongchao, the owner of Mixue Ice City. ”
According to the enterprise investigation, the major shareholder of Henan Fulujia Trading Co., Ltd. is Tian Haixia, and the legal person is Jia Rongrong.
Among them, the three companies under Tian Haixia's name (Zhengzhou Huiji District Michelle North City Ice Drink Shop, Zhengzhou Jinshui District Mi xue bingcheng drink shop, Zhengzhou Jinshui District Tian Haixia drink shop) have been cancelled, it is worth noting that "Tian Haixia Beverage Shop" is now the location of Zhengzhou Jinshui District Mi Xue Ice City Drink Yellow River Road Store; Jia Rongrong has operated 11 Mi Xue Ice City beverage stores, all of which have been cancelled.
Is Michelle Ice City really going to grab the convenience store business?
In fact, when the slogan of "Yellow Peach Fruit Finishing The Explosion of Iced Black Tea" in Michelle Ice City triggered industry discussions on low-cost milk tea to rob the convenience store beverage business, it had already extended its tentacles to the entire industrial chain of convenience stores.
01 Although the sparrow is small, Fulujia convenience store "all the organs are complete"
Henan Fulujia Trading Co., Ltd. was established in October 2018, and the "Fulujia" brand was registered at the same time and officially entered the Henan market. In May 2019, the first store of Fulujia Convenience Store opened, which was located in Henan University of Economics and Law, the alma mater of Zhang Hongchao, the founder of Mixue Ice City. In August 2020, the "0 franchise fee" was opened to join; at the end of the same year, Fulujia used the backstage power of Mi xue ice city to upgrade its image.
Half a year of preparation, two years of "replication". Fulujia has taken root in Henan and completed the development process from 0 to 1, from 1 to 100, and then the thousand stores and ten thousand stores plan also shows that it is imperative for The Fulu family to go out of Henan and lay out the whole country.
Focusing on the physical store of Fulujia, its store VI selects orange, red and dark blue, with "FULU MART" as the English logo, similar to the "Family Mart" logo of family convenience.
On the commodity side, Fulujia claims that there are more than 3,000 kinds of standard store SKUs and more than 1,500 kinds of BOX stores. In addition to the basic categories, Fulujia also includes the sale of fresh food (oden, sandwiches, buns, etc.) and its own products (bread, mineral water, craft beer, etc.).
Retail Business Finance and Economics learned that in terms of the construction of warehousing and logistics system, Henan Juntai Supply Chain provides it with regular (daily distribution, next-day delivery) delivery services for warehouses and store goods.
Fulujia also lays out online and offline at the same time, trying to provide consumers with "all-in-one" convenient services. Not only in the store to provide toilets, document photo printing and other services, but also opened the "Fulujia Convenience Store" mini program online, build a membership system and open Ele.me, Meituan takeaway services.
In terms of digital construction, Fulujia chose Haiding as its digital service provider. It is worth noting that Fulujia provides a "convenience bee-like" self-service cashier service in the store, but it cannot do the intelligence of the convenience bee, let alone compare with the operation and procurement ability of the convenience bee.
In the positioning of the consumer population, Fulujia is the same as The Honey Snow Ice City, specializing in the pursuit of "high quality and low price" of young people and student parties, such groups are willing to pay for what they like, but their consumption power is limited. Therefore, the location of Fulujia's stores is mostly around the school, around the pedestrian street, around the shopping mall and other large traffic areas.
In terms of marketing, Fulujia launched nodal marketing activities such as "Big Price Release in the Beginning of the School Season" for the student group, launched the Huang Taiji-style "Fulu Daily", sold the surrounding area and blind boxes of the "Snow King" of Mi xue ice city, and specially created the "Fulujia Commissary" commodity display area and Costa coffee theme store.
Whether it's printing and restroom services at 7-ELEVEn convenience stores, VI design for the whole family, Rosen themed store marketing, or convenience bee self-service cashiers... Fulujia draws on the characteristics of imitating excellent convenience store brands at home and abroad, and draws scoops from various dimensions, and finally lands in Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, Xinxiang, Jiaozuo, Puyang and other markets at a small cost, creating a localized convenience store brand of "sparrow although small and complete".
In this regard, Shanghai Jiaotong University visiting professor, senior convenience store expert Lin Xin said that tea brands to open convenience stores to avoid blindly opening stores, Although the Michelle Ice City tea shop has the advantages of chain store management and development, but the commodity structure and supply chain of convenience stores are more complex than tea stores, catering and retail have huge differences in store management, store development choices are also different, headquarters backstage management organizations, should be independent and combined with each other, can do a good job of tea stores, but not necessarily good convenience stores.
02 Novices poured in, and Zhengzhou convenience stores opened the "melee" mode
In recent years, the ministry of commerce has paid unprecedented attention to the scale and chaining of the domestic convenience store industry. According to the relevant data of Tianyancha, the annual registration volume of convenience store-related enterprises in mainland China will exceed 250,000 in 2021, showing a stable growth trend in the past 10 years. At the same time, the rise of young consumer power in the sinking market has brought huge development opportunities to the convenience store industry.
According to the "China Urban Convenience Store Development Index" released by the China Chain Store and Franchise Association, the Zhengzhou Convenience Store Development Index in 2021 will be 68%, down 1.96% from the previous year. Among the 39 key cities in China that were included in the index ranking in the same batch, Zhengzhou ranked 35th, down 6 places from the previous year.
Zhengzhou, Henan, which was once a convenience store "desert", has attracted a number of foreign brands to enter Zhengzhou in the past two years, in addition to favorable policies and changes in market demand, the "depression effect" of Zhengzhou convenience stores has brought a lot of impact on investment fever.
Since August 2021, Lawson Convenience Store has successively settled in Many prefecture-level cities such as Tangshan in Hebei, Wuhu in Anhui and Nantong in Jiangsu, with nearly 20 stores; 7-ELEVEn has opened its first stores in Dezhou, Shandong, Kunming, Yunnan and other places.
In addition to Japanese convenience stores, as of the end of 2021, among the top 20 domestic convenience store players, more than 8 convenience store brands such as Today, Convenience Bee, and Tang Jiu have made great efforts in Zhengzhou. The entry of foreign convenience store brands into Zhengzheng broke the original market pattern, which also announced that the Zhongyuan convenience store market has opened a melee mode of elimination and annexation.
According to Dahe News, since 2021, convenience store investment has shown a new speed in the Consumer Market in Zhengzhou, and industry competition has undergone many obvious changes compared with the previous year. This includes the increase in the difficulty of site selection, the fluctuation of street shop rents, the promotion and encryption of promotional activities, and the introduction and competition of "skilled" talents.
The new store development strategies of various enterprises may be different, but in reality, the appeal and reserve scale of each company to the industry 's skilled hands (store manager, store development, procurement, etc.) have become the core competitive elements of the current "enclosure war".
"The convenience store industry is ostensibly fighting for scale, but in fact it is fighting for multi-dimensional retail technology." Ma Qian, head of Yuelai Yuexi, believes that from brand positioning, store development, procurement and selection, differentiation setting, supply chain integration (price control), financial background, logistics system, etc., what is about to unfold is a full contest.
03 It is actually a "grass boat", and the Fulu family "quietly" borrows the East Wind
The battle of Zhengzhou convenience stores that has quietly started has tested all kinds of players in addition to brand power, as well as market adaptability and competitiveness.
Fulujia, as a native convenience store brand in Zhengzhou, has passed tricks with industry experts, in addition to the competition of commodity power, operation and service power, in the long run, it is inseparable from the competition of understanding the essence of retail, and the development of Fulujia is obvious.
On the one hand, Fulujia quietly used the East Wind of Honey Snow Ice City to quickly enter the market with the combination of "Honey Snow Ice City Ecology + Fulu Family", with outstanding geographical advantages.
In the sinking market tea industry has long been "sealed" the honey snow ice city, the ambition to recreate a "king of the sinking market convenience store" can not be underestimated. The site selection conditions of Honey Snow Ice City and FuluJia are quite similar, the two live next to each other, and retail resources are shared with each other.
The entrepreneurial experience of the Mi xue ice city team for more than 20 years has provided a strong resource backing for the Fulu family. The former's development capabilities in the fields of beverages and pastry are undertaken by the latter stores and precipitated into the latter's own brand. The form and function of the latter compound store are far better than that of a single milk tea shop, and the two form a combination fist in the construction of convenient commercial circles.
On the other hand, the Fulu family's distinct "take-ism" mix-and-match wind is difficult to scrutinize, and the heart of "Haiding" exposes the essence of "grass boat".
Among the local convenience store brands, there are many excellent enterprises that actively explore or build central kitchens (central factories, private brands, category management capabilities, etc.), improve "data-driven" digital capabilities (operation and precision marketing of front-end private domain traffic, back-end AI use data mining, etc.), improve product selection and improve the quality of daily operations, and rely on teams and talents to export brand culture with extreme services.
Compared with excellent enterprises, Fulujia is still in the stage of "copying and manipulating", and the weakness of the supply chain system construction and system research and development capabilities is intuitively reflected in the single commodity pull noodles, and the commodity strength is poor. In addition, the pursuit of revenue is "big and small", in addition to opening up franchises, in the beverage cabinet chocolate commodity display, store huge marketing paste, the opening of a full line of takeaway, Fulujia's emphasis on operating costs is far better than the consumer experience of entering the store.
Convenience stores are a business that is easier said than done, but behind the low threshold there are ultra-high standard industry requirements. Opportunists who rely on money transfusions end up drowning in the torrent of the times.
In a sense, the non-professional Player Fulujia opens a convenience store but it is difficult to understand the convenience store, and the innovative mashup wind that is better than nothing is a bit sensational in the industry.
In the long run, whether it is a first- or second-tier market or a sinking market, with the blessing of new technologies and new ideas, the development of convenience stores must still conform to the changing needs of consumers, return to the essence of "convenience", and pursue long-term value. As for the Fulu family, the best ending may be to be annexed by the strong and sell for a good price.
04 Do not do the right thing, Honey Snow Ice City is not far from its "Low"
On the occasion of the 2022 New Year, the unproductive Michelle Ice City ate the first cake of the coffee sinking.
Relevant data show that after the 1 yuan ice cream and 5 yuan milk tea, the number of "lucky coffee" stores under the coffee sub-brand of Michelle Ice City has expanded to more than 500. It has more than doubled from more than 200 six months ago. Lucky Coffee aims at the third- and fourth-tier cities where the coffee brand is blank, and by copying the franchise model of Michelle Ice City, it has played a super affordable slogan as low as 5 yuan for a cup of freshly ground coffee.
"Honey Snow Ice City does not dislike you poor, you should not abandon it low", looking at the development path of Fulu family and lucky coffee, "Low" seems to have become the only magic weapon for Honey Snow Ice City to cross-border all-you-can-eat.
First of all, the pricing of lucky coffee products is very compatible with the consumption habits of small towns. The sinking market is the core battlefield of Mi Xue Ice City, and its store location is concentrated in urban villages, university towns and small towns; in terms of products, the product line of Mi Xue Ice City is almost below 10 yuan; in terms of store publicity, it adopts a full-coverage, continuous and repeated promotion method, and pastes poster materials throughout the store, even the cup holder is not spared.
From pricing, operation to marketing, Michelle Ice City has formed its own set of logic, and after it completed the construction of its own research and development, warehousing, logistics system, Michelle Ice City began to copy this set of logic to coffee and convenience stores, and promoted to the whole country.
Secondly, the race to the ground, the ever-changing without its "Low" so that the Honey Snow Ice City solidified in the past experience. The current Michelle Ice City is in the franchise store, and may also be trapped in the continuous increase of franchise stores in the future.
Looking closely at the development of Mi xue ice city, it seems that it has become more and more inseparable from the staking and crazy expansion, especially in the past two years. Michelle Ice City has successively released preferential policies for franchisees on its official website to encourage franchisees to open stores in places with greater traffic but higher rental costs, and the same is true for Lucky Cafe and Fulujia.
But the core question is, will the chaos of running too fast increase?
The blindfolded Andraught Tried to increase the chips for the listing, but the level of store management after the expansion was uneven, and the sequelae were aggravated.
Retail commercial financial retrieval market supervision penalties found that Mi xue bingcheng has been repeatedly investigated and punished by the market supervision department for food safety problems such as tampering with the validity period of kaifeng ingredients and using semi-finished products of overnight tea soup milk pulp, and has been punished by the market supervision department for many times.
As for the lucky coffee and Fulu family, they are just replicas of the Honey Snow Ice City model in the coffee and convenience store formats, and whether the latter can develop for a long time depends on whether the Honey Snow Ice City can be successfully listed. On September 29 last year, the official website of the Henan Securities Regulatory Bureau showed that Mi Xue Bingcheng planned to IPO in A shares.
However, the tea market has been "bad news" in recent days, and the stock price of the head brand Naixue's tea has fallen sharply after being listed at a high valuation, which has seriously hit the capital's enthusiasm for investment in the new tea industry. In addition, the days of regional new tea brands such as Heytea being exposed to layoffs, tea beauty, and Lele tea are not good.
After experiencing great prosperity, new tea brands have faced the test of life and death of losses, store closures, and traffic decay. People in the industry believe that the tea industry is entering a long-term stage of socialism, and gradually moving towards the reshuffle period of the strong Hengqiang. In the primary market, investors have also reduced the investment heat of new tea drinks, and this time Honey Snow Ice City intends to list A shares, and will also face the embarrassment of investment cooling.