Text / Meng Yonghui
On February 4, during the Spring Festival holiday, Cainiao Network issued a "Reminder of Precautions for Returning to Work during the Spring Festival", which clearly stated that express delivery sites are prohibited from using third-party receiving systems to enter the warehouse. This is considered by the industry to refer directly to the express delivery software service of buying more vegetables.
Defending the "last mile", rookie is undoubtedly serious. As an industry-wide end-of-line infrastructure provider, Cainiao understands better than anyone what this means for Cainiao's entire "empire".
Yes, "Rookie Empire". All along, people have only been impressed by Alibaba's aura and attracted by the story of Ant Financial, but they rarely pay attention to this rookie, the real king of China's express logistics market in recent years.
Since May 2013, Alibaba launched the "Cainiao Network" plan, announcing that it wants to build a nationwide super logistics network, and in 9 years, Cainiao has done it.
Looking back at the 9-year growth history of Cainiao, it is not difficult to find that in its meticulous storage of China's logistics express market, the dependence, mastery and adherence to the "last kilometer" at the end have always been the deepest appeal.
Momentum: Heaven and earth linked, soaring into the sky
He was born with great splendor.
Alibaba has once again exerted its best "platform" advantage in logistics, and "integration" is the keyword of rookie. From the beginning, Cainiao has pulled enterprises in every link of e-commerce logistics into it, including warehousing, trunk transportation, logistics real estate and last-mile distribution.
Cainiao's initial shareholding structure shows all this: the start-up capital is 5 billion yuan, Tmall accounts for 43% of the shares, and the investment is 2.15 billion yuan; Yintai invested 1.6 billion yuan, accounting for 32% of the shares, and Fuchun, Fosun Group, SF, "Three Links and One Da" all participated.
When the rookie first flies, it has a "heaven-earth linkage" to escort it.
After its establishment, Cainiao plans to build a data network based on the transaction and logistics information of Tmall and Taobao, called "Skynet", and build several huge warehousing centers in several important logistics areas distributed throughout the country, called "ground network".
"Skynet" cooperates with "Ground Network" to carry out "heaven-earth linkage", according to the advantages of its information big data, arrange warehousing, allocate logistics, and improve the efficiency of logistics express transit in many aspects.
Beyond the heavens and the earth, there are all things.
According to logistics data monitored by Cainiao Network, throughout 2014, tmall and Taobao generated parcels accounted for more than 60% of China's express delivery market share. Taking it down will be the most core business support of Rookie.
Rookie did. A humble post in early 2018 showed it all.
At that time, a notice about Cainiao's mandatory requirement for merchants to enter the warehouse was circulated online. The notice pointed out that all key merchants in the industry must join the cainiao warehouse, and the proportion of cainiao shipments must exceed 50% before September 30, until the next 100% are shipped through cainiao, and the future traffic of merchants who have not entered the warehouse will definitely have an impact.
The notice also requires that the merchants overcome their own difficulties and actively contact Xiao Er to sign a contract.
Source: Zhihu
Although this notice made Cainiao gain some complaints, in the end, most of the merchants apparently "overcame their own difficulties" until they achieved "100% delivery through Cainiao".
100% of the merchants are in storage, which not only makes the rookie and the upstream merchants closely integrated, obtains the inventory, funds and data of the merchants, but also prepares the first hand for the layout of supply chain finance. In May of the same year, Cainiao announced the upgrading of its supply chain financial services, from the "patents" of some merchants in the past to the "loans" of all merchants.
Zhao Wei, general manager of Cainiao Supply Chain Finance, said that this means that the commodity flow and information flow of the merchant's offline inventory will form a complete data closed loop, which is more conducive to the opening of the entire domestic commercial supply chain financial information chain.
Backed by Ali, Cainiao has understood from the beginning that Ali has the most users, the most extensive merchants, the largest commercial and logistics network, and is Cainiao's inexhaustible advantageous resources.
Alliance: Rookie Supreme, unified rivers and lakes
When the deployment of upstream merchants and inventory was completed, Cainiao also almost completed the "integration" of the express delivery company in the middle reaches, and September 2020 was Cainiao's highlight moment.
On September 1, YTO Express announced that it had reached a new round of strategic cooperation with Alibaba. After this capital increase, Alibaba and its co-actors hold 22.5% of the shares in YTO.
Alibaba Group, Cainiao Network and Zhongtong Express
On September 11, ZTO Express officially passed the listing hearing of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and in the financial report released by ZTO, Alibaba held 8.7% of the shares, with 2.6% voting rights, and was the second largest shareholder.
On September 21, Shentong Express issued an announcement that Ali spent 3.295 billion yuan to indirectly obtain 10.35% of the shares of Shentong Express, so far, Ali has accumulated 25% of the shares of Shentong Express.
Shentong had reached an agreement with Ali to allow Ali to continue to purchase its shares worth nearly 10 billion yuan, and after the completion of the transaction, Ali would become the largest shareholder and actual controller of Shentong.
So far, Ali's shares in the four links and one reach are divided into: Yuantong (22.5%), Shentong (25%), Zhongtong (8.7%), Yunda (2%), occupying half of the express delivery jianghu.
Cainiao network in an open state to attract all express logistics companies to join, and through the construction of data systems, not only improve logistics efficiency, but also let some express delivery companies slowly become ali e-commerce platform logistics suppliers, and when almost all express delivery companies have joined the cainiao alliance, the profitability of cainiao network also appeared.
In May 2021, Alibaba Group released the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021 and the full year of fiscal 2021, Cainiao achieved external revenue of 37.258 billion yuan, an increase of 68% year-on-year, and achieved positive operating cash flow in fiscal 2021, officially ending the days of consecutive years of losses.
But rookie and even Ali have to do much more than that, they are frequent in the field of logistics, and their steps are amazing. as:
Leveraging Intime Fosun to obtain land across the country and lay out logistics real estate; "10 billion" marriage to Suning, the 4.5 million square meters of warehousing network and national offline stores are included; participate in Xinyi Technology to seize the highest point of intelligent warehousing in the future; inject capital cards into the world, involved in trunk transportation and so on.
Between the vertical and horizontal openings, the territory becomes clearer. The original "Rookie Alliance" eventually achieved the status of rookie's martial arts alliance.
End: Real cow nose
It is easy to unify the rivers and lakes, it is difficult to gather people's hearts, and the rookie alliance is not stable. Therefore, seizing the end and controlling the "last kilometer" has become the inevitable battle for rookies. For rookies, without this, it is not enough to "king the world".
With the rookie station as the terminal station, the rookie wrapping as the transceiver tool, and the pickup code as the core moat. With this troika, rookies are self-contained and increasingly unshakable.
For Rookie Station, Rookie established exclusivity. For all franchised sites, Cainiao clearly requires that the station operators are not allowed to undertake commercial scenarios other than the Tao system, and the station operators are not allowed to independently reveal other cooperative brand elements signboards.
In this regard, the rookie remains highly vigilant and sensitive. Li Baofu (pseudonym), a 43-year-old in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, who originally ran a tobacco and alcohol supermarket and joined Cainiao Station two years ago, said, "When community group buying was relatively hot last year, Cainiao clearly required that the station was not allowed to undertake Meituan Preferred, Duoduo buy vegetables and Orange Heart Preferred, and could only engage in Easy-to-Buy and Taocai. ”
The recent incident of rookies that have been making a lot of noise in the city has banned duoduoduo's express delivery software is also listed.
Rookie Station Business Operation Policy
As for cainiao wrapping, it is the entrance to the collection and delivery of express delivery, and it has become an important part of cainiao's layout in the express delivery industry.
At the very beginning, Cainiao Station informed the recipient of the pickup through the SMS verification code, and later in order to promote Ali's Taoshi APP, Cainiao Network added a short link to the SMS notification, and the SMS recipient will download the APP after clicking on the link. Later, Cainiao Network directly explained in the TEXT message that it is necessary to download the APP to obtain the pickup code for pickup.
For users, this may not be a reciprocal market relationship, but many people still recognize it.
There will also be different sounds. In September 2020, a college student wrote an article on Zhihu titled "Because Cainiao Station forced to download the Rookie Wrap APP, so I chose to sue" quickly became popular and attracted attention. But the end of the matter is not difficult to think: the parties can only choose to download the rookie wrapped APP to take out the courier.
Cainiao's persistence has made it a breakthrough development. Li Jianghua, CEO of Cainiao Wrap, has said that Cainiao Wrap has more than 200,000 national shipping points in 2021. In July of that year, Cainiao Wrapping released a mid-year shipping report showing that its number of users had exceeded 300 million.
Regarding the pickup code, it is the deepest moat of the Rookie Empire.
Behind the pickup code is a big game of traffic. By "scanning the code to pick up the package", each pickup can be converted into a valid click. In 2021 alone, the business volume of express delivery service enterprises nationwide has reached 108.30 billion pieces, which is a huge traffic pool, and the continuous influx of traffic makes monetization possible.
The information of the pickup code is isolated, and its direct revenue is also possible. On the one hand, it can be used to further "order" the courier company, on the other hand, and then realize the commission of the courier collection point according to the "pickup code". ”
Pickup codes are so important that Rookie even fights for it. A typical case is the ban on the Battle of SF in 2017.
SF revealed that in the process of renewing the contract from March to April 2017, Cainiao requires that the trigger of all express cabinet information must be wrapped through Cainiao, the pickup code information is unconditionally given to Cainiao, and Fengchao needs to return all package information to Cainiao (including non-Tao orders), which is unacceptable to SF, and said that "it will continue to defend its core competitiveness, and hope that all colleagues in the express delivery industry will be wary of Cainiao's bottomless involvement in the core data behavior of express delivery companies." ”
SF did not succeed. On June 1, Cainiao Network blocked SF's logistics data interface through a statement. It was not until the State Post Bureau intervened to mediate that the two sides shook hands and made peace.
But rookies are still rookies.
Ending: The King of the Last Mile, the Ultimate Battle of Eternity
Ants that can't fly can't become rookies, but rookies who land on the ground are real ants.
Today, this rookie has truly landed as king.
With the blessing of "heaven and earth linkage", the dignity of the "lord of the martial alliance", and the "troika" of rookie station, rookie wrapping, and pickup code, rookie has completed the control of the "last kilometer". It grew quietly in a pattern that most people could not understand, and became the infrastructure for the daily life of the people.
Wan Lin, president of Cainiao, publicly announced at alibaba's 2018 global investor conference that "Cainiao is accelerating its layout in the fields of supply chain, terminal, express delivery, and global to build a global business infrastructure." "In the challenging last 1 km service, the cainiao terminal network has handled more than 10 million parcels per day, becoming a milestone in the breakthrough of China's express terminal."
This is the largest urban terminal network in China, and the only terminal network in China that provides diversified solutions such as self-pickup, cabinet entry, and door-to-door, and has become the end infrastructure of the whole industry.
An industry insider said that the concentration of express terminals is much higher than that of upstream dispatches, and mastering the terminal can command the entire express delivery industry, and Cainiao's share in the express terminal market has already exceeded 50%.
When a rookie begins to have a large sky of China's logistics express, it also has a greater initiative, stronger action, and at the same time has a greater and greater influence on some places.
As the Logistics Salon pointed out in a 2017 report, the core of Cainiao's positioning is two keywords: supervision, service, and in fact, quasi-government. When Cainiao Network becomes a full-process regulatory logistics service provider, it becomes, to some extent, a courier regulator, a rule-maker, and an influencer of policy and decision-making.
Whether it is for the previous SF or for other entrants, never underestimate the determination of rookies to safeguard their core interests and goals, and any possible plot for the "last mile" is destined to trigger a war.
This is the ultimate battle of eternity. And rookies, never hesitate to fight, always determined to win.
Cainiao Network is just 9 years old this year. For this "big bird", it also has a bigger sky and more time.
This article is written by Meng Yonghui, 36Kr is published with permission.