Wen | Wu Lingwei
Editor | asked
In the penultimate week of 2020, RT-Mart opened two new formats in Changchun City and Baoying County of Yangzhou City, "RT-Mart Super". The search results of AutoNavi Map show that the Guilin store is also under renovation.
When the Super Changchun store opened, Huang Mingduan, who had only recently announced his retirement, was also on the scene of the store. This format, which has been in preparation since 2018, finally ushered in the official opening two years later.
The reason why it is new is for RT-Mart itself. RT-Mart has always swept through second- and third-tier cities with large and comprehensive stores, opening nearly 500 stores nationwide, and in July this year, it also opened the first community supermarket of about 500 square meters in Nantong, "Xiao runfa".
The Super positioning is a medium-sized supermarket, compared with the RT-Mart hypermarket of more than 10,000 square meters, and the small Runfa of about 500 square meters, the Super area is about 3,000 square meters, and the main focus is "fresh life supermarket". It removed the home appliances and clothing areas of hypermarkets, and more than 10,000 kinds of goods mainly focused on fresh and FMCG: the proportion of food was as high as 85%, of which fresh accounted for 20%. Non-food home textiles accounted for only 0.2%.
A month before the opening, residents of Changchun and Baoying counties had already received the classic discount brochure of RT-Mart's store. The most conspicuous places on the folding page are the Boston lobster for 79 yuan and the Chilean cherry for 99 yuan /kg.
3,000 square meters, emphasizing freshness, the store also set up a seafood dine-in area, which is everywhere in the standard box horse RT-Mart Super, is regarded as the "sunken version of the box horse". It has sunk to the county with the lifestyles of Bolong, Chelizi and front-line residents, and said it will promote 30-50 Super stores next year.
RT-Mart hopes to expand small and medium-sized supermarkets in the sinking market, in fact, it has long been written in Gaoxin Retail's 2020 mid-year financial report: small and medium-sized supermarkets will become the main development direction of the group.
Other supermarket competitors also recognize that small and medium-sized formats are the future trend: in addition to RT-Mart, its learning object Hema Xiansheng, as well as brands such as Yonghui and Cr Vanguard are also opening medium-sized or small stores. Most of CR Vanguard's "Marts" are around 5,000 square meters and plan to open 100 stores in 2022. The success of Yonghui Supermarket in the Chongqing market is also attributed to Li Guohui, president of Yonghui Supermarket, for its exploration of medium-sized supermarkets.
"In the Chongqing market, Yonghui's store is not as big as Carrefour and Wal-Mart, basically set between 3000-8000 square meters, the store is relatively compact, unlike other hypermarket operating income is a lot of foreign lease, investment driven, our store area is just able to radiate 1.5 km - 2 km, the store type is not big or small just to meet the objective conditions of continuous opening of stores."
In the past, hypermarkets of tens of thousands of square meters could become a living center within 5 kilometers of a city, but they could be distributed in a network of small and medium-sized formats, and offline consumers were closer and could cover more online consumers. This layout, which occupies both physical space and affects the user's mind, is precisely competing for the sinking market that has not been completely reclaimed - suburbs and communities other than the core business district, that is, counties and townships with a wider range and consumption upgrade needs.
However, it should be noted that from the first line to the fifth line, there is a gap in consumer demand. No matter how accurate the selection of products in first-tier cities is, it is difficult to reuse them to the people of the county. And even the richest counties and towns, most of them may face the problem of population loss - the most spending power of young and middle-aged people go out to work, women, the elderly and children mainly consumer groups are quite sensitive to prices, can they be attracted by higher-priced fresh supermarkets?
"E-commerce Online" reporter visited the Baoying store of RT-Mart Super's second store in the country, and interviewed Li Yudong, the general manager of the store, hoping to tell you with this article that the selection of more "refined" fresh supermarkets, after feeding the residents of first-tier cities, how to meet the needs of the people in the county?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > RT-Mart Super="Sunken Version" Hema? </h1>
At the entrance of the general hypermarket, it is either clothing or electrical appliances. Textiles and daily necessities are at the entrance of the Super Baoying store, and more lifestyle goods such as green plants and goldfish are prominently displayed.
The fresh area stacked with fruits and vegetables has always been the most popular area in the supermarket. On the RT-Mart Super public account, as well as the leaflets distributed to residents, the main items in addition to imported fruits and bolong are to emphasize RT-Mart's "daily freshness": vegetables that cannot be sold out on the day, discounts begin after 7 o'clock, and free gifts after 10 o'clock.
The store also has an area of more than 200 square meters that can accommodate more than 50 people to dine in. At the edge of the dine-in area, sugar-fried chestnuts, sugar gourds and local yangzhou cooked food brands are sold.
This set that RT-Mart Super admires is like another box horse. Li Yudong, general manager of Baoying Store, said that the fresh and dine-in parts are indeed learning from Hema.
As a junior Super, it is like a front-row soldier of Hema to open up the sinking market. As early as March this year, Hema put forward the goal of opening 100 hema fresh and 100 hema mini. Hema fresh occupies the core business district of the city, while Hema Nini, which has a lower cost of opening a store and a more affordable commodity, is responsible for sinking.
However, at present, the scope of the sinking of hema mini is still concentrated in the communities and suburbs of first- and second-tier cities. Hema Fresh has more than 300 stores, 60% of which are distributed in first-tier cities (as of September this year). In the north and in the truly sinking counties and townships, Hema stopped. In the words of Hema CEO Hou Yi, Hema wants a single store to be profitable, it must be the deepest and most transparent in the region. Therefore, the suburban market around the big store must be more priority than directly entering the third and fourth-tier cities.
The king of the sinking market, RT-Mart, accounts for only 7.6% of the stores in first-tier cities, and its experience in the sinking market, as well as the reputation accumulated for 23 years, just make up for the area where Hema is still difficult to set foot in for the time being. In 2018, hema stores in Hainan and Northeast China were handed over to RT-Mart to operate, and the store retained the characteristics of hema supply chain, while RT-Mart appointed store managers and joined RT-Mart's special categories. In whose advantageous areas, it is managed by whom, and their respective characteristics complement each other.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > treasure should be a typical sinking market template</h1>
RT-Mart has once again placed new formats outside of Shanghai. Last time, Xiaorun was distributed in Nantong, one of the most aging cities, and this time, Super took root in a county town in central Jiangsu Province.
As always, all RT-Mart stores opened on the first day of the local market, and they were crowded.
The day of the super baoying store was Saturday, and half of the road in front of the RT-Mart was blocked, and there were many clerks from out of town who came to reinforce the supermarket. On Saturdays and Sundays, from 3 to 4 p.m., there is always a long queue in front of the RT-Mart cashier, and customers pushing shopping carts need to give in like Huarong Road to move forward.
Baoying, the northernmost county seat of Yangzhou. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway are like two parallel lines, one running through the west of the county and the other through the east of the county. In the heyday of the canal, the old city was built by the river, but now the center of gravity of the county's development has moved from the northwest to the southeast closer to the Beijing-Shanghai line.
(Map of Baoying County, the left channel is the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and the right side is the Beijing-Shanghai Expressway and the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway.) ）
In the view of store manager Li Yudong, Super's location in Baoying is quite good, it is on the first floor of the county's newest and largest shopping mall "Jinyuan Hot Spring Life Plaza".
Developed by Jinyuan, the largest local real estate developer, the mall is like almost all business districts – it is regarded as the traffic center of the city, with a variety of eating, drinking and entertainment formats. Next to the mall is the most luxurious new hotel in the county and the newly opened bathing center; on the side are several residential buildings and playgrounds; the brands in the mall, in addition to RT-Mart, there are haidilao, Xianhezhuang, Walnut Lane and other catering, as well as three squirrels, tea and other snacks and drinks. These brands and the lifestyles they represent are commonplace in first- and second-tier cities, but in counties like Baoying, it is a consumption upgrade.
Whether it is passers-by a few kilometers away, or a taxi master, the developer spent tens of millions of yuan to introduce the news of RT-Mart Super, and almost everyone in the city knows it.
Bao should be regarded as a typical sinking market sample. Although it is a county seat, the main urban area has a permanent population of 290,000, and there is also a local Top 500 enterprise Baosheng Group, which has enough purchasing power to support this newly opened life square.
Jiangsu Province is the base camp of Suguo Supermarket, a supermarket brand formerly known as the Fruit Branch of Jiangsu Fruit And Miscellaneous Food and Miscellaneous Corporation, which is also quite competitive in Baoying County: there are two Suguo in the county seat, one in the old city, and one in Wuyue Square in the south of the county. The former is a hypermarket, and the latter is a medium-sized supermarket (self-proclaimed "second-generation hypermarket") opened by Su Guo last year, whether it is an area of 4,000 square meters, or about 10,000 goods, as well as fresh products, which are similar to RT-Mart super.
But Li Yudong believes that RT-Mart has a total of 6 stores in Yangzhou, and its influence and layout are not lost to Su Guo.
In addition to facing local competitors, Super also needs to solve a problem: Can the box horse moves it learn help it run wild in the sinking market?
Even if Baoying is already a strong person in the county, the lives of people in first- and second-tier cities obviously cannot be completely copied and pasted. In particular, when the format becomes smaller and the shelves become fewer, how does Super use refined SKUs to solve the needs of local residents?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > low price, how to store thousands of noodles? </h1>
"According to the background big data, we have retained the breadth of goods in the original commodity pool of the big super, while refining the depth and carefully selecting the most popular categories for customers." Zhang Haoming, head of the RT-Mart Super project, selected products for supermarkets in this way.
This selection method was successfully verified in changchun super store. The weekend the Changchun store opened, locals bought 2.8 tons of cherries and 1,140 Boston lobsters in two days.
The opening of the Baoying store also focuses on imported fruits and large seafood such as Chelizi and Bolong, but the manager told E-commerce Online that this strategy is not really suitable for a county store.
Changchun is the capital city, and Super's location is also in the city center. No matter how strong the economic development level of the county town is, there is also a clear difference with a provincial capital city: the chelizi and bolong that were sold in Changchun were generally reverberated in Baoying. The imported banana of 2.49 yuan / kg is more popular, and the clerk cuts a banana into several pieces for guests to try, and constantly emphasizes that "this is imported", selling more than a ton on the opening day.
The 200 Boston lobsters sold out in Baoying Store are also because of the blessing of low prices in Li Yudong's view. The price of 79 yuan in Baoying store is 10 yuan cheaper than that of Changchun store, and the processing cost of dine-in food is reduced by 10 yuan / kg. The "e-commerce online" reporter noticed at the scene that although the seafood area gathered a lot of people, more people just embraced curiosity, and then turned around to buy freshwater fish next door.
"Consumers in the county are still more interested in low-priced goods," the store said of "e-commerce online".
Consumers who walk out of Baoying store have two bags of rice and one bag of pork in their shopping carts. Unexpectedly, pork became a hit in Baoying store.
"We want to make pork a model project for RT-Mart super to attract guests." The point of attraction lies in the price and quality of pork. Pork purchased from all over the country, as well as imported frozen pork brands, allowed RT-Mart to achieve the lowest price in the city. "Vegetables and fruits are the same, everyone is selling, and pork highlights our quality and price, which is our advantage."
(China Resources Suguo in the old town of Baoying County also has a bolong, and the price is 158/kg.) Compared with RT-Mart Super, you can buy a lobster for 79 yuan, and the threshold is slightly higher. ）
Imported fruits and seafood are used to attract consumers, but what really attracts county residents to pay for is the affordable necessities. After Li Yudong and the clerks reviewed the sales on the first day of opening, they quickly made adjustments:
The JJ-class cherries, which are not so easy to sell, have been adjusted to J-class cherries (59 yuan / kg), and the price of a box of about 29.9 yuan is more affordable and better sold. In the rice and pork areas that are on sale, there are constantly shop assistants replenishing them.
Categories that are difficult to copy and paste need to rely on background data adjustment, and also rely on the experience of "people". "The company's development direction is to use the differentiation of the commodity structure to drive young guests, but it is still based on the local consumption level," Li Yudong said.
In the first few days of opening, there were local push personnel at the entrance of the supermarket teaching the elderly who passed by how to receive the opening red envelope and drain the flow of the RT-Mart Youxian app. However, this 1-hour express service, which has been launched on December 11, has far less online orders than offline.
In fact, even such a link as self-service payment has encountered a little "challenge" in RT-Mart Super. Suguo Supermarket has also opened a self-service cashier service for a long time, which shows that self-service cashiering is not a rare thing in the local area. However, the cashier queue on the opening day of the Super Baoying store was congested, partly because some consumers would not use self-service cash registers, and partly because Alipay payment supported by RT-Mart was not high in the county. More people still use WeChat Pay.
The smaller area and streamlined merchandise structure mean that the RT-Mart Super will be more flexible. If The soul of Super is RT-Mart's own supply chain, the skeleton is the way of life that Hema respects, and the flesh and blood have to be cut by the habits of county residents.
Retail stores such as RT-Mart and Yonghui are accelerating the layout of small and medium-sized stores. Super carries the strategic role of RT-Mart's large-scale expansion, and relies on its advantages accumulated in second-, third- and fourth-tier cities to shape "thousands of stores and thousands of faces" to do a good job in consumption upgrading. Among them, the most joyful is the consumers in the sinking market, from the originally overlooked market gap into the Business War story of Internet giants and retail giants. In a richer selection of goods, more cost-effective goods, they inadvertently changed the landscape of the commercial market.