36Kr learned that the snack collection store brand "Neighbor Ogre" has received nearly 10 million yuan of angel round financing, and this round of financing is handled by Chenrui Capital as the exclusive financial adviser. This round of financing funds is mainly used for the preparation of new stores, digital system development and supply chain construction.
Neighbour Ogre (company name, brand name "Snack Mofa") is a hard discount chain positioned as a snack "category killer". Founded in November 2021, the company has opened nearly 10 stores in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in just two months of its establishment, and has opened in third- and fourth-tier cities such as Meishan, Sichuan.
Originating in Europe and the United States in the 1970s, the "category killer" refers to hard discount chain stores with a large business area and focusing on a certain category, because they have more items in the smaller commodity category, so they can "kill" those small stores that operate similar goods, and have an impact on traditional channels such as supermarkets.
Snack Mofa's single-store SKU of 1000-1500, covering first-line national brands, high-end imported snacks, Internet celebrity explosives, local snacks, etc., and 15% of the new items are available every month, bringing consumers high-quality and diversified choices.
The brand's unique strengths lie in its hard discounts, product offerings, high frequency on newness and efficient turnover. Founder Feng Hui introduced to 36Kr that because there is no entry fee, listing fee, promotion fee, snack moa's goods are 25% cheaper than supermarkets and 10-15% cheaper than their peers in the industry; but the gross profit margin reaches 28%, 3-5 percentage points higher than that of peers; in terms of operational efficiency, the number of 7-10 days of commodity turnover days is only half of the industry.
In terms of stores, Snack Mofa adopts a system of direct operation + franchise. For franchisees, the 12-day store opening cycle, the cost of preparation below 18% of the industry and the digital system are the main attractions; at the same time, the digital system makes the brand have a high store copying ability. Among the more than ten stores that have been opened, Snack Mofa has set a new industry record for a 100-square-meter store with daily sales of more than 150,000 yuan, and the average daily sales of each store are currently more than 10,000 yuan.
The team has rich experience in retail and chain management. Founder Feng Hui is the former strategic partner of Yonghui Yunchuang and has many years of experience in chain operation and management. As a "retail veteran" with a technical background, his career began with Fuji Rong, known as "IBM, SAP" in China's retail industry. At that time, Fuji Rongtong served most of China's chain supermarkets, department stores and other retail enterprises, providing them with one-stop integrated solutions for information and IT systems, and was later acquired by Shiji Information, a listed company strategically invested by Alibaba. Since 2009, Feng Hui has been an information technology consultant in the newly listed Yonghui Supermarket. In 2012, he officially joined Yonghui and subsequently became the head of the information center, providing support for Yonghui's overall technical architecture and application architecture. In 2015, the "Yonghui Yunchuang", which brought together super species, Yonghui life and Yonghui home, came out, with Feng Hui as a strategic partner, and the technology and business were shoulder to shoulder. Since 2017, Feng Hui has served as the general manager of the southern district and the general manager of Yonghui Home.
Not only understanding the retail operation business, but also having the ability to build a digital middle office system of a large factory, the compound resume has laid a solid foundation for Feng Hui to establish a snack mofa. The team also has talents from many first-line Internet and retail manufacturers such as Yonghui, Suning, Ali, Meituan, JD.com, Carrefour, Yongguan and many other first-line Internet and retail manufacturers, deeply cultivating the retail industry, and accumulating a lot of practical experience and resources in various dimensions such as investment promotion, preparation, procurement and operation.
The essence of snack collection stores is still small profits, high sales and refined operations, which are inseparable from supply chains and digital capabilities. Feng Hui believes that the company's initial achievements "benefit from a deep understanding and accurate grasp of the essence of retail: retail is a flywheel model, with the fastest speed, the lowest cost, the highest efficiency to achieve commodity turnover, to meet customer needs, behind the embodiment of the supply chain and digital system of the ultimate pursuit."
The picture shows the strategic planning of snacking magic ena's technology products
In terms of supply chain, Snack Enamel is turning efficient and flat channels into reality by polishing the efficient organization and flexible production of the supply chain.
Brand direct procurement, OEM production, joint research and development and special channels are the company's current four main supply chain models. Among them, special channels refer to cross-regional and cross-factory purchase channels, which can eliminate many additional costs in intermediate links. For snack morphers, OEM production and special channels account for a larger proportion, which also makes the gene of "buyer culture" a unique advantage of the company. Feng Hui introduced that the team's rich supplier resources make it an agent for many first-line brands, which can directly take goods from the brand side; for other brands and various bulk or local snacks, they can go to the factory to directly collect, "such as Fujian seafood, baked goods, Jiangsu and Zhejiang various standardized production of puffed food, do not need to go to Sichuan local channel providers."
In addition to procurement capabilities, the digital management of integrated links and processes in the supply chain is also a highlight that attracts many franchisees and partners. Snack Mofa combines digital procurement with category strategy, and improves the accuracy of order frequency by controlling the daily sales data, sales rate, safety inventory and other dimensions to meet the needs of refined operations and achieve higher supply chain efficiency.
Digital capabilities are the core competitiveness of Snack Enamel. The independent information system created by the founder Feng Hui led the team to open up the front-end user analysis, commodity analysis, store location, sensor heat map, invoicing, inventory, ERP, CRM, logistics and warehousing in the middle office, and real-time data analysis in the background, etc., which integrates the real-time data of people, goods and fields, providing strong support for business decisions. As an important part of the growth flywheel, the digital system will optimize the replacement of goods, inventory management and abnormal warning, store operation SOP, commodity display and replenishment.
Focusing on the sinking market offline, it is because the team is optimistic about its huge growth potential.
The picture shows the store display of snacking morph
Channels such as large supermarkets, large stores, and business districts in first- and second-tier cities of snack retail are declining, while the channels of sinking markets and community stores are growing. At the same time, the current growth rate of offline channels for snack retail is stable at 10%, and the scale is more than 5 times that of online; and the traffic conversion rate of offline chain stores is high, and the consumer repurchase rate is also higher than that of online. Therefore, in terms of categories, snacks mofa chooses leisure snacks for mass consumption, and focuses on the sinking market offline.
According to euromonitor, Frost Sullivan, iResearch and other institutions, the scale of the mainland leisure snack market in 2020 will reach 1.29 trillion yuan, with an annual growth rate of between 5% and 9%, of which the growth rate of baked pastries, leisure brine, nuts and other categories has remained at 10%. The penetration rate of snack collection stores in the entire snack consumer market is still very small, accounting for less than 0.5%. Snack "category killer" discount chain format can sink to cover the county, township, community and other "outside the five ring markets" of 1 billion + population, the future has a scale of 100 billion growth space.
This year, Snack Mofa plans to continue to stabilize the local market in Chengdu, planning to open 200 stores, becoming a leader in the Chengdu and Sichuan markets, and laying out to the national market, planning to expand nearly 4,000 stores in 3 years. In the future, Snack Mofa will continue to strengthen the exploration of the standardized chain operation system, focus on the development of the franchisee system, and will also expand its store network with the support of capital, and land more strategies in terms of investment promotion and marketing.
Compared with foreign countries, the mainland leisure snack industry is very fragmented, and the giant that has not yet had a market share of more than 10%, new brands have more opportunities. At present, the mainstream snack sales channels in the mainland are still concentrated in traditional supermarkets, but the complicated fees and settlement policies of supermarkets make pricing generally 15%-25% higher than that of discount chains, and they have gradually been unable to meet consumers' new demand for snacks, which has become a problem for most snack brands. As a result, the sales contribution of snacks in supermarkets has also dropped from about 16% in the past to 5%. In recent years, various snack brands have turned to e-commerce, but the peak of online traffic dividends, high marketing costs, and the impact of the real experience and commodity display that are naturally lacking in the virtual world have made snacks, an "impulse consumer product", unable to exert its lasting potential. The data shows that the online sales share of mainland snack food in 2021 will be about 14.7%, almost the same as the previous year.
At present, there are two main types of players in the mainland leisure food discount retail track: one is a temporary food supermarket represented by good special sale, hi special purchase, etc., positioning the urban business circle, the initial sale of temporary food at a low price, and gradually increasing the proportion of genuine products; one is a collection store represented by brands such as snacks are very busy, snack magic ena, snack moena, snack girl, etc., biased towards the sinking market community. Players in both modes are growing at a high speed and have been favored by capital in recent years.
Discount retail formats in Europe and the United States have been developing for a long time. Dollar General, a community "dollar store" that originated before World War II and went public in 1968, is the largest low-priced grocery retailer in the United States. As of fiscal 2021, there are about 18,190 Dollar Generals in the United States, far surpassing large chain retail companies such as Walmart and achieving "community-level coverage". Products are mainly for the middle and low income communities in the United States, 80% of the goods are sold for less than $5, but the gross profit margin has remained above 30% for many years, and single-store sales have risen for 31 consecutive years, with operating income and net profit of 34.220 billion and 2.399 billion US dollars in fiscal 2021, respectively, and a market value of more than 50 billion US dollars.