"The headline is the first to be carried out, and offenders will be prosecuted. Before reading this article, please click "Follow" in the upper right corner, which is not only convenient for you to discuss and share, but also can bring you a different sense of participation, thank you for your support!
- Source/Brand Officer
- Author/Brand Officer
Introduction: RT-Mart, which finally relied on the whole "flower work" to turn losses into profits, fell into the quagmire of losses again half a year later.
This brother, who was once known as the "most profitable supermarket", can't stand up to the pace of the times after all?
When Alibaba acquired RT-Mart, RT-Mart founder Huang Mingduan sighed when he left:
"Defeated all the opponents, but lost to the times. ”
From entering the Chinese market in 1997 to winning the mainland retail championship in 2010, RT-Mart only took 12 years.
With the vigorous development of the e-commerce industry, RT-Mart, as a traditional offline retail store, has suffered a strong impact.
In the three years from 2013 to 2015, Sun Art Retail's revenue growth rate dropped from 10.72% to 4.96%, and net profit growth rate also decreased from 15.19% to -15.73%.
However, even if it is acquired by Alibaba, it still can't change RT-Mart's declining state.
Recently, Sun Art Retail, the parent company of RT-Mart supermarkets listed on the Hong Kong stock market, released its interim results for fiscal year 2024.
From March 1 to September 30, 2023, the company achieved revenue of 35.768 billion yuan during the reporting period, a year-on-year increase of 11.9%, a net loss of 378 million yuan during the period, a year-on-year increase of 334.5%, and a loss attributable to owners of the company of 359 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 420.3%.
With the rise of new retail e-commerce and the change of mass consumption habits, RT-Mart has lost money, which may be expected by many people, but it is indeed embarrassing.
01, RT-Mart, the "boss", has no opponent in the field of supermarkets by "guaranteeing support".
Looking back now, RT-Mart has indeed not appeared in the public eye for a long time.
What brought it back into the spotlight this year was its "unpretentious" potato bread, which hit the market on October 11.
This potato bread has become popular on social platforms at an unexpected speed, and it has also set off a new consumption trend of "digging potatoes" when the price of purchasing agents has reached 10 times.
It was so popular that RT-Mart once came out overnight to call for "don't speculate on prices".
For affordability, RT-Mart has always adhered to it to the end.
At the beginning of August, Hema X members launched a "moving mountain price" for Sam's Club, and the two membership-based supermarkets started an unpretentious price war.
You drop one cent, I drop two cents,-for-tat.
Immediately afterwards, RT-Mart, which acted as a "peacemaker", launched "No Quarrel" on August 18, and also joined this business war in a low-key manner.
Some netizens compared RT-Mart's "no noisy prices" with the prices of Sam's Club products, and found that RT-Mart is really giving profits to consumers.
Whether it is calculated according to the unit price and grams, the final comparison result is a complete victory of "no quarrel".
It can be seen that as a long-established retail supermarket, RT-Mart provides consumers with high-quality and low-cost products with practical actions.
In fact, before the "no price quarrel", RT-Mart launched activities such as special prices for the people, uniform prices, and low-price storms, and achieved continuous low prices in daily operations, so that the discounts can effectively fall into the hands of consumers.
In fact, RT-Mart started at a low price and developed on a low-cost route.
Since RT-Mart opened its first store in Shanghai in 1997, RT-Mart is still just a "nobody" in China.
After all, in the field of retail hypermarkets at that time, there were already foreign giants such as Carrefour and Wal-Mart entrenched.
Moreover, RT-Mart's management has no retail experience, including RT-Mart's founder, Huang Mingduan.
Huang Mingduan has been working in production management in textile factories before, from the textile industry to the retail industry, it can be said that he started from scratch.
So, he adopted an "opportunistic" approach.
He knows that RT-Mart, as a supermarket novice, wants to gain a foothold in the retail industry, that is, to imitate first, and then surpass.
So, at the beginning, RT-Mart imitated the warehousing model of Makro, but the response was mediocre.
Later, after visiting domestic supermarkets, Huang Mingduan found that unlike the situation of Makro, Carrefour next to it was like a market.
As a result, Huang Mingduan began to study Carrefour's business model, and finally decided to change RT-Mart to a hypermarket business model.
He removed the "high" storage shelves and imitated Carrefour in terms of store display, stockpiling, store design, service and product categories, creating a people-friendly attitude.
It was not until 2000 that RT-Mart's parent company, Runtai Group, entered into a joint venture with Auchan Group, which has 40 years of retail distribution experience, and Huang Mingduan learned a more international retail management model.
In the future business model, Huang Mingduan gradually developed RT-Mart's unique business model.
And Huang Mingduan knows very well what users care about most, the fierce competition in the supermarket market makes the public loyalty low, therefore, it must be "cheap" to win.
Therefore, RT-Mart's hypermarkets take the low-price route.
In order to make things "as cheap as possible", RT-Mart has created a set of "KISS" strategies for this purpose, namely "Keep it simple and stupid".
To be able to achieve low prices, it also benefits from RT-Mart's source procurement, and also generously uses the "package" strategy, relying on the ability of money to cover everything that can be packaged.
For example, selling peaches, RT-Mart can wrap up the entire fruit mountain in Wuxi.
Selling pork, RT-Mart simply bought an entire slaughterhouse in Yangzhou.
has a lot of money, and the main focus is a boss who "just wants to be good for you".
In 1999, RT-Mart achieved a revenue of 24 billion yuan, kicking the former benchmark Makro out of the top three.
Since then, RT-Mart has fully started the pace of staking and moving from the region to a broader market at the rate of adding 20 new stores every year.
Relying on various low-price strategies, RT-Mart directly knocked down Carrefour, the giant that was once invincible in the domestic retail market.
In 2010, RT-Mart's revenue reached 40.4 billion yuan, replacing Carrefour as the "sales champion" in the domestic market.
From a layman to a professional in the industry.
It can be said that this "boss" in the supermarket industry has properly grasped the locals with its "high-quality and inexpensive" products.
02. The low price is not good, and it is still difficult to "enjoy the shade" with the back of the big tree
However, RT-Mart, which was once crowded with people during the New Year's holidays, seems to have been abandoned by the times.
Not only has the momentum become smaller, but the passenger flow is also getting less and less, and the sales shown in the semi-annual report have decreased by 11.9% year-on-year.
In 2017, RT-Mart, which took advantage of Alibaba, has carried out a series of digital restructuring and transformation.
Alibaba has allowed RT-Mart to access Alibaba's businesses such as Ele.me, Taoxianda and Tmall Supermarket to attract traffic to RT-Mart.
And it has also added many product categories that RT-Mart did not have before, including Tmall supermarket's Internet celebrity products and imported products.
However, RT-Mart has not regained its reach with the help of Alibaba.
According to the 2020 financial report, Sun Art Retail's revenue was 95.486 billion, with a year-on-year increase of only 0.1353%, and the net profit attributable to the parent company was 2.872 billion, a year-on-year increase of only 1.3409%.
The results from April 2021 to March 2022 show that Sun Art's total retail revenue was 88.134 billion yuan, and the net loss was 826 million yuan, which not only decreased by 7.3 billion yuan, but also fell into a huge loss.
In this predicament, RT-Mart, which focuses on "cost performance", has carried out drastic explorations in the past two years in order to save profits.
It has not only launched a variety of retail formats such as "China RT-Mart" and "Xiao RT-Mart", but also carried out hypermarket restructuring and omni-channel layout, etc., but has not achieved significant results.
Even due to the transformation of the scene layout, a lot of money was spent.
Sun Art's share price has also been below HK$2, and it can no longer reach the glory of more than ten yuan.
As of the close of trading at 16:00 on November 28, Sun Art's retail share price was HK$1.50, with a total market capitalization of HK$14.31 billion, compared with the total market value of HK$120 billion at the time of listing, hundreds of billions of Hong Kong dollars have evaporated.
03. Is the traditional offline retail supermarket really going to become the tears of the times?
In recent years, when it comes to traditional supermarkets, everyone's key words are "closure, store closure, difficulty" and so on.
Carrefour has been caught in a "store closure wave" since 2019, and has closed more than 100 stores so far.
Yonghui supermarkets have closed nearly 400 stores in three years, and China Resources Vanguard has closed 800 stores in a year and a half.
Traditional supermarkets, are they really going to fall off the altar?
It is undeniable that offline supermarkets are becoming fewer and fewer, but in the foreseeable future, they will not disappear.
And today's consumers don't like to go to the supermarket.
For example, Fat Donglai, which is popular in the country, has been praised by many parties for its ultimate service and has become a well-known "Internet celebrity supermarket" throughout the country.
When it's not a holiday, it's a daily crowd of guests. During the National Day, even because the customer flow was too large, Fat Donglai Supermarket also took measures to limit the flow.
Fat Donglai "went upstream" in the traditional supermarket that was "going down", which shows that the supermarket has not completely fallen in the torrent of the times.
Returning to the essence of the supermarket, serving people, putting customers first, and achieving the ultimate in standardization and details are what consumers need.
Visiting the supermarket can bring a sense of happiness in the air.
In addition to buying, buying, buying, it also gives warmth to life.
After getting off work, stuffing happiness into the shopping cart one by one in the supermarket, unloading the tiredness, and reaping a bag full of happiness is not the simplest happiness in the world?
And it is not as "arrogant" as Sam's kind of membership supermarket, which divides the crowd into hierarchies, and requires a threshold to enter.
Traditional shopping malls are more down-to-earth, oriented to the neighborhood and have a human touch, which is difficult to replicate in online shopping.
Chinese pay attention to food as the sky, and the satisfaction of appetite is the easiest reward for ordinary people in their busy lives.
When people go to supermarkets to shop, they still mainly solve the needs of "food".
Eating is the top priority of Chinese people, and they buy fresh vegetables from the supermarket every day to make a hot meal.
Not only can we fill our stomachs, but we can also fill our "hearts", and many things may be able to suddenly become clear in a tea and a meal.
Admittedly, we still crave the comfort of food and draw motivation from it.
Do you prefer online shopping or go to the supermarket? What do you think about the traditional supermarket "falling off the altar"? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss, express your opinions or opinions, thank you.
Celebrity anecdotes, hot character spicy comments, business fun, Internet information, more high-quality and interesting content, welcome to follow @brandofficial