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«——【Preamble】】 ——»
As the founder of Alibaba Group, the largest e-commerce platform in China, Jack Ma has always been committed to developing online marketing models.
However, in 2018, he changed his normal situation and spent more than 40 billion yuan to acquire RT-Mart, a large supermarket that has been marketing traditional offline.
What is the purpose of his doing this, and how has RT-Mart developed under his management?
The source in this article comes from Baidu Encyclopedia and official media interface news, "RT-Mart" and "Auchan" are all Ma Yun's: Ali accounts for 71.98% of the shares, released on January 13, 2018, but in order to improve the readability of the article, the details may be polished, please read sensibly, for reference only!
«——【RT-Mart's Development History·】——»
To talk about RT-Mart's current situation, it is necessary to understand its establishment and the situation before it was acquired.
RT-Mart was not a professional supermarket at the beginning, it was actually a product of the textile industry.
In the nineties of the last century, the textile industry was faced with the threat of high labor costs and overseas low-price competition, and the large-scale textile group - Runtai Group was also facing the same problem.
As a result, Runtai Group began to seek transformation, and it set its sights on investing in insurance and financial businesses.
At that time, it was a very good choice to choose to invest in the distribution business, so the general manager of Runtai Group gathered a small team to prepare to build a local retail store, so RT-Mart Supermarket came into being.
At that time, large supermarket chains were not common, so Huang Mingduan opened the first RT-Mart in the more prosperous Shanghai.
In less than a few months, RT-Mart opened the local market and reached a turnover of more than 20 billion yuan in the second year.
Taking advantage of the momentum of RT-Mart's development, Huang Mingduan has established RT-Mart chain stores in key cities in East China, North China and Northeast China.
During this period, Huang Mingduan also reached an agreement with the two major brands of Zhongyang Group to form a strategic partnership and set up a joint procurement center.
RT-Mart has also developed from the initial retail of snacks and daily necessities to the sale of a variety of products such as clothes, jewelry, and electrical appliances.
In 1998, Huang Mingduan acquired three stores of Formosa Plastics Group's Asia-Pacific wholesalers, and after the merger, RT-Mart's exhibition store scale surpassed that of Makro Supermarket for the first time.
In the second year, RT-Mart recorded a revenue performance of 24 billion yuan, and with this performance, RT-Mart squeezed Makro out of the top three.
In 2000, RT-Mart had opened 15 stores and gained more than 1.5 million members. That year, RT-Mart alone had a regular consumer population of 5 million people.
With the continuous expansion of RT-Mart supermarket chain, Huang Mingduan also paid more attention to the quality of goods and the attitude of service personnel.
In order to facilitate business management, Huang Mingduan has formulated a series of relevant policies and systems to coordinate the relationship between service personnel and customers.
«——【Human Management System·】——»
Such a management model has indeed achieved remarkable results in the operation of shopping malls, but RT-Mart's operation has encountered other difficulties.
Because RT-Mart supermarket chains are located all over the country, cultural differences in various places have been the biggest difficulties RT-Mart has encountered since its establishment.
For example, in Taiwan, people may be more inclined to buy meat products that have already been processed, while in mainland China, it is more popular to cut and sell them. Consumers everywhere have different needs, and it is impossible for them to meet the needs of all customers.
In addition, when RT-Mart was just starting, Huang Mingduan thought that the sales of quilts and down jackets in the north, especially in the northeast, must be particularly high, so he ordered a lot of quilts and down jackets in the northeast in winter.
But what he didn't expect was that these goods were not as good as they were sold in the south, not only did they fail to make money, but they also put all the costs into it, and finally caused a backlog of a large number of goods.
So why did the sales of quilts and down jackets in Northeast China not only not increase but declined? In order to find out the answer to this question, Huang Mingduan specially flew to Northeast China to do a survey, and also prepared a questionnaire covering a wide range of contents.
After half a month of investigation, Huang Mingduan found that in the Northeast, most homes have sufficient heating, usually only need to wear a thin dress in the house, and do not need to cover a thick quilt to keep out the cold when sleeping.
As for down jackets, most of the ones sold in their shops are not thick, and they are only suitable for northern cities with relatively low temperatures, and are not suitable for wearing in the northeast where the temperature is dozens of degrees below zero, and most of the people in the northeast wear thickened down jackets or other clothes specially purchased when they go out.
Here, Huang Mingduan also discovered a strange phenomenon, that is, in the winter of Northeast China, the sales of ice cream are several times higher than in summer.
In order to better adapt to the development of each region, Huang Mingduan has set up regional general managers in each region. Different managers in different regions develop marketing strategies in order to be as local as possible.
In addition, RT-Mart also has a unique approach to employee management. Since it is a large supermarket chain, the daily wear and tear is definitely essential.
In order to reduce the attrition rate, RT-Mart linked it to employee bonuses, and employees in the same department with the lowest attrition rate in different places can get more bonuses, while the higher department may not only not get bonuses but also have the risk of being deducted wages.
Under the constraints of this system, RT-Mart has controlled the loss rate between 2 and 3 per 1,000, which is far lower than the 10 per 1000 per 1000 of supermarkets in the same industry, which also enables RT-Mart to reduce a large amount of indifferent expenses every year.
In terms of price, RT-Mart also has an advantage over other supermarket chains. In order to ensure that consumers can buy high-quality and low-cost items at RT-Mart, RT-Mart has set up a market research team to detect fluctuations in market prices to ensure that RT-Mart's prices are competitive enough in the market.
With RT-Mart's basic stability in the mainland market, Huang Mingduan also began to gradually establish shopping malls in medium-sized cities, and also began to build supermarkets in counties with more promising development prospects.
In 2001, RT-Mart partnered with Auchan, a French company with 40 years of retail experience, and RT-Mart became a foreign joint venture.
In 2010, RT-Mart reached an agreement with Auchan to establish a holding company in Hong Kong and realize the vision of RT-Mart to be listed in Hong Kong.
«——[Traditional marketing model makes it decay·]——»
However, RT-Mart was the first to face the embarrassment of being about to close its doors before it could wait for a successful listing.
Since 2013, more and more people are more inclined to online shopping, which is not only convenient but also more affordable, and it is precisely for this reason that RT-Mart's performance has been declining since 13 years.
The sharp decline in RT-Mart's marketing volume made Huang Mingduan realize the importance of online platform sales, so he immediately launched his own e-commerce platform - Feiniu.com, but after all, it was not a professional online sales, and it ended in failure within a few years.
In the face of the failure of the transformation, if you want to bring Darun back to life, you can only choose to cooperate with e-commerce platforms, and the most suitable e-commerce platform at that time was none other than Alibaba, which was founded by Jack Ma.
At that time, Ma Yun, who had been doing online marketing for many years, wanted to carry out the marketing model of online and offline "new retail", so in 2017, Alibaba Group invested about 19 billion yuan in RT-Mart and obtained a 36.16% stake in RT-Mart.
Later, in order to become the largest shareholder of RT-Mart, it invested more than 40 billion yuan before and after, and became the largest shareholder of RT-Mart with an absolute advantage.
But Ali's addition only made RT-Mart shine again for a short time, and then it went downhill again.
It turned out that after Alibaba Group took over, it spent a lot of money to invest in a number of independent checkout machines in RT-Mart's stores, and also opened a sales model online.
In the beginning, people did visit RT-Mart many times because they felt the convenience, which also gave RT-Mart a short-lived glory.
But with the introduction of these high-tech products, in order not to make enterprises lose money, they can only repeatedly increase the price of goods, which also causes dissatisfaction.
After the enthusiasm faded, RT-Mart returned to its previous miserable state, and most of the few customers in the supermarket came to visit it because of their previous feelings.
In addition to the increase in prices compared to before, RT-Mart's quality control of food is also much worse than before, and in 2021, RT-Mart was also found to have food safety problems.
However, RT-Mart has rectified all these problems under the supervision of relevant departments.
In order to increase RT-Mart's sales, Alibaba Group tailored a seafood takeaway platform for it - Taoxianda, on which people can buy the same fresh seafood in supermarkets at a low price, and can also enjoy the treatment of home delivery.
But with the rise of e-commerce platforms, people are no longer focusing on just one platform, but have more and better choices. As a result, RT-Mart failed to come back to life under the rescue of Taoxianda.
In order to reduce more losses, RT-Mart had to choose to sell the goods at low prices and then close the store. So far, about 25 stores have chosen to close.
With the closure of RT-Mart supermarket chains in various regions, the era of RT-Mart, which belongs to the traditional retail "veteran", has gradually come to an end.
«——【·Conclusion·】——»
Perhaps, as Huang Mingduan, the general manager of RT-Mart said, RT-Mart defeated all its opponents, but only lost to the times.
In the context of the continuous development and expansion of the e-commerce industry, it is difficult for the traditional retail industry to continue to survive in this era if it does not seek transformation.
Although RT-Mart's profits are declining year by year, Jack Ma is still investing in it in an attempt to reverse the unfavorable situation. It is hoped that RT-Mart will be able to regain its past glory as soon as possible under the management of Jack Ma in the future.
RT-Mart's example tells us that if an enterprise wants to develop and survive for a long time, then it cannot blindly stick to the old ways and stagnate and actively follow the trend of the times, and advancing with the times is the last word.