"Ali is going to sell Hema "
This is not the first time that gossip has been circulated
This time there is a clear amount and buyers
If the news is true, it may be able to breathe new life into wine
Last weekend, a news about "Ali is going to package Hema and RT-Mart for 30 billion to sell to COFCO" exploded on the Internet. In less than a day, Internet media came out one after another to refute the rumors, "the relevant persons in charge of Hema and RT-Mart both said that the news was not true", and the circle of friends of colleagues in the public relations departments of the two companies became evidence.
After two days of fermentation over the weekend, Monday did not wait for the official statements of several companies, and all the news was learned by the media from relevant people. What came on Monday was Alibaba's official closure of RetailTong and the suspension of the operation of the "B2B platform that supplies offline retail stores in communities such as Tmall stores".
Also on the same day, Alibaba Group announced at an internal meeting that Hema founder Hou Yi will step down as CEO and officially retire because he has reached the age of 60, and Yan Xiaolei, the chief financial officer of Freshippo, will also serve as CEO. After the meeting, Hema employees received a notification letter. There was no rumor about this in advance, and it was reported that before the announcement was issued, Hou Yi was still dealing with business emails.
Putting aside the suspicions of the outside world about Alibaba's new retail decision-making for the time being, but Hema, RT-Mart, and COFCO, these three names together will definitely set off a revolution in wine in supermarkets.
The rumors that Alibaba is going to sell Hema and RT-Mart (Sun Art Retail) are not completely groundless, and the successive remarks made by the group-level managers, combined with the profitability of RT-Mart and Freshippo, this rumor is more like a reasonable speculation. If a leading Internet company wants to exit traditional brick-and-mortar retail, which is not very profitable, it seems that it is indeed the best strategy to deal with the current market situation, but it will definitely take time for such a large volume.
In that year, after the establishment of Hema in 2015, it received an investment of 150 million US dollars from Alibaba, and then Ma Yun publicly put forward the concept of "new retail", saying that "there is no e-commerce in the future, only new retail", and Hema has become the No. 1 project of Alibaba's new retail. After 9 years of development, although under the leadership of its founder Hou Yi, Hema has far-reaching significance for exploring China's new retail, but unfortunately the overall situation has been in a state of loss.
In January last year, Hou Yi said in a letter to all members of Hema that "the main business of Hema Xiansheng has achieved profitability", which is the first 'profit statement' in seven years. Then in May, Jack Ma reappeared at Alibaba, and the internal meeting emphasized the "return to the Internet". Obviously, Hema, the child who made Ali work hard, is too slow to make money, and Ali's layout in traditional retail will definitely be adjusted.
In February this year, Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai also said at the earnings conference, "At present, Alibaba still has some traditional brick-and-mortar retail businesses on its balance sheet, which are not core focused businesses, and it is reasonable to exit." "The probability of Hema and RT-Mart being sold is more than 50% predicted based on the rhetoric of all parties and the actual operating conditions.
Some people in the industry believe that they may still be looking for more suitable offers and buyers. However, there was also news that COFCO had senior executives joining RT-Mart's DingTalk system, and there were also rumors of layoffs to accept the acquisition in a more streamlined posture. There is also news in the Beijing area of Hema that the company began to promote salary cuts on the 18th, and some employees began to transfer to third-party outsourcing.
But until the official announcement is made, these are still speculations.
After going through more than a dozen crazy iterations of the "octopus-style" state of the industry (including Hema Fresh, X Membership Store, NB Outlet Discount Store, as well as F2 convenience store, Hema mini, Hema Mini, Hema Neighborhood, Hema Station, Hema Vegetable Market and Hema Pick'n Go, etc.), Hema once praised the user experience when it came to Hema and carried out discount reform for profit, leaving only the bad reviews of backstabbing members and brand suppliers, and the acquirer had the ability to balance the seesaw of the quality-price ratio of the merchant and the profitability of the channel terminal.
If Alibaba has to sell these traditional retail "burdens", perhaps only large state-owned background groups such as Poly, CITIC, COFCO, and China Resources can take over. Considering that each group has different pillar businesses, and some of them already have more mature retail projects, the likelihood that COFCO can become a buyer is greatly improved.
COFCO focuses on agricultural grains, focusing on grain, oil, sugar, cotton, meat, dairy and other categories, such as grain and oil brand "Fu Linmen", wine brand "Great Wall" and "Drunkard", milk brand "Mengniu", meat brand "Jiajiakang", canned food brand "Meilin", etc., covering more than 90% of the Chinese market. However, COFCO does not have a brand that focuses on supermarket retail. As a large shopping mall in many cities, Joy City has also introduced supermarkets with different backgrounds in various places. COFCO Mingzhuang Hui, a liquor operation brand established in its tenth year, is only an importer, and it is aimed at distributors.
If you can have your own supermarket brand, whether it is for upstream product brands or to build an integrated self-owned supermarket, it seems to be a good move. The direct acquisition of a terminal channel can provide a better display for its own brand, and many imported or domestic fine wines have the opportunity to face consumers directly, and the integration of a complete upstream and downstream supply chain with the power of COFCO can also obtain more favorable prices for consumers, and have a more life-oriented platform to access the 'high-quality' wines.
Although the dust has not yet settled, COFCO needs a Hema or RT-Mart to lead the supermarket forward.
In recent years, wine bloggers like to visit the supermarket the most, one is Sam and the other is Hema, these two supermarkets attract most of the 'well-off' young people and middle-class families, and wine seems to be the only way to get the quality and price guarantee in these two supermarkets.
Hema, a native supermarket, is completely based on consumer users in the process of building, learning from the experience of many foreign century-old supermarket brands, and also attaches great importance to the planning of wine products. Whether it is an online APP or an offline store, they have tried to erase the professional threshold of wine, and set up sections such as "Little Sweet Water" and "Buyer's Choice" to reduce the difficulty of purchasing. In the fresh section, different types of seafood and meats are combined and different types of wine are placed. At the same time, Hema wine activities are very frequent, and when the membership system still existed, it launched "If it is more expensive than Costco or Sam's culb in the same city, you can refund the difference with the voucher within seven days." ”
There are obviously many more fine wines to choose from in Hema than RT-Mart, which is more like most local supermarkets in China, with wine shelves in the deepest part of the wine and beverage section, and many bottles have even accumulated dust, and most of them are famous wines, so it is difficult to tell whether the imported wine is really imported in the original bottle or canned in China, and there are only a few old Chinese wines.
From the perspective of "how to enhance the presence of wine in people's lives", it is undoubtedly an opportunity if COFCO takes Hema and RT-Mart into the bag. Perhaps, with the support of its own wine importers, it is possible to standardize the supermarket to put wine with the real price and value, and it is no longer a step on the sinkhole to buy a bottle casually, and there is no voice of "domestic wine is canned" among the mass consumer groups. After all, today's wine can no longer be fenced to entertain itself.