Author丨Listen to Tao
Editor丨Tangerine
A few days ago, a friend said that he was going to Indonesia to start a business. This is already the third person in my small circle of friends who wants to go abroad to "engage in a career". When asked why they didn't stay in the country, the more "main" reason is: volume. The developed logistics and distribution in China, the rapidly changing consumption patterns, and the various shopping platform paths are forcing some people to go to other countries to find a "way to live" - not to say how much more they can earn, but mainly because they are less tired and easier to grasp.
United States and Indonesia
Xiao Shi is the author's college classmate, born in the rich second generation. There is a saying on the Internet that if you are not afraid of the rich second generation spending all day and night, you are afraid that the rich second generation will prove yourself. Although Xiao Shi did not fall on the way to prove himself, various "outlet" investments did not make him much money.
"The project is very good, the team can do it, the future is promising, and then you invest the money, and the project will encounter all kinds of iterations. The main reason is that each project does not last long, and the direction of the tuyere changes too quickly." Xiao Shi said that he had tried several shopping projects that did have some outlets at that time, such as subdivided shopping platforms like Mushroom Street, unmanned convenience stores, new consumer brands, and community group buying.
These projects were all star projects at that time and were sought after by the whole country. But the final result was no result, the follow-up financing was unfavorable, the team had internal conflicts, etc., and sometimes he had to take over some projects by himself, but he couldn't save them. The only advantage is that I am now clear from management to execution, from personnel to finance. These have nothing to do with what he studied in college, after all, he is from the Institute of Electronic Information.
The domestic changes are too fast, and he has begun to invest in some foreign industries in recent years. Currently, he is working on a "hard discount store" in the United States. Well, it's the tuyere project again. He said that he will not repeat the mistakes of the past, because the distribution logistics in the United States is very underdeveloped, of course, because of the high labor costs, so consumers are still accustomed to buying products by themselves offline. And the amount of single purchase by consumers is indeed a lot, and it is basically to fill the carriage. The low price is also very attractive in the United States, and judging from the results of the current business for nearly a year, the investment is worth it.
Because the business of hard discount stores in China is also very hot, he is on the cusp, and asked him if he would consider investing in such a platform in China. He said: "I don't think about it for the time being".
First, with the previous experience, the domestic outlet has changed too quickly, and he is afraid that he has just invested in one, and this hard discount store outlet has passed again. Relatively speaking, once the shopping habits of domestic people are formed, they will last for a long time. It's like the comparison between a foreign diet and a domestic diet. Foreign countries may have been buttered with bread since their ancestors, and it has not changed for so many years. However, the diet in China is not the same every day, but there are often several different ways to eat. So, he felt that he could still open this hard discount store for a few more years;
The second is the way of shopping, the domestic Internet is too developed, there are too many platforms to sell goods, consumers are accustomed to shopping online, although there is a special existence like Sam's, but Sam's more is not necessarily more competitive than the Internet, which is why only Sam's and Costco have succeeded, and others are rarely successful. However, in the United States, it is still mainly offline, and consumers do not have free shipping over 88 yuan, which is the stimulation of various displays, activities and shopping at the terminal and other people.
"As long as Wal-Mart's revenue can surpass Amazon's, this hard-discount business can continue", in fact, it is an exaggeration, even if Wal-Mart's revenue is lower than Amazon's, his business can continue.
If Xiao Shi represents the investor, Lao Hu represents the entrepreneur.
Lao Hu is a person who is ready to start a business in Indonesia, Lao Hu is a very restless representative of the FMCG industry, and has created two or three industries, but the effect is not very good. Last year, I made a children's sugar-free drink, but of course it didn't sell much. The variety of domestic products is too rich, there is no blank scene, due to the "crushing" of new consumption to the capital market in the past few years, capital is very cautious about domestic investment in new consumer brands.
"Unlike the past to spend money to smash the market share, the current investors have to look at the profit and loss ability", obviously Lao Hu's children's drinks are not very popular. But Lao Hu's personal professionalism is still very strong, and he also met some other venture capitalists in the process. They are going to let Lao Hu go to Indonesia to do market research, "I hope Indonesia is the same as the mainland market in the 90s."
Vietnamese market
Compared with Lao Hu's "exploration process" of the Indonesian market, Lao Dai has been in Vietnam for half a year and has a certain understanding of the Vietnamese market. Compared to Indonesia's 270 million people, Vietnam's market of more than 100 million people is smaller. Of course, they are far from being comparable to the domestic market. The biggest convenience point in Vietnam is that the temperature is relatively high throughout the year, and the season for selling drinks is longer.
Domestically, people may have more of an impression of Vietnam as economically backward and backward in consumption. The current economic situation should be the trend of reform and opening up on the mainland. However, in the eyes of the old generation, compared with the mainland's 90s, which were dominated by various copycat products, the food and beverage in the Vietnamese market is actually much more fashionable, and it is mainly influenced by South Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia, and the design of many products is more fashionable than that in China.
The Vietnamese market is relatively more inclusive, especially imported products dominate the local market, and various multinational companies bring their own unique products.
In recent years, many domestic capital parties have also moved to Vietnam, which has made Vietnam's economic development relatively good. Among the featured products, Korean products are more popular. The popularity of Korean products is mainly related to the Korean wave, and relatively speaking, Chinese goods will still be labeled as cheap and unsafe in the eyes of the Vietnamese people, so there are actually relatively few products from China. More Chinese goods are in the form of OEM.
Therefore, for the older generation, how to break the consumption prejudice of the Vietnamese people is what they will start to do in the future. Obviously, this kind of cultural export cannot be accomplished by the older generation alone. Of course, the older generation does not have to be afraid that one day their careers will become stronger and bigger, and they will be overturned by the Vietnamese people. After all, everyone is used to importing products.
Due to the underdeveloped logistics system of distribution, the ratio of offline to online in Vietnam can reach the level of 8:2. Although the proportion of online sales is low, various forms of domestic sales also exist in Vietnam. For example, community group buying, hard discounts, retail convenience, etc., online shopping has developed rapidly in recent years and has great potential. Mainly because of the underdeveloped logistics and distribution, these models have been learned very well, and they cannot become mainstream in Vietnam for the time being.
Not only is the development of online shopping not very good, but even the modern stores that have been eliminated in China are not developing well. There is almost no germination of modern stores, and Vietnamese consumers still shop mainly in traditional wholesale stores, husband and wife stores, and perhaps better is that CVS chain convenience stores have a certain market share. And another "freezing point" that has been eliminated from the Chinese market - if you have a memory, you must remember the newspaper halls all over the country and the refrigerators next to the newspaper halls. There are more freezing points in Vietnam, and business is better. In fact, these frozen snacks also have a part of the role of freshly brewed milk tea shops, because Vietnamese people especially like to add ice to drinks, and these freezing snacks are also poured into a cup of packaged drinks and then added with ice.
In the Vietnamese market, consumers prefer tea drinks first, then coffee, then energy drinks (various Red Bull), and finally carbonated drinks. As for sugar-free drinks and water, it can only be said that the market potential is relatively large, and it may be developed in the next ten years, but the current consumption in Vietnam is still dominated by sugar-sweetened beverages. This year, China's tea beverage sales have also surpassed carbonated drinks, so to speak, tea drinks are a well-deserved brother in the entire Asian market.
In addition to product differences and channel differences, there is the difference between agency and sales. In terms of agents, Vietnam is also deeply distributed, usually a three-level system, including national distributors, regional distributors, and retailers. In our market, this is actually more like Evian and Suntory, which are foreign companies looking for a local national general agent, and then going to retailers by province. Vietnam also has a second-batch business and a wholesale and retail business, but the proportion is different. To put it bluntly, the place is small, which is convenient for product distribution, and does not require too many levels, and regional dealers can directly distribute to the store and earn more profits.
As for the working hours of the business and the digitalization that the business hates the most, the current frequency of business visits to terminal stores in the Vietnamese market is also once a week, but the digitalization progress of each company is still relatively poor, so generally speaking, there is no market action of various system check business personnel. However, some large multinational companies still have strict requirements for this, such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, which have used systems to manage distribution and distribution, which is a standard. However, as mentioned earlier, products such as South Korea and Japan are more mainstream in Vietnam, and their system management is relatively poor.
Currently, Vietnam has a six-day workweek, so the working hours of the business are the same as those of irregular employees in China. However, there is a difference in the fact that the income of Vietnamese business personnel is higher than that of Vietnamese people, which means that the salaries of these business people are basically the same as those of Chinese business people.
In the early years of the mainland, the salary of FMCG business personnel was also considered a high income, I still remember that there was such a question in the "Dialogue" program that year, whether to join Procter & Gamble as a manager or go to the Chinese Academy of Sciences after graduation, now it seems that this is still a choice, but at that time it was a choice. In recent years, the income of domestic FMCG business personnel has declined, while the wages of other industries have risen. Therefore, China's FMCG business personnel basically have no sense of happiness. But in Vietnam, this income is okay.
In the eyes of these three people, the United States, Indonesia, and Vietnam do not seem to have domestic volumes, "logistics is underdeveloped because of the underdevelopment of Internet shopping, after all, it is the Internet that promotes domestic infrastructure and makes logistics developed." In a word, the development of the offline economy makes them feel that there is more room for survival. (All names have been changed)