Entering April, Fat Donglai is experiencing the biggest word-of-mouth crisis in history. In the past, Fat Donglai's biggest slot was: Why don't you come to open a store near my house? But now he is complaining:
The "scalpers" captured Fat Donglai
For a long time, Fat Donglai has been called the "ceiling" of China's supermarket industry and the "5A-level scenic spot" without off-season. But in this April, more and more consumers complained that they couldn't get in the tea shop for an hour, consumers didn't buy anything, the experience was not good, things were expensive, and the purchasing agent was pulling into a car......
At the end of the day, scalpers are too rampant.
Some local citizens in Xuchang revealed that every day there are purchasing agents queuing up in the early morning of Fat Donglai, and they are even more ruthless to stay at the door directly, just waiting for the business hours to arrive and rush to buy.
For example, Fat Dong sells his own craft beer, and within a few minutes of arrival, the purchasing agents will quickly fill several shopping carts and leave. In front of the checkout machine of Fat Donglai, you can even see the scene of an aunt guarding dozens of shopping carts.
Fat Donglai Tea Shop has a daily limit of 500 people, but it is not possible to buy it when you get it. Some consumers complained: "I'm No. 134, and there is no loose tea in it, and the top ten have all the loose tea bags." ”
Other popular products, such as big moon cakes and craft beer, are also sold out every day.
It is understood that through two days and one night of hard work, the most fierce purchasing agent directly consumed more than 200,000 yuan in Fat Donglai, with an income of about 20,000 yuan. Some people directly transformed their home into a small supermarket specializing in selling Fat Donglai products.
In addition to queuing up to grab goods, many scalpers will also blatantly "support stalls" in front of Fat Donglai, a video posted by a consumer shows that some shopping carts are parked in front of Fat Donglai, which are full of beer that consumers can't grab. Some consumers inquired and learned that a case of beer priced at 45 yuan could be sold for 65 yuan at the door.
The daigou business is not only for local consumers, they will also sell Fat Donglai's products to foreign consumers through Taobao, Xianyu, Pinduoduo and other platforms, and these customers bring them considerable profits.
Nashi searched for keywords related to "Fat Donglai" on the shopping platform, and found that some good goods appeared on the Internet, such as Fat Donglai Selection, Fat Donglai Strict Selection, and Dongzi Self-operated Good Goods...... Among them, there are many online stores with hot business, such as in the "Fat Donglai Selection" store, Fat Donglai brand strawberry fruit oatmeal crisps have been sold 9000+, and Fat Donglai large moon cakes have been sold 2000+.
The emergence of daigou has seriously affected the shopping experience of local residents and tourists. Some Xuchang residents reluctantly said: As a local, I am now looking for purchasing agents when I buy Fat Donglai beer.
When will the purchasing problem be solved?
In the face of pervasive purchasing agents, Fat Donglai even has a headache than consumers. Although Fat Donglai has begun to crack down on purchasing agents, the current results are limited.
"The company is also discussing options to stop this behavior if our employees see it. The staff of the Fat Donglai Yuzhou store suggested that consumers go to the store to shop, and the purchasing agent could not provide after-sales service.
Fat Donglai has also issued statements many times, saying that all purchasing behaviors for the company's goods have not been officially authorized by the company, and there is no direct association or cooperative relationship with the company, and it is completely a third-party behavior. Fat Donglai also said that please pay attention to the selection in the purchase process to ensure the authenticity and quality of the source of the goods, and any disputes arising from the price and quality of the goods in the purchasing process have nothing to do with the company.
But for Fat Donglai, it is not easy to clean up the purchasing agent. One of the key problems is that it is difficult to distinguish between daigou and normal consumers. In this regard, the method adopted by Fat Donglai is to implement a purchase restriction policy for several Internet celebrity products:
For example, consumers need to scan the code and queue up at 8 p.m. the day before to buy tea, and can only enter the store with the number on the same day, and the online appointment is limited to one time within seven days, and cannot be repeated. Consumers need to pick up offline after purchasing online, and those who do not pick up on the same day will be automatically refunded, and each WeChat account is limited to three pieces of each flavor on the same day. "Craft Wheat Beer" adopts a purchase restriction policy, and each WeChat account is currently limited to 2 cases.
However, the purchase restriction policy seems to have had little effect on the blow to purchasing agents. Now the daigou are still active on the e-commerce platform, and the Douyin live broadcast room of the daigou is still full of fat Donglai's "big moon cakes" and "beer".
What cannot be ignored is that the crazy purchasing behavior has affected Fat Donglai's "reputation". In addition to the lack of after-sales guarantee for the product, fraud in the name of Fat Donglai's purchasing agent has also begun to spread.
If these problems are not solved as soon as possible, it will also have a certain impact on Fat Donglai.
How does the "myth" perpetuate?
Nowadays, the crazy rise of e-commerce, a variety of new retail formats, hard discount price wars and other factors, resulting in the phenomenon of physical retail under pressure, negative growth, and bankruptcy.
And Fat Donglai, who climbed on the "altar of the supermarket", was extremely popular: there was a long queue at the door of the store, the gold was snapped up, the tea was to be shaken, and there were too many customers so worried that the boss scratched his head, so that Yu Donglai sent out a soul torture: "Why do you have to come here to queue up to buy?"
The polarized contrast makes us not only think about why Fat Donglai has become a retail myth?
In Fat Donglai, we will find that this is often inseparable from two points: one is the preference for employees, for example, employees have 30-40 days of annual leave; set up grievance awards for employees, rumors say that employees "work according to the normal process and are wronged, a subsidy of 5000-8000 yuan"; a new 10-day unhappy leave; employees do not want to go to work, if they want to ask for leave, it is not allowed not to approve leave......
The second is that Fat Donglai also gives profits to consumers. Many netizens posted the price of Fat Donglai Pharmacy, and it is not uncommon for drugs under 10 yuan to be used: a 25 ml bottle of ibuprofen suspension sells for 3.5 yuan, a box of three yellow tablets sells for 3 yuan, and a box of Coptis supernatant tablets costs 3.5 yuan.
Not only the price of pharmacies is low, last year, the topic of "Fat Donglai only earns 3 cents for a down jacket" rushed to the hot search, and the purchase price and selling price were marked on the price tag of the down jacket, and a down jacket of 499 yuan only earned 3 cents.
But in the future development, how will Fat Donglai continue his "myth"? From Fat Donglai's actions in the past two years, it is not difficult to see that he is also looking for his own solution:
For example, actively develop self-operated brands, including baking, fresh food, washing and care, seasonings and alcoholic beverages, etc., the "must-buy list" of large moon cakes, snack oatmeal crisps, orange juice and peach juice drinks are mostly self-operated products, build them into traffic products, attract more consumers, reduce procurement costs, and build their own supply chain.
In addition, although Fat Donglai has established a low-price and profit concession model in Henan, it is still difficult to replicate Fat Donglai's model in other provinces and cities, if it opens stores in first- and second-tier cities, whether Fat Donglai's existing supply chain system can support it to compete with large supermarkets such as Sam's and Hema and how to obtain customers from local supermarkets and other issues need to be solved. In the past, compared with the scale of the store, Fat Donglai paid more attention to quality. At its peak, Fat Donglai had more than 30 chain stores, but in 2012, Fat Donglai found that the quality of store service was declining, so Yu Donglai still closed 13 branches despite the store's profitability.
Faced with this problem, Fat Donglai chose to go to the whole country in another way by copying more Fat Donglai. At the end of last month, Yu Donglai and his senior management team went to Changsha to help Hunan supermarket BBK, planning to use 2 to 3 months to renovate 2 to 3 BBK supermarket stores. According to relevant media reports, Fat Donglai's "explosive reform" action on BBK Supermarket has achieved initial results, and the turnover of BBK Meixihu store exceeded the million mark in only four days.
Although the rectification of the purchasing chaos has become a critical issue in front of Fat Donglai, we believe that this problem will be properly solved soon. What do you think of the "purchasing" incident of Fat Donglai, welcome to leave a message in the comment area.