#精品长文创作季#
Gome frequently "saves itself", but the thunder is loud and the rain is small.
Author: Zhiyan Editor: Lv Xinyi
出品：零售商业财经 ID：Retail-Finance
Gome has a new move!
On April 21, GOME announced its entry into the instant retail track and officially released its "GOME Instant Warehouse" and "GOME Convenience Store". At the same time, GOME and Yicai Business School X Pistachio Digital Intelligence jointly released the instant retail four-wheel drive chain model.
In the view of Luo Jing, CEO of Gome Neighborhood, Gome's entry into instant retail is not only to give full play to the advantages of the platform to increase business, but also to expand the ecology under the full retail strategy.
Obviously, Gome has written a story about "self-help", judging from the reaction of the capital market, investors choose to believe in Gome again, as soon as the news comes out, Gome Retail (00493. HK) began to rise, with a maximum increase of more than 20% on April 24.
However, this increase did not last long, and there was a slight decline on the 26th.
To a certain extent, the trend of the stock price is the same as the story of Gome's "self-help" in recent years. From the launch of the True Happiness APP to the live broadcast business, and then to various transformations since then, Gome has always been able to arouse the curiosity of the outside world, and gradually declined after taking advantage of the trend to increase its voice, but in the end it failed to stir up too much splash in the market.
Judging from the script, perhaps this time, instant retail will not save Gome, let alone Huang Guangyu's lifeline.
In fact, for Gome, under the pressure of huge debts, it is better to re-examine internal resources and optimize allocation, and shrink back to familiar offline business, rather than reaching new markets through new stories.
01 I want too much, but I can do too little
It's not hard to see why Gome is targeting instant retail.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, in 2022, the number of instant retail orders exceeded 40 billion, and the market size reached 504.286 billion yuan, which is expected to triple in 2025.
In the face of this fertile ground for growth, not only many Internet e-commerce platforms have accelerated their layout, but even traditional retail giants have begun to "prepare" for instant retail, and each has launched a home-to-home model. Judging from the timeline, Gome should be one step late.
In the real-time retail track of competing for the richness of local supply and the ability of delivery and fulfillment, many traditional retail companies such as Walmart, Carrefour, and Lianhua Supermarket have been coerced forward but have not achieved results. Judging from the current situation of its peers, Gome's entry into instant retail has little chance of winning.
Focusing on a little more, although Gome's instant retail blueprint looks very grand and innovative, its essence is still to build its own APP+ to settle in a third-party platform, introduce channels including takeaway platforms, and Douyin, WeChat mini programs, etc., to provide consumers with home-to-home services.
At present, the most direct way for traditional retail enterprises to deploy real-time retail is roughly divided into two types: self-built platforms and third-party platforms, but the current model of self-built platforms of supermarkets or convenience store brands has not been run through for the time being.
Source: Yicai Business School public account
In addition to the same business essence, Gome does not have obvious differentiated competitive characteristics, and is also facing pressure at the level of delivery speed.
The goal of GOME's instant warehouse program is to achieve fast fulfillment within a radius of 6 kilometers within 3 hours. However, the instant retail platform of "everything to home" has already occupied the fulfillment highland of "30-minute delivery".
Gome, which has lost its speed advantage, may find it difficult to attract the favor of merchants. In other words, once small and medium-sized businesses decide to do instant retail, why should they choose Gome, a newcomer, instead of JD.com, Alibaba, and Meituan, which have been deployed for many years?
Source: Gome Neighborhood Official Account
In addition, Gome also said that it will complete the product structure that truly meets the needs of localization through online and offline digital analysis. However, at present, the scale of monthly and daily active users of the Gome APP is limited, and a large number of offline stores have been closed, and the strength of its digital analysis is still a question mark under the premise that the data source is relatively weak.
Although Gome has chosen to cooperate with Meituan's digital system "Morning Glory" in terms of digital transformation, instant retail is also Meituan's own key business, and it is less likely that Gome wants to leverage its strength to break through the encirclement.
It is undeniable that Gome's winning side of the layout of instant retail is concentrated in the plan to closely combine instant retail with rural revitalization and land in the county-level economy.
At present, instant retail in the county shows the characteristics of rapid market scale growth, strong consumption vitality, and high user stickiness. In recent years, Gome Retail has also gradually promoted the policy of "one county, one store", which has certain market advantages.
However, an in-depth analysis of Gome's new business layout in recent years shows that "thunder is loud and rain is small" seems to have become a unified exploration formula for enterprises.
For example, the hot pot ingredient supermarket "Guomei Youshi" in 2021 and the Gome supermarket in 2023 have all disappeared from public view. And basically every time Gome releases a new move, the stock price will rise in response. In this foray into instant retail, it is still unknown whether Gome will take the form or really prepare to do a big job. However, the goal of short-term stimulus for stock prices was achieved first.
02 Gome can still withstand a few big turnarounds
The more realistic question in front of Gome is that after Huang Guangyu returns, can Gome, which is in turmoil, withstand several major turns?
According to the financial report data, before Huang Guangyu was released from prison, Gome had a cumulative loss of 14.921 billion yuan in the past four years, and there were still a large number of offline stores in the third and fourth tiers. However, after Huang Guangyu took the helm again, the loss in 2022 alone exceeded the total loss of the previous four years.
Exploring the essence, the failure of GOME retail is a chain reaction caused by the dimensionality reduction of the total cost strategic leadership brought by the Internet model to the offline traditional retail. The outside world generally believes that the rapid decline of Gome is caused by the reform of Huang Guangyu after his return.
The author combed through several major strategic adjustments of Gome after Huang Guangyu was released from prison and found that in the early stage, Gome's efforts in the online retail field mainly revolved around the home appliance business.
For example, it has made efforts in e-commerce, renamed Gome Online as "True Happiness", entered the home improvement industry, and acquired "Dress Up Home". But the total investment of these two is only 1.2 billion yuan, according to the financial report data and people familiar with the matter: True Happiness spent nearly 1 billion yuan, and the home spent at least 200 million yuan.
After a series of tosses, Gome's cash flow began to come under pressure, and as of June 30, 2023, Gome's net cash flow from retail operating activities was -1.194 billion yuan.
Since the end of 2021, Gome has extended the settlement period for suppliers, and hopes to supply goods on behalf of the "sharing and co-construction" platform. After that, most home appliance brands did not renew their original purchase and sales contracts after the expiration of their original purchase and sales contracts, and successively stopped supplying to Gome.
For example, in 2022, Galanz's Whirlpool announced that it would stop cooperating with Gome and recover the arrears, and Supor even directly filed for bankruptcy reorganization on behalf of Gome. Subsequently, the collection of arrears by suppliers around the country continued to be exposed.
Source: Internet
At that time, it was also a turbulent moment in the external environment, and most domestic chain retail enterprises chose to shrink their stores, but Gome bucked the trend and accelerated its attack in the sinking market. By the end of 2021, Gome had 4,195 offline stores, including 2,763 new retail stores, entering 1,439 cities and towns.
But that figure was quickly rewritten, and according to Caixin Weekly, Gome closed 90% of its stores in the third quarter of 2022, to less than 500, and its branches were merged from 40 to about 30.
The road of online and offline mutual empowerment has not worked, and Gome has made corresponding adjustments to seek business growth. This time, Gome chose to use a more relaxed mode to test the waters in many ways.
Taking Gome Supermarket as an example, Huang Guangyu and its affiliates cooperate with an independent third party to operate in the form of franchise, and Gome unmanned retail is also operated by a similar logic, adopting a third-party custody model, without large investment or establishment of operations, and operating in an asset-light model.
Looking back now, whether it is heavy investment or asset-light operation, Gome's business innovation has not captured the essence of the new retail revolution, and the business layout seems to be diversified, but in fact it lacks differentiated advantages. The layout of new business is also constantly carving up the proportion of home appliances in Gome, making consumers more and more confused about Gome's positioning.
Today, Gome Retail has not only closed a large number of stores, with current liabilities of up to 38.3 billion yuan, but also been exposed to owed suppliers for goods, consumer refunds, advertising payments, and thousands of employees' salaries, and its business reputation is close to zero. At this point, how long will the few remaining Gome be able to toss Huang Guangyu around? I'm afraid there will be a big question mark.
03 Compared with tossing new business, it is more important to keep the domestic signboard
For Gome, instead of trying various industry outlets, it is better to keep the home appliance business.
Suning's poor transformation is precisely because of its blind pursuit of the times. Now, Suning has returned to the familiar offline and avoided the fierce online fighting, and its performance is gradually recovering.
According to the financial report, in 2023, Suning will focus on the development of the 3C business of core home appliances, with a year-on-year increase of about 11.9% in the sales scale of the home appliance business, a year-on-year increase of 4.94% in the sales revenue of comparable stores in the 3C home life specialty store of household appliances, and a year-on-year increase of 11.28 percentage points in the gross profit margin of the company's household appliances and consumer electronics business. In contrast, many Gome stores closed last year, and some of them were taken over by Suning.
It can be seen that not only new business can bring new increments, but also a beautiful "turnaround" can be played by keeping the fundamentals.
Although the offline store business is not good, there is no shortage of customer flow. In recent years, not only Fat Donglai has exploded out of the circle, but brands such as Sam's Club and ALDI have also opened stores intensively. Of course, times are changing, consumer needs are also changing, and the brick-and-mortar retail industry is not static, but needs to provide the ultimate service around the customer experience. At that time, Gome also made a similar attempt, planning to build a comprehensive experience hall with all categories and multiple formats, but Gome obviously did not do it.
Even if it enters a more promising market, according to the current situation of Gome, it should follow Suning's example and achieve a soft landing through open cooperation. Previously, Suning also launched the "Suning Speed" service, and 5 months later, it reached a strategic cooperation with Meituan, becoming the first large-scale chain brand of home appliances 3C category officially settled in the latter, with the help of Meituan's "east wind", to make up for its shortcomings in the distribution system and traffic.
Source: Internet
In fact, previously, Gome has successively "married" with Pinduoduo and JD.com to introduce more online traffic and optimize the 3C supply chain and logistics system, but the cooperation has not brought too much traffic tilt. Gome had to choose the most difficult path: to go all out to lay out instant retail, and try all the retail industry outlets in an asset-light way.
However, in the context of the giants vying for the first place, Gome, which is mired in the quagmire, may be very difficult to successfully "grab food" from the giants by relying on its own strength.
Now, Gome may want to deepen its cooperation with Internet giants and seek respite. It's just that the problem in front of Gome is that now the core flagship stores of Gome electrical appliances are constantly closed, and e-commerce platforms such as JD.com are accelerating the expansion of retail outlets offline.