At that time in 2012, in an inconspicuous small commodity market in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province, Feng Ji was working hard to take care of his meat shop.
As a young and talented shopkeeper, Feng Ji understands the customer's desire for fresh food, but he is frustrated that although he always tries his best to recommend the freshest meat products of the day to customers, he often hears responses like, "Sorry, boss, do you have any freshly slaughtered pork here?"
The strict requirements of customers for the freshness of meat undoubtedly deeply pierced Feng Ji's heart. He began to think that although he would always sell the leftover meat at a lower price in the evening, the freshness of the meat would inevitably drop significantly over the course of the night.
One day, Feng Ji stumbled upon a small kiosk on the street that was actually thriving, and what was particularly surprising was that there was a huge billboard in their house that read "Never sell overnight food".
With this unique marketing strategy, the store's business is thriving.
Inspired by this, Feng Ji couldn't wait to hang a large bright red sign in front of his butcher shop the next morning, with the words "Never sell overnight meat" written unmistakably.
The effect was immediate, attracting passers-by and customers pouring into the store to snap up the fresh meat Feng Ji had to offer.
The small butcher shop, which was originally popular, instantly became a powerful commercial storm. Feng Ji adopted the strategy of "purchasing the right amount and selling quickly" to ensure that all new meat products are sold out on the same day.
In this way, it not only effectively avoids the problem of unsalable meat due to overnight, but more importantly, it has won the high trust of customers in the freshness of the ingredients.
However, good times are always short-lived, and Feng Ji's innovative idea soon aroused the jealousy and revenge of other butcher shops. Someone maliciously vandalized a large billboard in front of his store, and someone even secretly threw spoiled and smelly meat anonymously in front of his store in the middle of the night, causing his business to plummet.
In the face of these heavy blows, Feng Ji wanted to give up for a while, but he thought that if he did so, it would only give those who hurt him what they wanted.
After in-depth thinking and weighing, Mr. Feng Ji resolutely decided to bid farewell to his homeland in Dongguan and set foot in the Shenzhen market, which is full of infinite possibilities, to find a broader career stage.
He has shown a strong belief in the business philosophy of "not selling overnight meat", which will undoubtedly become the best marketing strategy and the most competitive brand core value that he relies on when Shenzhen rebuilds.
There is no doubt that it is with this unique business philosophy of "not selling overnight meat" that Mr. Feng Ji has quickly emerged in the Shenzhen market and achieved remarkable results.
This concept deeply touched the attention of Shenzhen residents to the freshness of the ingredients, and his butcher shop business is thriving, with a steady stream of customers.
Mr. Feng Ji has always adhered to the principle of "small purchase, fast sales", and the meat purchased every day can be sold out on the same day, so as to eliminate the sale of overnight meat from the source.
Customers praised his sincerity and commitment to freshness, and dubbed his small shop as an "Internet celebrity butcher shop".
Soon after, Mr. Feng Ji made remarkable achievements in the Shenzhen market, making a name for himself and accumulating wealth at an astonishing rate.
However, Mr. Feng Ji was not satisfied with this. He knows that a small shop alone cannot achieve a bigger dream, and he must promote the concept of "not selling overnight meat" to a wider range of fields, so that more consumers can benefit from it.
As a result, he began to actively seek to start a business with like-minded partners and build his own chain brand.
After many in-depth discussions and consultations, a new brand - "Aunt Qian" came into being. Since the official opening of the first store, Aunt Qian has expanded rapidly, and the number of stores has sprung up all over the country.
In just a few years, Aunt Qian has spread all over China, with the number of stores exceeding 3,000, and the development momentum is unstoppable.
The pace of expansion continues to accelerate, and they have set an ambitious development goal: they plan to open branded stores in every province and municipality directly under the central government in China, and provide the general public with high-quality vegetables from all over the world.
In order to realize this magnificent blueprint, it is clear that the efforts of Mr. Feng Ji and his team alone are far from enough. They urgently need the support of capital to promote the rapid development of enterprises.
Sure enough, between 2015 and 2019, Aunt Qian successfully completed five rounds of financing, which can be described as frequent and inspiring!
With the help of the powerful power of capital, the expansion speed of Qian Dama's franchise branches is like a galloping horse, which is unstoppable, and its territory has covered all parts of the country.
With the vigorous rise of the Qian Dama brand, hot money in the capital market continues to pour into this field. From 2015 to 2019, Aunt Qian successfully obtained five rounds of financing, and the good news came one after another, which is exciting.
These hard-won funds have undoubtedly laid a solid foundation for Aunt Qian's expansion and provided a strong driving force. With the help of capital, Aunt Qian's franchise branches are expanding like wild horses, which are extremely fast, and they have spread all over the country in just a few years.
According to authoritative data, up to now, Qian Dama has more than 3,000 physical stores, and this number is still rising. Every month, the number of new franchise branches of the Qian Dama brand is more than 100, and the expansion is in full swing and unstoppable.
However, for Aunt Qian, this is only the starting point of her grand development blueprint. The fresh food supermarket chain is determined to open its own brand stores in every province and city in China, providing consumers with high-quality agricultural products from all over the world.
In order to realize this ambitious vision, the continuous injection of capital is crucial. With abundant funds as the backing, Aunt Qian can move forward steadily and forge ahead on the road of franchise expansion.
We firmly believe that in the days to come, the Qian Dama brand will spread all over the land of China and become a well-known brand.
However, with the growing scale, Aunt Qian also began to face some growing troubles. The most significant thing is that the original business model is gradually showing limitations in the new market environment.
Compared with the rapid pace of expansion of Qian Dama, the unified business model it has always adopted has begun to expose some problems that cannot be ignored.
The first challenge is the uniform requirement for the decoration style of franchised branches, which has brought heavy economic pressure to many franchisees.
According to relevant media reports, in order to ensure that all stores can present a uniform decoration style, Qian Dama requires franchisees to strictly follow the standards set by them for store decoration, and the cost is jaw-dropping.
For example, a small store with an area of only 50 square meters needs to be renovated at a staggering 250,000 yuan! This means that the average cost per square meter is as high as 5,000 yuan, which is far beyond the normal price range in the market.
A franchisee who did not want to be named said helplessly that he had consulted everywhere and found that the regular quotation on the market for the decoration of the same area was only about 1,500 yuan / square meter.
From this point of view, Aunt Qian's pricing of the decoration fee does make people question.
In addition, Aunt Qian's strict requirements for the staffing of franchisees have also brought great pressure to franchisees. Each Qian Dama store must be equipped with at least 6 staff, including store managers, store assistants, tally clerks and dividers, etc., and all labor costs are borne by the franchisee.
One franchisee complained that labor costs are staggeringly high, with workers being paid tens of thousands of yuan a month just for their wages. In addition, the franchise fee in the early stage is as high as hundreds of thousands of yuan, so if you want to successfully join a Qian Dama store, it is definitely not an easy and pleasant thing for franchisees, and they are burdened with heavy economic pressure from the beginning.
On the other hand, in order to maintain its "low-priced" brand image, Aunt Qian had to ask franchisees to increase orders and enforce the subsidy policy.
The reason is that Qian Dama lacks the support of a well-established local supply chain system in many emerging markets, and the purchase cost remains high, even higher than the parity level of the vegetable market.
As a result, the profit margins of franchisees have been severely squeezed. In order to keep up with Aunt Qian's promotional discounts, they can only sacrifice their own interests and buy a large number of goods, which may end up in a loss-making situation.
In fact, there have been more than 500 franchisees of Qian Da Ma stores who have begun to look for solutions for transfer and divestment.
For Master Zhao, choosing to join Aunt Qian is undoubtedly a costly decision. He not only did everything he could to raise a franchise fee of 500,000 yuan, but also made countless efforts for the smooth opening of this store.
Aunt Qian's unified requirements for decoration style have brought a heavy financial burden to Master Zhao. In order to ensure that the overall style of the store and the headquarters is coordinated, Master Zhao had to spend a huge amount of money to hire a professional decoration team under the condition of tight funds, and spent as much as 250,000 yuan on decoration.
"That's a huge expense of hundreds of millions of dollars!" Mr. Zhao said with extreme frustration: "I searched around and found that the market value of a renovation project of the same size would not exceed 15,000 yuan at most.
However, this is only the beginning, greater economic pressure is still waiting for us In order to ensure the freshness of the ingredients, Aunt Qian strictly stipulates that each store must be equipped with at least 6 employees, including store managers, clerks and cutters, etc., which undoubtedly brings us huge human resource costs Mr. Zhao carefully calculated, just the monthly salary of workers is as high as nearly 10,000 yuan, plus the franchise fee, Mr. Zhao invested almost all of his family property in equipment purchase expenses and other expenses, and he originally relied on renting out his old house to make a living, but now not only all the rental income is used for this investment, but even his old house has been mortgaged, "What should I do if the business is sluggish?" Mr. Zhao asked worriedly: "I have put all my belongings on the market."
In order to maintain its "low-priced" brand image, Aunt Qian had to force franchisees to increase orders and provide corresponding subsidies to a certain extent.
This is mainly due to the lack of local supply chain support in many emerging markets, resulting in the cost of goods being much higher than the retail price of the vegetable market"Once when I went to purchase, I was surprised to find that the supply price of Aunt Qian was even higher than the retail price of the vegetable market, how could I take it lightly?" Mr. Zhao shook his head again and again, "I can only grit my teeth, increase the number of orders, and carry out large discounts according to the requirements, I am dizzy" According to media reports, there have been more than 500 franchisees of Qian Da Ma stores in trouble, some even announced the closure of their stores after just 9 days of opening, and some people lost all their family property in order to join Qian Da Ma "I joined Qian Da Ma with passion and confidence, but I never expected to suffer such a heavy blow."
At the same time, Mr. Li, another franchisee, was in even worse condition. In order to raise enough money to join him, he first sold his only property and then borrowed money from relatives and friends.
"At that time, everyone thought that Aunt Qian was a good project that would make money without losing money, and I myself joined it with the belief that I would win," Mr. Li said helplessly, "but in the end, I fell into an endless financial abyss."
With the hundreds of thousands of yuan raised by the loan at that time, Master Li bravely opened his own Qian Dama community store in his hometown, which is a relatively economically backward county.
Although the business of the store was very prosperous in the early days of its opening, it did not last long, and its development quickly fell into the dilemma of huge losses.
The root cause of the problem is that the small city they live in lacks a sound supply chain system, and the cost of sourcing goods remains high.
"The purchase price here is even more than 30% higher than the retail price in the vegetable market!" "In order to follow Aunt Qian's promotional activities and sell at a discount, we can only barely afford to lose money, otherwise customers are likely to turn to other competitors."
In desperation, Master Li had to make ends meet in a short period of time, and it was difficult to turn over the funds previously advanced.
In order to keep the store running, he had to borrow money from relatives and friends again, which eventually led to a debt-ridden financial abyss from which he could not extricate himself.
"If I had thought more carefully, I would never have chosen to join so lightly. ”