When it comes to convenience stores, Chinese people will soon think of 7-11, FamilyMart, Rosen, it seems that only Japanese convenience stores are authentic, mainstream, and high-grade.
As everyone knows, these Japanese brand convenience stores are the defeated hands of Chinese local convenience stores.
According to deloitte research, The number one convenience store in China is the local brand Meiyijia, and The Whole Family ranks 4th, and 7-11 only ranks 5th.
It is worth noting that 7-11 entered China as early as 1978, while the local brand Meiyijia was founded in 1997, 19 years later than the former.
Meiyijia, who started late and has a poor foundation, relied on what to beat the industry giant 7-11?
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > the king of convenience stores in China</h1>
Founder Ye Zhijian is a native of Dongguan, and before founding Meiyijia, he was also the chairman of Dongguan Sugar and Wine Group.
Not only Meiyijia, but also the second Tianfu convenience store in Dongguan City and the third shanghao convenience store are also from the Sugar and Wine Group, the former was founded by Ye Zhijian's secretary, and the latter was once the first generation of Meiyijia store owners.
It can be said that all convenience stores in Dongguan have the pedigree of Meiyijia. Founder Ye Zhijian is also known as the "godfather of Dongguan retail industry".
In 2016, Ye Zhijian won the CCFA China Chain Industry Lifetime Achievement Award, which is the highest award in China's retail industry.
However, in 1997, when Meiyijia was first founded, Ye Zhijian was not so beautiful. In those two years, he was quite stressed.
At that time, the world's retail giants Wal-Mart and Carrefour successively entered Dongguan, and their business area was about 10,000 square meters, while Meijia Supermarket, which accounted for half of the turnover of the Sugar and Wine Group, was only 300-500 square meters in size.
Compared with the first two, Mega Supermarket is simply insignificant.
However, the "ground snake" will transform, and Ye Zhi nuts will choose the transformation, learn the 7-11 model, make the store small, and set up a Meiyijia convenience store.
After 20 years of game, Meiyijia was not killed by foreign capital, but grew stronger and stronger under their eyes.
As of May 2018, Meiyijia has more than 13,000 stores nationwide, thousands more than the Shanghai Agribusiness Convenience Group (which owns Good Virtue, Ke) and 7-11 (Mainland) combined, and is a well-deserved "King of Convenience Stores in China".
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > The way to counterattack</h1>
Meiyi Canon has developed from a small convenience store in one place to the whole country, which is inseparable from the word innovation.
This kind of innovation does not mean simply copying foreign models, but adapting to local conditions and transforming:
First, open the shop to the industrial zone;
7-11 stores are generally opened in commercial centers or urban residential areas, but Dongguan is a "world factory", there is no strict sense of the city center, there is no residential area, only industrial area.
Therefore, Meiyijia put the location of the store around the industrial park, first, the crowd is dense, and second, it can avoid head-on competition with giants such as Carrefour, so as to break into pieces and blossom everywhere.
Early Meiyijia convenience store
Second, lower the threshold and open up to join;
Unlike the high franchise fee and "step-by-step commission" of 7-11, Meiyijia decided to expand in the form of franchise from the beginning.
Only need to invest up to 200,000 yuan in the cost and labor of opening a store at one time, you can open a store as a boss. This is a dream that even migrant workers can achieve.
Under this stimulus, the number of Meiyijia stores soon doubled.
Third, learn 7-11 to build a supply chain;
At the beginning, Meiyijia did not mandatorily require franchisees to unify procurement and distribution, but let them solve it by themselves, but then the franchise store had a product quality problem, which directly affected the reputation of Meiyijia.
Meiyijia decided to rectify, learn 7-11, and establish a supply chain.
On the one hand, the full introduction of pos system to solve the connection needs between headquarters and stores;
However, the more than 10,000 yuan pos machine is much more expensive than the 3,000 yuan cash register, and many franchisees are reluctant to replace, which eventually leads to 1/4 of the franchisees quitting and establishing a separate Jiahe convenience store company.
To this day, Meiyijia is living a prosperous life, but it is difficult to see Jiahe convenience stores on the streets of Dongguan.
On the other hand, improve logistics;
In 2002, Timesjet Logistics was established. Subsequently, Meiyijia built a warehouse of 20,000 square meters.
By 2012, Jet Logistics had hundreds of trucks delivering goods to the store every day, and Meiyijia stores achieved two-day delivery.
After improving the key service of the supply chain, Meiyijia entered a period of rapid development.
<h1 class="ql-align-center" > the challenge of Meiyijia in the new retail era</h1>
In June 2018, at the China Convenience Store Conference held in Beijing, Ye Zhijian said that in the new era, Meiyijia is seeking to change its business style and realize the transformation from a convenience store channel to a service provider by building three major platforms.
These three platforms refer to: supply chain data platform, store intelligent operation platform, and member precision marketing platform.
These three platforms need strong data support to be fully established.
To this end, Meiyijia has made the following changes:
First, the intelligent upgrading of convenience stores;
Yaliang Technology is a well-known brand of china's passenger flow statistics system, and this time participated in the transformation of Meiyijia, adding a full set of retail technology such as passenger flow statistics, face recognition, hot zone analysis, and store patrols, helping to intelligently and accurately manage passenger flow and improve the overall transaction rate of goods.
Passenger flow statistics, hot zone analysis system
Second, digital membership;
For Meiyijia, with more than 10,000 stores and more than 3.5 million customers every day, the huge membership data is Meiyijia's biggest wealth.
In the period when takeaway is not as convenient as it is today, Meiyijia has been able to realize WeChat orders and deliver to the door.
The opening up of the online and offline membership system makes the customer portrait and demand law summary of Meiyijia more accurate.
The data shows that users who used to come to the store twice a week to spend, now the breakthrough has increased to 5 times.
Third, upgrade the store, more convenience;
For customers, convenience is the most critical indicator of choosing a convenience store.
The newly upgraded Meiyijia store not only provides fresh food, daily necessities, grain and oil side foods, personal care cosmetics and other consumer goods, but also provides more than 20 life services such as recharge payment, collection and delivery, convenient payment, etc., and has begun to try to operate more than a dozen kinds of Cantonese morning tea.
The newly upgraded Meiyijia store features a fresh food and relaxation area
However, the situation of Meiyijia is very severe, not to mention the fierce competition in the convenience store industry itself, in the new retail era, Ali, Tencent, JD.com, Suning and other giants have participated in the convenience store industry.
It can be said that China's convenience stores are about to usher in an unprecedented digital reform.
But in fact, this is the third transformation of the sugar and wine group led by Ye Zhijian.
As early as 1990, when it was still the era of supply and marketing cooperatives, Ye Zhijian found that this model could not keep up with the trend of the times, and he decisively led the team to carry out reforms, learn from foreign advanced retail experience, and establish a localized supermarket chain - Mega Supermarket.
After that, Meijia Supermarket was transformed into Meiyijia Convenience Store again.
It can be said that innovation and subversion are the genes of Meiyijia.
And Fengqing always has confidence in innovation!
Author: Feng Qing
(This article is the original author of the e-commerce newspaper, and may not be reproduced without authorization)