Recently, it was reported that Qian Ayi, a community fresh-keeping chain brand from Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, had appointed CICC and Morgan Stanley to prepare for an IPO in Hong Kong, raising as much as 500 million US dollars (HK$ 3.9 billion). At the same time, it is reported that a round of pre-listing financing will be completed soon, and it may be listed at the end of this year at the earliest.
It is understood that Qian Dama was founded on 20 12, which is a chain brand of Guangzhou Qian Dama Agricultural Products Co., Ltd. and positioned as a community fresh food store. During 20 15-20 19, Aunt Qian received five rounds of financing. The latest financing took place in 65438+February last year. Aunt Qian introduced cornerstone capital, fixed investment and other investors to carry out D round financing for her.
Aunt Qian's new round of valuation has a better chance of reaching 25 billion yuan. This is another fresh retail chain giant after Xianfeng Fruit, Baiguoyuan, Ding Dong Shopping and Daily Fresh. Xianfeng fruit and Baiguoyuan compete for the first share of fresh food, Ding Dong buys vegetables and daily fresh food compete for the first share of fresh e-commerce (pre-warehouse), and Aunt Qian is currently competing for the first share of community fresh food chain. The first shot was fired.
Nowadays, after the baptism of the epidemic, users' online shopping habits have developed rapidly, and fresh e-commerce itself is also iterating. Don't underestimate the ordinary trivial matter of buying food. The total market value of fresh food is as high as trillion yuan. However, the current penetration rate of e-commerce is less than 5%, which is full of huge business opportunities. Innovative models such as pre-warehouse and store-warehouse integration are constantly emerging. Aunt Qian, the representative of community freshness, has been keeping the pace of expansion. In eight years, from one store to more than 3,000 stores, it is a unique landscape in the trillion fresh market.
Food is the most important thing for the people, and fresh food is the first.
Feng Yisheng, the founder of Qian Aunt, opened the first community store in Shenzhen on 20 13. The main selling points are "fresh" (no overnight meat) and black pork, which just captures the pain points of Guangdong consumers and is also the key to Qian Aunt's success.
On the one hand, Guangdong people pay attention to health preservation, love to make soup, and have higher requirements on the freshness of ingredients. As a differentiated selling point, "no overnight meat" is very attractive to Cantonese people. In the previous media reports, Feng Yisheng was pushed out by the surrounding businesses because he hung up the "No Overnight Meat" sign at the Dongguan Farmers' Market, which also shows that the selling point of "fresh" is very lethal.
Secondly, pork is the main ingredient of soup in Guangdong, but the local aquaculture industry in Guangdong is not developed. In the past, the meat supply chain was underdeveloped, and there was no difference in the quality of meat supplied by mainstream channels.
Aunt Qian made her own pork supply chain and made a complete link: she used to do black pig breeding; Also come down and do retail in physical stores. After six to seven years of development, Aunt Qian has built the whole link of "farm-processing base-supply chain-terminal franchise store-consumer". Now Aunt Qian can complete direct mining, delivery and distribution to the store within 12 hours after placing an order in the store. "Do not sell overnight meat"+pork full link supply chain has become the two core selling points and capabilities held by Qian Aunt.
Industry analysts pointed out that unlike the mode of burning money by e-commerce, Qian Aunt's main approach is to fully liberalize the franchise mode and quickly open stores, build a front-end supply chain by virtue of scale advantages, guide suppliers to standardize planting by relying on stable orders, put quality control first, further improve the supply chain system, and finally provide consumers with the freshest ingredients together with franchise stores through the business philosophy of "no overnight meat", and consumers can also form a supervisory role in this process, which makes Qian Aunt's "daily life".
Too close to franchisees, losing at least 30 thousand a month.
A general rule of the physical retail industry is that the later you enter the market, the fewer high-quality lots there are. Aunt Qian also attaches great importance to gold bunks. Location is the most important, and an excellent location can make up for the lack of franchisees. But for the latecomers, gold shops are obviously more scarce, and with the increasing density of shops, the distance between Qian Aunt's shops is getting closer and closer.
In the early planning, Qian Ayi set the store spacing at 500 meters. With the expansion of Qian Ayi, this distance was shortened to 250 meters. This leads to the situation that a large and medium-sized community may have two or three money aunts. Many times, the competitors of franchisees are not other brands, but other franchisees owned by Qian Ayi.
In this way, the passenger flow of each store is at risk of being diluted. At the same time, due to the high degree of standardization and reproducibility, the products of each store have a high degree of coincidence. How to differentiate depends on the refined operation level of franchisees, which makes it more difficult for stores to cultivate loyal customers, and the competition barriers between stores are relatively low.
For franchisees with bad business, losses are inevitable. With the continuous expansion of aunt Qian's size, the negative voices issued by franchisees are getting higher and higher. In addition to high-intensity competition, franchisees also "accuse" the headquarters of setting a minimum purchase amount, and the amount is still being raised. According to relevant media reports, a Qian Aunt franchisee in Hunan claimed to sell two houses and invested 6.5438+0.7 million yuan to open a shop, but the monthly loss was between 30,000 and 50,000 yuan. At the same time, in "The Trouble of Franchisees", it is also mentioned that Aunt Qian supervised the disorderly change of orders, and franchisees still insisted on operating at a loss, resulting in large-scale losses.
With the rapid expansion, the management system needs to be optimized.
In addition to the rift with franchisees, Qian Aunt's rapid expansion is also facing tremendous pressure in terms of talents, management and technology. According to media reports, Aunt Qian plans to recruit more than 1 10,000 people this year. Before that, Aunt Qian recruited 2000 people in 1 month. Such a huge manpower scale requires a mature training system and a sound management mechanism. Aunt Qian 1 month can recruit 2000 people, but 1 month is difficult to optimize an expanded management system and training mechanism.
In addition, there are obvious differences in consumption habits in different regions. The single-store category structure and profit model polished by Aunt Qian in Guangzhou and Shenzhen may not be successfully copied to East China and North China, and cross-regional expansion makes it not as unimpeded as in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
The fresh track in the trillion-dollar market has propped up the revenues of RT Mart, Wal-Mart and Yonghui for hundreds of billions of years, put Ding Dong's gourmet shopping and daily fresh food on the stock market, and fed millions of couples' wives' shops, so there is huge space for gold digging. But the more opportunities, the greater the competition. Entering the fresh market in the second half of the year is like the Red Sea.
Aunt Qian, who is about to go public in Hong Kong, can undoubtedly get more development funds for her platform, thus improving the supply chain and tapping more sources of goods. However, it cannot be ignored that fresh e-commerce has frequently fallen. The problem is that many platforms are not operating well in terms of product category, service experience and supply chain. There has always been the concept of burning money to cultivate market and consumption habits, and core competitiveness and high moat have not been formed. Even if the listing is successful, these are still areas where the fresh e-commerce platform needs continuous efforts and key breakthroughs. Only by ensuring a strong supply chain and resource allocation can consumers truly enjoy cost-effective products.