Why convenience stores are suddenly on fire Know

News.com saw this, hope it helps.

Convenience stores, a myth in the Japanese retail world, have been something of an embarrassment in Beijing, with three opening here and two closing there.

In many cities abroad and in the south of the country, even if the streets are empty and the lights of the skyscrapers are dimmed in the early hours of the morning, the lights are still on in the 24-hour convenience stores on the street corners, and basically you can see this warm light every few hundred meters, and some of them are even open next to each other or face-to-face across the street, a sight you might only see in a place like Sanlitun.

But since last year, many corner stores have been replaced by convenience stores, and you can actually see two convenience stores next to each other in many parts of Beijing. Recently, convenience stores have been mentioned again and again as the "star of tomorrow" in the retail world, tied to new retail.

First, Zhongguancun opened five convenience bees, and then there is news that the love of fresh bees, which has just been held by China Business Huimin, will also try to open its own convenience stores, and even the topic of convenience stores has also changed from "why Japanese convenience stores do not make money in China" to "how a certain convenience store has turned a profit", and convenience stores seem to be the most important thing in the world.

Beijing's convenience stores seem to have "come alive" overnight.

Why are there fewer 24-hour convenience stores in Beijing than in Shanghai?

In the overall downturn in the retail industry, offline retailers are either seeking transformation or defecting to online, the convenience store's counter-trend growth appears to be very rare, and is also seen as the hope of the retail industry in the next few years.

Kaidu a FMCG retail industry report shows that in 2015, online retail sales increased by as much as 36.5%, while offline FMCG retail sales achieved only 2.6% year-on-year growth, the first half of 2016 is slowing down to 1.5%, the FMCG retail industry in 2015, the traditional channels of the business shrank by 10.4%, hypermarkets also appeared in the negative growth of 0.2%, supermarkets / small Supermarket growth slowed to 4%, while convenience store sales rose 13% year-on-year.

Similar economic and social environments, China is often compared with Japan in the 1980s, whether from the level of GDP per capita, demographic structure, or consumer spending habits, the two have many similarities. And Japan's convenience stores just from 1975 to 1980 began to rapidly popularize, until 1995 only gradually slowed down.

On the rise of convenience stores, the industry recognizes the following conditions: a per capita GDP of 6,000 U.S. dollars, a sharp rise in the level of aging, and an increase in the number of singles and dual-income families. And while these indicators have long been met in Beijing and are comparable to those in Shanghai, there has been a significant gap between the number of convenience stores in the two cities.

The 2016 China City Convenience Store Index report released by the China Chain Store Association shows that from the point of view of convenience store saturation, in 2015 in Shanghai, every 3,466 individuals own a convenience store; in Beijing, it is every 7,185 individuals covered a convenience store. Two years further ahead, the contrast is even stronger, the figures are 2,975 and 20,700 people, a difference of nearly ten times.

A few years ago in Zhihu concerned the question, "Beijing's 24-hour convenience stores than Shanghai a lot less? Why?"

The company's business is based on the idea of "half a road"; Beijing's nightlife habits are not very strong, so it can only do "half a day" business.

This answer is very simple and rough, but in fact, Beijing convenience stores do not open up there is a regional characteristic reason - difficult to get a license.

Being a license to a difficult convenience store

Fresh food in the convenience store, like fresh food in the supermarket, is to pull the flow of the tool, especially like bento, Guandong cooking such hot food, gross margin is very substantial, usually between 35% and 70%, for a convenience store, fresh food can account for more than half of sales.

And fresh food is also the key to differentiating convenience stores from the competition, such as dessert cakes you would think of Rosen, Kanto boiled you would think of 7-Eleven, but in order to operate these things, you have to get a catering license first.

After 2009, when the Food Hygiene Law was replaced by the Food Safety Law, catering came under the jurisdiction of the health department and retailing came under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Industry and Commerce, making the fresh food business in convenience stores slightly more awkward. Ordinary FMCG foods require a food circulation license, while on-site preparation and sale of such items as bento and kanto boiled require a catering license.

While bento is basically a pre-processed food that only needs to be heated up in the store, it is not sold on-site. But the regulator took into account the unpacking will cause secondary pollution, so this piece of business has not been liberalized, and there is no clear relevant norms.

And since 2012, the Beijing municipal authorities will basically no longer issue food and beverage licenses to new stores, and 7-Eleven entered Beijing in 2004, so it was not affected too much, but it is also very difficult for new stores to get a license. Even if you can do it, the cycle is also very long. A convenience store practitioners told Titanium Media, Beijing districts and counties have different audit standards, the efficiency is also fast and slow, a license down less than a few months, more than half a year.

However, this phenomenon has slightly changed since last year, at the end of September last year, the Beijing Municipal Food and Drug Administration adopted the "Beijing Food Business License Management Measures (Trial)", this approach since November 1, 2016 came into force, will be food circulation permits and catering permits will be united into a single card, that is, a food business license, unified under the management of the relevant departments of food and drug administration bureau .

Although the audit is still strict, but from the license process is simplified a lot. Titanium media reporter visited several convenience stores, the end of last year began to open a number of new convenience stores store basically hanging this new license, some old stores or the original two certificates.

"Curve to save the country" community O2O

Beijing's kiosks, husband and wife store is also a bright landscape, they seem to be more vital than the "foreign" convenience stores. Suning will try to avoid those stores when choosing a location, because local people are very loyal to them.

So why don't convenience stores take these couples' stores into their pockets? In the case of 7-Eleven, unlike the franchising model it has adopted in most parts of the world, the conservative Japanese tend to take on a commissioned franchise when they first enter a new area to ensure that the brand can be copied down without distortion.

Unlike franchising, which involves taking people and stores with you, entrusting a franchise doesn't require you to prepare a store or pay for rent, but the vetting process is very rigorous, and only after 7-Eleven confirms in various ways that the franchisee is capable of doing the job and that the store has reached a certain profitability point will the store be handed over to the operator with confidence.

This makes it impossible for store owners who own their own husband-and-wife stores to join, and it also scares off a lot of franchisees by requiring them to share at least half of their profits with 7-Eleven.

But the transformation to a modern convenience store is the inevitable trend of small retail business, so there is a "curve to save the country" transformation - community O2O, Love Fresh Bee is one of the representatives of the kiosks hung bright yellow signs, some of the stores in the bright yellow signs, and the store's some The signboard for the kiosks to hang a bright yellow, some of the equipment in the store a little unified style, and then give them to make up for the marinated food, fresh food and other fresh food categories, although the transformation of the humble, but some of the key elements of the convenience store has.

Logistics, supply chain these aside, fresh food this piece or need an offline scene, but on the line the volume is still very difficult to profit this level. Fresh has always been the biggest difficulty is logistics, supply chain costs are high, and easy fruit investment in Lianhua Supermarket, 100 fruit garden merger and acquisition of fruit DuoDao, box horse fresh life based on the integration of online and offline physical stores, are through the procurement, logistics system merger to dilute the cost.

So to a certain extent, the convenience store suddenly fire, but also community O2O trial and error results, "curve to save the country" ultimately did not succeed, so we have to be from the light mode of the road back to the heavy mode.

But it's not yet known exactly how the road to convenience stores will play out in Beijing, but it should be much the same as the road Japan has taken.

Some say the main reason why e-commerce has failed to develop in Japan is that the brick-and-mortar store, represented by the convenience store, is too powerful. Japanese convenience stores are more like community service stations, where tickets, express delivery, laundry, photocopying, ATMs and many other services are provided. The largest will not exceed 150 square meters of convenience stores, sku is difficult to exceed more than 3,000 or more, but the value of the services provided can not be limited by the space of the store, driving performance growth. The perfect offline service makes Japanese people more accustomed to go online to get services.

In China, on the contrary, O2O went ahead of the convenience store, O2O hot two years to move all the services online have been rehearsed, so we are more accustomed to waiting for the delivery boy door to door.

However, the offline scene must not be absent, the convenience store is also seen as a good entrance to the integration of online and offline, but only some of the "black science and technology" embedded is not enough to reconfigure the original commissary model, after all, Japan's convenience stores perfect merchandise management, intelligence systems, production, supply and marketing system is not a one-day practice. Toshifumi Suzuki's reconstruction of the U.S. 7-Eleven also took nearly two decades to complete. Beijing's convenience stores can catch up with the footsteps of Shanghai, it is not known, but destined to take a steady path.