Fresh e-commerce has been laid off in succession
Fresh e-commerce has been laid off in succession, and 2112 was the first year of fresh e-commerce. However, the fresh platform spawned by the epidemic began to decline in 2121, either laying off employees or stopping operations. Fresh e-commerce has been repeatedly laid off. Fresh e-commerce has been laid off one after another. 1
Recently, bad news frequently came from the fresh e-commerce track.
On October 2nd, according to Phoenix Net Technology, on the eve of listing in Hong Kong, the headquarters of Meicai.com was moved and 41% of its employees were laid off. One of the employees said that Meicai.com was laying off employees.
Coincidentally, Ding Dong, another fresh e-commerce player, was also reported to have been laid off on a large scale. According to Sina Technology, some employees said that compared with the peak period, the company lost tens of thousands of people. However, Ding Dong responded that the news was untrue, without factual basis and rigorous data sources, and individual job changes in the company were normal organizational resource adjustments.
however, in the past year, "burning money", "financing" and even "bankruptcy" have become unavoidable labels. With the daily listing of US stocks, the net loss in the first three quarters of 2121 was 3.117 billion yuan, and the net loss in the same period when Ding Dong bought vegetables also reached 5.333 billion yuan. The listed front warehouse duo suffered a terrible loss, and the remaining waist and tail players without the support of giants, such as Yiguo Fresh, Tongcheng Life and Dairadish, declared bankruptcy and withdrew from the competition.
some analysts believe that the main difficulty faced by the fresh e-commerce market lies in the difficulty of making profits. on the one hand, the increase of customer unit price has reached a bottleneck, on the other hand, the existing supply chain model has encountered difficulties in further reducing costs. For now, the fresh e-commerce track has not yet run out of the real winner.
Meicai and Dingdong were caught in a layoff storm
In the fresh e-commerce industry, which was cold in the second half of last year, news of layoffs came from time to time, and this time it was Meicai and Dingdong who bought vegetables.
According to reports, some suspected employees of Meicai.com broke the news on social platforms. After the last 51% layoff, Meicai's Beijing headquarters laid off another 41% of its staff. In addition, the headquarters of Meicai.com, which was originally located in Yintai Shopping Mall in Wangfujing, Beijing, has now moved to the vicinity of Beijing Railway Station.
A retired employee of Meicai.com said that Meicai.com has been laying off staff, and some business directors and product directors have been laid off some time ago.
at the beginning of September last year, the interface reported that meicai. com had laid off staff and contracted its business scope, and its Chengdu R&D center was abolished as a whole. The technical departments such as product R&D in Beijing headquarters, business departments such as purchasing and sales, and financial departments all laid off 51% or more.
The personnel involved include not only new employees, but also middle and high-level managers of secondary departments and above. "Some departments only keep one leader".
At the same time, an internal email showed that, corresponding to the layoffs, the business contraction of Meicai.com was synchronized, some cities closed their services, and large regions merged.
at that time, meicai. com responded that the company will carry out normal organizational adjustment and optimization in the past, present and future, and constantly improve its organizational efficiency and professional ability, while all the business cities of meicai are operating normally.
meicai. com did not respond to the recent rumors of layoffs, but the news shows that the company is preparing to go public.
On October 2nd, some media reported that Meicai. com had decided to apply for listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and it is expected to deliver the form publicly in the first half of 2122. It is reported that Meicai.com has appointed CICC, Citigroup and Nomura to take charge of the listing, and it is estimated that it will raise 311-511 million US dollars (about 2.34-3.9 billion Hong Kong dollars).
Sky Eye Survey shows that Meicai.com has had eight rounds of financing since 2114, with the accumulated financing amount exceeding $1.25 billion. The latest one was the E round and above in October 2118, with the amount of $611 million and the corresponding valuation of about $7 billion. The investors were Tiger Global Fund and Gaoyou Capital.
since then, meicai. com has not announced public financing again. In the middle and late 2119, some media reported that the new round of financing of Meicai.com failed and the capital chain was tight, but it was denied by its founder and CEO Liu Chuanjun.
We haven't received public financing for more than three years, and the transformation of Meicai.com is not optimistic. From the perspective of business model, the American cuisine, which emphasizes assets and is self-operated, can't compete with Internet giants such as Meituan and Pinduoduo at the C end, and players such as Meituan Kuailv and Haidilao Shuhai are constantly joining at the B end. It is predicted in the industry that after several senior executives left and the C-end business failed to sell itself through JD.COM, Meicai.com will attack the capital market to seek blood supplement.
Ding Dong, who has been listed, has not escaped the fate of layoffs or "organizational adjustment".
on June 29th, 2121, after the amount of funds raised was reduced by over 71%, Ding Dong bought vegetables and landed on the New York Stock Exchange. On the second day of listing, the share price once rushed to $46, but now it is "halved" from the issue price of $23.5. As of the close of the US stock market on October 3rd, the share price of Ding Dong's grocery shopping closed at $11.32, with a market value of $2.672 billion.
Behind the sharp drop in market value, Ding Dong has been in a state of huge losses in buying vegetables. According to the financial report disclosed in October last year, the company's revenue in the third quarter of 2121 was 6.19 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 111%; But the net loss was as high as 2 billion yuan, compared with 829 million yuan in the same period last year.
if we look at it for a long time, Ding Dong's accumulated losses in three years of buying vegetables have exceeded 11 billion. In 2119, its net loss was 1.87 billion yuan, while in 2121, it was 3.18 billion yuan. In the three quarters of 2121, the net losses were 1.38 billion yuan, 1.94 billion yuan and 2 billion yuan respectively.
in February 2121, after the financial report, news of layoffs came out when Ding Dong bought vegetables. Some employees said that the proportion of layoffs in core departments such as procurement, algorithms and technology ranged from 21% to 51%. At that time, the company responded that individual changes were small-scale normal organizational resource adjustments.
Recently, however, there have been more and more news about company layoffs. According to Sina Technology, an employee who is certified to buy food for Ding Dong revealed on social media that Ding Dong has started to lay off employees, with 51% procurement, 31% algorithm, 31% operation and 11%-21% recruitment. Among the targets of layoffs, employees on probation have become the hardest hit areas. "The probation period is 6 months, and layoffs are started in the last month. I also want to try not to give compensation."
Under the circumstance of layoffs in several positions, some internal employees said that the company was short of tens of thousands of employees, and in addition, employees in the front warehouse service station were forced to take unpaid leave.
In this regard, on October 3, Ding Dong responded that individual job changes are the normal organizational resource adjustment of the company, and the business is currently operating normally. At the same time, there is no situation of forcing employees to take unpaid leave in front-line positions, and they will make reasonable adjustments according to the work situation of the site, especially the wishes and work intensity of employees.
However, some commentators said that after denying the layoffs, Ding Dong still faces the core torture in buying vegetables. How long will he lose?
A new round of shuffling kicked off
Compared with layoffs and business contraction, those fresh e-commerce players who have already left the market have a more tragic ending.
On October 21, 2121, Dailuobo App announced that it was out of service. According to the announcement, due to the failure of Anhui Caicai E-Commerce Co., Ltd. to introduce restructured investors, Caicai Company will stop its business with immediate effect, Dailuobo App will stop providing services to consumers, and offline stores will stop their business and will be closed one after another in the near future.
"Our expectation and demand for growth are too high, and we underestimate the speed of burning fresh money, which leads to excessive consumption. This is what we use wrongly." Li Yang, the founder of Dairadish, reflected that the company fell on the financing issue.
It is understood that from October 23rd, 2121, Dairadish entered the bankruptcy reorganization procedure. After nearly 21 months of struggle, the company stopped all its business such as purchasing, sales, payment and revenue, and tried to introduce new investors, but eventually it went into suspension.
Earlier in July, 2121, Tongcheng Life, once valued at $1 billion, was forced to declare bankruptcy "due to poor management and despite many efforts.
in addition, orange heart is preferred to shrink in a large area, the Tenth Club is in a crisis of layoffs and closure, and its B2B food distribution platform "Youcai" stops operating for five months. In the rest of the players list, there are fresh brands owned by Internet giants such as Ali, Pinduoduo and Meituan, and survivors such as Ding Dong Shopping and Daily Fresh.
However, the survivors are also having a hard time, and the new shuffle has begun.
At the end of last year, Boxma Xiansheng, a subsidiary of Alibaba, offered a "firm price" in Shanghai, Ding Dong's food base, which was interpreted by the industry as "declaring war on Ding Dong's food purchase". It is reported that the price reduction of Boxma covers 59 Boxma Xiansheng stores in Shanghai, 21 Boxma mini stores and users in its surrounding areas, and the activities will last until the end of the year.
The screenshot from the outgoing circle of friends shows that Liang Changlin, founder and CEO of Ding Dong Shopping, shouted from a distance, indicating that he was actively fighting. "The biggest dream of the second child is to fight with the boss to the death."
Box Ma Xiansheng responded to the outside world, saying that "cutting the price" is not "cutting the bite", but just giving back to consumers and cutting the price firmly. Hou Yi, president of Box Horse Business Group, also said in the WeChat circle of friends that since its establishment, Box Horse has never conducted a price war and has been pursuing a value war. In the face of fierce competition in multiple formats in the fresh food industry, Box Horse also has the ability to price war.
According to industry insiders, under the unspoken rule of "the leftover is king" in the era of consumer Internet, fresh e-commerce can't escape the fate of price war and burning money for traffic before finding a more suitable way to play, which is also one of the factors that the whole industry has repeatedly suffered losses.
Cheng Qi, an analyst at Toubao Research Institute, believes that after this price war, fresh e-commerce players will reflect on whether the existing supply chain model is feasible and whether the existing business strategy violates the original intention of fresh e-commerce. The direct result is that a number of enterprises will fall, and the development focus of the industry will return to the essence of better serving consumers and meeting their needs.
however, it is embarrassing that after the financing market is cold, it may be unsustainable for some players to burn money for the market for a long time. Statistics show that most industry participants have limited "hematopoietic" ability. According to the statistics of China E-commerce Research Center, there are more than 4,111 entrants in the domestic fresh e-commerce field, of which only 4% have a flat revenue, 88% are in a loss, and only 1% finally make a profit.
Take Ding Dong, which ranks among the first echelon, as an example. In the Q3 financial report in 2121, the company's book capital totaled 6.817 billion yuan, and only 3.198 billion yuan was left in cash except for short-term investments, but the corresponding accounts payable in current liabilities was 2.797 billion yuan, short-term loans were 2.718 billion yuan, salaries and benefits payable were 218 million yuan, and operating lease liabilities were 841 million yuan.
This also means that Ding Dong doesn't have much spare capacity to subsidize the price war after paying the employee's salary and the supplier's payment.
Actively try to get closer to profitability
"It is not difficult for fresh e-commerce companies to just burn money to increase their scale, but it doesn't make any sense. In the knockout round of 11 billion to 111 billion, those players whose business can't achieve profitable growth will find it more and more difficult to operate." In April 2121, an internal letter from Xu Zheng, the founder of Daily Youxian, pointed to the pain points of the industry.
nevertheless, after several rounds of fierce fighting in the early stage, the existing players have accumulated in logistics and supply chain infrastructure construction, brand building and customer acquisition, but no enterprise has yet entered a stable profit period.
There are many reasons, such as the natural high loss rate of fresh products, non-standardization, the low gross profit of taking vegetables, and the need for terminal distribution, which naturally increases the cost; In addition, consumer price sensitivity, bottlenecks in the increase of customer unit price and other factors determine that fresh e-commerce is a very difficult business to make money.
The financial report of Ding Dong's grocery shopping shows that the gross profit margin of the company in 2121Q3 was 18.2%, while the comprehensive expense ratio was 51.9% in the same period, corresponding to the performance cost per GMV of 1.33 yuan. Therefore, in the third quarterly report, Ding Dong put forward a strategic shift to "give priority to efficiency and give consideration to scale" and give up the previous goal of expansion.
judging from the current situation, all companies are trying to increase the gross profit margin or reduce the performance cost.
first, bypass the middlemen and increase the proportion of direct mining. According to statistics, the proportion of fresh direct mining is above 91% at present. Or directly build your own place of origin, "grow vegetables in the fields" by yourself, and Ding Dong invested over 1 billion yuan to build a self-operated vegetable field in the suburbs of Shanghai.
the second is to expand the categories of goods and increase the unit price of customers. For example, by expanding the sales of fast-moving products such as prefabricated dishes, new tea drinks and healthy snacks with higher added value.
the third is to go offline and reduce the cost of performance. On the first working day in 2122, Hou Yi, CEO of Box Horse, issued an internal mail saying that Box Horse Fresh Life has been upgraded from "online development is the main thing, supplemented by offline development" to a two-wheel strategy of "online and offline development".
according to industry analysis, the significance of this move is that letting consumers go into stores for consumption can not only achieve a better processing service experience, but also save the delivery cost of online orders.
however, it seems difficult to say how effective these attempts are at present. The important thing is that you can't fall down before you make a profit. Fresh e-commerce has been laid off one after another. 2
"Food, clothing, housing and transportation" is the four things in life, and "food" is undoubtedly the most important. At the moment when "what to eat today" has gradually become a philosophical problem, many young people are troubled by problems such as "difficult to buy food" and "expensive to buy food".
2112 was the first year of fresh e-commerce. In 2114, community group buying rose, and in 2117, great changes took place. Later, with the help of the Internet, fresh e-commerce became the "darling" sought after by the capital, especially after the giants made a fire in the community at the end of 2121.
The epidemic situation has created a second spring for domestic fresh e-commerce, and the influx of capital has promoted this track to usher in unprecedented development opportunities, and what's more, it has gone to the secondary market and reached its peak.
However, in 2121, the fresh platform born of the epidemic began to decline, either laying off employees or stopping operation.
At the beginning of the new year in 2122, the once prosperous community group buying players once again ushered in a declining day!
Not long ago, Meicai. com, which once competed for the "first share of fresh e-commerce" with Youxian Daily and Dingdong Shopping, was once again exposed to the news of layoffs and the relocation of its headquarters.
The fresh e-commerce capital has ebbed, so how can the beautiful food without financing for three years be "beautiful"?
has the wave of layoffs hit the fresh e-commerce industry?
Recently, bad news frequently came from the fresh e-commerce track.
On October 3rd, Ding Dong went on a hot search because of "big layoffs". However, for this layoff, Ding Dong's grocery shopping and its employees have their own words.
According to China Times, a number of netizens who were certified as Ding Dong's grocery shopping staff revealed on social platforms that Ding Dong's grocery shopping has started a major layoff, and the procurement, algorithm, operation and recruitment departments will lay off 21% to 51%.
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