Question 1: How big is the market? At what stage?
What kind of e-commerce to do depends on the space and ceiling of the category itself. But there are three questions about how big the market is. One is how big is the fresh market? One is how big is the fresh e-commerce market? How big are the traditional fresh e-commerce and O2O fresh e-commerce markets with different modes of fresh food? The market is big enough, so where is the difficulty of being a fresh e-commerce?
Therefore, fresh food can be broadly understood as e-commerce of agricultural and sideline products, about 4 trillion. The scale of dishes is even larger than 3C communication of clothes and home appliances. After all, food is the most important thing for people. But many of them are self-produced and sold, and the real sales in the circulation market are about 2.5 trillion. Moreover, we sell in e-commerce channels, and many industrial agricultural products, soybeans, grain and oil are not available. So what you can get from online channels should be 1.5 trillion, such as fresh food, vegetables, fruits and some aquatic products. Generally speaking, the scale is still relatively large. However, at present, e-commerce is mainly tea and some fruits. Relatively resistant to transportation and storage, the requirements for cold chain are not so high. According to the data of Ali Research Institute, the annual transaction volume of fresh e-commerce is expected to be1300 million in 20 14, and it is expected to double to 26 billion in 20 14. Therefore, compared with the overall e-commerce, the proportion of fresh e-commerce is extremely low, which should be said to be a very small demand, and it is still in the stage of educating users to cultivate online buying habits, although it is speculative. If you are not only selling goods, but also doing the important layout stage of fresh e-commerce, if you burn a lot of money at this time, you may become a martyr, if you remember the article I wrote before.
Question 2: What are the difficulties in doing a good job in fresh e-commerce?
Fresh e-commerce is difficult to make money, and many people's intuitive reaction is cold chain logistics, which has high logistics costs; Marketing is difficult, the cost of finding users for niche needs is high, inventory management is difficult and inventory loss is high.
Brother Dong visited or telephoned WeChat to exchange the judgment of six or seven fresh e-commerce companies in China. The difficulty of fresh e-commerce lies in the supply chain.
The supply chain determines the gross profit margin. For example, imported meat products, if overseas origin participates in bullish futures, the price is extremely low and the gross profit margin can be above 50%. If you only get the goods through traditional third-party channels, the gross profit margin can reach 30%, which is very good. Many fresh e-commerce companies doing B2C don't make money, but many sellers selling special fruits on Taobao still make money.
The supply chain determines the inventory loss. Good goods will be more resistant to storage and transportation, with longer shelf life and less secondary screening of defective products. A better appearance will also reduce the loss caused by users' return. Some fresh e-commerce companies lose more than a dozen points, and those that do well can be controlled within three or five points. Many fresh e-commerce companies are not cheap in pricing, but the gross profit margin is not high in the end, because the gross profit margin is a loss.
Supply chain determines user experience, word of mouth and return rate, and the core of users is to buy goods, which is only one aspect. JD.COM used to make Aksu apples. I bought them, and they looked very bad. I don't want to buy the second time if I buy it once, and I feel directly about JD.COM. The freshness of COM is very poor If the goods are poor or unstable, platform promotion is not recommended.
As for the problem of cold chain logistics, it is not only that the third-party logistics does not cover the whole country, but also that the cost of each order is very high. Therefore, the current fresh e-commerce companies have basically adopted self-built methods. Fresh e-commerce has become a localized business. The reason for the previous problem is still insufficient demand, and fresh e-commerce is still relatively niche demand rather than public demand. This is a reverse process, as long as there are enough orders, third-party logistics will definitely do it. For example, SF cold chain, SF's previous preservation is not really for preservation.