The box horse also began to close stores one after another to save their lives
The box horse also began to close stores one after another to save their lives, March 1, there are five box horse fresh life stores closed at the same time, this is not the first time that the box horse is rumored to be shutting down the news, before the box horse in a number of places have appeared in the case of shutting down the store closure, the box horse also began to shut down the store one after another to save their lives.
box horse also began to save the life of the successive closure of stores12 28, box horse at the same time shut down the Nanjing Xinjiekou Oriental Fuleide store and set Qing store, the reason for the closure of the store are business strategy adjustment. In addition, the box horse in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Qingdao and other cities also appeared to close the store, and the box horse gave no reason other than business optimization adjustment.
Some industry insiders believe that the intrinsic reason for the closure of stores may be that the existing model in some areas and business districts there is a certain degree of non-adaptability. Close part of the long-term loss and no hope of profitability of the store, this is a wise move in time to stop the loss.
Fill in the pit for aggressive expansion
Back then, the box in the high-speed expansion of the time, to take the Internet's method of play, balanced layout of the stores, in an attempt to quickly full coverage of a city, which can be loaded with more possibilities in the grid layout. Unfortunately, things are not as they should be, the physical stores will eventually return to the dimensions of physical retail.
Those poor business box horse stores, there are generally inconvenient transportation, insufficient foot traffic and other problems. This is the aftermath of the pursuit of full coverage play. To do physical retail or to follow the laws of physical retail, e-commerce play to the offline is not necessarily spirit. There are three tricks to do a good job in physical retail: location, location, or location. That's right, if the physical stores want to do business, a good location is the first place.
And the box horse in order to fully cover this goal, a lot of stores have poor site selection and other issues. The location is not well chosen, the business is naturally very poor. Now, the adjustment of these stores is also for the previous aggressive expansion to fill the pit. After all, the box needs to make money, and before making money must first stop.
At the end of 2021, Hou Yi, president of the box horse business group, said in an interview with the media that the box horse to develop independently, must have the ability to make profits, do not make money as a business always feel a shame.
Can multiple businesses form a synergy?
Does the constant closure of stores mean that the new retail exploration has failed? Not necessarily! Closing stores to stop losses is normal behavior for any retailer.
Nowadays, there are more than 300 stores in the box store, and it has formed a synergistic trend of multi-industry. Boxmart Fresh Life meets the consumption needs of urban middle-class customers, while Boxmart X member store focuses on the high-line market; in addition, Boxmart mini, Boxmart Neighborhood and Boxmart Fresh Outlet are effective supplements to the end of the city and the sinking market.
At present, the sinking market is the focus of major e-commerce giants and retailers. And Boxmart Neighborhood is the core carrier of Boxmart's foothold in the sinking market. The box horse neighborhood draws on the box horse small station front warehouse model experience, relying on the box horse cloud super commodity system to sink.
Of course, BoxMart Neighborhood mode to run through, also faces great challenges. At present, Box Office Neighborhood is rapidly expanding in seven cities, but it still needs to be scaled up and practiced, and has not yet reached the tipping point. Logistics costs are still overall high, and need to reduce marginal costs by expanding density and scale. At present, the box horse neighborhood is still in the mode verification, whether it can achieve profitability is still unknown.
The next three years, the box will enter a period of adjustment.
How much space is left for BoxMark to imagine? For BoxMark, how to focus on a clearer strategic direction and how to realize the ultimate retail efficiency is the key to more imagination in the future.
Hou Yi has also said that the integration of online and offline is the future. The box must change the past 70% of the business are online, and ultimately realize the online and offline 50/50, which is a reasonable balanced ideal layout.
The box horse also began to save the life of the successive closure of stores2As Alibaba's "pro son", the box horse opened its first store in 2016, had attracted countless eyes, fear of missing the wind mouth of the peers, scrambling to learn this new retail benchmark, have opened the same type of stores. Now six years later, these projects are not living as well, the United States small elephant fresh was called off, Yonghui super species huge losses after a succession of store closures, Jingdong seven fresh store expansion is slow, Su Fresh life silence.
The leader of the box horse is not a good day. March 1, there are five box horse fresh life stores closed at the same time, two of them are located in Nanjing, Qingdao, Chengdu, Guangzhou, one each.
This is not the first time that the box horse rumors of store closure news, before the box horse in a number of places have appeared to shut down the store closure situation, the reason given is invariably business strategy adjustment.
This seems to mean that the box horse, which has said that there is no upper limit to the investment, after more than ten trial and error adjustments, had to consider the business nature of making money and profitability. In the internal letter of January this year, Hou Yi, CEO of the box horse will be fully profitable as the new goal. Previously, Alibaba has implemented an operational accountability system for its business lines, requiring each business segment to feed itself.
In this context, some of the long-term profitability of the box horse stores without hope was eventually included in the list of stop-loss.
The other side of the closure of the store to stop losses, burning can not burn money 'box horse, the recent news is the layout of fresh Ole store, this business is not only the low cost of opening a store, but also help the box horse to solve the problem of loss of goods, reduce the cost pressure.
Can't burn money
"Fresh food industry outlet is here!" The promotional poster for the Box Office Fresh Outlet store reads.
This is a new business, last October, the first box horse fresh Ole store in Shanghai Pudong New Area Changli Road 333 Pudong shopping center on the first floor of the low-key opening. This store is transformed from the "box horse Mini store", with an area of about 480 square meters. Since then, Hangzhou, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, Xi'an, Qingdao, the box horse fresh Ole store opened one after another.
On March 2, Caijing World came to Beijing Tongzhou BoxMa Fresh Ole store, which also has a small area of more than 200 square meters, and can be seen at a glance from the door, with a simple layout, streamlined categories, and "fractured bone" prices, which is a huge contrast to BoxMa Fresh Life, which has always positioned itself as a high-end store. The first time I saw this, it was a huge contrast to the high-end Boxmasters.
It is understood that most of the box horse fresh Ole store sells the expiration date of the "daily fresh" goods, which was used by the box horse to attract the user's killer mace, but the "daily fresh" commodities from the launch of the box horse since the constant skepticism, saying that it is the "daily throw", "the daily throw". The products have been questioned since the launch of BoxMart, saying that they are "daily thrown", and that they are on the shelves during the day, but expire at night. With the expansion of the number of stores in the box, this loss is huge, and many of the goods themselves actually did not deteriorate, throw away for nothing is really a pity, and ultimately the box came up with the method of opening the outlet store.
Hou Yi, CEO of BoxMark, has explained to the media that the purpose of opening a fresh food outlet store is to help BoxMark reduce the loss of stores and processing centers, so the price is basically less than half of the surrounding fresh food supermarkets. For example, there are two days of expiration of the day fresh milk selling price directly from 7.5 yuan to 3 yuan per bottle.
Boxma told Finance World Weekly that Ole is a supplement to the three main formats of Boxmart Fresh Life stores, Boxmart X member stores, and Boxmart Neighborhood. The reason why box horse opened Ole store, on the one hand, can reduce commodity loss, on the other hand, can enter the sinking market, play a role in pulling new.
From the cost of opening a store, the box horse fresh Ole store in the box horse system is considered low, because of its small area. It is understood that the number of stores has seven box horse X member store, the area of about 16,000 to 18,000 square meters; the next box horse fresh life has 300 stores, the area of 2,500 to 5,000 square meters; box horse Mini stores in the area of 500 to 1,000 square meters. And is vigorously expanding the fresh food outlet store, the area is much smaller, only 200 to 500 square meters.
The small area means that the cost of rent to be paid, as well as the cost of labor to be paid will be much lower. According to the Huaxia Times, the cost of opening a Boxmart Fresh store is around 30 million yuan, the cost of opening a Boxmart Mini store is around 2 million yuan, while opening a Boxmart Fresh Ole store only costs around one million yuan.
While opening a lower-cost fresh food outlet store, Boxmart is closing Boxmart Fresh Life stores that are not doing well.
On March 1, Boxmart Fresh Life's Nanjing Xinjiekou Dongfang Fulaide store and Jixingmen store, as well as the Qingdao Taishan Road store, the Guangzhou Jianhuahui store, and the Chengdu Tianfu Great Wall store were closed at the same time, and the announcements posted on the door of the stores said the stores were closed because of the adjustment of the business strategy.
Among them, Box Office Qingdao Taishan Road store covers an area of more than 4,000 square meters, is its sixth store opened in the region, however, less than two years of operation was closed down.
The closure of the box horse neighborhood stores, this business with more food, the United States Mission preferred community group buying similar. According to media reports, in order to compress costs and refine the operation, the box horse at the end of 2021 closed the box horse neighborhood stores in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Suzhou three cities. After the contraction, there are only neighborhood pickup stores in seven cities.
In fact, the box horse can not burn money, there have been signals before. Like other loss-making business lines under Alibaba, the loss of six years of the box horse has reached a critical moment when it must consider the issue of profitability. Earlier this year in the internal letter, Hou Yi said, the development goal of the box horse is to make a full profit, so in 2022 the box horse has to follow the essence of retail management, temporary "belt tightening", "lean production, lean management".
From the life to life
The story of the box horse began in 2015, this year, as a BOE executives, served as general manager of the O2O Division of the Hou Yi, due to disagreements left the BOE. Allegedly, he envisioned an integrated online and offline retail model in Jingdong could not get space to play, and resigned angrily. After leaving Beijing and returning to his hometown in Shanghai, Hou Yi had a coffee with his hometown, then Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong, which led to the later story.
The two met and had a great conversation, and hit it off right away. According to people familiar with Hou Yi, Zhang Yong showed great interest in listening to Hou Yi for only five minutes. Since then, the two met no less than 10 times in six months to exchange the design of the new retail architecture. Eventually, the two reached an agreement, the general direction is determined to be supermarkets + catering + logistics.
On January 15 of the following year, the Shanghai Jinqiao Plaza store opened for business, and the BoxMark App was synchronized on the line. 5 months later, the actual operational data of the pilot verified the feasibility of the BoxMark business model, and on September 30 of the same year, the BoxMark opened its second store, and then the BoxMark model began to rapidly replicate across the country.
In October 2016, at the Ali Yunqi Conference, the concept of "new retail" came out of the circle, and as a benchmark for Ali's new retail experiments, the box office was supported by Ali's efforts. Hou Yi was full of confidence at the time, said "Alibaba's underlying technical architecture, payment system, membership system, we can take over and use." It is understood that the box horse was established that year in Ali performance appraisal got more than expected 4 points, which in the Ali appraisal system belongs to the level of the best, and then up is the outstanding level of 5 points, but almost no project can get.
Since then, the box horse has entered a period of wild running. at the end of 2017, the box horse stores only 25, increased to 149 a year later, and since then, more than proposed a plan to open 500 stores in 2019. In Hou Yi's view, before the box horse has established an absolute industry barrier, this is the only choice for the box horse.
However, the high speed expansion failed to exchange for high quality growth, and the box horse profitability and GMV growth rate are less than expected. According to media reports, the 2019 mid-year performance appraisal, the box horse only took 3.25 points, a little better than the lowest grade unqualified 3 points, and almost at the bottom of all the group's business segments.
This year's Alibaba Organization Department General Assembly, Hou Yi, in front of the group's core management team of more than 500 people, received a rotten strawberry award symbolizing the worst of the business, which was named by Zhang Yong to be sent to Hou Yi, because the progress of the box horse did not meet Alibaba's expectations.
Perhaps to change the unfavorable situation, the box horse in the following three years, in the form of dazzling, constantly open up new business. From 2019 to 2021, Box Horse has tried Box Horse Fresh Life, Box Horse X Membership, Box Horse Mini Store, Box Horse Small Station, Box Mali, Box Horse Vegetable Market, pickn go, Box Horse F2, Box Horse Bazaar, Box Horse Neighborhood, and so on, which almost covers the entire retail business format.
These businesses are segmented according to different regions and different customers. To put it simply, BoxMart X member is an enlarged version of BoxMart Fresh, BoxMart Mini store is a scaled-down version of BoxMart Fresh, BoxMart mini station is a front warehouse model, BoxMart is a shopping center, BoxMart F2 is a convenience store, and BoxMart Neighborhood is a vegetable market.
The constant trial and error of the box horse, trying to find the most suitable for their own business format, to find a profitable business model. Unfortunately, most of the business formats it tries end up failing.2019 box horse focuses on the development of box horse small station and box horse Mini store, because these two business formats are small in area, low investment cost, and can be quickly replicated. At that time, Hou Yi planned that the box horse small station should achieve full coverage in the core city.
But after only one year, Hou Yi denied himself, saying that the box horse small station is just a warehouse, the limitations are very large, the sales rely on burning money to pull new, it is difficult to realize the profitability, and ultimately called a halt in 2020, more than 70 box horse small station in this gradually withdrawn from the market, upgraded to the box horse Mini store. BoxMini is a small store format, different from the BoxMart Freshman large store model, the area is quite small, and the distribution range is also shortened to 1.5 kilometers.
Hou Yi once said that the box horse Mini store will become the ultimate mode of fresh food e-commerce, and put forward "a year to open 100 stores target". However, by the end of 2020, only 14 Box Office Mini stores were opened. He later reflected that his previous belief that the Box Mini store is the best business model is an error in judgment.
"Because it is not open for franchising, the implementation is difficult and the investment is large, the BoxMart Mini store has encountered great problems in its expansion." Hou Yi reflected, began to tout the box horse neighborhood, this business is a community group purchase model, online ordering the next day offline pickup or home delivery, after the launch in 2021, was defined as the most important strategy of the box horse in the next decade.
But since the end of last year, the box horse neighborhood was exposed to be a large-scale closure of stores, some from the opening to the closure of the store only a few months apart, giving the reason for the business adjustment.
Six years after more than a dozen trial and error adjustments, burned countless money, box horse has not found a viable development model. If Alibaba did not encounter a crisis, perhaps can continue to give the box horse blood, but now not, box horse to the time must be independent.
In January, according to Bloomberg, people familiar with the matter revealed that Alibaba Group is considering seeking independent financing for the box. Alibaba said it would not comment on this, but Finance World Weekly learned that there are indeed investors who are in contact with Boxmart.
For the intention of independent development of the box horse, has been losing certainly not, it must have its own ability to make blood. That is to say, the box horse must change the past "to run wild", change to life to live, so it will be unprofitable stores and business to stop loss.
Annual loss of 10 billion?
The business model does not run through the box horse, how much money has been lost over the years, has been like a "mystery". Alibaba's financial report, also did not disclose information related to it.
Before 2018, the box horse, together with Gao De map and nail, was divided into Ali's innovative business and other; after 2018, the box horse was raised to the core business of China's retail business. However, just after joining, the profitability of Alibaba's core business fell off a cliff.
However, it seems that the status quo of Boxma's huge losses can be seen from its partners.In 2019, Zhejiang Zhehai, a subsidiary of Sanjiang Shopping, sold 100% of its stake in its grandson company, Hangzhou Zhehai, to Hangzhou Boxma at a total price of 30 million yuan. Data show that Hangzhou Zhehai had a net loss of 10.73 million yuan in 2018.
It is understood that Zhejiang Zhehai mainly operates Box Office Fresh Life in Ningbo, and its subsidiary Hangzhou Zhehai is mainly responsible for operating Box Office Fresh Life in Hangzhou. The annual report of Sanjiang Shopping shows that Zhejiang Zhehai had a net loss of 19.12 million yuan in 2017, and the net loss in 2018 was 23.49 million yuan. The reason for this is that the four Boxmart stores opened are due to high upfront costs.
Sanjiang Shopping is also owned by Alibaba, which bought 32% of its shares in 2016. Hou Yi has said to the public that the future box store in the whole of Zhejiang is represented by the three rivers shopping and responsible for the management, box store only output brand, system, technology, big data and so on. I didn't realize that this ultimately led to the poor performance of three rivers shopping.
Fuzhou is also one of the few areas where Boxmart adopts an affiliate model. 2017, Xinhua Du and Ali Zetai each invested 100 million yuan to set up Fujian New Box Technology Company, with each party holding 50% of the equity. There is a clear division of labor between the two, with the front-end operation of the stores being handled by Boxmart, and the back-end supply chain being handed over to Xinhua Du. However, after only 2 years, Xinhua Du through two asset sales, will hold the equity of Fujian New Box Technology all let out, the box horse Fujian business to return to the full self-management.
Xinhuadu chose to end its cooperation with Boxmart, again to stop losses. According to the content of the transfer announcement, Fujian New Box Technology's annual revenue in 2018 was 140 million yuan, with a net loss of 58.8339 million yuan; in the first half of 2019, the company's revenue was 110 million yuan, with a net loss of 40.4443 million yuan.
The return of self-operated Fuzhou Box Horse still did not escape the fate of losses. Following the closure of Fuzhou Xinhua Mall store in March 2020, Boxmart Bona Plaza store and Chating International store also ceased operations from May 7, since then Boxmart has withdrawn from the Fuzhou market.
Similarly, on the evening of May 31, 2019, the announcement issued by GCL Retail exposed the operation of Hainan Boxmart, and during the period from May 28, 2018 to December 31, 2018, Boxmart Hainan had a net loss of about 9.72 million yuan before tax.
E-commerce analyst Li Chengdong wrote in July last year that the annual loss of 10 billion yuan, which is the development status of box horse. According to his estimates, the box horse single-quarter loss of about 3 billion yuan, the loss rate is as high as 21%. This result is his estimate, the box horse single quarter revenue is about 14 billion yuan, in ali revenue accounted for about 20%. Alibaba's non-mature business loss in the first quarter of last year was 13.656 billion yuan, according to the 20% ratio, the box horse about 3 billion yuan loss.
The box horse also began to save the life of the successive closure of stores3
Since February this year, following Walmart, Carrefour successive closure of stores to adjust at the same time, the box horse has also carried out the closure of stores to adjust.
Opened only two years
box horse Xinjiekou store announced the closure
Recently, the netizen broke the news that the box horse Nanjing Xinjiekou store issued a notice will be on February 28, 22:00 stop business.
The announcement shows that the rapid development of the box horse fresh life, there are now 25 stores in Nanjing. In order to better serve consumers, Boxmart Fresh Life Nanjing region decided to do business strategy adjustment, Nanjing Xinjiekou store will be on February 28, 2022 at 22:00 pm to stop business.
Boxmart also reminds consumers that after the store closes, they can go to the nearest Boxmart Nanjing Daxinggong store to shop.
Public information shows that the store is located in Dongfang Fulaide, opened on January 12, 2020, is the first store of Boxmart in Xinjiekou business district, and is also the first innovative flagship store of Boxmart Fresh Life in China.
The biggest difference between this store and other stores is that it contains a second-floor dining area and a first-floor offline pickup business. Among them, the second floor aquatic area, seafood processing and associated stalls account for about half of the store area, the store operating brand categories more than 20,000, to meet the needs of a variety of scenarios of Xinjiekou CBD customer base in an all-round way. When it opened, it was once sought after, but after only two years of operation, the first store in Xinjiekou announced that it was closing.
As to why the store closed? The announcement of the box horse responded that the regional decision to do business strategy adjustment.
Figure source: real estate development I first.
These three stores
will also be closed from March 1
In fact, this is not the first store of the year that Box Office has closed, and at the same time, there are also three stores that will be closed at the same time.
1, box horse fresh life Tianfu Great Wall store will be closed in early March
Recently, some Chengdu citizens found that the box horse fresh life supermarket located in the South Third Ring Tianfu Great Wall neighborhood near the hanging out of the closing news, announced that the upcoming March 1 closed store.
For the reason of this store adjustment, Boxmart Fresh Life responded: "Tianfu Great Wall store is too close to the residential district, the daily unloading and transportation and other nuisance hidden danger. At the same time, because the store itself overall property conditions, customer equipment and facilities are relatively old, does not meet the requirements of the box horse upgrade offline experience. Subsequently, a brand new upgraded store will be opened near the original site."
Public information shows that Box Horse Fresh Life entered Chengdu on January 31, 2018, and has opened 21 stores one after another.
2, box horse fresh life Qingdao Taishan Road store closed on March 1
Recently, the Peninsula Metropolis Daily reporter learned from box horse fresh life, Qingdao box horse fresh life Taishan Road store will be closed after the end of business in February 28th online and offline business, March 1 onwards will be closed. Boxmart Fresh Life responded that Qingdao is still one of the key cities in Boxmart Fresh Life's national layout, and will open Boxmart Fresh Ole store in Qingdao within the year, and continue to expand the scale of operation and service scope in Qingdao.
At present, Qingdao also has seven stores, including Thumb Plaza, Harmony Plaza, Great Renaissance City, Xindu Xinxin, Hongkong Middle Road, Golden Lion Plaza and Jinshui Road.
Photo credit: Peninsula Metropolis Daily News.
Public information shows that the store is located in Taishan Road, opened on June 5, 2020, is the sixth store in Qingdao, with a total area of more than 4,000 square meters, taking into account the consumption habits of the surrounding neighborhoods and consumption, the store collection of the local characteristics of the daily livelihood of the deep-fried roasted brine, wontons, soup noodles and other snacks. Just opened was once sought after, but less than two years, the store has closed.
Boxma Fresh Life continues to respond that since Boxma entered Qingdao in 2018, it has opened eight stores one after another, and the main city has achieved initial coverage. In order to better plan the development and layout of the Qingdao region, not only including the adjustment of this store, within the year, the box horse fresh Ole store will be stationed in Qingdao, in the fresh food retail industry to explore high-quality development and "anti-waste" way.
Source: Peninsula Metropolis Daily News.
Box Office is positioned as a quality discount store, allowing more consumers to experience Box Office's products at a cheaper price. In the future, Boxmart will continue to expand its scale and service scope in Qingdao, so that more citizens can enjoy the fresh and beautiful life. At present, in addition to Qingdao, Box Office Fresh Outlet has previously opened stores in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan and other places.
3, Box Office Jianhua Hui store closed on March 1
A few days ago, according to "Panyu Terrace" reported, Box Office Jianhua Hui store issued a notice, due to business adjustments, Box Office Jianhua Hui store in February 28, 2022 from 22:00 to stop doing business with the public. According to Jianhua Hui staff, the change is mainly a business adjustment of Boxmart Fresh Life, which will be handed over for renovation in March and will be taken over by makro Wankelong.
Figure source: Panyu Terrace.
Public information shows that the box horse fresh life located in Dashi Street Jianhua Hui is the first store of the new retail supermarket to enter the Panyu District, which was opened to the public in March 2019, and after this adjustment, the only box horse fresh life in the Panyu District is the Sihai City store in Nancun Town.
Photo credit: Panyu Terrace.
By the end of 2021, the number of Boxmart Fresh Life stores in China has exceeded 300, having opened stores in more than 27 cities. In addition to the main Boxmart Fresh Life, Boxmart has launched a variety of business formats such as Boxmart Mini, Boxmart Little Station, Boxmart Pony, Boxmart X Membership Store, Boxmart Mali, etc., and at the end of last year, it launched a new format of quality discount stores - Boxmart Outlet Store.
Multi-format operation
Launch of the box horse fresh Ole store
It is understood that the box horse fresh Ole is the box horse Fresh born in 2021 to launch a new form, the area of about 300-1,000 square meters or so, the operation of nearly 2,000 SKUs, and would like to build a fresh food industry "the". It wants to become the "outlet" of the fresh food industry!
Illustration: The first store in Xi'an, Box Office.
In October 2021, Box Office opened the first Box Office store in Shanghai, which was transformed from the original Box Office Mini store with an area of about 480 square meters. After opening, it has received a lot of favorable comments from netizens, who said: Box Office Outlet Store opens from 8:00 a.m. to 21:30 p.m. The store mainly sells discounted and special-priced dishes, and the price is super cheap.
In this regard, Hou Yi, president of Box Horse, replied to Retail Krypton Planet that opening this new business is mainly to help Box Horse reduce the loss of stores and processing centers. The price is very competitive, "basically less than half of the neighboring fresh food supermarkets". Because of the affordable price, "business is super good, open the door every day to line up".
On December 31 last year, the first store of Box Office Wuhan opened in Qiaokou District, the first store in Chengdu in February this year, the first store in Xi'an opened, and the first one in Shandong will also be located in Qingdao North before the end of the year.
It was revealed that the box horse is also the first to transplant the "outlet" store business philosophy to try fresh food. It was also revealed that the box horse fresh outlet store in the price management to take 30-50% discount price of fresh food.
Some industry insiders believe that the Box Horse Fresh Ole positioning discount stores, which is a complement to the Box Horse Fresh and Box Horse X members, but also minimize the loss of fresh products, improve the turnover, the loss of fresh products play a good role in controlling the loss of fresh products.