---
title: "2025: Big Tech 'Bets' on Hard Discount"
description: "In 2025, major internet companies are entering the hard discount retail sector, with Meituan's 'Happy Monkey' and Hema NB's 'Super Box NB' opening stores in Hangzhou, and JD.com launching discount supermarkets. These moves are part of a broader strategy to integrate online instant retail with offline supply, leveraging self-operated products to offer extreme value for money."
author: "Philip"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-09-13"
categories: "Retail Formats"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-big-tech-bets-on-hard-discount-b6ca2e85.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/06LoC6-Re6aS__01W1PX0w"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/2025-%E5%A4%A7%E5%8E%82-%E6%8A%BC%E6%B3%A8-%E7%A1%AC%E6%8A%98%E6%89%A3-b6ca2e85.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-big-tech-bets-on-hard-discount-b6ca2e85/"
citation: "Philip. “2025: Big Tech 'Bets' on Hard Discount.” New Distribution, 2025-09-13. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-big-tech-bets-on-hard-discount-b6ca2e85/"
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---

# 2025: Big Tech 'Bets' on Hard Discount

> In 2025, major internet companies are entering the hard discount retail sector, with Meituan's 'Happy Monkey' and Hema NB's 'Super Box NB' opening stores in Hangzhou, and JD.com launching discount supermarkets. These moves are part of a broader strategy to integrate online instant retail with offline supply, leveraging self-operated products to offer extreme value for money.

Philip heard that Happy Monkey has great deals; why don't we go check it out tomorrow? Although she wanted to lie flat on the weekend, Lisa still made plans with friends while thinking about what to buy.
On August 29, Meituan's first hard discount supermarket, 'Happy Monkey', opened at the Daguan Road store in Gongshu, Hangzhou, with second and third stores in Hangzhou in preparation.
Notably, on the same day Happy Monkey opened, Hema NB, located 800 meters away, officially upgraded to the new brand 'Super Box NB', and 17 other Hema NB stores nationwide also underwent brand upgrades that day.
Happy Monkey and Hema NB can be seen as representative formats of internet giants entering hard discount retail.
In fact, **the concept of hard discount is defined relative to soft discount**, where the latter achieves cost-effectiveness mainly by bulk purchasing near-expiry surplus goods, changing the assortment from the procurement end, with typical examples being Japan's Don Quijote and domestic HotMaxx. In contrast, one of the models for hard discount to achieve cost-effectiveness is by starting from deeper upstream supply chain links.
Not only Hema, which is halfway through its journey, and Meituan, which is at the starting line, but JD.com's discount supermarket also opened four stores simultaneously in Suqian on August 30. Clearly, no major company underestimates the impact of the hard discount format on retail efficiency reform and its significance for strategic synergy. With the starting gun fired in the hard discount track, coupled with the 'fierce battle' in instant retail, the 'war' among major companies in 2025 is spreading from online to offline.
The hard discount war spreads to instant retail
Meituan's Happy Monkey and Hema NB are facing off head-on in Hangzhou, and from a deeper perspective, the entry of major companies into hard discount is more about the future battle in instant retail.
As mentioned, the hard discount format creates healthier profit margins through extreme cost reduction and efficiency improvement in operations and supply chain. According to a report by Cinda Securities Research and Development Center, gross margins in hard discount retail typically range from 10% to 15%.
At the same time, the profit space created by hard discount, while passing on benefits to consumers, also allows the format to deploy more innovative businesses, such as instant retail operations that require higher costs for rider delivery.
In short, because hard discount has larger gross margins, retailers have more flexibility to engage in businesses that incur additional operational costs but also bring incremental volume, making hard discount supermarkets one of the representative models suitable for instant retail.
Meituan, which launched its flash purchase business in 2018, has already connected various offline retail formats, including franchise-based lightning warehouses. However, Meituan's past problem was that although flash purchase connected many leading chain supermarkets and retail brands, more merchants were non-chain individual businesses, allowing Meituan only weak product control. In terms of pricing, apart from issuing coupons, there were few solutions.
Now, Happy Monkey can bring Meituan flash purchase higher-quality, more cost-effective product supply, especially supplementing Meituan's shortcomings in standard daily chemical categories, further promoting the professionalization of instant retail supply.
Compared to Happy Monkey, Hema NB's role for Taobao Flash Purchase is similar. At the celebration of Hema's tenth anniversary, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming specifically mentioned: 'Within the group, only Hema is truly self-operated in products. When we scale up, we will hand over these basic product capabilities and service experiences to Hema.'
Relative to the supply network that Taobao Flash Purchase is slowly building (Taobao is also doing lightning warehouses), Hema NB's supply is more professional and cost-effective; of course, Hema NB also has its own instant retail service, mainly through WeChat mini-programs, but its traffic cannot compare to Flash Purchase, which is a strategic entry point within Taobao.
Taobao Flash Purchase needs supply, and Hema NB needs online traffic. In the future, the strategic synergy between Taobao and Hema NB will inevitably deepen.
In terms of strategic synergy, JD.com's discount supermarket is not far behind. Currently, JD.com's discount supermarket has been launched on JD Seconds, and the Zhuozhou store, due to its geographical proximity to Beijing, will have deeper synergy with the group in logistics and product supply chain. This is also JD.com's advantage as a 'group army' strategy.
Compared to traditional hard discount brands like ALDI, a unique advantage for major companies doing hard discount is 'group army operations'. At the same time, the synergy advantages brought by the group's massive business resources also make major companies more determined to invest in new formats.
From the current business layout, there is also a certain differentiated competition among the hard discount formats of major companies. For example, JD.com is mainly focusing on northern cities like Zhuozhou and Suqian; Hema NB focuses on its advantageous markets in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai; Meituan's Happy Monkey first targets first-tier cities like Hangzhou and Beijing.
A certain judgment is that internet giants' attempts at hard discount will be a 'protracted' competition, and from online instant retail to offline product supply, this competition will involve every detail of the retail industry.
For the retail industry, business competition is more direct than in high-tech industries, and market changes are faster. Retailers need to provide quality products with more price competitiveness and seize more high-traffic prime locations; then consumers will naturally vote with their feet.
A retail efficiency revolution
Like the aggressive new retail wave of the past, the hard discount model may bring a new round of retail efficiency revolution.
In the past, the procurement systems of traditional supermarkets mainly 'dealt with' distributors and dealers, but because the distribution system adds layers of markup, unnecessary circulation costs are added to product pricing, and this traditional system is deeply entrenched with complex interests, making it difficult to change.
In response, **the hard discount solution is, on one hand, to directly contact head distributors to reduce intermediate circulation links as much as possible; on the other hand, to cooperate directly with manufacturers for source supply, restoring the true value of products in pricing as much as possible.**
Specifically on the channel side, hard discount adopts the approach of streamlining SKUs, meaning the category coverage should be broad enough, but the brands within each vertical category should be sufficiently premium, ensuring that sales of sub-items within each category continue to grow, thereby negotiating better pricing with suppliers and ultimately passing on benefits to consumers.
Of course, channel-side reform is not just about products; it also involves innovating all unnecessary operational details: for example, Hema NB and ALDI both display goods by directly opening cardboard boxes; Lerle, one of the leading domestic hard discount brands, even chooses not to turn on air conditioning and uses high shelves as storage to save store costs as much as possible.
In the end, hard discount is about compressing costs from every link, continuously optimizing the circulation efficiency of the traditional supply chain, and ultimately creating a unique cost-performance competitive advantage on the product side.
In fact, hard discount is not a new concept; the reason it is now being 'embraced' is also related to changes in consumption trends.
Relevant data shows that in 2024, luxury goods sales in China fell by 17%; during the same period, domestic outlet sales reached about 239 billion yuan, an increase of about 4% year-on-year.
More and more consumers are turning to more cost-effective purchasing channels.
The changes taking place in China's consumer market provide an opportunity for the rapid development of the hard discount format. According to NielsenIQ data, over the next decade, the compound annual growth rate of China's hard discount format will reach 5.6%, far exceeding hypermarkets' 2.5% and even slightly higher than convenience stores' 5.5%.
From an essential understanding, although consumption downgrading has become a prominent topic, China still has a broad middle-class family base that insists on 'wanting good quality but not overpaying', meaning on the basis of quality consumption, they minimize unnecessary brand premiums and pay for the use value of products.
Therefore, hard discount is not just about price wars; it must also provide products and consumption experiences with extreme cost-performance.
Solidifying cost-performance with self-operated products
The demand for both low prices and quality, when applied to the hard discount format, leads major companies to a path of developing self-operated products.
According to the author's on-site visits to Hema NB and ALDI stores, both have a rich selection of self-operated products, covering basic items like rice, flour, oil, alcohol, and seasonings, but each has its own focus; for example, Hema NB's self-operated snacks are relatively more diverse, including dried goods and braised foods, while ALDI's daily chemical and cleaning products are more prominent, including facial cleansers and toners.
Relevant data shows that Hema NB's self-operated brands currently account for about 60%; in addition, ALDI has nearly 2,000 self-operated products in the Chinese market, accounting for over 90% of its total SKUs.
In fact, self-operated products are an important path for the hard discount format to achieve extreme cost-performance, because this involves deep strategic cooperation between retailers and source suppliers, allowing retailers to deeply participate in product development and production, and eliminating the profit-sharing links of distributors at various levels in the circulation process, making product pricing closer to the most essential raw material and R&D costs.
Of course, the high cost-performance of self-operated products does not mean a downgrade in quality.
According to the author's research on multiple retailers, when developing and producing self-operated products, retailers often first verify the factory's production assets and production site environment, and after passing the factory inspection, require suppliers to produce according to certain ingredient ratios and requirements. After production, internal blind tests are conducted, and after launch, feedback is collected for adjustments, ensuring product experience at every step.
Most importantly, the suppliers chosen by hard discount retailers for self-operated products are basically leading brands or product expert manufacturers in the industry.
Still taking Hema NB and ALDI as examples, in the fresh orange juice category, ALDI's supplier is Wuxi Chengyi Food Co., Ltd., whose beverages are long-term used by star-rated hotels like Sheraton, Marriott, and Hilton; Hema NB's supplier is Shanghai Zhehui Health Technology Co., Ltd., which is also the supplier for Chagee's Ceylon black tea bags and Haidilao's triple pomelo concentrated juice.
From strategic positioning and supply chain optimization, self-operated products are an indispensable part of the development of the hard discount format, and JD.com and Meituan are also making efforts.
For example, JD.com's first discount supermarket also introduced self-owned brands like JD Qixian, Jingxianfang, and Jingdong Jingzao, and even has a JD Qixian self-owned brand section. Some products are very price-competitive, such as Jingxianfang pure grain liquor 500ml at 9.9 yuan per bottle and Qixian fresh pomelo juice 1L at 9.9 yuan per bottle. For JD.com, product quality and supply chain are already one of its core competitiveness.
In this war about the future of the retail format, major companies like Meituan, JD.com, and Alibaba not only must participate but also need to compete fiercely with a 'must-win' mindset.
In the leisure of the weekend, Lisa and her friends found good deals at Happy Monkey, and not far away, 'Super Box NB' also had people staying for cost-performance. Just like her phrase 'let's go check it out', it reflects consumers' simple expectation of 'getting value for money'.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: Philip
- Published: 2025-09-13
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2025-big-tech-bets-on-hard-discount-b6ca2e85/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/06LoC6-Re6aS__01W1PX0w

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