Recently, ONMINE, a snack store jointly created by Intime Retail and Alibaba's Tmall, opened at Hangzhou Zhongda Intime City. As a new retail innovation project of Intime Retail, it marks Intime's entry into the snack food sector, aiming to create the most delicious and fun new snack species.
Leveraging Alibaba Tmall's Supply Chain Advantages ONMINE Focuses on Imported Snacks
Walking into the ONMINE store, within an area of nearly 300 square meters, nearly 800 SKUs of snacks are displayed, including Shiroi Koibito, Indonesian Papadum series, Binggrae banana milk, Sonnet raw chocolate, Sun-Maid raisins, Lotte chocolate bars, etc. Among them, imported snacks account for up to 80%.
According to Huang Lingjie, head of ONMINE, the cooperation with Alibaba Tmall leverages its powerful supply chain system, ensuring the same products at the same prices online and offline. At the same time, Alibaba's big data helps analyze the consumption habits and product preferences of the local consumer base, enabling ONMINE to obtain consumer information more timely and accurately, thereby adjusting store merchandise. "In this way, we can achieve short-cycle, fast new product launches. Within the limited SKU constraints, we maximize the satisfaction of consumer purchase needs."
It is reported that the ratio of mature and well-known brands to some niche emerging brands in the store is controlled at 7:3. In addition to relying on Alibaba's big data analysis, ONMINE also has its own retail buyers, whose task is to discover that 30% of emerging snack brands.
Alibaba also provides technical support, enabling ONMINE and Tmall to truly achieve "product connectivity" and realize backend data sharing. Take the electronic price tags in the store, for example: when some snack brands on the Tmall platform adjust prices, ONMINE store prices automatically change simultaneously, truly achieving the same product at the same time and price.
Merchants on the Tmall platform utilize the unlimited "cloud shelves" in ONMINE's physical store to achieve O2O services where offline customers scan codes, order online, and have goods delivered to their homes. In the future, ONMINE will also try to achieve online ordering with pickup at nearby stores.
"We are a product of new retail," Huang Lingjie said bluntly. "Based on the results of Tmall data analysis, we have customized the most suitable menu for 200,000 snack enthusiasts within a 5-kilometer radius of Zhongda Intime City." ONMINE emphasizes the optimal balance between quality and price, achieving "good things at reasonable prices," with an average customer transaction value of around 60 yuan. For example, the currently popular Shiroi Koibito cookies are usually priced between 99 and 118 yuan in offline stores, while ONMINE's selling price is consistent with Tmall at 62 yuan.
In addition, ONMINE is a "cashless" store, where customers can browse and purchase products through the mobile Taobao app. It is revealed that face-scanning payment will also be implemented in the store in the near future.
Emphasizing Experience Becomes a New Trend ONMINE to Open 8-10 More Stores Within the Year
With consumption upgrading, if traditional promotion-oriented sales methods are still used, they will obviously become increasingly outdated. "Emphasizing experience" has become a new killer feature for snack brands.
Therefore, ONMINE has made bold adjustments in its overall merchandise layout: within the 288-square-meter operating area, only 1/3 is reserved for snack display, while the remaining 2/3 is occupied by a large bar counter and rest area. It is understood that in addition to selling snacks, the snack store also pioneers snack cuisine. Compared to the similar concept of Three Squirrels' "feeding store," ONMINE not only has stronger technical support but also the courage to sacrifice more display space for "experience."
"We hope to create a new experience space and truly achieve experience upgrading. And because snacks have high frequency and high repurchase characteristics, they are a relatively low-threshold format for reaching customers," Huang Lingjie said.
"We will not sacrifice these two areas due to factors such as area, but we do not rule out the possibility of opening MINI ONMINE in the future," Huang Lingjie mentioned. "This is actually the most direct experience upgrade. Although we have abandoned the traditional warehouse-style merchandise display, and seemingly insufficient goods have become our sales shortcoming, in reality, we have solved this problem from the technical and data levels." In the current fiercely competitive environment where sales per square meter is the only focus, will ONMINE hand in an ugly report card?
But what is certain is that this has rebuilt a retail sales scenario for consumers. In this scenario, consumers no longer come with strong purpose and leave immediately after buying. Instead, they will rest for a while in the store, which on the one hand deepens consumers' attachment to this scenario, and on the other hand increases the possibility of consumers spending in the store.
According to Huang Lingjie, they will also try to build brand communities in the future.
Regarding future store expansion plans, Huang Lingjie said that they will mainly focus on shopping center channels in second- and third-tier cities, planning to open 8-10 stores this year, and it is not ruled out that they will open in malls outside the Intime system.
ONMINE Model Is Encouraging But Problems Are Equally Obvious
Since the concept of "new retail" was proposed, Alibaba has been rapidly deploying, and ONMINE is its first foray into the FMCG industry. So, what attitude do industry insiders hold towards this new species? Food Board invited two experts who have conducted in-depth research on "new retail" to interpret this issue:
Bao Yuezhong Founder of New FMCG, New Retail Innovation Practice Studio
The ONMINE snack store has the following characteristics:
- Fresh store design, accurately targeting a clear consumer group: women, white-collar workers, and fashion-conscious people. This group is the main customer base for current snack consumption;
- Store layout focuses on social scenarios, striving to solve the problem of weak customer attraction in the snack category;
- Leveraging Tmall's online data to select best-selling products and optimize product structure;
- The integration of offline and online from the start gives it an omni-channel gene, laying a solid foundation for the store's future development.
However, from the perspective of basic retail business logic and considering the current problems in retail, the development of similar snack stores must pay attention to the following issues:
- Customer acquisition must be the primary consideration when opening a store. It is necessary to clearly answer: Who are your customers? How to acquire them? How to influence them? How to connect with them? ONMINE opened its first store in Intime City, intending to leverage Intime's offline traffic. This development model of relying on others' traffic will face many constraints in the future, as Watsons has already set a precedent.
- The product category should form a basically reasonable combination. Opening a store requires a basic category mix and meeting basic SKU requirements. Overall, ONMINE's 800 SKUs are relatively few, and the categories are relatively narrow, which will weaken the product's influence on the target customer group.
- The scenario-based retail model is worth promoting, but it will inevitably increase store costs. In an environment of high rents, it will increase the burden on enterprises.
Tan Changchun Chief Expert at Huaxia Jishi Consulting Group
Don't overuse scenario-based and socialized concepts!
Seeing Tmall open another offline snack store and being promoted as a new attempt at new retail, Tmall has made considerable efforts in exploring new models. This is worth looking forward to. Its pricing, online-offline integration, and store design are all innovative without prior experience. It has a sense of topic, novelty, and breakthrough, and also has a certain degree of advancement, which is worth encouraging.
However, we should focus on some possible inappropriateness.
What is a snack? It is food consumed in various leisure, free-time, and different scenarios. Food has two major consumption scenarios: ready-to-eat and non-ready-to-eat. Snacks are definitely a type of non-ready-to-eat food. Is it inappropriate to force consumers to eat on the spot in a retail store? Is this a sign of over-consuming the concept of scenario? Let's wait and see.
Socialization: Who would socialize in a retail store? There might be some, but it should be extremely rare? Look at some 7-Eleven stores that provide meal seating; no one has seen people socializing there like in a bar or coffee shop. They are mostly for convenient dining or resting.
So, analyzing from the above two aspects, if new retail is not about the integration of online and offline shopping and convenient, comfortable, and happy experiences, nor about big data providing better support for SKUs, but rather about abandoning sales per square meter to pursue possible purchase demand satisfaction, does it mean that Alibaba's new retail path is again trial and error, or even continuous trial and error?
In recent years, the pattern of China's traditional consumer industry has undergone drastic changes: first, changes in channels, including the shift from offline to online, and the increasing differentiation between offline and online; second, changes in brand communication methods. Currently, brand communication channels are more diversified and scattered. The relationship between brands and consumers is no longer one-way but has become two-way or even multi-way. Consumers have begun to have a say in brands; third, changes in consumer groups. The current main consumer groups are the "post-80s," "post-85s," and even "post-90s." They no longer blindly follow brands, prefer original and personalized designs, and are increasingly distant from traditional brands. Based on this, a new consumption cycle is coming.
New retail is sweeping in. Now Alibaba has set its sights on the trillion-yuan-scale leisure food market. Is the wolf coming, is the wolf coming, or is the wolf coming?
Source: Food Board; References: Lianshang.com, Zhejiang Online, Beijing Business Today, etc.