AUTHOR ARCHIVE
Articles by 晚点团队
Browse 13 New Distribution articles by 晚点团队.
Published articles
13 articles · Page 1 of 1
The Pangdonglai Universe
Last May, Yonghui Superstores founder Zhang Xuansong led a team of over 100 people to Xuchang to study Pangdonglai. What surprised many on-site was not Pangdonglai's signature service or employee benefits, but that with only about a dozen stores, its prices for many goods were lower than Yonghui's, which had over a thousand stores and ranked first in national supermarket sales. A food brand first received Pangdonglai's procurement staff a few years ago when it was not yet famous, and was won over by the friendly procurement terms of 'no returns or exchanges, bare-price purchasing,' leading to sales that exceeded many first- and second-tier new retail supermarkets. Now they realize that entering Pangdonglai means winning an entire city.
晚点团队The End of the Double 11 Gala: A Consumer Era Comes to a Close
Qiu Hao and Guan Yiwen argue that all unnecessary expenses eventually become part of the product price. On November 9, 2016, the final rehearsal for Tmall's Double 11 Gala was underway at the Shenzhen Universiade Center, with international stars like Kobe Bryant, David and Victoria Beckham, Thomas Müller, OneRepublic, Scarlett Johansson, and others set to perform. However, Katy Perry, who was scheduled to headline, canceled at the last minute after her preferred candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost the U.S. presidential election. Eight years later, Alibaba has decided to discontinue the gala, marking a shift from a grand celebration to a more direct sales approach.
晚点团队Duoduo Maicai and Meituan Youxuan Continue to Reduce Losses, Community Group Buying Shifts Focus to Profitability
After four years of pursuing growth and scale, the only two national players in the community group buying sector, Duoduo Maicai and Meituan Youxuan, have entered a new phase in 2024 where profitability is the top priority. Meituan Youxuan plans to control its full-year losses at 10-12 billion yuan in 2024, reducing losses by 8-10 billion yuan from the previous year. Duoduo Maicai plans to halve its labor costs from 4 billion yuan to around 2 billion yuan in 2024, while continuing to cut costs in other areas. Currently, Meituan Youxuan's operating loss margin has narrowed from over 20 percentage points to 10-15 percentage points, while Duoduo Maicai's has narrowed to single digits, suggesting that Duoduo Maicai may achieve profitability sooner this year.
晚点团队Everyone Is Learning from Sam's Club, but There Is No Secret
In 2015, a new retail war broke out in China. On one side were traditional supermarkets like Yonghui, RT-Mart, and Carrefour with hundreds or thousands of stores; on the other were Hema, JD 7Fresh, and Miss Fresh backed by internet capital and technology. Eight years later, the retail brand most closely associated with China's 70 million middle-class consumers is none of the participants in that battle, but Sam's Club, which was ignored by everyone at the time.
晚点团队Pinduoduo's Tipping Point: When the Ultimate Methodology Starts to Fail
Internet companies use A/B testing as the basis for all product adjustments. Pinduoduo goes further, testing all participants in every aspect of its business, re-exploring how fast a company can grow and how far business rules can be bent. Each step starts with innovation that benefits all parties, then gradually becomes an extreme test of participants' endurance. The 'cut a knife' feature is an extreme user growth tactic: users invite others to order for discounts, cash, and AirPods, helping Pinduoduo surpass Taobao in user numbers, until it becomes a game of decimal places where the final cut never comes.
晚点团队Meituan's 'Three Brothers of Home Delivery': Flash Purchase, Medicine, and Tuanhaohuo's Retail Exploration
From local services to local retail, and then to online retail. 'Retail is the new continent, and we are Columbus.' In September 2020, at Meituan's annual strategy meeting for the Home Delivery Business Group in Changsha, Wang Puzhong, the group's president, could hardly contain his excitement when he said this. His general idea was that in early human history, civilizations developed in isolation. When the first navigator set foot on the American continent, he connected this barbaric land to modern civilization. Throughout human history, once technological capabilities break through geographical barriers, civilizations begin to merge. A higher-order civilization will bring a lower-order civilization up with it. The transformation of retail is the same.
晚点团队New Dynamics in Local Life Services: Douyin's Aggressive Goals and Meituan's Quiet Response
When ByteDance enters a new market, it typically downplays its goals and conceals its ambitions for as long as possible. Tencent and Alibaba have both experienced this firsthand, and now it's Meituan's turn. In early 2023, media reported that Douyin's local life services annual GMV target was 150 billion yuan, roughly half of Meituan's 2021 in-store and hotel/travel GMV. However, according to LatePost, Douyin's actual target for this year is close to 400 billion yuan, with in-store and hotel/travel at 290 billion yuan and food delivery at 100 billion yuan.
晚点团队Hema's Downward Path: A Bigger Market, Less Room for Error
Hema is expanding into lower-tier markets with new formats like Hema Neighborhood and Hema Outlets, but faces challenges in profitability and competition. The company aims for 100 billion yuan in GMV in 2023, requiring aggressive growth and cost control.
晚点团队Hema's Downward Path: A Bigger Market, Less Room for Error
A debate raged for six months between Hema CEO Hou Yi and Alibaba Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang over whether to abandon Hema Neighborhood, a premium community group-buying format. Hou defended it as a strategic opportunity to serve national consumers, but losses persisted. Ultimately, Shanghai operations were retained while others closed. As Hema faces profitability pressures, it pivots to Hema Outlets, its 10th format, focusing on private-label products and cost efficiency to expand into lower-tier markets.
晚点团队Meituan vs. Pinduoduo: Reshaping Meituan's Community Group Buying Battle
In less than two years, the once-hot community group buying track, hailed as a 'once-in-a-decade opportunity' and 'set to reshape China's internet landscape,' has turned from fierce competition to collective retreat. No one has won. The only two players left on the national front—Meituan and Pinduoduo—haven't won either; they just haven't given up yet.
晚点团队Dialogue with Tang Binsen of Genki Forest: Tycoon, Pirate, and Product Manager
Tang Binsen, a serial entrepreneur who made his fortune in internet gaming, entered the beverage industry in 2016 and found his place as an internet tycoon. His company, Genki Forest, sold 100 million boxes of sugar-free sparkling water this year, with 80% from offline sales, and is projected to generate 8.3 billion yuan in revenue, catching up to one-third of Nongfu Spring, a 25-year-old company.
晚点团队Orange Heart Preferred Self-Rescue, Shifts Focus to Wholesale Business
Starting in September, Orange Heart Preferred (Chengxin Youxuan) shrank its service area from 31 provinces to 9, cut staff from 16,000 to 5,000, and saw orders drop from 12 million to 2 million. Now, it is pivoting to a wholesale business model to survive.
晚点团队Desire Kills Tongcheng Life: The Largest Bankruptcy in Community Group Buying
Many assumed death was imminent for Tongcheng Life: on the night of July 3, its neon sign was taken down, and the head of South China told staff to halt all purchasing. Founder and CEO He Pengyu refused to believe the company would die until July 7, when he announced bankruptcy under pressure, leaving debts of 1.389 billion yuan.
晚点团队