Box Horse has also started to close its stores one after another to save its life

Box Horse has also started to close its stores one after another to save its life. On March 1, another five fresh stores of Box Horse were closed at the same time. This is not the first time that Box Horse has reported the news of closing its stores. Previously, Box Horse has closed its stores in many places, and Box Horse has also started to close its stores one after another to save its life. Box Horse also began to close stores one after another in order to save its life. On the 2nd and 28th, Box Horse closed nanjing xinjiekou Oriental Fulaide Store and Jiqing Store at the same time, all because of the adjustment of business strategy. In addition, Box Horse has also closed stores in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Qingdao and other cities, and the reason given by Box Horse is nothing more than business optimization and adjustment.

Some insiders believe that the internal reason of Boxmaguan Store may be that the existing model has some inadaptability in some regions and business districts. It is wise to stop losses in time by closing some stores with long-term losses and hopeless profits.

Filling the hole for radical expansion

In that year, when Box Horse was expanding at a high speed, it adopted the Internet, with a balanced layout of stores, in an attempt to quickly cover a city, and then more possibilities could be loaded on the grid layout. Unfortunately, contrary to expectations, physical stores will eventually return to the dimension of physical retail.

those box horse stores with poor business generally have problems such as inconvenient transportation and insufficient flow of people. This is the sequela of pursuing full coverage. To do physical retail, we still have to follow the laws of physical retail. It is not necessarily true that e-commerce plays offline. There are three tricks to do a good job in physical retail: location, location or location. Yes, if a physical store wants to have a prosperous business, a good location is the first.

In order to achieve full coverage, many stores in Box Horse have problems such as poor site selection. If the location is not selected, the business will naturally be very poor. Nowadays, the adjustment of these stores is also to fill the pit for the previous radical expansion. After all, box horses need to make money, and before making money, they must first stop.

At the end of 2121, Hou Yi, president of Box Horse Business Group, once said in an interview with the media that Box Horse must be profitable if it wants to develop independently, and it is always a shame to be a business without making money.

Can multiple formats form a joint force?

Does Box Horse's constant closing of stores mean that the new retail exploration has failed? Not necessarily! Closing the store to stop loss is a normal behavior that any retail enterprise will conduct.

Today, there are more than 311 Boxmamen stores, and it has formed a trend of multi-format synergy. Boxma Xiansheng meets the consumption needs of middle-class customers in general cities, while Boxma X member stores focus on the high-line market; In addition, Box Horse mini, Box Horse Neighborhood and Box Horse Fresh Ole are effective supplements to the urban periphery and sinking market.

at present, the sinking market is the focus of competition between major e-commerce giants and retail enterprises. The box horse neighborhood is the core carrier of box horse based on the sinking market. The neighborhood of Box Horse draws lessons from the experience of the pre-warehouse mode of Box Horse Station and relies on the commodity system of Box Ma Yunchao to sink.

of course, it is also facing great challenges to run through the box horse neighborhood model. At present, the neighborhood of Box Horse has expanded rapidly in seven cities, but it still needs large-scale expansion and practice, and has not yet reached the critical point. The overall logistics cost is still high, so it is necessary to reduce the marginal cost by expanding the density and scale. At present, the box horse neighborhood is still in the model verification, and whether it can achieve profitability is still unknown.

In the next three years, Box Horse will enter an adjustment period.

how big is the imagination space of the box horse? For Box Malay, how to focus on a clearer strategic direction and how to achieve the ultimate retail efficiency is the key to whether it can be more imaginative in the future.

Hou Yi once said that online and offline integration is the future. Box Horse will definitely change the situation that 71% of the business in the past is online, and finally realize the 51-51 split between online and offline, which is the ideal layout of reasonable balance. Box Horse has also started to close stores one after another to save his life. 2

As the "son" of Alibaba, when Box Horse opened its first store in 2116, it attracted countless eyes. Colleagues who were afraid of missing the outlet rushed to learn this new retail benchmark and opened similar stores one after another. Now, six years later, these projects have not lived up to expectations. The fresh elephant of Meituan was stopped, and Yonghui super species closed stores one after another after a huge loss. JD.COM Qixian Store expanded slowly, and Su Xiansheng became unknown.

it's hard for the leader to be a horse. On March 1, another five Boxma Xiansheng stores were closed at the same time, including two in Nanjing, one in Qingdao, one in Chengdu and one in Guangzhou.

This is not the first time that Box Horse has reported the news of store closure. Previously, Box Horse had closed its customs clearance stores in many places, and the reason given was the adjustment of business strategy without exception.

This seems to mean that Box Horse, which once boasted that there was no upper limit on its investment, had to consider the commercial nature of making money after more than ten trial and error adjustments. In an internal letter in October this year, Hou Yi, CEO of Box Horse, set comprehensive profit as a new goal. Previously, Alibaba implemented a management responsibility system for its business lines, requiring all business segments to support themselves.

under this background, some box horse stores with no hope of long-term profit are finally included in the stop loss list.

On the other side of the stop loss, Box Horse, which can't burn money, recently came out the news that fresh Ole stores were laid out. This format not only has low opening cost, but also can help Box Horse solve the problem of commodity loss and reduce the cost pressure.

I can't burn money

"The outlets in the fresh food industry are here!" This is written in the poster of Box Horse Fresh Ole Store.

This is a new format. In October last year, the first fresh Ole store in Hema opened in a low-key manner on the first floor of Pudong Shopping Mall, No.333 Changli Road, Pudong New Area, Shanghai. This store is transformed from "Box Horse Mini Store" and covers an area of about 481 square meters. Since then, Boxma Fresh Ole stores in Hangzhou, Beijing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Nanjing, Xi 'an and Qingdao have successively opened.

On March 2nd, Caijing Tianxia Weekly came to Beijing Tongzhou Box Horse Fresh Ole Store. This store is also small, only over 211 square meters. You can see the end at a glance when standing at the door. Its simple layout, streamlined categories and "fractured" price are in great contrast with Box Horse Fresh, which has always been positioned as a high-end store.

It is understood that most of the products sold by Box Horse Fresh Ole Store are "daily fresh" products, which used to be a killer weapon for Box Horse to attract users. However, since the introduction of Box Horse, the "daily fresh" products have been questioned constantly, calling them "daily throwing". They are put on the shelves during the day and will expire at night. With the expansion of the number of box horse stores, this loss is huge, and many goods themselves have not deteriorated. It is indeed a pity to throw them away in vain. Finally, box horse came up with a way to open Ole stores.

Hou Yi, CEO of Box Horse, once explained to the media that the purpose of opening a fresh Ole store is to help Box Horse reduce the loss of stores and processing centers, so the price is basically less than half that of the surrounding fresh supermarkets. For example, the selling price of daily fresh milk that has expired for two days has dropped directly from 7.5 yuan to 3 yuan.

Box Horse told Caijing Tianxia Weekly that Ole is a supplement to the three main formats of Box Horse Fresh Store, Box Horse X Member Store and Box Horse Neighborhood. On the one hand, the reason why Box Horse opened Ole Store can reduce the loss of goods, on the other hand, it can break into the sinking market and play a new role.

In terms of opening cost, Box Horse Fresh Ole Store is low in the Box Horse System because of its small area. It is understood that there are 7 Boxma X member stores in the number of stores, with an area of about 1.6 million to 1.8 million square meters; Next, Boxma Xiansheng has 311 stores with an area of 2,511 to 5,111 square meters; Box horse Mini stores cover an area of 511 to 1111 square meters. The fresh Ole store, which is expanding vigorously, has a much smaller area, only 211 to 511 square meters.

small area means that the cost of rent and labor will be much lower. According to China Times, the cost of opening a box horse fresh store is about 31 million yuan, the cost of opening a box horse Mini store is about 2 million yuan, and the cost of opening a box horse fresh Ole store is only about one million yuan.

while opening a lower-cost fresh Ole store, Box Horse is closing its unhealthy fresh life store. On March 1, Boxma Xiansheng nanjing xinjiekou Dongfang Fulaide Store and Jiqing Store, as well as Qingdao Taishan Road Store, Guangzhou Jianhua Hui Store and Chengdu Tianfu Great Wall Store were closed at the same time. The announcement posted at the door of the store indicated that the store was closed because of the adjustment of business strategy.

Among them, Box Horse Fresh Life Qingdao Taishan Road Store covers an area of over 4,111 square meters, which is its sixth local store. However, it closed down after less than two years of operation.

There are also closed box horse neighborhood stores, which are similar to community group buying such as buying more food and optimizing the US group. According to media reports, in order to reduce costs and refine operations, Box Horse closed its neighborhood stores in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Suzhou at the end of 2121. After the contraction, there are only 7 neighborhood self-service shops in cities.

in fact, the box horse can't burn money, and there has been a signal before. Like Alibaba's other loss-making business lines, Box Horse, which has lost six years, has reached a critical moment when profitability must be considered. In an internal letter at the beginning of this year, Hou Yi said that the development goal of Box Horse is to be fully profitable. Therefore, in 2122, Box Horse must follow the essence of retail management and temporarily "tighten its belt" and "lean production and lean management".

The story from running for one's life to saving one's life

Box Horse began in 2115, when Hou Yi, a JD.COM executive and former general manager of O2O business unit, left JD.COM because of disagreement. It is said that the online and offline integrated retail model he envisioned could not be put into use in JD.COM, and he resigned angrily. After leaving Beijing and returning to his hometown in Shanghai, Hou Yi had a coffee with Zhang Yong, a fellow villager and then CEO of Alibaba, before he got the later story.

they had a good talk and hit it off. According to people familiar with Hou Yi, Zhang Yong showed great interest only after listening to Hou Yi for five minutes. Since then, the two have met more than 11 times in half a year to exchange the design of the new retail structure. In the end, the two reached an agreement, and the general direction was determined as supermarket+catering+logistics.

On October 5th of the following year, Boxma Xiansheng Shanghai Jinqiao Plaza Store opened for business, and Boxma App was launched simultaneously. Five months later, the actual operation data of the pilot verified the feasibility of the box horse business model. On September 31 of the same year, the box horse opened a second store, and then the box horse model began to be quickly replicated throughout the country.

At the Alibaba Cloud Habitat Congress in October, 2116, the concept of "new retail" came out, and Box Horse, as the benchmark of Ali's new retail experiment, was fully supported by Ali. At that time, Hou Yi was full of confidence and said, "We can use Alibaba's underlying technical architecture, payment system and membership system." It is understood that Box Horse scored 4 points in Ali's performance appraisal in the year of its establishment, which belongs to the outstanding level in Ali's appraisal system, and 5 points in the outstanding level, but almost no projects can be obtained.

Since then, Box Horse has entered a rush period. At the end of 2117, there were only 25 Boxmamen stores, which increased to 149 a year later. Since then, the plan to open 511 stores in 2119 has been put forward. In Hou Yi's view, this is the only choice for Box Horse before it has established absolute industry barriers.

However, the high-speed expansion failed to bring high-quality growth, and the profitability of Box Horse and the growth rate of GMV were less than expected. According to media reports, in the mid-year performance appraisal in 2119, Box Horse only got 3.25 points, which was a little better than the lowest unqualified 3 points, and it was almost at the bottom of all business sectors of the Group.

In this year's general meeting of Alibaba Organization Department, Hou Yi received the rotten strawberry award, which symbolizes the worst business, in front of the group's core management team of more than 511 people. Zhang Yong named it to give it to Hou Yi, because the progress of Box Horse did not meet Alibaba's expectations.

Perhaps to change the unfavorable situation, Box Horse continued to develop new business in a dazzling way in the next three years. From 2119 to 2121, Box Horse successively tried Box Horse Fresh Life, Box Horse X Member, Box Horse Mini Store, Box Horse Station, Box Mali, Box Horse Food Market, pickn go, Box Horse F2, Box Horse Market, Box Horse Neighborhood, etc., covering almost all retail business formats.

these businesses are subdivided according to different regions and different customers. To put it simply, Box Horse X is an enlarged version of Box Horse Fresh Life, Box Horse Mini Store is a reduced version of Box Horse Fresh Life, Box Horse Station is a pre-warehouse mode, Box Horse is a shopping center, Box Horse F2 is a convenience store, and Box Horse Market is a vegetable market.

Box Horse, which tries to find the most suitable business format and a profitable business model. Unfortunately, most of the formats it tried eventually failed. In 2119, Box Horse focused on the development of Box Horse Station and Box Horse Mini Store, because these two formats are small in size, low in investment cost and can be copied quickly. At that time, Hou Yi planned that Box Horse Station should achieve comprehensive coverage in the core cities.

However, after only one year, Hou Yi denied himself, saying that Box Horse Station was just a warehouse with great limitations, and it was difficult to make a profit because sales depended on burning money to innovate. Eventually, it was stopped in 2121, and more than 71 Box Horse Stations gradually withdrew from the market and upgraded to Box Horse Mini stores. Box horse Mini is a small shop format, which is different from the box horse fresh store model. The area is much smaller and the distribution range is shortened to 1.5 km.

Hou Yi once said that Box Horse Mini Store will become the ultimate mode of fresh e-commerce, and put forward the goal of "opening 111 stores a year". However, by the end of 2121, there will be only 14 Mini stores in Box Horse. He later reflected that he had previously thought that Box Horse Mini Store was the best business model and it was a misjudgment.

"Because it is not open to join, it is difficult to carry out and the investment is large, and the expansion of Box Horse Mini Store has encountered great problems." After reflection, Hou Yi began to support Box Horse Neighborhood. This format is a community group buying model. After it was released in 2121, it was defined as the most important strategy of Box Horse in the next decade.

However, since the end of last year, it has been revealed that the neighborhood of Boxma is closing its stores on a large scale, and some of them have only been closed for several months from opening to closing, citing business adjustment.

After more than ten trial and error adjustments in six years, Box Horse has not found a feasible development model. If Alibaba hadn't encountered a crisis, it might still be able to continue to give blood transfusion to Box Horse, but now it's no good, and Box Horse must be independent.

In October this year, according to Bloomberg News, a person familiar with the matter revealed that Alibaba Group was considering seeking independent financing for Boxma Xiansheng. Alibaba declined to comment on this, but Caijing Tianxia learned that there are indeed investors in contact with Box Horse.

For Box Horse, which intends to develop independently, it is definitely not possible to lose money all the time, and it must have its own hematopoietic capacity. In other words, the box horse must change the past "running for one's life" and live to save one's life, so it will stop the unprofitable stores and formats.

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