To make a profit, fresh e-commerce is collectively near the big tree.

Fresh e-commerce, which has created many sales miracles such as American cherries and avocados, has chosen a path of both money and flow. It was reported yesterday that the orchard was invested by JD.com with tens of millions of dollars. The relevant responsible person of JD.com confirmed the above investment news to the reporter of Beijing Business Daily. Coincidentally, e-commerce such as Futian net and delicious Qiqi have also found the double backing of capital and business. From the point of view of the industry, fresh e-commerce who do not see the dawn of making money still need the dual support of money and flow, and the integrated e-commerce platform has also found a shortcut to quickly increase the size of fresh products.

Find a big tree

Vertical fresh e-commerce began to fall into the embrace of platform e-commerce. Beijing Business Daily reporter learned from JD.com yesterday that JD.com has completed his investment in Tiantian Orchard. Although the specific amount of investment was not disclosed, some industry insiders said that the investment is expected to be announced in the near future. Another news shows that the amount of investment received by Tiantian Orchard is close to JD.com 's previous investment in ele.me and home food, which is tens of millions of dollars. However, an insider in the industry told the Beijing Business Daily that the investment had reached an agreement as early as the beginning of this year, with an investment amount of about 100 million US dollars.

Tiantian Orchard is an early fresh e-commerce business in China, which has participated in famous marketing activities of fresh e-commerce industry, such as cherry war, litchi war and so on. Competitors who were hot with Tiantian Orchard at that time were also "incorporated" one after another-Shunfeng selected to integrate with the Group's Hei Ke Mall to sell all kinds of goods except fresh; two other well-known fresh e-merchants in Shanghai, delicious Qiqi and Futianwang, were also invested by Amazon and FeiNiu one after another.

According to the statistics of the Beijing Business Daily, among the well-known fresh e-commerce businesses, only the original Life Network and easy fruit fresh still maintain independent development, while Tuotuo Industrial Co-operation still relies on the Nine cities Group.

Have both money and flow

Fresh e-commerce enterprises such as Orchard and Tuotuo Industry Society have not been lack of attention from the capital market. From the insider's point of view, what the orchard wants from JD.com is not only the tens of millions of dollars, but also the huge traffic behind it.

Although the Orchard itself is an e-commerce platform, a large number of its sales in the past actually came from Ali. Insiders in the industry said that the sales of the Orchard Tmall flagship store accounted for at least half of the total sales. Statistics on the day of "double 11" last year showed that the Taobao index of the orchard exceeded the second place by 300% and exceeded the third place by 2400%, setting a record for online fruit sales on the same day and winning the "double first" of fresh and fruit categories.

But the person familiar with the matter said that after Tmall began to work at Tmall supermarket last year, he did not choose Tiantian orchards in the fresh category, but chose another fresh e-commerce company, Yi Guo fresh. In the view of the person, the move had a great impact on the orchard. It is understood that a few days ago, Tmall surprised netizens in a cold sweat of the "Apple new product Tmall launch" marketing campaign, the partner is easy fruit fresh.

Lu Zhenwang, CEO of WanRock Consulting, said that as a high-input industry, fresh e-commerce is even more expensive than the traditional e-commerce industry. As a "high and cold" industry, obtaining the traffic cost of users is a problem that enterprises must consider. According to the analysis from the Beijing Business Research Institute, although the orchard has a layout in distribution and warehousing, relying on JD.com 's business scope will quickly break through the national market.

Move forward in a group

Although the orchard is an investor's role, what JD.com pursues is not as simple as the return on capital, and it is a fact that the strategic layout is fresh. From the point of view of the industry, fresh e-commerce and integrated e-commerce platforms have become partners.

Fresh category is an excellent drainage product for e-commerce platform. Huang Mingduan, chairman of RT-Mart China and executive director of Feiniu net, once said frankly that although the profitability of fresh e-commerce is not high, the drainage effect is outstanding. It is understood that 90% of the categories sold in Tiantian Orchard, which was established in 2009, are imported fruits, which are imported in cooperation with orchards of producing areas, without intermediate wholesalers and retailers.

The 2014 results released by Tiantian Orchard show that the sales of Tiantian Orchard exceeded 500 million yuan last year, an increase of 150% compared with 2013. Among them, last year, mobile orders accounted for more than 70%, and the number of users also exceeded 2 million. Lu Zhenwang said that the positioning of fresh e-commerce to people with high quality of life has a high consumer viscosity and can optimize customers, which coincides with JD.com 's positioning.

However, in Huang Mingduan's view, simply doing fresh e-commerce is a very dangerous thing. Lu Zhenwang said that the huge market space for fresh e-commerce is already a consensus in the industry, but it is difficult for fresh e-commerce to make a profit within 3-5 years. "the investment of fresh e-commerce is too large".

Some industry analysts believe that cold chain logistics, which has always been regarded as the most powerful threshold, is only part of the difficulties faced by the development of fresh e-commerce, and it is more important to break through the entire supply chain and swim upward.