Is it really cost-effective to make a profit in rural e-commerce?

The rural market can be said to be the last "virgin land" for the expansion of e-commerce, but it is also the most difficult to reclaim a vast land. Today, among the "gold panning" army of rural e-commerce, there are not only large e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, SUNING, and Taobao, but also traditional public-owned enterprises in the transition, such as supply and marketing cooperatives, agricultural reclamation, and postal services. coupled with a large number of localized and regionalized e-commerce enterprises, as well as venture capital and private capital from various sources, the momentum can be described as wind and fire, vigorous.

However, in recent months, the reporter of Nanfang Daily found that the development of rural e-commerce is still in the stage of construction, the investment of e-commerce enterprises is not cheap, but the profit is very small, and it is too early to talk about profits.

The development of enterprises can not be for the purpose of public welfare, in the face of distant profit expectations, rural e-commerce is really a cost-effective deal?

The social benefits of rural e-commerce should not be underestimated

In April this year, Shixing County and Alibaba jointly launched the village Amoy partnership system. When they recruited partners in the village Amoy service station, more than 2400 people signed up in less than six days. Qiu Xinhui, of the county government's e-commerce office, said that the applicants are basically young people under the age of 35, including those who have returned home with higher education. In Shixing County, rural e-commerce has produced a huge employment attraction to rural youth.

Today, the village Amoy service station has become a local entrepreneurial employment incubation base in Shixing. Liu Lifang, from the Ma Town Service Station, used to do shop business in Shenzhen. considering the development potential of rural e-commerce and the factors of reuniting with her family, she finally chose to return to her hometown to do village Amoy service. With her accumulated experience, she soon became the sales champion of the whole county. Dong Bin, South China Operations Manager of Ali Rural Affairs Department, said that the village Amoy service station plans to cover all 113 administrative villages in Shixing in 2018, when there will be more rural capable people like Liu Lifang to start a career.

After introducing the electronic screen of "Le Cun Amoy", Aunt Cheng's grocery store in Daling Village began to help villagers who are not familiar with online shopping to buy goods from all over the country. Although she has only added more than 10 orders of business every month, Aunt Cheng has tasted the benefits of online purchasing agents and feels that she has not been abandoned by the trend-the Internet gives her brick-and-mortar stores not only a shock, but also hope. In Renhua County, traditional rural retail stores have opened up a new world after inserting the wings of e-commerce.

The arrival of e-commerce has brought the hope of transformation and development to the traditional rural circulation enterprises such as supply and marketing cooperatives. In Xinhui District of Jiangmen City, supply and marketing cooperatives "old stores" have begun information upgrading, access to e-commerce platform, transformed into a "online shop" full of modern genes-rural e-commerce public service stations. Huang Ruilou, deputy mayor of Xinhui District, revealed that on the one hand, Xinhui is the pilot area for the comprehensive reform of supply and marketing cooperatives in Guangdong Province, and the transformation and development of the supply and marketing cooperative system is imperative; on the other hand, Xinhui plans to set up service points in all 190 administrative villages in the district next year, and this task can only be quickly accomplished by the network as deep as tentacles in every corner of the rural supply and marketing cooperative system.

At the same time, the supply and marketing cooperative system of Zhaoqing City has found another way to transform the development of e-commerce. Through the organic combination of traditional business and "Internet +", Zhaoqing supply and Marketing Co-operative has built an e-commerce platform for "vegetable basket" service express line, sending fresh agricultural products from Tantou one-stop service to the dining table of urban residents. As of the first half of the year, the "vegetable basket" service express line has gone deep into 73 residential areas, more than 90 distribution agencies and group canteens, and more than 32,000 members. At the other end, the "vegetable basket" service express line connects more than 80 professional cooperatives and bases, driving the planting and breeding base to an area of more than 30,000 mu, realizing the service of both urban residents and rural farmers.

It can be said that with the deepening of more and more rural e-commerce models, rural commercial development is entering a stage of transformation and upgrading. In the past, the relatively quiet rural commercial market has been greatly activated with the deepening of rural e-commerce, and the "way" for agricultural products to go out has also been opened, bringing new vitality and way out for the development of rural commerce. In this sense, the social benefits brought by "e-commerce going to the countryside" are incalculable, far from being negated by temporary economic difficulties.

It is not difficult to find the right way to survive and make a profit

Rural e-commerce is by no means a loss-making business doomed to lose money and power as a public welfare. In the interview, the reporter came into contact with the exploration of several e-commerce models, all really saw the economic benefits, or at least saw the dawn of profit.

Yingde City supply and Marketing Association to create a delivery network, to the county as a unit, through the online shop and offline physical store linkage, to create a small and beautiful regional e-commerce enterprise. That is, the physical supermarket run by the delivery network sells goods directly to consumers. At the same time, if consumers choose to place orders online, distribution personnel can also pick up goods from physical supermarkets, pack them, and deliver them to urban customers within 30 minutes. According to reports, at present, the average daily order volume of the delivery network is close to 3000, with an average of more than 10,000 online active members per month, and monthly online sales of more than 4 million yuan, which has exceeded the income of physical supermarkets. What is commendable is that it takes only one year to make a profit, and the customer's activity and stickiness are kept at a high level.

Jiaxian Farm, which was born in Guangdong land reclamation system, has found a way to survive fresh e-commerce after more than two years of exploration. Jiaxian Farm relies on the powerful land reclamation system, integrates online and offline business, and opens the fast passage of agricultural products from the field to the table, with a total of nearly 200000 members, including more than 50, 000 online members. Li Guangjian, chairman of Guangdong Guangken Green Agricultural products Co., Ltd., said bluntly that it is an important reason why Jiaxian Farm can gain a firm foothold in the highly competitive fresh market in just two years by steadily setting up offline stores and supply chains, and then diverting them from offline to online. "the community fresh O2O made by Jiaxian Farm is similar to the current popular catering takeout platform. After customers place orders online, Jiaxian Farm's physical stores in the community are responsible for distribution." In this way, store employees are both clerks and couriers, and can deliver the freshest ingredients to customers' homes in time after placing orders from customers in the area under the store's jurisdiction, with high efficiency and low logistics costs, Li said.

Jiaxian Farm also keenly "sniffed" the purchasing needs of small restaurants scattered around the stores, providing them with an open and transparent purchasing channel. As long as the owner of a small restaurant places a good order directly on the mobile phone client, the clerk of the good fresh store will deliver the goods to the door.

At the same time, Jiaxian Farm also attaches great importance to two types of B2B business: one is the group meal business, which provides a package of solutions such as raw materials for government agencies, schools, enterprises and institutions canteens, and chain catering enterprises through e-commerce channels; the other is to issue orders through mobile phone APP to provide direct distribution services to vegetable market stalls. At present, B2B business has become the most stable source of profit for Jiaxian Farm, saving energy for its development of consumer-oriented B2C business, which may be a breakthrough for agricultural e-commerce enterprises to survive to achieve sustainable development.