It's not easy to eat "fresh"? Fresh e-commerce merchants are under obvious pressure.

Over the past year or so, fresh e-commerce has been the main hot spot. Almost all mainstream e-commerce businesses are engaged in fresh e-commerce, as well as specialized fresh e-commerce businesses like life, and even Shunfeng, a logistics company, is also doing e-commerce; but at the same time, fresh e-commerce is under obvious pressure. from this year on, fresh e-commerce companies have closed down one after another, and not many of them have survived. As of October this year, only 1 per cent of the country's more than 4000 fresh e-commerce companies were profitable, flat, 88 per cent at a loss and the remaining 7 per cent at a huge loss, according to the forward-looking Industrial Research Institute.

Although fresh e-commerce "looks beautiful", it is not easy to do well, from the supply chain to the distribution chain to product profits, is a "big test" for e-commerce. It seems that it is not easy for consumers to sit at home and eat fresh food through e-commerce.

Supply distribution chain: the chain is too long and the cost is too high

The original intention of fresh e-commerce is to let consumers quickly eat fresh food, local products and so on. The fresh chain is relatively long and needs to be supplied from the source of food, which may come from all over the country and even all over the world. This requires the integration of supply chains. Judging from the current situation, fresh e-commerce generally rely on local cooperative suppliers.

But this chain may be very long, suppliers should not only have the goods they can handle, but also have the qualifications of food in line with national regulations, and more importantly, they need to be equipped with a relatively complete network platform. Relatively speaking, large-scale comprehensive e-commerce and more mature e-commerce have a relatively perfect supply chain; logistics, such as Shunfeng, have been online one after another, such as Shunfeng, etc., and recently launched the B2B e-commerce platform, which has the advantage of logistics and distribution, while there are very few suppliers on some e-commerce platforms.

Compared with suppliers, logistics distribution, especially cold chain logistics distribution is more critical. Fresh goods can easily deteriorate, but it is difficult for e-commerce platforms to achieve full logistics coverage on their own, mostly through cooperation with logistics companies. Yi Guo Shengxian recently became a supplier to SUNING's online brand Su Xiansheng after it bought a stake in SUNING; in turn, it can take advantage of SUNING's logistics, warehousing and store resources.

Because logistics is not in the grasp of simple e-commerce platform, the service of logistics partners is very critical. Consumers often complain that the distribution of fresh food is not timely enough, resulting in mildew and deterioration of goods due to poor logistics. The wastage of goods also increases the cost of e-commerce.

The price is high and high: can you make money with a gross profit margin of 32%?

Due to the characteristics of the supply and distribution chain, the price of fresh e-commerce products is on the high side.

But high-end prices may not completely fill the cost hole for e-commerce. In particular, the volume and unit price of e-commerce is a wavering and difficult balance: if for ordinary users (B2C), the gross profit margin is relatively large, but the volume of a single order is small and unstable; if for group users (B2B), the order is relatively stable and the quantity is guaranteed, but the gross profit margin may not be high enough, it still depends on more quantity. This contradiction is a problem that almost all fresh e-commerce companies have to consider.

Originally Life CEO Yu Huafeng said publicly that life would not be able to break even until 2018. The implication is that in the next year or so, life will still be in a loss imbalance. In particular, if B2C business wants to break even, the gross profit margin of commodities may be more than 32%; and if the unit volume is too small, 38% gross profit margin may not be able to achieve break-even.

If this gross profit is fresh compared to the average supermarket, the profit is absolutely unimaginable. On the other hand, this means that only the high-end can afford high prices, consumers who can afford fresh e-commerce, "rich or expensive", belong to the more economically powerful high-end people.

Starting from April this year, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other places have successively shut down fresh businesses such as "delicious Qiqi", "fruit gang", "Yijia.com" and so on. Wang Ningyuan, an Internet industry researcher with CIC consultant, said publicly in an interview that the main difficulty for fresh e-commerce is whether it can take into account supply chain management, platform operation and logistics, and the cost of fresh e-commerce remains high. the price of the product is relatively high and the number of consumers willing to buy is relatively high. A successful e-commerce needs the common support of supply chain management, platform operation and logistics, all of which are indispensable.