The "money-burning mode" of fresh e-commerce has been tested.

Tiantian Orchard announced in Shanghai a few days ago that it has received 100 million yuan of D+ round financing from the fund management company invested by Zhangjiang Hi-Tech. Wang Wei, founder of Tiantian Orchard, said that this round of financing will mainly be used for regional expansion, category introduction and supply chain construction. This round of financing comes after Tiantian Orchard received a $100m D-round financing led by JD.com in early 2016.

The successful financing of the orchard also shows that the orchard is beginning to get out of the shadow caused by the previous "closure" of offline stores. However, industry insiders believe that the fresh e-commerce industry represented by "Orchard every day" is still facing a severe survival test. For example, since the beginning of this year, fresh e-commerce has suffered a series of changes, delicious Qiqi, the youth vegetable gentleman, and the fruit gang have successively announced that they are out of business; Aixian Bee has "persuaded" its employees on a large scale, and JD.com has also caused a storm of layoffs in a disguised form after arriving home and Dada; originally convenient to change its name to "Super Speed" has been integrated into the original life platform. The whole industry is facing many challenges, where on earth will the fresh industry go?

Experts say the most obvious difference between fresh products and other products is timeliness. Different from the shelf life of traditional products for several months. The shelf life of fresh products, especially fruits, is often calculated on a daily basis, even in hours of transportation. The perishable characteristics make consumers have a lot of worries when buying fresh online. Fresh e-commerce may be able to use subsidies and other ways to attract consumers, but as long as they receive an unsatisfactory product, consumer confidence will be shaken, and enterprises may lose customers as a result. Therefore, the cold chain logistics which can keep fresh in the whole process is particularly important.

Wang Wei said that it is not difficult to establish cold chain logistics, but managing the warehouse is a big difficulty. Every day orchard has more than 50, 000 square meters of warehouse, the warehouse is divided into different layers, there are minus 36 ℃, minus 10 ℃, minus 18 ℃, and fruit can not be mixed. It can be seen that the orchard has accumulated some experience in warehouse management, but Wang Wei also said that they still have a long way to go and may have to pay a lot of "tuition fees."

As for the previous practice of closing all offline stores in Orchard, Wang Wei said that this is not to close stores, but to turn them into warehouses. In order to improve operational efficiency and enhance user experience, the overall strategy of O2O will still be implemented in the future. In the strategy of urban expansion, the orchard will also take a more refined road, no longer pursue scale and quantity, but start with first-tier cities, and then expand to second-and third-tier cities.

When talking about the future development trend of the fresh e-commerce industry, Wang Wei believes that since 2015, a large number of fresh e-commerce companies have done a lot of irrational actions driven by capital, and various fresh models abroad have been practiced almost all over the country. and from explosive development to a return to rationality is an inevitable process for emerging industries. The end of the money-burning model will eliminate a large number of companies that do not have a supply chain precipitation. Many companies claim that they went bankrupt because they invested too much in the layout of the supply chain and cold chain logistics, but in fact, there were problems in marketing, capital chain, subsidy repurchase rate and other aspects.

"since last year, the fresh industry has been talking about being light companies and light supply chains without warehousing and procurement, but it turns out that many light companies have died." Wang Wei said that the new round of financing will still be spent heavily on the layout of the supply chain and logistics.

Wang Wei said that the additional financing is not because the previous financing has been spent, there is still 1 billion yuan in cash on the account. Now the additional financing is mainly for "sense of security". "A company with more money is safer, and cash flow is very important for a company." At the same time, in order to increase the sense of security Initiative, Tiantian Orchard has also reached a strategic cooperation with France's Lactalis, the largest dairy group in the world, to conduct in-depth cooperation on the rand brand, especially the fresh dairy series, in online platform sales, brand building and supply chain optimization of Tiantian Orchard. Lanteris uses "Tiantian Orchard" as the launch platform for some of its rand brand products in mainland China.

In addition, GE Peijian, general manager of Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, is also optimistic about the development of fresh e-commerce. He said that as a "unicorn" enterprise growing up in Zhangjiang Park, growing together with it is an important measure for Zhangjiang Hi-Tech to practice the concept of "time partner". In the future, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech will rely on its own strong ability to integrate resources, help enterprises in the park to connect all kinds of resources, actively create innovative service platforms, strengthen post-investment management services for industrial investment, and strive to cultivate and create more "unicorns" enterprises.