How can Hema Fresh achieve Alibaba's new retail?

　　On April 27, Hema Fresh will officially enter Xi'an, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Nanjing, and will open new stores in 10 cities across the country on the same day. Hou Yi announced that "from then on, Hema has fully covered the central city in the main regions and has become a truly national company. This is the first national city network for new retail." Since then, it entered the 2.0 era with the "Hema speed" of opening a new store in 6 days.

　　To be honest, Xiao Haozi firmly believes that "only the dreams on his lips cannot live beautifully." At the end of 2016, I went to chat with Hema's little brother. At that time, Jack Ma had just proposed the concept of new retail, and Hema also "lived" its branch in Alibaba's Shanghai, with only 3 stores in Shanghai.

　　During the conversation, the young brother said confidently: Shanghai Jinqiao Store is about to make a profit. In 2017, Shanghai will open a few more stores. In addition, Hema will also open new stores to cities such as Beijing to accelerate its layout across the country.

　　I responded with a polite but awkward smile. I thought to myself: I have been to Hema store. The fresh food gameplay is very novel, but opening a physical store is not as good as e-commerce, which is extremely challenging to have offline skills. Supply chain, site selection, product selection, etc. are all complex compulsory courses. Many merchants are struggling to death because of this. How easy is it? What's more, the investment cost of physical stores is extremely high. After all, Alibaba is a listed company. Can it give money without hesitation and give Hema a quick layout across the country?

　　As a result, it was a slap in the face. Since 2017, Hema has not only opened N new stores in Shanghai, but also laid out its storefronts in major first- and second-tier cities across the country, covering over 15 million people in 3 kilometers around it. Many stores have achieved profitability in just half a year...

　　That’s right, Xiao Haozi made the same mistake as many traditional retailers - looking at new things with an old perspective. From being unable to see clearly or understand, to being unable to catch up. Ignoring what Jack Ma said: "Some people believe it because they see it, while Alibaba people see it because they believe it."

　　Now, Hema started in Shanghai, ran all the way, replicated quickly in a year, and blossomed all over the country. This way, it has its unique truth to seize the market. Then, it fucks its own cow, which is naturally remembered by everyone. Undoubtedly, Alibaba's investment in Intime, RT-Mart and other investments still need to be verified. At present, Jack Ma's new retail dream will be realized by Hema.

　　Shanghai is the first in the country, how to do it?

　　Teacher Ma often says: Be big in your heart and be solid in your feet. Hema can be as good as today as it is down-to-earth and accumulates strength.

　　In March 2015, Hema was secretly launched in Shanghai, with only 7 founding teams. Hou Yi and Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong jointly conducted "top-level design" with the goal of integrating supermarkets, catering and logistics. The principle is "30 minutes of delivery; independent survival; offline experience, and more online consumption."

　　Afterwards, the team took a fancy to Shanghai Jinqiao Plaza's 30,000-50,000 people's traffic per day, and won it at a twice-time price in the industry, and went online to test its complete systems such as logistics distribution, APP, membership, payment, marketing, and property.

　　In early 2016, the Jinqiao store opened. At the beginning, the effect was not good. More than 5,000 people entered the store in a single day and only brought more than 100,000 yuan in sales. However, one month later, the process of product selection, dishes, management and other links were adjusted, and the number of patrons increased to 8,000 per day. Especially on weekends, the sales volume was 10 times that of the opening. There was an offline experience, more consumption online, and the two were mutually connected and assisted, and the value of integration began to emerge.

　　As a Shanghai native who has worked in a supermarket, Hou Yi deeply understands that the details determine success or failure of online and offline. The consumers here are already picky and have to cater to the consumption upgrades of young people. The finished products, semi-finished products and dishes of fresh food must be even more "showy", so he and his team of foodies keep "trying dishes", set signature products such as king crab, Australian steak and Boston lobster, and invited famous chefs to be executives, design dishes, and set standards.

　　For example, the "Internet celebrity" delicacy sold out of stock - crayfish mooncakes. Each mooncake must have 18 layers of pastry, hot water, hot dough, soft and crispy cake crust, and the cake filling contains 3 crayfish, each of which must be more than 7-9 yuan. The meat is numb and does not choke, and it is spicy and does not irritate... This is what the famous chef executive and Hou Yi foodie group ordered more than 30 times.

　　As long as he is in Shanghai, almost every day, Hou Yi will try dishes with foodies. Some people's weight has soared, and they even joked to report "work injury" to him. It is precisely because of this "death struggle" of the team that Hema has continuously optimized operational details, which has resulted in an average purchase of users more than 4 times per month. The square footage is 3-5 times that of traditional supermarkets, and the online conversion rate is 35%, far superior to traditional e-commerce.

　　Of course, this achievement also moved Shanghai managers. At that time, they were worried about the saying that "Shanghai has no first-class Internet". Hema's innovation in "Internet + Retail" not only carried forward the traditional advantages of Shanghai's "first retail city", but also created a supply-side reform sample of "departing from virtual and entering real", giving Shanghai an Internet benchmark of "being able to show off". Therefore, more resource grafting and policy tilts are accelerating their implementation, helping Hema accelerate its growth and winning the market.

　　As a result, small steps were taken to speed up trial and error, iterative upgrades, and local resource support, at the end of 2016, several Hema stores in Shanghai successfully experimented. In internal words, "the business model was run through", realizing what management master Drucker said, "do it right first". It is time to move towards "do it well again". In this way, it became the first "Internet +" brand to move from Shanghai to the country.

　　3 kilometers and 30 minutes, flowers bloom everywhere, what do you rely on?

　　Shi Yuzhu, a business expert who founded the "giant", once said: "The local market cannot be fast, and the national market cannot be slow." The implication is that if the local market experiment is sufficient, it must be quickly spread out in the national market, because imitators will also grow rapidly. Only by completing the land grabbing step by step can we always maintain our advantages and remain invincible.

　　This is the logic that Hema is blooming everywhere. However, the offline layout of new retail is much more difficult than that of Nao Platinum. The venue, goods, and supply chain are all large investments. Hema must rely on the power of its parent group Alibaba, while constantly improving itself, pursuing higher efficiency and greater economies of scale.

　　First of all, for Hema, Alibaba not only invests money, but also resources. In this way, it has solved the "direct procurement of origin" of Internet celebrity products such as lobster, steak, and king crab, and firmly adhered to users with affordable imported products. In this way, even if the store skyrockets, it can ensure quality supply so that users will not be disappointed.

　　More importantly, Alibaba has accumulated more than 10 years of e-commerce data. With its powerful data analysis, Hema can find a gathering place for target people and choose a location to open a store near their community. You should know that all kinds of surveys, analysis and testing in traditional supermarkets can be completed at least 3 months.

　　At the same time, relying on Alibaba's analysis, Hema can choose to settle in more places. As long as the coverage of the 3-kilometer crowd is good, you can choose relatively cheap properties to settle in.

　　And these are the abilities that Meituan, JD.com and Yonghui lack, so they cannot expand the country quickly like Hema, and endure hardships or feel confused.

　　Secondly, relying on the brand he has established, Hema has become the traffic responsibility of the mall. Therefore, real estate developers regard it as a hot commodity, reduce rents one after another, and take the initiative to come to seek cooperation.

　　Just like the Dacheng Road store of Beijing Cuiwei Department Store, where Hema settled in, the passenger flow in six months doubled; the Shanghai Jinqiao Plaza store increased by an average of 3,000-4,000 young passenger flow per month... There are more and more stories like this. Hema brings good news to real estate developers who are struggling to operate. Naturally, they no longer "love to ignore" like they used to be, but instead are afraid of "not being able to afford it". The more they give rent discounts, the more generous they are. In this way, the cost of opening a store in Hema can be reduced again and again, winning the economy of scale.

　　At the same time, Hema Fresh only serves people within 3 kilometers, and 30-minute delivery is easier to achieve. Compared with the massive categories of ordinary e-commerce and three-day delivery, it can save a lot of manpower and material resources in warehousing, distribution, operation and maintenance, and other links. In addition, various operating systems are rapidly optimized in an "Internet-style" manner, sales continue to rise, costs can continue to decrease, and single-store profits can be accelerated.

　　For example, Shanghai Jinqiao Store initially had 300 employees, but now it has only less than half, but its sales have increased by more than triple. In this way, operational efficiency has been greatly improved, and Hema can maintain an excellent input-output ratio while its scale has skyrocketed.

　　It can be said that Xiao Haozi was mistaken back then because he ignored the Internet power of Hema and Alibaba, and it was this power that changed the retail pattern from the traditional perspective.

　　There is no doubt that the world's martial arts skills are only fast and will not be broken. For a considerable period of time in the future, Hema will still be able to open stores and deploy them nationwide. Of course, it must also speed up the solution to talent supply and upgrade its organizational structure. Only in this way can Hema take into account the expansion speed and management efficiency, deepen local business, and move towards the Matthew effect "better".

　　Previously, Jack Ma once said: "Ali's Hema is to awaken the retail industry." Now, the awakening is achieved, and the rest is to pull retail partners and become new retail partners together, practice "five plus two, white plus black" and play together to create exciting things. God has his own arrangements for the rest.

　　It goes without saying that compared with other new retail units of Alibaba, Hema started the earliest and has gone the farthest. It is probably already "destined to be fate" for Jack Ma's dream of new retail. What is the result? Time will not deceive others. Let's wait and see.