When can I make a profit?
Text: Fire (industry Fengyunhui)
The intelligent loss of the company, the business model has not yet passed, it has attracted the dissatisfaction of the courier and users.
With the development of e-commerce, the express delivery industry has grown rapidly. In recent years, smart express cabinets have emerged. Nowadays, terminal terminals such as smart express cabinets and post stations have been popularized in various cities and woven into a network covering communities, university towns and office buildings, achieving the goal of efficient delivery. At the same time as the rapid development of intelligent express cabinets, many criticisms in the industry have gradually emerged.
To this end, the author visited a number of residential communities in Beijing to investigate the use of Fengchao, China Post Express and other brands, as well as feedback from users.
The courier complains that the charge is high, accounting for one-third of the commission
The National Post Office data shows that the annual average compound growth rate of China’s express delivery business in 2010-2018 is as high as 46.9%; in 2018, the volume of China’s express service enterprises reached 50.71 billion, an increase of 26.6%. Although the growth rate has slowed down, the number of single pieces has increased year by year. What followed was the low efficiency of delivery at the end of the express delivery and the high cost of labor.
The trivial “last 100 meters” has become the pain point of e-commerce logistics distribution. The courier delivery and the user’s receipt are staggered in time, which makes both parties unsatisfied.
After smelling this market pain point, merchants began to deploy smart express cabinets to support 24-hour self-service access, which is convenient for couriers to store and pick up users. Among them, Fengchao and China Post Express are the most representative, and the two have become the top two in the industry, occupying 80% of the market. In June 2015, Fengchao was founded by five companies including SF, Zhongtong, Shentong, Yunda and ProLogis, and the development momentum is fierce. China Post Express is easy to be in September 2012, by China Post and Santai Holdings Group. Four giants, Fosun Capital and Rookie Network, jointly created.
Today, search for “Fengchao” and “China Post Express” on Gaode map or Baidu map, you can see that many communities have their points.
In the Fengchao point of Ximen, No. 12 Building of Harmony Garden, you can see the couriers of different companies come to store the parcels, including Shentong, Yuantong, SF and so on. Among them, Shen Tong courier Zhang Tao said, “I am mainly responsible for the distribution of several neighborhoods here and around. Many office workers are in the company during the day and it is not convenient to pick up the pieces. He has to ask the recipient to agree and then put the package in Fengchao Express. Cabinet, wait for the recipient to come back after work in the eveningtake.
However, he prefers that users can sign up for shipments at home. Because basically a cell express delivery is a batch delivery, it is better to deliver to all users at one time. Users who cannot sign at the time need to make a phone call to communicate with the user, and they need to pay the “custody fee” of Fengchao Express.
Zhang Tao said: “We have made more than 1 yuan for each single delivery, and we have to pay a part of it to Fengchao, which accounts for almost one-third of the commission.” According to him, Fengchao’s storage cabinets There are three types of large, medium and small grids, of which the large grid charges 0.4 yuan each time, and the medium and small grids charge 0.35 yuan each time.
Of course, some recipients directly write the address as “Harmony Yayuan No. 12 Building Ximen Fengchao”, so that the courier can reduce the communication cost with the recipient. But the company will not reimburse the courier for this extra expense.
In the 26th floor of China Post Express Yihuawei Beili, SF Express courier He Xiang said, “One person collects more than 100 pieces a day, 20-30 pieces per day in a community, and about 10% use smart courier cabinets. Other courier companies, because of the low unit price, each person collects about 200 pieces per day, there may be 50 in a community, nearly half of the pieces will use smart courier cabinets. Compared with other courier companies, they are already a lot lucky.” He introduced that the deposit fee of China Post Express is similar to that of Fengchao. Each time it is between 0.3-0.6 yuan, there will be discounts.
In the investigation, the author also visited the Ximen bicycle parking area of the Creative Space, the Fengchao point of the East Gate of the Yushang Upper Court, and the China Post Express of Building B, Building 49 of Huawei Beili and Building 6 of Huamao Apartment. easy. All the couriers can find the parcels, but most of them are dissatisfied with the charges from the smart courier. There are very few people who pick up the pieces. According to the security of each community, there are usually more people picking up after work at night, and less during the day.
Many features, but low utilization
Experience Fengchao Smart Express Cabinet, which has many functions, including: express delivery, express delivery, storage, happy delivery (idle items are transferred out and received), mobile phone recycling, Xinjiang Xiangli (Fengchao Special Shopping Mall) and so on.
But the survey found that mainly the courier used to store the package and the recipient to pick up the package, and other functions are used very few people. However, this is not difficult to understand. After all, in the hearts of many users, Fengchao is equivalent to a machine that keeps express parcels. Other functions are poorly understood.
Moreover, Fengchao is far behind in the trading of idle items.Second-hand trading platforms such as transfer and idle fish; in terms of mobile phone recycling, there are head players such as love recycling and recycling treasures; in terms of e-commerce, the strengths of Jingdong, Taobao, and many more are very different. Although Fengchao constantly tried many fields on the basis of storing express, it had little effect.
At the same time, Fengchao is also involved in the advertising business. Some Fengchao smart cabinets have some brand advertisements, such as B&Q, Wanxing (Vanke and chain home decoration company), and some are in the “investment”. On the display, there will also be some print ads and video ads.
The functions of China Post Express Express Express Courier include: taking parcels, parcels, storage, e-commerce, etc., and also involved in advertising, but there is no business in Fengchao.
Whether it is Fengchao or China Post Express, the two are more like a “package access intermediary”. The courier saves the courier and the recipient picks up the courier. Other functions are relatively rare, and few people use it.
From the time of establishment, Fengchao was earlier than China Post’s express delivery for nearly 3 years, but Fengchao clearly has the potential to rise. This is related to the lucrative financing and the constant rapid expansion.
After the first anniversary of the establishment of Fengchao, the five major express delivery companies received a capital increase of 500 million yuan to help Fengchao lay out more smart express outlets in the city. In January 2017, Fengchao received RMB 2.5 billion in Series A financing; in January 2018, Fengchao received RMB 2.07 billion in Series B financing. Less than four years after its establishment, it has accumulated more than 5.5 billion yuan in financing. By burning money, it quickly occupied the market and leapt to the position of the industry’s first echelon.
The reason why Fengchao can obtain a lot of capital blessing, and then rapid expansion, is directly related to the broad prospects of the smart express cabinet market.
Ireui Consulting expects that the number of smart express cabinets in the country will reach 750,000 in 2020, and the market size of China’s smart express cabinets will reach nearly 30 billion yuan. According to the data disclosed by iResearch, between 2014 and 2017, the number of smart express cabinets that have been launched in China has rapidly increased from 15,000 to 206,000. The 2018 annual express market supervision report released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that in 2008, 279,000 smart express cabinets were put into operation nationwide.
If you follow the above data, it means that there will be 571,000 sets of smart express cabinets in the country in 2019-2020.
In this regard, some insiders said: “Although the domestic intelligent express cabinet is still in the stage of staking, it is difficult to support the operating costs of the company by collecting the courier’s storage fee and advertising fee. The faster the expansion, the loss Bigger and because of intelligenceThe operating efficiency of the courier cabinet is low and it is difficult to improve in a short time.
Driven by burning money, it’s difficult to make money
In the smart express cabinet industry, players are generally at a loss, relying on burning money to occupy the market.
Fengchao got a lot of money in the whole country after getting the A round of financing. In just one year, Fengchao completed the layout of 20,000 sets of intelligent express cabinets. In the later days, Fengchao has not stopped burning the money to occupy the market.
According to public data, in the first five months of 2018, Shenzhen Fengchao Technology Co., Ltd. (Fengchao Parent Company) had a net profit of -250 million yuan. In 2017, the net profit was -390 million yuan. Fengchao CMO Li Wenqing once said that the loss of Fengchao was mainly due to the addition of new express cabinets.
According to the “2019 Semi-annual Results Announcement” issued by Chengdu Santai Holding Group Co., Ltd., the third half of this year, Santai Holdings suffered a loss of 5,000-76 million yuan, and the overall loss was mainly Zhongyou Zhishen Technology Co., Ltd. (the operator of China Post Express) accounts for the investment losses apportioned by the equity method.
Face in the face of a huge market, Fengchao and China Post Express are the two giants in the smart express cabinet industry and are still at a loss.
The survey found that most communities have only one smart express cabinet brand, which means that the industry is likely to have a preemptive position. In order to rapidly expand the market, smart courier players will face the dilemma of rising rents.
According to industry insiders, the cost of a smart express cabinet on the market currently ranges from 20,000 to 50,000. In addition to the cost of the cabinet, it is also necessary to pay for the rental of the venue, electricity, labor costs, and so on. The main revenue of the intelligent express cabinet comes from the rental fee paid by the courier, the overdue detention fee paid by the recipient and the advertising revenue, and the income and expenditure are not balanced. Moreover, smart express delivery companies are still expanding, and they must continue to burn money.
In addition, with more and more players joining, the industry is highly competitive. At the beginning of 2018, the rookie station also has a smart express cabinet. The back of the rookie smart cabinet is Ali. It has both capital and accumulation of express resources, and its development potential cannot be underestimated.
On the one hand, the competition in the intelligent express cabinet market is fierce, and the players mainly rely on burning money; on the other hand, due to the high cost of placement, rent and post-operation costs, labor costs, user complaints and maintenance costs, the smart express cabinet is deeply immersed. Profit dilemma. There is still a long way to go before turning a profit.
Moreover, in the investigation, the author found that Fengchao, located in the creative space bicycle parking area, has stopped operating the small yellow dog smart garbage recycling machine.
In this regard, some insiders said that the expansion mode of smart express cabinets and smart garbage collectors is very similar. Smart garbage collectors have become a failed project due to long-term losses. If smart express cabinet companies can’t explore a good business model and get on the right track as soon as possible, they may face the tide of industry closure. For the head enterprises, it is also necessary to solve the problem of profitability at hand as soon as possible.