The trend is just an appearance.
文|真梓
Edit | Huang Wei
Xiaoyao and Luo Jiahui once did a joint marketing campaign for American cherries.
In 2013, fresh food was one of the few blue seas that had not been covered by e-commerce. At the end of June of this year, Xiaoyao, the then president of Tmall, and Locke, the US ambassador to China, officially signed the purchase. They decided to sell the cherries in the northwest of the United States directly to China via Tmall and directly deliver them to consumers.
This pre-sale of fruit, known as “the freshest seasonal”, started on the Tmall platform, hanging on the 168-ton cherries on the American branch, and was robbed by 84,531 people.
In just 72 hours, these cherries completed the whole process of picking and distribution, and they were shipped from the United States to Chinese consumers.
This is a very successful marketing campaign, which was called “The Cherry Event” in the history of Tmall’s fresh life. It led the normalization of online sales through the whole fresh food category. The key behind this is Tmall’s integration of the national cold chain logistics (supply chain that provides low-temperature services for products).
A young child named Nine Trolling began to emerge in the “Cherry Event”, which became the starting point for his future transformation of the fresh supply chain industry.
3 years of self-evolution
The real name of Jiu Tiao is Zhang Bing. “In that year, I worked as a house manager for Tmall Logistics in Ali. The hardest point after sales is how to solve the cold chain logistics of these cherries.” One day after the year, Zhang Bing sat in a conference room in Jiading, Shanghai, recalling the details of the “Cherry Events”.
At this time, he has already left Ali and turned to become a fresh supply chain company – the founder and CEO of Jiuzong Fresh Supply Chain. Founded in 2014, this company is the first domestic fresh supply chain solution operator with the only domestic full-scale fresh product warehousing management system. So far, it has completed seven rounds of financing.
For the Tmall and Zhang Bing at the time, the carLily must win the time. If the transportation speed is not fast enough, there is no cold chain blessing on the road, and these cherries will rot in the transportation. It is the first time in the history of the cold chain to complete the “from picking to delivery” within 48 hours. At that time, no cold chain logistics company could complete all the links from transportation to home delivery, “only can take the road of integration,” Zhang Bing said.
“Integration” refers to letting the traditional cold chain logistics company and the “last mile” home delivery company complete their own links and cooperate with each other to fully guarantee the timeliness of these two links and achieve 1+1 greater than 2 effects. The fresh-fashioned distribution method that Zhang Bing explored in this incident was later called the “two-stage” cold chain home delivery. Zhang Bing was also selected as “2013 Top Ten E-commerce Logistics Innovative Persons” and also became the “Master of Innovation” within the rookie network.
Behind the glory, Zhang Bing saw the opportunity.
Zhang Bing found that the domestic cold chain logistics companies are scattered throughout the country, basically only serving local large customers, and the functions are scattered. Some build cold storage rentals to earn rent, some do long-distance transportation in big cities, and some do Distribution in the same city, and each company usually has only one core function.
There is a lack of a role in the industry that understands the C-home and can improve the chain of cold chains.
“This industry is still in its early stages, there are pain points and needs.” When it comes to the process of discovering business opportunities, Zhang Bing is very calm, as if to describe a small thing that is not unusual. He is not fortunate, but because he has long been crouching in this industry, knowing everything, always ready to catch it faster than others when the opportunity comes.
From the wait and see to see, Zhang Bing spent ten years.
From 2002 to 2005, after graduating, Zhang Bing worked in a third-party storage and transportation company in Beijing, because the company often mobilized posts internally, so he almost all of it in four years. The logistics related posts have been done again. When dispatching a vehicle, he squats on the map every day to see which car is loading at the time, where to send it first, and where to send it. When doing sales, he often has to face different customers, both to maintain old customers, but also to expand new customers, but also to understand the different needs of each customer. This experience allowed Zhang Bing to master the traditional logistics management experience, and also made him interested in the industry. He decided to plung it in and make it deeper.
After entering a warehousing and logistics company serving Samsung, he found his growth flywheel – data thinking. atIn those days, he has become the general manager of North China. He has to go to Samsung to open weekly meetings every week. When he saw that Samsung was already using data to manage traditional logistics methods, he was very excited. “The logistics managers there will list the indicators every week. What is good, what is bad, how? To improve, it is really to use data to talk and guide you to do the following supplier management.” Data thinking helped him slowly upgrade from “empirical theory” and precipitated some thinking methodology. Through the data, he also glimpsed the other corner of the logistics industry.
After graduating from the school in Samsung, Ali became the next stop for his evolution. “There was a logistics of to B before, and a logistics of to C in Ali.” In the 3 years of Ali, Zhang Bing is constantly changing his thinking and iterating the experience of the service B end to serve the C-end. “Compared with the B-end, the C-side has a lot of demanding requirements for the experience. His data for you. It may be more demanding, and your network visualization requirements are more stringent. This is built around the perspective of how to serve C-side consumers.”
In addition to understanding the C-side services, Zhang Bing also gained valuable platform-based operational experience in Ali, This is Zhang Bing’s future venture. Another weight. Here he saw that Tmall does not have its own storage company, does not have its own home delivery, and does not have its own transportation vehicle, but can rely entirely on the system to manage the role of various service providers. “This kind of platform thinking will also benefit a lot from later entrepreneurship.” Zhang Bing recalled.
Time has come to 2013, and e-commerce platforms, including Tmall, have fallen into the trap of selling what can be differentiated. Fresh fruit, as the blue ocean that has not been covered by e-commerce, has entered everyone’s field of vision.
The cherries incident broke out at this moment, which seems to herald the birth of some new opportunities.
At this time, Zhang Bing has completed three self-iterations. He has gained experience in managing traditional logistics, obtained data management thinking, and learned the essence of service C-side and platform thinking. When the opportunity appeared, he caught up with the situation.
In June 2014, Zhang Bing left from Ali. In the same year, he registered his own fresh supply chain company.
The company name is “Nine Trolls”, which is the name he used when he was in Ali.
Even though the trend of traffic dividends coincided with the emergence of Internet model innovations, Zhang Bing was still optimistic about the decision to transform a traditional industry.
“With more than a decade of experience, I am not a newborn calf, not afraid of tigers, but with very good confidence. Plus the demand has overflowed into this, I see someone should do this. I will do it, at least not too bad.”
Lighten the “bitter business”
In the early days of the venture, Zhang Bing was a real “light pole commander.”
From July 2014, he left the company in the end of the year. At the end of the year, there were partners who entered the game. In the middle of half a year, Zhang Bing was thinking about the direction of the future.
No matter how you look at it, the fresh supply chain is a bitter business. Transportation, warehousing, and home delivery require a lot of manpower, material resources, and financial resources. In addition, the difficulty of fresh food is preservation, fruit and vegetable seafood, etc. should always pay attention to the matching of environmental factors such as temperature during transportation and storage. The operation of cold storage and refrigerated trucks is also the top priority.
As a startup company, people and money are tight, and it’s impossible for nine to drag all the links in their hands.
Zhang Bing spent a lot of time thinking about “how to make business light.” More than ten years of experience in the logistics industry have given Zhang Bing some inspiration. “At that time, many express companies, the core is the operation in the warehouse. Tmall also does not have its own storage company, does not have its own home delivery, nor Your own transportation vehicle is using the IT system to manage the roles of various service providers.”
Integrating social resources and relying on IT systems to operate seems to be a broken way.
During that time, Zhang Bing did a lot of investigations and visited many investment institutions. “Investors often ask, if other rich companies do it, how do you compete?” Zhang Bing said “Every visit is a challenge and a guide.”
The experience of dealing with couriers and drivers many years ago told him that if you want to build a transportation and home delivery system, it will increase the burden on the company and even the management; the resources of the refrigerated truck are not as good as others think. Lack of reason, Zhang Bing believes that “this is just information is not equal”;The library, buying land and opening a warehouse is even more difficult for start-ups.
Thinking for a long time, Zhang Bing finally has the answer that can answer the investors’ doubts. Since no one in the market has managed and operated the B to C fresh warehouse, it is the starting point. The form of the lease transforms the warehouse and is accompanied by a refined operation within the warehouse. As for the transportation and home delivery systems, they are all done by integrating social resources. Asked why he was determined in this direction, Zhang Bing said that he firmly believed in his judgment as a veteran of logistics.
After determining the idea, Zhang Bing quickly started the team building.
System and big data are the focus of the operation in the warehouse. Nine Trolling needs to develop an IT system, connect with the e-commerce platform, and also connect with customers, and help manage the warehouse.
For C-side warehouses, there are many categories, and customers have a variety of needs. “So the warehouse must have an information system that can manage inventory and reduce losses.” Combining data management and platformization Experience, Zhang Bing believes that the system is a prerequisite for B to C warehouse management. “All the in-house systems involved must be developed by ourselves. This is one of our barriers.”
Finding a reliable CTO is a priority. One day in December 2014, Hou Gaoyang, who was still working in a supply chain in the United States, met Zhang Bing under the match of the middleman.
“I was working in Beijing at the time, Zhang Bing came to Beijing. We found a small restaurant and talked about how we feel about this industry.” What made Hou Gaoyang impressed was that Zhang Bing had already been to the company. The strategy has a clear plan. Both people agree with the light operation model and want to improve the efficiency and transform this traditional industry through Internet thinking. After no more than one month before and after, Hou decided to join the team and serve as the CTO of the Nine.
The recruitment of the founding team is also continuing. Zhou Yiwu and Fan Qingxin, who have 13 years of experience in warehouse operations, have joined the ranks.
In the middle of 2015, the founding team of Jiulong was basically completed. This company, which became a star of the fresh supply chain, finally started their entrepreneurial story.
Let the company be like water
Zhang Bing does not like the title of “unicorn”. But when he saw his company appear on the “Quasi-Unicorn” list, Zhang Bing looked a bit too calm, even “unhappy.”
He said in a straightforward way in the work group that nine “do not be a unicorn, the road is invisible”, like water, nowhereNo, we can cooperate with anyone, as much as possible with the various customers in the industry, but also to quietly use the service and attitude to make customers dependent.
As of today, Nine Troll has been working in the fresh supply chain for five years. At this time, it has become the largest fresh warehousing operator in China with a focus on B to C. It has the only whole-class fresh storage management system in China. The number of customers of the service has also grown from the beginning of the dozens to the latest more than 1,400. Like water, it means “helping small and medium-sized agricultural operators to make up for the shortcomings of logistics and to be a public logistics department”.
Since it is a public logistics department, then don’t be “independent”. Whether it is an upstream production customer or a downstream e-commerce platform or catering company, it is a partner in the eyes of Nine. “This is a flexible thing. I don’t think of anyone as the concept of Party A and Party B. Jiu Teng is a platform company.” Zhang Bing explained.
In a variety of business roles, a platform-based company is like a face, responsible for making rules, providing tools, and combining other points and lines. Such a company is likely to bear the risks of the education market, and at the same time, every participant needs to experience the thrill of growing up. If it cannot take such responsibility, it will not be recognized.
Zhang Bing, who was born in Ali, still has the obvious temperament of Ali, starting from the most difficult service and serving every customer. In his planning, using IT systems, operational management capabilities to support, and then providing customers with a set of services that are really needed, is a means of “smooth and silent”. “We are not providing independent products, but a set of services,” he said.
This set of “moisturizing” services has been implemented from the very beginning.
In the early days of the business, the market recognition of Jiutang was not so strong, and the fresh supply chain was still in its infancy. Many customers don’t understand the use of the system, and the system that does not want to integrate with the customer is not integrated. In order to gain the trust of customers, the company has taken on the role of an IT consultant to help each customer analyze the characteristics of the mainstream E-commerce system in the market.
The scene when doing business with the first version of the system seems to be still in sight. In mid-April 2015, Nine went to Yantai, Shandong Province to make cherry fruit season, and wanted to send the cherries all over the country. The cherry season is only two weeks a year, and if you miss it, you have to wait another year.
Zhang Bing decided to go straight to the local area, with more than 20 people at the time, some lived in hotels, some lived in the farmer’s home, and real-time technical and operational support was provided to the farmers.
In this way, Nine Trolled a little bit of the door of various customers. Now it has established partnerships with more than 1,400 customers, and its homening partners have reached 118. But when it comes to the differences between the initial stage and the expansion stage, Zhang Bing bluntly defends customers. “When more and more customers come together, how can they be responsible for each customer, or even maintain a good customer? , that is, consumers, are the challenges we face.”
Partner He Jianhui followed the process of nine-trolling customer service upgrade iterations. In 2018, when he worked for rookie logistics, he came to Nine Traps, which was not only attracted by Zhang Bing’s execution, but also because he was optimistic about the nine supply in the fresh supply chain. In the foreground.
He Jianhui is currently responsible for the front-end market expansion and the guarantee of the China-Taiwan customer in Jiu Tseng. Under Zhang Bing and his plan, Jiu Teng has carried out a layered upgrade for customers. But unlike others, the tiered standard does not depend entirely on company visibility and revenue linkage. “We will value the potential growth of the company, the influence of the brand, and the continued investment of the company in supply chain management, such as Information construction, etc., will be considered factors.” He Jianhui said.
The purpose of the nine-trolling is to go to the information collaboration with the upstream customers. At present, with the continuous transformation of traditional businesses by e-commerce, the informationization construction of the terminal sales layer has been initially completed, but the informationization of the supply chain has not kept up. Many enterprises are still managing by telephone, WeChat or Excel. Collaborate with these companies that are willing to invest in information technology.
“If the growth is good, then we will match the special customer service staff. See what it needs to be in the process of growing up to serve. He Jianhui said.
While IT is constantly iterating over its service capabilities, IT technology and operational management capabilities are constantly being consolidated.
The system of nine trolling is constantly evolving, and now it has used the 2.5 version system. The current system uses distributed technology. A service needs to be upgraded. It only needs to upgrade the relevant parts. It will not be like the first version.From time to time, the whole body will be affected by individual bugs.
Nine-trailer has been built to include ERP (Electronic Business Management System), OMS (Order Management System), WMS (Warehouse Management System), TMS (Transport Management System), DMS (Distribution Management System) Full link supply chain system.
For customers, from the synchronization of orders, to transportation, to warehouse operations, to final delivery, almost every step has real-time monitoring of big data, and cooperate with the guidance.
Of course, the establishment of this system relies on a steady stream of orders. Updates to orders will keep these data rolling and train the system without interruption.
Zhang Bing admits that at the beginning, the company’s order volume has not been so much now. “There is no such data on the Internet. Everyone is very embarrassed. They can only rely on themselves and other cold chains. The company’s experience is to be more extensive.”
During this time, Zhang Bing’s word-of-mouth accumulation in Ali has had an effect. Customers often follow the influence of the word “nine tow” and pass it on to other companies eager for the same service. In this way, Jiutu’s initial customer network was built. But relying on the CEO’s reputation is not a long-term solution, the company decided to take the initiative to cooperate with the top merchants on some platforms at that time.
The Horqin cattle industry is such a connection with the nine.
When the Nine Trolling introduced the business, I was very familiar with the needs of the business in this industry.” Li Lin, general manager of the sales department of Kerqin Niuye, recalled.
In Li Lin’s eyes, Nine Troll’s nationwide warehousing service not only guarantees delivery time, but also reduces logistics costs. At the same time, the real-time monitoring system in the warehouse also makes the customers feel professional. Sensitive to the pain points of the fresh industry, Jiu Teng quickly gained the trust of the Horqin cattle industry, “the first time they settled in their seven warehouses.” Li Lin said.
Through such accumulation, the data also ran along with the business. Zhang Bing plans to gradually provide customers with intelligent decision-making services, and truly use data to guide the operation of fresh products.
For example, when different fresh food items enter the warehouse, the data system of Nine Trolling will form an algorithm based on historical data to recommend packaging configuration for customers. “How many grams of dry ice and ice packs to put, whether to add cartons, they are planning to give a complete algorithm. No one is using them to calculate the material configuration. Some people even listen to the supplier completely, the northeast is minus At 20 degrees, there is no need to freeze at all. As long as you let me put in the refrigerant, I will also put it on. Anyway, the supplier will pay for it.” Li Lin feels that Jiu Tiao is physically changing the industry and praises Jiu Tiao as one of the few strengths and services in the industry. A company with the ability to coexist.
Faced with customer praise and the company’s growing data, Zhang Bing was extremely humble. He feels that most of the courage to make new attempts in a traditional field comes from the confidence given by the industry.
“All decisions are made, or the establishment of a so-called business model. As long as there is always a demand for this matter, it is a very valuable thing to do. Everything is OK.” /span>
However, the experience of applying the reality to the customer, and then providing the customer with a personal service, does not force everyone to use their own system. In Zhang Bing’s heart, Jiu Teng is a company with “open” temperament.
“If the customer only chooses to use my position, then I will not force them to use my courier. If the customer wants someone else to deliver, or use other systems, then I will also provide the customer with him. The services we need, we can all accept.” Zhang Bing feels that Jiu Tseng is not currently, and he does not intend to become a closed system in the future.
He knows that providing a favorable commercial space for the characters on the platform is the ultimate service.
Let the industry be “younger”
Zhang Bing, born in 1981, said in his interview that he felt that his mentality was pragmatic and hard.
Indeed, to do business in the fresh supply chain, you must have a low profile to do a lot of things that Internet people don’t like.
Zhang Bing is still going to go to more than 30 warehouses across the country to see it. He is also very sensitive to many details while he cares about the business.
“The boss is a very careful person. Once the warehouse floor has some logos that are not clearly labeled, everyone has not found it. When he comes in, he can see where it is wrong.” One employee recalled.
In Zhang Bing’s view, attention to detail is the bottom line for this line, especially at the beginning of the stage of establishing basic trust with customers. “II can’t sleep for a long time. When I first start a business, my anxiety will be more trivial. The business just started running, facing the customer’s complaints. Today, I asked you if the goods were sent. If you asked for the goods tomorrow, we will still pack them in the warehouse. The position of the goods in the warehouse has not been found out yet.
Through the initial stage of the company’s business instability, the situation of not sleeping can still not be improved. It seems that the point of anxiety seems to have changed.
“The details of anxiety at that time were because some internal operational problems could not be solved at the time. Now I will pay more attention to some more macroscopic things.” Zhang Bing said.
Zhang Bing will now let himself jump out of the logistics industry to observe interesting business models in other industries. Zhang Bing, who has cut into the traditional business with a post-80s mentality, hopes that the company can become “younger” and try to use the post-95 play to inject new vitality into the company and the industry. This is his new requirement for himself.
In He Jianhui’s view, the CEO is a person with “jumping thinking”. Zhang Bing also said that he always produces some “thoughts of the sky”, and throwing the new things he sees in the middle of the night into his group is his normal life.
The business flow business that Jiu Tho is currently building is exactly what he has come up with.
Building a full-fledged platform, e-commerce operations, diversified content marketing, and socialized new media marketing are four businesses in the nine-traffic business segment. In Zhang Bing’s plan, the whole straight is the distribution platform that helps the upstream customers to receive more channels; the e-commerce operation can help customers including overseas upstream producers to open the store to the platform; diversified Content marketing and new media marketing are the two major ways of playing online trends.
In order to let fresh customers keep up with the trend, Zhang Bing designed a fancy marketing plan.
For example, “Fresh Meat Kitchen”, this food show will be displayed in the show, which will let customers show their own products on the show, as well as live sales, seeing the 5G trend of Zhang Bing, also I want to join the platform to foster a batch of net red, so that customers’ brands and products enter consumers through new ways.
“This girl on the screen is called Weiya, who is a head-loaded anchor.Almost all brands want to cooperate with her. Fresh can also make such an attempt…” During the Shanghai Expo, Zhang Bing introduced the planning of live broadcasting and video marketing to the Minister of Agriculture of Vietnam. A series of words from his mouth It doesn’t seem to stop coming out, it seems to be more aware of the emerging industry of live streaming than other young colleagues present.
These innovations that Jiu Ting is doing may be another half step more than others.
Introduction to the “Great Creators” section:
This is a business person column, positioned to look for those who promote the process of new business civilization, telling about all the adventures and evolution behind innovation. Innovators are at the forefront of the field, opening up new opportunities in risk, acting quickly, controlling fear, being tired of being old and self-innovating. In them, you can see that action is far better than a perfect exploration.
We are looking for pathfinders in those industries, innovators of technology, innovators of business models, and leaders in the field of social innovation… If you are interested in reporting, please feel free to contact us (Contact: Zhang Wei, zhangwei@36kr. Com).