With an annual income of 5.5 billion, it is on the verge of bankruptcy! The supermarket "head snake" is difficult to survive

Golden wrong knife

2024-06-30 17:18

Hebei's largest convenience store is going through the most difficult time of its life.

36524 convenience store, a supermarket chain that could not find competitors in Hebei at all, has recently been linked to the broken capital chain, the inability to pay wages, and the arrears of wages.

Before the wages were owed, this small convenience store enjoyed endless scenery.

Just two years ago, in the list of "2022 China's Top 100 Chain Chains", Hebei 365 Group has achieved an annual income of 5.579 billion yuan and opened 1,873 stores.

The pancakes and fruits of a convenience store were also rated as one of the "Top Ten Famous Foods" in Shijiazhuang's night economy.

Some people say that if you don't eat a set of pancakes from the 36524 convenience store when you come to Shijiazhuang, you won't be counted as having been to Shijiazhuang.

But if there is no opponent, why is it bizarrely unpaid? Obviously taking the lead, why have you had a hard life in the past few years?

In fact, the halo of the protagonist of Hebei's "King of Convenience Stores" was lost by himself.

A convenience store,

Lived into the "spiritual opium" of Hebei people

When it comes to 36524 convenience stores, many friends outside Hebei will say that they have never heard of it or seen it.

But as long as you have been in Shijiazhuang, you know the density of the number 36524, which can definitely compete with Mixue Bingcheng.

7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan open at 7 a.m. and stay open until 11 p.m. And Hebei people know very well in their hearts, they don't play with customers, and directly use more realistic numbers to make signboards:

"36524" – we are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

People who have never been in Hebei find it difficult to understand the true meaning of this string of numbers, just like the white moonlight in the hearts of many Hebei people.

More than 20 years ago, almost most northerners had never heard of 7-11, Lawson, and the whole family, and 36524 became an important symbol of Hebei with an advanced vision.

And this convenience store was originally converted from a bakery.

In 1993, a man named Yu Shuzhong was assigned to the Shijiazhuang state-owned enterprise Guoda Group after graduating from university, and Shijiazhuang Guoda and Taiwan Weiquan established a food company together to produce bread, meat floss, dried meat and so on.

A year later, the University opened its first bakery store called "Los Angeles", and in less than a year, Los Angeles opened more than 30 stores.

In the early years, the popularity of Los Angeles in Shijiazhuang once surpassed that of Hollyland.

In 1997, Taiwan's Weiquan gave NUS a money-making password, whether to open a convenience store in Shijiazhuang together, and the reason is also very tenable - the mainland market is vast, and convenience stores are like money printing machines.

Although the real Hebei people still don't know much about the gameplay of convenience stores, they have strong execution, and directly turned 12 bread stores into convenience stores.

This year, the first store of Guoda 36524 was opened in Guang'an Street, Shijiazhuang, and Yu Shuzhong was the manager of this store.

As a result, the convenience store's ability to absorb gold is really strong, and the sales volume reached 6,667 yuan on the first day, which is three times that before the transformation.

It's just that the convenience store model was still very fragile back then, and a year later, Carrefour, Yonghui, and China Resources Vanguard supermarkets opened stores and almost became the catastrophe of convenience stores. Compared with the small 36524, these giants have strong bargaining power with manufacturers, and the selling price of their goods is the purchase price of convenience stores.

Under the violent impact, 36524's performance plummeted, and it faced two choices: either conservative treatment to shorten business hours and reduce losses; Or boldly take the drug and look for new profit growth points.

At that time, more than 80% of people held the first view, but Yu Shuzhong turned his attention to foreign countries, "The opening hours of convenience stores in the United States, Japan and other countries have been extended to 24 hours, and we will also extend the hours to compete differently." ”

As a result, I really tried out an iron rule for convenience stores to make money - there were more sales in the second half of the night than in the morning.

In 2003, the first 24-hour 36524 convenience store was launched, and in the same year, most stores were open 24 hours a day.

Therefore, 36524 is almost a dominant existence in Hebei.

In 2009, the market share has reached more than 85%, and it is firmly seated in Shijiazhuang. Competitors such as Tian Yuan and Good Day Convenience Store are far behind it in terms of store opening speed, and some have now disappeared from view.

Yu Shuzhong was very helpful in the interview: "From the perspective of Shijiazhuang's business ecology, the biggest crisis of the Guoda chain at present is that there is no opponent. ”

Even if it is separated from the spread of short videos, countless Hebei people still remember its pervasiveness.

According to the data, as of July 2020, the number of stores under Hebei 365 Group's 36524 convenience store, 365 life supermarket, and good folks 365, which focuses on the rural sinking market, has exceeded 16,000.

After only four years, why did it reach the point where it could not pay wages?

There is no competition,

But one after another made fatal mistakes

When making money, whether you can find a good PK object is regarded as a kind of marketing wisdom that understands current affairs.

Although 36524 started very recklessly, he also learned two points from 7-11 according to the cat and the tiger:

First, in addition to selling products, we must also sell services.

As early as 2009, 36524 was able to help the people of Hebei pay gas bills, water and electricity bills, charging phone bills, print documents, and buy tickets for major scenic spots in advance.

7-11 convenience stores sell rice balls, fried chicken, oden, 36524 to also down-to-earth pancakes, fruits, fritters, soy milk, steamed buns, grilled sausages...

In the case of other convenience stores, there are all kinds of pre-made dishes, and after an all-nighter, you can have a set of steaming pancakes and fruits that are spread out on the spot, which is a super hit.

The second is to let every employee become a partner.

For 36524 convenience stores, there has been a long thinking of making employees business partners.

At one point, 365 Group launched a "revenue multiplication plan". On the 365 platform, each employee can open a micro-store to sell 365 products - the company provides employees with a product library, employees can choose from the product library, and set their own prices, and determine their own rate of return.

The company will select the corresponding store to deliver the goods to the customer according to the order situation.

According to the data, Hebei 365 Group is also a modern circulation enterprise with the largest number of physical service outlets in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

But when Hebei 365 Group was booming, it made a fatal mistake - investing in finance and real estate.

For example, in the real estate sector, the competition in the commercial real estate market is already under a red ocean, Hebei 365 Group chose to reinvest and developed two product lines: "365 Shengshi Life" and "365 Shengshi New Town".

In addition to high-end residences, the development of small town cultural tourism projects and commercial complexes has also been carried out, all of which are projects that cost money like water.

The small convenience store has long been unable to hide the ambitions of the 365 Group, and is expanding towards a large-scale comprehensive supermarket.

Some insiders broke the news that the retail business of 365 Group is still basic, but the blind diversification and expansion, especially the large-scale entry into the real estate industry, has dragged down the development of the entire company, and the capital chain has also been in crisis.

Opening a convenience store in the north, is it really unadaptable?

Because more and more convenience stores have closed down in recent years, the death of convenience stores has been rudely divided into two factions.

One is a one-size-fits-all approach, believing that opening a convenience store in China is not actually profitable.

Some netizens compared the top 20 convenience store brands in China in 2014 and 2023 and found that there were only 11 of the top 20 convenience store brands in 2014 last year.

The most conspicuous example is that in 2023, Convenience Bee, which was once wildly sought after by capital, will close more than 1,000 stores within 1 year.

The other is the water and soil adaptation faction.

It is believed that only the south can open convenience stores, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou... A few convenience stores, not to mention Hebei, even Beijing is a famous convenience store desert.

Before the problem of 36524, the full-time closure of Beijing's leading convenience store, which had more than 800 stores at its peak, is the best proof of this.

But instead of complaining about the environment, let's take a look at the real king of convenience stores, what is the essence?

Many convenience stores that have failed or have always developed mediocre have done very poor work in product selection and supply chain.

Zhang Sheng, who used to be the vice president of Lawson, once revealed that fresh food is the best-selling product of Lawson, accounting for about 40% of the store.

In 7-11, FamilyMart also revealed that fresh food only accounts for 4% of the store's product categories, but contributes more than 60% of the turnover and 60% of the gross profit margin.

Oden and rice balls for 7-11; coffee and bento boxes for the whole family; Lawson, who was the latest to enter various cities in China, relied on exclusive desserts to become the traffic password of many food and broadcast exploration stores.

But 36524 has no other selection advantages other than pancakes, and its price is more expensive than other supermarkets - it used to survive without competitive pressure, but once these outsiders entered, the problem was exposed.

Another awkward local convenience store, EasyJet, is backed by Sinopec.

It used to open 4,000 stores every year, which is equivalent to completing the number of stores that Lawson has opened in China for more than 20 years.

Since then, Sinopec has proposed to take the non-oil business with Yijie as the core as the focus of future development, not only arranging special funds for this business, but also recruiting major brands to settle in, such as bringing Kweichow Moutai to sign a cooperation agreement to introduce national liquor into Yijie convenience stores.

Today, there are more than 27,000 stores, but their presence is still not high.

In terms of products and services, the selection and supply chain are not accurate enough; When it comes to differentiation, it's hard to find a reason to go.

Nowadays, not only the wages of 36524 employees cannot be paid, but many people in the group are still in arrears. For the crisis of Hebei 365 Group, state-owned assets will obviously not sit idly by, and there has been an entry action.

But no matter who the big guy is behind him, if he wants to do a good job in the convenience store business, he must re-examine his current opponents:

In addition to eating the old book, you have to take strong medicine as soon as possible.

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