When the urn is eyeing the nest

原创首发 | 金角财经（ID: F-Jinjiao)

Author | Yingbao

Although the nest is always scolded, it is the first time that it is tied to the urn on the hot search.

The cause of the incident was a blogger who posted that it doesn't matter if he can't afford a cemetery, "put the urn in the nest express cabinet, only 55 yuan a year". This remark was originally intended to ridicule modern people for not even having the money to deal with the afterlife, but I didn't expect the focus of netizens to be biased, and they played stalks:

"It's not that the cemetery can't afford it, it's that the nest is more cost-effective." "Last night, my dad gave me a dream, saying that there are always people next door who open and close the door, it's really noisy."

Hive Hive customer service immediately refuted the rumor that every week, there will be couriers to clean up the stranded items in the express locker, and Hive Hive also has a clear requirement that "ashes and other items cannot be put into the cabinet", and what the paragraph said will not happen.

Inexplicably involved in the underworld business, Fengchao is a proper wronged boss this time. But from another point of view, this reveals a more heart-wrenching fact: netizens even make memes, subconsciously regard the nest as a locker.

In recent years, Hive Nest has been defeated one after another, first standing on the opposite side of public opinion, insisting on charging overtime fees, and then playing cross-border, trying to fill the deep hole left by the main express business with peripheral business, resulting in a more and more crooked business road.

The former "king of express delivery" is not far from leaving.

Hive Nest: Happiness is someone else's

The twins of e-commerce and logistics are still running.

According to data from the Ministry of Commerce and the State Post Bureau, online retail sales in mainland China increased by 11% year-on-year to 15.42 trillion yuan, accounting for almost one-third of the total retail sales of consumer goods, and the express delivery business volume in mainland China increased by 19.4% year-on-year to 132.07 billion pieces in 2023.

The development trajectory of the nest express cabinet, which is deeply engaged in the "last mile of logistics", should go hand in hand with the above-mentioned industries, but from the data of recent years, it has deviated from expectations.

Hive Hive Technology emerged in 2015 in the context of insufficient capacity due to the over-speed development of e-commerce, and was jointly invested and established by five logistics companies: SF Express, Yunda, Shentong, Zhongtong and GLP. The cost of the express locker business is high from the beginning, involving expenses such as hardware, operation and maintenance, entry fees, rent, etc. It is estimated that the annual operation and maintenance cost of a smart express cabinet is about 100,000 yuan. However, at that time, the market generally believed that it could rely on a huge delivery volume to run through the profit model, so it continued to increase its investment. After Hive Hive completed Series A financing in 2017, the shareholding ratio of SF Express and its affiliates increased from 35% to 38.68%.

However, public data shows that from 2016 to 2020, Hive Nest has lost money year after year, with a cumulative loss of more than 2 billion yuan.

When it incurred a loss in the first year, Hive Hive attributed the main cause to a lack of scale, so it burned further and started a full-scale expansion strategy. According to the data of the State Post Bureau, in 2019, there were 406,000 sets of smart express cabinets in the country, of which 170,000 groups were nests, with a market share of about 42%, and this data reached a peak of 70% in 2020 with the acquisition of Express Easy.

Looking at it now, the scale effect has not manifested itself in Fengchao, but has dragged down suppliers.

Zhilai Technology is a supplier of smart express boxes, self-service electronic lockers and other products, mainly serving customers such as Hive Nest in China and Amazon overseas. Its annual report shows that in 2023, its revenue will decrease by 53.02% year-on-year to 410 million yuan, deducting a non-net profit loss of 11.97 million yuan, turning from profit to loss. Among them, due to the decline in domestic demand for smart express box equipment, the proportion of revenue in this category to the company's total revenue will drop from 83.62% in 2022 to 68.34% in 2023, a decrease of 15.28 percentage points in one year.

In the past few years of burning money and expanding, even several start-ups such as Shentong, Yunda, Zhongtong and GLP have withdrawn from the list of shareholders of Hive Hive on the grounds of "high capital expenditure", and SF Express has transferred 15.86% of Hive Hive's equity.

It is true that Hive Hive bets on the wrong way of thinking, even if the proportion of the express cabinet track is high, it is only playing with itself in a small circle, and ignoring that the larger logistics storage market has been seized by the post station.

As of June 30, 2023, Cainiao Post Station has more than 170,000 post stations; The number of rabbit joy stations under Zhongtong exceeds 80,000. The convenience that the express cabinet can provide, the post station can provide. At the same time, the post station solves the problem of "hard to find a cabinet" and the urgent storage space for couriers, and alleviates the problem of "overtime fee superposition" for consumers, which quickly becomes the new favorite of the "last mile" track.

"The delivery cabinet is more troublesome than the post station, it needs to be delivered one by one, the efficiency is very low, and when there is a large number of orders in the past few years, you have to grab the cabinet early in the morning, and there are a lot of large items, and the express cabinet can not be put down at all." A courier once mentioned in an interview that he will now give priority to the delivery station. Another consumer, who often shops online, said: "Usually when I am not at home at work, I always ask the elderly at home to help pick up the delivery. Go to the express cabinet to pick up the code and scan the code, the elderly often do not operate, go to the post station to pick up the mobile phone number directly. ”

The data shows that the cost of courier drop-off contributes up to 50% of Hive Hive's revenue. With the loss of this group's nest, it is easy to understand the successive losses.

According to the report of "Times Finance", in the past year, Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, Haikou and other places have issued a number of express cabinet withdrawal notices, involving brands such as Fengchao and Express Easy, most of the reasons are expressed as "the use rate of express cabinets is low", so they choose not to renew the contract after the expiration of the contract.

The "Measures for the Administration of the Express Market", which will be officially implemented on March 1, 2024, has further extinguished the business dream of Hive Hive. According to the new regulations, express delivery companies will face a fine of less than 30,000 yuan if they use smart express boxes, express service stations and other ways to deliver express mail without the consent of users.

Although the post station has also been affected by the new regulations, based on the difference in business models, the degree of damage is far less severe than that of Fengchao. The post station mainly takes the franchise model, and the franchisee can adjust the operation mode according to local conditions within a certain range to avoid some regional risks, and there is no need for too large capital pool support for the parent company; Hive Hive adopts a self-operated model, which is less sensitive to special risks, and the capital cost of manipulating the market also needs to be more.

What's more, behind the "big brother" rookie post station of the post station track is Ali, and logistics companies such as SF, Shentong, Yuantong, Zhongtong, and Yunda are also its founders. The orders generated by Ali's e-commerce platform and the "resources" of major logistics companies are the guarantee of rookies. In the 2021-2023 fiscal year, Cainiao's revenue from Alibaba will be 15.423 billion yuan, 20.614 billion yuan, and 21.901 billion yuan respectively, accounting for 29.2%, 30.8%, and 28.2% of Cainiao's total revenue in the same period. It can be said that Ali is here, and the competitiveness of rookies is there.

In the thriving logistics market, happiness is someone else's, and it has nothing to do with the nest.

However, it was also his own demon that was rejected by the couriers and consumers collectively.

The life of a nest demon

The overtime fee rule, which is repeatedly scolded, is the beginning of resentment.

In 2020, in order to hedge the loss, Hive Hive unilaterally announced that it would charge non-member users who were stranded in the express mail at 0.5 yuan for more than 12 hours - this "smart way" to transfer the loss to consumers to bear.

The owners of the community first expressed their dissatisfaction, and the Hangzhou Dongxinyuan Community Committee announced the suspension of the use of nest cabinets, and many communities such as Hangzhou and Shanghai also issued notices of deactivation; The China Consumers Association and the State Post Bureau also came out to "scold" Fengchao, saying that "there should be no separate charges within a reasonable storage period".

Under the pressure of public opinion, Hive Hive will extend the free storage time from 12 hours to 18 hours, and charge 0.5 yuan for every 12 hours after overtime, with a cap of 3 yuan. At the end of the day, they are still reluctant to give up the charge.

Fengchao, which is equipped with e-commerce, thought that the express cabinet was just needed for consumption, but he didn't know that he was just Plan B in the context of insufficient capacity. After all, if you can get the courier to deliver it to your door, who wants to go downstairs to get the delivery? Besides, the courier fee has already been paid, so why should you give an extra "overtime fee"? The courier company has a similar idea, if there are enough couriers, who wants to give extra money to the courier cabinet?

Consumers are naturally not used to it.

In 2022, a consumer took Hive Nest to court. The reason for the incident is that the courier put the express into the nest express cabinet in the community without his consent, although the nest sent a pickup text message, but the text message only has a pickup code, and does not inform that overtime will be charged. In the early morning of the next day, the consumer suddenly received a reminder text message that he was about to overtime, but it was too late for him to go out, so he could only watch the overtime fee stack up little by little.

In addition to setting this "" timeout line, Hive Nest also sets a limit on "free". The above-mentioned consumer once called Hive Hive customer service and asked him to help open the cabinet for free, but the other party refused on the grounds that he was "not in customer service working hours".

According to the results of a survey initiated on the basis of this case, among the 481 social samples, 32.54% of the respondents said "not prompted", 37.57% said "prompted", and 29.89% said "did not pay attention" to whether they were reminded of the free storage period when they received the pickup SMS; Only 24.28% of the respondents knew about the 18-hour free time, and 31.88% said that they had "always defaulted to 24 hours, but now they know that it is 18 hours". As for the charging standard of Hive Nest, 38.77% of the respondents said they did not know about it.

In the end, the court ordered Hive Hive to refund the consumer 1 yuan. It was not until April 2024 that Hive Hive officially launched the new notification module on its official WeChat official account and pickup SMS interface nationwide to inform the free storage period and charging standards.

For 5 cents, Hive Hive is completely on the opposite side of the user. However, the court's decision did not stop him from acting as a demon.

In June 2024, there will be a wide range of complaints on the Internet again, pointing to the SMS bombardment behavior of Hive Hive - "Your storage, there is still half an hour of timeout, and you will incur a fee." "Your storage has run out of time, please pick up the items as soon as possible and end it, overtime will be charged." Some netizens said that they felt the yin and yang weirdness of Fengchao: "It seems to say, hey, didn't you say that you wanted to remind you of the charges, I will mention it repeatedly." ”

From another point of view, this is a last resort for Hive Nest to reduce storage behavior. With the market being preempted by the post station, the function of the express cabinet to the storage has become an established trend, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, published in the "China Storage and Transportation" magazine review article "Don't look at the express cabinet as an express cabinet" pointed out that storage is a good entry point for the transformation of the express cabinet, the investment will not be too high, and the market demand is large.

However, Hive Hive did not accept this transformation and drove away this business audience by charging high storage fees. According to media reports, Hive Nest's storage service costs 7 yuan for one hour of overtime, which is 14 times that of the temporary storage courier service.

If this continues, the nest will soon not even be ranked on the storage track.

The more transformed, the more biased

In fact, Hive Hive has already tried the road of transformation to stop losses, but it has always failed on the issue of "rushing to make money and neglecting supervision", which further erodes the brand favorability.

Advertising should be the most secure derivative business, and various commercial entities such as elevators, subways, and building properties have layouts for this. However, in 2022, Hive Hive was accused of advertising and diversion for illegal fundraising projects. According to media reports, an Internet investment advertisement jumped by Hive Nest, and the product was described as quite tempting, such as "the income can reach 15-50 times that of the bank's current account", "the project guarantees principal and interest, and 38 yuan will be given when registered", but after investigation, the financial platform behind this product has no financial management qualifications and the company's main system is counterfeit, which is purely a fraud platform.

Beijing Business Daily even used the phrase "many non-financial companies are ready to move on the diversion business just by virtue of their traffic advantages, which makes the business involved in the financial marketing business very complicated" to accuse Hive Hive of unprofessional behavior in advertising review.

Another cross-border contactless cleaning and care business, Hive Hive has also had similar problems. This business includes general cleaning and care of clothes and shoes, as well as professional cleaning and cleaning such as dry cleaning and washing. After placing an order in the Hive Nest Mini Program, consumers put the clothes into the bound cabinet compartment, and a staff member will collect and send them for washing, and then send them back to the express cabinet after washing.

This move was once seen as a sign of Hive Hive's entry into the life service track and its head-on relationship with platforms such as Meituan, but before the splash was aroused, the complaints came first.

In April 2024, the matter of "8,000 yuan Bosideng goose down jacket will disappear after being allocated to Fengchao for cleaning at home" became a hot search, and consumers demanded compensation for the original price, but the customer service said that the maximum compensation was 2,000, plus 69 yuan for laundry.

According to a social statistics released by Zhongshan Daily, from October 2023 to May 2024, the Zhongshan 12345 hotline received a total of 162 complaints from citizens about the "Hive Nest Cleaning Service", including problems such as staining or damage to clothes and shoes after washing, and loss of sent clothes. At the same time, a number of citizens said that they had called Hive Hive customers as soon as possible, but they did not get feedback on the processing results, and the lost clothes were not recovered.

After being exposed, Hive Hive's response was that "the cleaning and care factory and logistics system are under pressure during the peak season".

According to Hong Yong, an associate researcher at the Institute of E-commerce of the Ministry of Commerce, generally speaking, express service providers across borders adopt an asset-light model, that is, cooperate with professional manufacturers to enter new fields. In other words, the cleaning and care work is carried out by a third-party manufacturer. Hive Hive's response is actually a self-debunking fact that it is unable to screen, manage and supervise third-party manufacturers across borders, and it is unable to guarantee the quality of service.

At the moment when the express cabinet outlet is no longer available, what Hive Hive has to do is to find out the differentiation with the post station, and at the same time ease the relationship with consumers, such as with the help of canceling or lowering the overtime fee, after all, the most direct method is also the most sincere, rather than squeezing into the track that you are not familiar with, and ending up with a result of "doing more and making more mistakes".

The reputation of the nest is no longer good, and if it continues, I am afraid that I will not even be able to catch up with the popularity of the urn joke.

Resources:

Golden Horn Finance "New Regulations Introduced, Rookies Are Confused"

Deep dive atom "Nest, gradually losing yourself? 》

Zhengguan News "Quietly withdrawn, why is the smart express cabinet not fragrant?" 》

Business Magazine The Nest: Where to Place? 》