China's logistics has entered the era of 3.0: what kind of story should intra city logistics tell?

Source / zinc Finance (ID: xincaijing)



Author / Chuan Chuan



Edit / gale





"Baby's milk powder is running out, and express delivery can't deliver the goods";



"There is no milk at home. Where can I buy it?"



"How long will my documents arrive at the destination?"





During the epidemic period, information about the purchase of daily necessities and material distribution was rolling in the community every day. When supermarkets, vegetable farms and other stores cannot operate normally, who will be responsible for the last few kilometers sent to residents has also become a new test question for the logistics industry.




Pick up the wire and charge the battery car. In the city, the answer to this question falls on the little brother of the rider who is common in the streets and alleys, shuttling along the road with the materials eagerly awaited by consumers.





In fact, not only during the closure period, but also in the daily life of consumers, in addition to common takeout, the transportation and distribution needs of fresh food procurement, flower distribution, material collection and delivery in the same city are being released on a large scale.





Not long ago, the topic of "takeout has been used as express" rushed to the microblog hot search, and netizens spontaneously shared under the topic: "I haven't received express for a long time, and began to use takeout as express", "I don't have time to go shopping in the supermarket, I just want to lie at home, and I can send anything to take out", "nephew, I'm about to take an exam, I'll order a set of 53 with my backhand, and the takeout will be delivered to the door".





The explosion of demand for "last mile" instant delivery and personalized distribution has given local logistics a huge potential market and development momentum. From receiving goods in 3 days to receiving goods in 30 minutes has become the core proposition to be solved by China's logistics.







01




Value and imagination of intra city logistics




The development of China's private logistics industry is inseparable from the rise of e-commerce. The 1.0 era and 2.0 era of logistics originate from the vigorous development of e-commerce.

The development of early e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and jd.com has made four links and one da the representative of cross city logistics, which is also the 1.0 era of China's private logistics. In the era of 1.0, cross city logistics represented by "four connections and one access" accounted for the vast majority of the market share. At this stage, it is more the sellers' the final say.

As consumers have higher and higher requirements for the timeliness and service of express delivery, the "next day arrival" logistics with fast and safe labels has attracted more and more attention. The "next day" logistics represented by jd.com and sf.com has pushed the logistics industry into the era of 2.0. They improve the efficiency of cross city logistics by resetting the transit warehouse and upgrading the means of transportation.



In the era of 2.0, China's logistics still takes the e-commerce industry as the starting point, and the evolution and upgrading is also to improve the logistics efficiency of cross city parts.



The rapid iteration of e-commerce logistics has actually accelerated the sharp increase in consumers' demand for intra city distribution. For example, e-commerce parts evolved from one week to three days, and then delivered to the door the next day, which also "fed" the demand of consumers for goods to be delivered immediately after placing an order.



Fundamentally speaking, neither the 1.0 era nor the 2.0 era has solved the intra city logistics demand in the city. For users, there is no quickest, only faster. A large number of demand for instant delivery is being released. Especially in the era of epidemic, new requirements are put forward for logistics distribution. The sharp increase of local logistics demand has brought new tests to the transportation capacity and technology of logistics enterprises.



Office workers often need to send documents urgently. The best way is local logistics; On a friend's birthday, send flowers and cake surprises by running errands, which can be delivered within an hour; Daily favorite takeout and snacks, moving your fingers and delivering takeout to your home are abilities that logistics 1.0 and 2.0 did not have.



The diversified needs of consumers promote the logistics to enter the 3.0 era. In the 3.0 era represented by intra city logistics, the handover stick has been handed over to enterprises represented by meituan distribution, Dada and SF intra city.



The importance of intra city distribution network as logistics infrastructure is being amplified and revealed.




02




From takeout to home



Behind the arrival of intra city logistics in front of the stage, in essence, there are quietly changes on both sides of supply and demand.



In the new era of consumption, people are more and more willing to pay for "saving time, trouble and effort". In fact, many people are not suitable to go out. Catering, fresh vegetables, supermarkets, daily necessities, mother and baby pet products... The same city logistics platform has become the best choice in people's daily life. On the one hand, it can save users' purchase time, on the other hand, it can improve the quality of life, which has become a convenient service under the current new retail economy.



Takeout is the beginning of being accepted by most people in the same city logistics service. But in fact, in addition to takeout, business needs, including catering, fresh food, supermarkets, documents, personal goods and express terminals, are gradually emerging. More large-scale local consumer services are looking for open and high-quality logistics. "Take out" has become a service model, which can not only deliver meals, but also deliver everything.



Secondly, merchants are also developing more business scenarios to meet the needs of consumers. A large number of physical stores such as catering, retail and clothing have developed the same city delivery business. For merchants, this is another business scenario.



The outbreak on both sides of supply and demand has gradually surfaced the 100 billion level market of local logistics, and the market development space is exploding. Many capital and players have also focused on this market to solve the problem of how to better, better and faster complete delivery.



In the demand scenario of intra city distribution, catering takeout accounts for a relatively high proportion. With the help of meituan and hungry takeout platforms, the increasingly mature meituan distribution and Hummingbird + point I Da began to enter the intra city logistics industry. In May 2019, meituan announced the launch of a new brand "meituan distribution" and announced the opening of the distribution platform to serve more merchants and users; Dada group relies on Jingdong home to expand its distribution business; SF Co., Ltd. is backed by SF holdings, and launched an independent brand SF Co., Ltd. in 2019.
Meituan distribution, hummingbird, Dada and SF all focus on the track developed from takeout to distribute goods for fresh food, supermarkets and various offline brand stores.



Players with similar admission time have different entry points. However, to do a good job in the same city logistics, the core capabilities are common: first, distribution capability; The second is the supply capacity, that is, the service capacity to merchants.



For example, SF is positioned in the high-end market in the same city, and the customer unit price is relatively high. SF is also a logistics enterprise rising in the era of e-commerce logistics. After carrying out the same city logistics business, a large part of its customers come from its traditional logistics business customers; Dada is characterized by stable customer orders on large platforms such as Jingdong home and Jingkelong. Its early core customers were mainly supermarkets and retail enterprises that needed o2o services, more like "little Jingdong" in the field of real-time distribution.



Meituan distribution is expanding the meal delivery capacity established over the years to more non meal fields. In 2020, meituan distribution announced to upgrade the open distribution platform and build a more open industrial chain ecology. Wei Wei, its general manager, once revealed that meituan distribution has served 6.2 million merchants in various categories, including catering, fresh food, supermarkets, bookstores and flowers.
On the basis of fast delivery, different categories of goods actually need different distribution solutions. For example, sending electronic products, paying more attention to timeliness and safety; Sending flower cakes needs to pay more attention to the collision and loss in distribution.



From delivery of takeout to fresh food, supermarkets for daily use, mother and baby department stores and digital electronics, meituan distribution has launched solutions in multiple categories to adapt to multiple timeliness, multiple scenes and multiple categories. Taking Starbucks coffee distribution as an example, meituan provides Starbucks with customized distribution services, incubators and exclusive customer teams to ensure the timeliness of distribution.
In the field of supermarkets that we are familiar with, in July last year, dada launched the "dada excellent picking" system to provide picking services for supermarkets' stores, serving all kinds of work such as order picking, commodity packaging and order delivery, and helping businesses improve efficiency in the process of picking goods.




03




Intra city logistics "acceleration"



For the current local logistics players, while providing customized distribution schemes and distribution services for businesses of different sizes and formats according to different demand scenarios, scientific and technological innovation represented by hardware facilities such as automatic distribution system is also becoming an important layout to promote the industry to further meet the needs of users and businesses.



According to media reports, during the epidemic period, meituan's automatic delivery vehicle guarantee team entered Fudan University to provide contactless delivery services for teachers and students three meals a day, contributing to the last 100 meters of delivery. Every morning, noon and evening, the car drives to each dormitory building in the school independently according to the route set in advance for distribution. At present, the distribution volume of each meal is nearly 2000 orders, and the single car can bear the distribution of more than 200 meal boxes.



At the same time, attention has been paid to the "UAV drug delivery" from Jinshan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University to the high tech Zone. It originally took half an hour to transport, but it only took 15 minutes to transport by UAV. At the same time, it can reduce the risk of cross infection among volunteers. For the performance of delivery in one hour, the last few kilometers and even the last 100 meters, local logistics is being pushed to the forefront under many scenarios.



For merchants, the rise of intra city logistics can also open up a new business model for them. With more and more distribution categories, it may stimulate the ability of more b-end merchants to create new scenes.
Not long ago, a microblog official from Lu Weibing, a partner of Xiaomi group and general manager of redmi brand, announced the cooperation between Xiaomi and meituan: more than 3000 Xiaomi homes in China have landed on meituan platform to provide real-time distribution services in the same city for products including mobile phones, smart wear, smart home, personal care and so on.



For brands like Xiaomi, traditional e-commerce has achieved "buy anytime, anywhere", but the faster "buy and use" can not be fully satisfied. After pure online and pure offline, the online and offline integration model of real-time retail and the performance ability of local logistics have opened up a new consumption scenario and brought new market space, which is a real business increment for enterprises.



During the May Day holiday, Beijing's Hall food was suspended, and takeout platforms opened takeout online green channels for catering businesses. At the same time, they all mentioned a distribution service that had not been paid attention to before - whole city delivery. After opening, merchants can expand the online business scope to more than 3km and obtain more orders within the same city.



It can be predicted that the commodity categories of intra city logistics will be more abundant next. The Internet retail market is changing from "everything store" to "everything now". More and more things consumers need daily can be delivered through "order a takeout".



Intra city logistics will also become a useful supplement to the whole logistics system. From cross city to intra city, it will jointly connect the distribution channel from merchants to users.




Source / zinc Finance (ID: xincaijing)



Author / Chuan Chuan



Edit / gale