Resumption: behind the "secret war" of local logistics is the new growth pole of China's logistics industry

The following article comes from Wuji of Finance and economics, by Xiao Tian

Source / financial Wuji (ID: caijwj)

Author / Xiao Tian

On this may day, sun Xinliang ran the shortest distance, because the single range was in Kangying home, Sunhe Township, but it seemed that he ran the longest distance.

Due to the impact of the epidemic, Kangying home, Sunhe Township, Chaoyang District, Beijing has taken sealing and control measures. After sun Xinliang delivered more than 700 backlog orders, he was originally a courier. He became a "distributor" and was busy delivering guaranteed supplies for residents.

In Shanghai after the closure, the delivery clerk Zhou Xizheng was working as a "courier".

When the delivery of daily necessities and online shopping goods is slow, people choose to buy daily necessities, digital cosmetics and other products through takeout. The 25-year-old Anhui man gets up at 6 a.m. every day and goes to bed in the early morning to provide as many distribution services as possible for the people sealed up at home. He has lost 5 kilograms in two months.

Since 2020, affected by local prevention and control policies, the epidemic has inevitably impacted cross city transportation, and traditional e-commerce has been difficult to meet the emergency needs of clustering for various reasons. The delivery personnel in the city have become the key to alleviate the logistics bottleneck during the sealing and control period.

Take out riders and distribution stations in batches, and stay at the distribution posts. In order to get through the "last kilometer" of material supply guarantee, it has assumed the role of supply guarantee transportation.

In the list of National May Day Labor award and national worker pioneer in 2022 just released, meituan takeout Shanghai Longchang Road station and hungry Shanghai xingguangyao takeout station won the "National worker pioneer" for the first time in history.

Whether sun Xinliang or Zhou Xizheng, in essence, the change in the nature of their work is actually an epitome of the new development trend of China's logistics industry - the demand for intra city logistics is growing.

01

Demand "stars in the sky",

Why do you say that the future is "the king of the same city"?

"The new Ximei is of excellent quality!" In a small fresh food store in Taiyuan, the Tiktok merchant "guojidou" walked and stopped with his mobile phone, introduced the newly arrived fruits to the "family" in the live broadcasting room, and began to pick up, pack and paste the newly printed Shunfeng City invoices.

"In the past, everyone bought by looking at photos. The quality of the goods depends on luck. Now everyone looks at me to pack and deliver goods on site. My friends in Taiyuan guarantee that you can eat fresh fruit in an hour on average!" Since its opening, the sales volume of "guojidou" on the Tiktok platform has reached 158000.

In recent years, head short video platforms have deployed live e-commerce business, and the live delivery market has ushered in rapid growth. However, ordinary merchants such as "fruit season beans" and "non flow" online celebrities show good carrying capacity.

The reason is that the emergence of new retail formats has virtually increased the demand for local logistics. The same city logistics also allows merchants and online celebrities to gradually build core barriers and become a "new force" with goods that can not be underestimated.

In fact, there is not only the live broadcast and delivery industry, but also the local logistics industry.

In March this year, meituan and Xiaomi reached a cooperation and launched a flash purchase service to get home as fast as half an hour, bringing users the speed of buying mobile phones as fast as ordering takeout.

From 2 hours to deliver the iPhone to the door, to place an order in the live broadcasting room for 1 hour Under the explosive demand of local logistics, takeout brother and rider brother also once became "Top Men's Troupe", and many netizens joked that they were "modern food and clothing parents".

But in fact, before the epidemic, based on the huge real-time logistics demand in the field of local life services, local logistics has forked from the traditional logistics industry into a new "golden track".

As early as 2008, taking Cao Cao's errand as the starting point of development, then Renren express, dada, flash delivery and Mr. Feng were successively established, mainly focusing on the errand mode to serve the landing distribution demand, which is the "embryonic period" of local logistics;

After 2015, takeout o2o promoted the industry to enter a "high-speed development period". From the self built logistics platform of meituan, hungry Yao and Baidu takeout, to the merger of Jingdong home and dada, hungry Yao's strategic cooperation with dianwoda, and then to the launch of real-time logistics business by SF and Yuantong, all participants have entered the development stage;

Since 2018, China's local logistics industry has entered a "mature period". At this stage, the orders and scale of the real-time logistics industry have shown a stable and rapid growth trend.

In particular, the epidemic accelerated the cultivation of users' consumption habits of intra city distribution services. With the growth of catering takeout and real-time retail, these constitute a new growth pole of intra city logistics.

On the one hand, with the change of consumers' consumption habits, the categories of real-time distribution and errands are constantly expanding, and the coverage scene is also gradually expanding.

For example, the distribution category of meituan distribution has expanded from the initial catering takeout to fresh food, supermarkets, flowers, drugs and other fields, and the service objects have also expanded from platform businesses to non platform businesses.

On the other hand, the Internet retail market is changing from "everything store" to "everything now".

Compared with traditional supermarket stores and e-commerce, the front warehouse cuts into the user's real-time consumption demand in terms of "fast" and "good". Both the old e-commerce giants, new retail species and traditional retail giants realize that the local logistics ability is the key to determine the real-time retail experience.

In other words, the high synergy between catering takeout and real-time retail growth is becoming a trend. It is not difficult to explain why intra city logistics is a trillion level cake.

According to frost Sullivan data, the scale of local logistics market in mainland China increased from 893.1 billion yuan in 2017 to 1319.9 billion yuan in 2021, and is expected to continue to increase to 2300.8 billion yuan in 2026.

All this also means that in the era of real-time retail, consumer demand is connecting the "stars" of local logistics. Intra city logistics is becoming a new trend in the development of logistics industry.

02

"Distribution + supply",

The "interstellar compass" scrambled by giants

The popular track of intra city logistics is not the only one with "unique scenery" in China.

Over the past two years, large takeout platforms in the United States have also ushered in a golden period of development. Due to the influx of a large number of orders and the increasingly fierce competition, the main players try to pursue the terminal "efficiency" from the terminal "distribution + supply" in order to seize the market share.

For example, grubhub cooperated with 7-11 to build more than 3000 front warehouses to provide warehousing and distribution services for selected goods on 7-11; Deliveroo cooperates with the chain distributor super Waitrose and relies on the self built front warehouse of deliveroo to provide on-line service in 10 minutes.

Objectively speaking, intra city logistics capability is not the continuation of e-commerce logistics. It has completely different systems, requirements and modes. The pursuit of intra city delivery is inseparable from the building of distribution capacity and supply capacity.

For the logistics industry in the same city, the diversity and immediacy of customer needs and the more efficient and convenient logistics services are undoubtedly great challenges.

At the same time, due to the great potential of the local logistics market, there are many new models and new enterprises, and the undercurrent has been surging under the water.

At present, players in the field of intra city logistics are mainly divided into three categories: one is the takeout distribution platform represented by meituan distribution and Hummingbird; One is the vertical distribution enterprises represented by dada and flash delivery; Another is the cross city logistics companies represented by SF and Yuantong.

In order to compete for the same market, players from all walks of life have "Eight Immortals crossing the sea and each shows his magic power" in the "distribution and supply".
Specifically, SF is mainly positioned in the high-end market in the same city. From the perspective of the choice of cooperative merchants, including UNIQLO, Chow Tai Fook, Sephora and other chain brands, rely on these customers and business flows to maintain their customer unit price in the medium and high-end market, but the supply capacity of business flows is relatively weak;

Dada is a force that cannot be underestimated in the same city logistics. It is characterized by stable customer orders with large platforms such as Jingdong home and Jingkelong. This is a virtuous circle pattern. Jingdong home delivers more distribution needs for dada express delivery, and dada provides performance services for Jingdong home, which helps Jingdong home attract more retailers and brands to join.

Last year, dada express also released the panorama of "warehouse picking" full link real-time performance service, striving to provide integrated real-time distribution solutions for supermarkets. Out of a characteristic mode of "business flow + logistics" two wheel drive;

In addition, meituan distribution has great competitive strength in the current local logistics field. This is mainly related to three factors:

First, meituan distribution has more than one million active riders per day (with a total number of more than 5 million), which are the basis of terminal performance system, distribution timeliness and door-to-door stable delivery; Secondly, backed by the large flow pool of local living services, the rich categories provide a strong supply capacity from catering, fresh vegetables to super convenience;
Finally, meituan has accumulated scientific and technological advantages since the launch of takeout business in 2013. At the software level, the self-developed real-time distribution system can realize the optimal matching of each section; At the hardware level, meituan actively carries out research on automatic distribution vehicles, takeout cabinets and other products to supplement the terminal transport capacity.

In other words, the advantageous distribution capacity itself, together with the rich supply side, technological innovation and strength, constitute the potential of meituan's first mover advantage in distribution.

However, different from the competition pattern of the express industry, the local logistics field is attracting more new players. If you want to capture the "stars in the sky" and share the cake, you still need each platform to find its own "interstellar compass".

03

Openness, cooperation and win-win results,

The goal of intra city logistics is "star sea"

In on truth, the philosopher protagra put forward a classic saying: "man is the yardstick of all things. When man exists, all things exist, and when man does not exist, all things do not exist." The same applies to retail.

In the retail industry, the core of all changes is to make goods closer to "people". Consumers don't care where the goods are, they only care when they arrive.

In the past, no matter the OV of the mobile phone industry, or the catering giants such as the traditional super giants and Starbucks, their trump card to win the market is to continuously open more stores, get close to consumers and capture a large number of users.

Jingdong, Alibaba and other major e-commerce companies have also been trying to do one thing for many years: establish or dispatch more warehousing, logistics vehicles and distributors to ensure that the goods are close enough to consumers.

In the current era of real-time retail, the intra city logistics characterized by real-time, regional and point-to-point is constantly shortening the distance between goods and users and reducing the waiting time. Whether it comes to the door or to the store, it is faster than traditional stores or traditional e-commerce.

From this perspective, intra city logistics has improved the experience of consumers, improved the efficiency of the supply chain and reduced the inventory pressure of merchants, which is bringing new changes and reconstruction to the retail format.

As Cui Zhongfu, vice president and Secretary General of China Federation of logistics and procurement, said, "today's new format of real-time distribution has the ability to force business innovation, reconstruct the format mode and optimize the efficiency of the supply chain."

In fact, the players of intra city distribution have already begun to take action.

Born in the same city of cross city logistics, SF has set its sights on relatively low-frequency consumption scenarios, created customized solutions such as "SF + warehousing" and "SF + cold transportation", and cut into multiple market segments.

Dada express, which focuses on the real-time distribution of supermarkets, has joined hands with JD logistics and white rhinoceros to create an unmanned distribution ecology under the real-time consumption scenario of supermarkets. At present, the normalized application has been realized in the real scenes of supermarkets such as Qixian supermarket and Yonghui supermarket. Consumers can enjoy the "hourly delivery" experience of unmanned distribution by placing orders through real-time retail platforms such as JD home.

Since its launch as an independent brand in 2019, meituan distribution, with a more mature layout, has opened its real-time scheduling system capability to more merchants and partners to connect the upstream and downstream of the industry.

From the supply side, the experience and cost advantages established by meituan distribution relying on takeout business are being expanded to more categories and businesses of different levels inside and outside the platform.
At the same time, through the digital marketing activities such as online full reduction and distribution reduction of meituan platform, preferential support for new store traffic and other forms, the brand is drained. Achieve business flow, logistics coordination and win-win cooperation with brand merchants. Help businesses improve their operating efficiency and comprehensively increase their business scale and the number of stores.

From the demand side, consumers began to get used to the consumption behavior of "reaching what they want" and "everything comes home". Meituan distribution continues to expand its service scope, including fresh home distribution, supermarket retail, medical distribution, errand service, etc. the application scenarios are gradually expanded to all aspects required by residents' life and become an important part of near-field e-commerce performance.

In essence, intra city logistics is a transaction around time cost. Whoever can solve the user's pain points can maximize the commercial value.

As the next trillion level track, the cake can not be bigger without an open, cooperative and win-win local logistics grid system. How to connect more goods and merchants, provide better services for service merchants and consumers, and realize the mission of "delivering the world to you" is inseparable from the joint participation of players such as meituan distribution, SF city and dada express.

Competition helps the industry progress and cooperation brings win-win results. Obviously, with the continuous deepening of the head players, the local logistics industry is ushering in wonderful and profound changes and sublimation.

Source / financial Wuji (ID: caijwj)

Author / Xiao Tian