China’s ＂hottest＂ supermarket is an e-commerce, which once attracted Ma Yun and Lei Jun to study.

Original Liu Yiqi Dianshang Online

Text | Liu Yiqi

Editor | question

How much the "business super top flow" Fat Donglai is loved by netizens, a paragraph that has been circulating on the Internet can be seen. Some netizens asked: What is the biggest problem of Fat East? The following answer is: there is no branch in my city.

Nowadays, the purchase of products from fat east in different places has finally come into reality from the ideal. Recently, many netizens found that Fat Donglai, who has always been "high-profile", quietly opened an online mall.

The entrance to the mall is extremely secret. Search for the keyword "Fat Donglai" on WeChat, and the "Fat Donglai Department Store Merchant" applet has been unable to enter, showing "For internal use only, you need to have an internal account to log in". According to media reports, on March 13th, there was a server strike because there were too many people paying attention to the search. If curious consumers want to have a quick look, the quickest way is to click on the official WeChat official account of "Fat Donglai" and jump in.

In fact, the online mall channel of Fat Donglai WeChat was launched as early as last March. But in publicity, the company is extremely low-key. In addition to WeChat, another officially certified online channel is "Fat Donglai Tik Tok Mall", which was officially launched in December 2002.

As a shopping mall with its own traffic, Fat Donglai has always been a frequent visitor on hot search. There are many reasons why it attracts the attention of netizens, such as "super cost-effective goods", "working environment that advocates not working overtime" and "extreme service". But Yu Donglai, the founder, has always carried out the principle of "never stepping out of Henan Province". The 13 stores from Pangdong are located in Xuchang and Xinxiang, and even did not enter Zhengzhou, the provincial capital with a larger population base.

Many people call Fat Donglai "the sea fishing in the business world". Not long ago, Haidilao, which has always adhered to the direct mode, played a new card to join. With the development of online shopping malls, can the fat east who advocates only regional operation open up new markets online?

Fat East to open an online shop, cautious and restrained.

"Can I buy tea in the online mall?" "Is it possible to buy moon cakes in the future without queuing?" "Finally, you don’t have to look for a purchase!" When I heard that Fat Donglai launched an online mall, many netizens expressed their feelings.

However, when you click on the online mall from Fat East, the page that jumps out may disappoint many netizens in different places. When we set the delivery address in Hangzhou, we could only place an order for more than ten products.

Except for two books related to corporate culture, most of the others are supermarket self-operated products with the label "DL". On the shelves, there are no short-term guaranteed desserts and cooked foods, and there are no cost-effective drugs and tea, only standardized products, such as detergent, liquor and peanut oil. The delivery address of the product is the comprehensive production base of Pangdonglai Industrial Park in Xuchang.

When we switch the receiving address to Xuchang or Xinxiang, we can obviously see that the goods are much richer. In addition to Jiaqing paper products, household department stores and leisure snacks, the category also includes short-term fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, eggs, aquatic products and cooked food baking. Although under the banner of "online shopping mall", the main business here is still the near-field business with offline shopping malls as the radiation core.

Caution and restraint in dealing with the online market are also reflected in the channel of Fat East coming to Tik Tok. The number of fans of Pangdonglai Tik Tok franchise store is as high as 2.53 million, and only 37 works are published on the platform. Among them, there are only a handful of videos related to products, most of which are the company’s external announcements and rumors.

The store only launched 7 products. However, with the popularity of the consumer market, Pangdonglai Tik Tok franchise store still achieved good results, with sales reaching 617,000. The best-selling one in the store is the self-operated liquor launched in cooperation with Baofeng Liquor Industry, showing that it has sold 20,000 copies, and this liquor even ranks second in the "50-degree liquor explosion list of Tik Tok Mall".

The "online celebrity Supermarket" in the opposite direction

Fat Donglai’s caution and restraint in business is not only reflected in the expansion of online shopping malls and offline stores, but also the same.

According to the Daily People, at the peak, there were more than 30 department stores and supermarkets from Fat East. From the traditional business logic point of view, the company should actively expand its stores at the stage of strong development momentum, which will not only make the sales volume go up a step, but also make it easier for the brand to make a sound.

Take Yonghui, a Shangchao brand which was founded at a similar time and also came out of the region, as an example. After becoming famous locally, it quickly expanded its stores and got a ride on capital. Today, Yonghui has gone out of Fuzhou, and its brand has penetrated into nearly 30 provinces and cities, with nearly 1,000 stores.

However, in 2012, Fat Donglai did the opposite and began to close stores on a large scale, leaving only 13 stores today. Some staff members have revealed that Yu Donglai, the founder, even planned to close the supermarket in Xinxiang and only do Xuchang market. There are two main reasons, one is to consider operating costs. In addition, Yu Donglai, the founder, is an entrepreneur who pays less attention to the scale of business and pays more attention to the feelings of consumers and employees.

(Yu Donglai is sharing)

Yu Donglai himself experienced a devastating fire in 1998, and since then, he has had more philosophical thoughts on life. His business philosophy is full of enlightenment, for example, the core of the enterprise is "free love" and the "altruistic principle" that he often talks about.

Lei Jun, the founder of Xiaomi, once went to the Times Square to study in Pangdonglai, and publicly stated that Pangdonglai is a god-like existence in China’s retail industry. Ma Yun, the founder of Alibaba, also compared Fat Donglai to a mirror that can reflect the shortcomings of other enterprises.

As a supermarket in online celebrity, Pangdonglai has almost become a local landmark. According to the data released by Xuchang, during the Spring Festival this year, three supermarkets, namely Angel City, Times Square and Life Square, from Pangdong received 1,163,300 tourists in just three days. According to the data of Xuchang Cultural Tourism Bureau, during the Spring Festival holiday (8 days), 11 4A scenic spots in the city received a total of about 1.273 million tourists, and the number of tourists from Fat East for only 3 days was almost the same as that of other 11 4A scenic spots for 8 days. In Henan, even many local tourism companies have launched the "Fat East Day Tour" project.

In order to buy products from Fat East, many consumers do not hesitate to increase their prices through purchasing. For example, the offline price of online celebrity moon cakes from Fat East is 29.8 yuan. Even if the price of 5 yuan is increased in the purchasing store on Taobao platform, more than 4,000 orders are still sold.

From the perspective of consumption fever, if you want to go further in the business of selling goods online, Fat East can be said to be more than enough. However, Yu Donglai himself didn’t rely on the heat to do business, and the e-commerce movement from Fat East has been very slow.

Some practitioners in the supermarket industry told E-commerce Online that in the face of the online market, offline supermarkets usually hold a very contradictory attitude. On the one hand, they hope to increase the sales of products through new channels, so as to get more rebates or lower purchase costs with brands. On the other hand, consumers’ price acceptance of products sold through e-commerce channels is usually lower, and the inconsistency of online prices will also shake and hurt the original offline customers.

Some people say that Fat Donglai has launched its own brand-Donglai Youxuan. Facing the continuous public domain traffic, it can create an online brand with more perfect products like "Oriental Selection" and "Xiao Yang Zhen Selection". Some netizens also said that if this is done, the Fat East will no longer be the Fat East.

It is difficult for online brands to enter the offline market. For Fat Dong, who is familiar with offline business, online business is not a simple matter even with traffic. The quality of products is on the one hand, how to control inventory in the face of ever-changing consumption trends? And how can we improve the logistics performance ability in far-away business? Most importantly, the instability of online business will inevitably put forward higher requirements for the company’s after-sales customer service ability.

Increasing the business of far-field e-commerce also means that the company needs to invest more, whether it is facing Taobao, JD.COM, Pinduoduo and other e-commerce platforms as a platform or making more marketing investment as a brand. For Fat East, everyone is facing great challenges.

Nowadays, the purpose of opening the online shopping mall from Fat East is not so much to increase sales, but perhaps more to divert the off-line market.

Last year, 57-year-old Yu Donglai announced his retirement in an interview, saying that he would devote his energy to building and spreading the concept of life according to his ability in the future. What fresh blood will the young management team inject into Fat Donglai? We will wait and see.

Original title: "China’s" hottest "supermarket is an e-commerce, which has attracted Ma Yun and Lei Jun to study"

Read the original text