With repeated epidemics, the "non-contact economy" has been able to heat up rapidly and become the focus of the spotlight. Telecommuting, intelligent distribution, Internet medical care, online education and other industries are all contracting the "contactless" demand, ushering in a bright moment of a sharp increase in users and business volume.
Recently, Fujian Wukong Cloud Cabinet Network Technology Co., Ltd. announced the completion of an angel round of financing of RMB 50 million. It is worth noting that this round of financing is led by JD.com and Meituan. The funds raised in this round will be used in three aspects: one is to increase investment in project research and development, and plans to launch an innovative product every year; the other is to accelerate market promotion 1. Lay more terminal service communities to quickly occupy the market. 3. Increase the construction of mass production lines.
During the epidemic, "contactless" services became popular, playing a pivotal role in the coverage and penetration depth of social production and life. Why did JD.com and Meituan, which have entered this subdivided field, take a fancy to the business of smart containers?
Smart cabinets take advantage of the momentum
Due to the increasing popularity of online shopping, sometimes the delivery staff cannot contact the customer in time and cannot complete the delivery in time, which affects the delivery efficiency of the overall express delivery, so the express cabinet came into being.
With the emergence of the epidemic, residents are isolated at home and reduce going out. A large number of daily necessities need to be purchased through e-commerce platforms. The logistics distribution network has become an important "people's livelihood channel", but there are huge risks in face-to-face pickup.
In view of this, the community smart locker is advocated as the main method of "contactless delivery". Through the drop-in and pick-up of the community smart locker, it can not only reduce the contact opportunities between residents and couriers, but also improve the efficiency of package delivery.
Since express cabinets entered the end market, they have been recognized by a large number of consumers by virtue of their flexibility, safety and convenience. According to data from iResearch Consulting, the market size of my country's smart cabinets exceeded 10 billion yuan in 2017, and will exceed 30 billion yuan by 2020.
As a solution for the "last mile" of the express delivery industry, smart express cabinets have also issued various policy support at the national and local levels. The field of smart express cabinets will usher in huge development opportunities:
. On February 6, the State Post Bureau stated at a press conference to actively promote the smart express box model.
. At the executive meeting of the State Council held on March 3, it was proposed that in order to promote the breaking of the "last mile" traffic and delivery barriers in rural areas and communities, smart delivery facilities should be included in the construction of urban and rural public infrastructure. This move can be said to open up the field of smart cabinets The "green channel" leading to the community, the problem of the layout of the community will also be alleviated.
. On the morning of March 6th, at the press conference held by the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, Liu Jun, deputy director of the State Post Bureau, said that in order to solve the "last mile" obstacles and congestion points, the State Post Bureau will promote the introduction of some specific measures to actively promote Incorporate the smart terminal construction of mail express and terminal public service stations into the scope of urban and rural public infrastructure construction.
The government has continuously introduced various favorable policies for the express terminal industry, not only providing financial subsidies, but also making an overall plan for smart express cabinets from a higher perspective.
It is not difficult to see that the epidemic has highlighted the important strategic position of the express logistics industry in the national economy and people's livelihood and economic development, and the development of smart cabinets is in line with the development direction of national industrial policies, the trend of modern logistics development, and the planning and requirements of national smart city construction.
The silent expansion of small smart cabinets has become a part of exploring new service scenarios for local life. After the price war, "the last mile of delivery" has become the focus of enterprises. to the value. As various companies continue to take root in the field of unmanned distribution, will smart containers usher in a new round of competition?
The giant's "smart container" abacus
Under the background of the development of "Industry 4.0" and "Internet +", my country's logistics industry has also ushered in intelligent upgrading and transformation. The government once issued a number of policies to promote the rapid development of "smart logistics".
Looking at the entire industry, under the epidemic situation, the market's demand for "last mile" distribution has become more and more clear.
Wukong Cloud Cabinet, which focuses on community smart containers, its flagship smart container is a new form of unmanned container, aiming to improve user consumption experience through technology. Smart cabinets are one of the current end-of-delivery methods of express delivery, and it is also one of the future trends. As the end link of a complete logistics system, setting up subway self-pickup points, community self-pickup cabinets and other methods further flexible delivery time and saved labor costs.
The strong network speed and low latency of 5G allow smart containers to put more computing power on the cloud, allowing the terminal to perform more complex tasks while being lighter, so that the cloud is the local. In this way, the cost of the product is expected to further decrease. More importantly, these containers are also equipped with a smart operation platform, which can help the platform manage smart containers easily and efficiently, and make data analysis.
At this stage, smart cabinets may only be a supplementary scene for takeaway and express delivery. But obviously the e-commerce platform does not want to use it as a cabinet for storing items.
For JD.com, once the network scale of smart containers is formed, the scale of online and offline synergy can make up for the problem of low gross profit of a single container, and can further optimize the overall shopping experience of JD Daojia; on the other hand, in terms of supply chain integration and replenishment New products, SKU selection, and user purchase experience are several important aspects. JD Daojia, which already has rich experience and advantages in the O2O field of fresh food merchants, has also made sufficient preparations, highlighting its strong strength.
The capacity pool of Meituan's millions of crowdsourced delivery personnel ensures that Meituan's smart containers can be quickly updated and replenished in a timely manner after a large number of stations are laid.
Secondly, Meituan, which is deeply involved in the food delivery industry, has accumulated relatively comprehensive user portraits and consumption big data. It has accumulated tens of millions of registered users and a transaction scale of millions of orders per month, which can help it have a relatively more comprehensive user portrait. And consumer big data, combined with the sales data fed back by each smart container, AI algorithms are used in the background to form data decisions and judge the tastes and hobbies of consumers in the region, which makes the smart container truly "smart" in terms of SKU selection and customer operation .
Looking at it at a higher level, different identities will have different considerations. For brand owners, this may bring greater sales of containers. Ele.me has a vegetable selling business, and Ali also has The community e-commerce business of Hema NB and MMC, and the large-scale distribution of takeaway cabinets, are likely to become the infrastructure reserve for new businesses, just like Cainiao Station.
At the current stage, the explosive growth of domestic e-commerce will hardly come again, and most of the remaining users are settled in the rural and offline fields. In rural areas, both the speed of expansion and the extent of growth are very limited, while offline is almost an uncultivated treasure land. If it is used properly, it is likely to bring about an explosive growth.
Smart containers that are deeply integrated into offline scenes can also accomplish some things that online JD.com and Meituan cannot. For example, natural advertising display attributes and a closer distance to users. Beautiful imagination can hardly conceal the skinny reality, and there are still many "thresholds" in the field of smart cabinets that companies need to cross.
The "threshold" to be crossed
At present, although smart containers have been further developed with the influx of many companies, the implementation of smart express cabinets is also a problem that cannot be ignored.
According to industry insiders, the cost of a smart express cabinet currently on the market ranges from 20,000 to 50,000. In addition to the cost of the cabinet, site rental fees, electricity fees, labor costs, etc. must also be paid. The main income of smart express cabinets comes from the rental fee paid by the courier, the package overstay fee paid by the recipient and advertising revenue, and the income and expenditure are not balanced. Moreover, smart express companies are still expanding, and they will inevitably continue to burn money.
On the one hand, the competition in the smart express cabinet market is fierce, and players are mainly driven by burning money; on the other hand, due to the high cost of launch, rent, post-operation costs, labor costs, and user complaints and maintenance costs, smart express cabinets are deeply in profit. There is still a long way to go to turn losses into profits.
The expansion model of smart express cabinets and smart garbage collection machines is very similar. Today, the smart garbage collection machine has become a failed project due to long-term losses. If smart express cabinet companies cannot explore a good business model and get on the right track as soon as possible, they may also face a wave of industry closures. For leading enterprises, the immediate difficulty of making profits must be solved as soon as possible.
In terms of improving the "intelligence" of smart cabinets, enterprises need to make further efforts and return to the essence of business. "The hardware manufacturing technology threshold of the smart cabinet itself is low. However, because the smart cabinet relies on the Internet of Things technology behind the identification, storage, monitoring and management of items, the technical requirements for high reliability and high stability are very high. Back to In essence, if the user experience is not enhanced, the efficiency of upstream delivery cannot be truly solved, the operation and maintenance cost of batch deployment cannot be reduced, and short-term dividends cannot be sustained.”
From a courier post station to a small smart cabinet, the shape of the commercial retail body is constantly changing, and it is difficult to say which one is the brightest path. But at the moment, it is still too early to tell the possibility of these business extensions. While taking into account high benefits, it is also extremely cost-effective, which still requires the joint efforts of players from all walks of life.
Source: New Industry Insights