When a customer enters the store using a mobile phone scanned code, he or she can purchase goods of his or her own choosing, settle them automatically at the counter when he or she leaves the shop and deduct the amount from the user's payment. Such a fresh experience has led to the emergence of no-man retail stores in ali baba, which have become the focus of capital attention。
It can be argued that, with the influx of large amounts of capital into the market, the commercialization process of unretailed has gradually exceeded market expectations. Between the end of june and the beginning of july alone, many companies received financing. At the same time, the unretailed concept unit has risen rapidly, with more units on the rise。
However, while the concept of unretailed sales is strong, recently the pickle box was suspended at the first convenience shop in shanghai。
In response, the official response stated that “due to technical adjustments”, normal operations would resume in the near future. On the afternoon of 11 july, the journalist called the box headquarters and the telephone was connected but never answered。
This, in turn, has led to a re-examination of the question of whether unpopularism can actually land. In interviews with journalists, analysts who do not want to be known expressed the view that, at present, the focus on unretailed is all about the new sense that the realization of untried technology has brought about, without considering whether or not it has a sustainable business model that can generate real profits。
No one's retailing into a new place
With the rapid development of mobile payments and the spread of payment terminals such as treasures and micro-intelligence, china has gradually reached the threshold of a “cash-free society”. All of this has also made it possible for no-man retail outlets to emerge。
According to the chinese securities analyst, internet giants such as amazon and alibaba have led the “new retail” boom, and the acquisition of offline physical stores has been accompanied by unretailed sales, further accelerating integration online and offline。
He stated that the lack of retail power on the internet was not of a water test nature, but a response to capital operations, such as the acquisition of entity supermarkets, and reflected a high level of acceptance of the new business of “new retailing”. Unretailed retailing, as one of the scenarios for integration online and offline, is expected to become one of the important models of “new retailing” as costs go down, such as sensors。
It is also out of appreciation of this model that uninhibited retail, represented by no-facilitating shops, has received a large influx of capital in the short term。
In the light of the latest month alone, on 25 june vakha announced a contract of purchase with deepland technology (shanghai) ltd., which is developing unincorporated retail shop technology. According to the terms of the contract, the company's payment system, the fast cat smart retail system, was to be applied to the terminal no-sale machine。
On 28 june, f5 future shop announced that it had received $30 million in investment in innovative workshop a+ rounds. It is understood that, as a 24-hour smart-no-facilitator shop that uses machine-automated combination algorithms to replace manual labour, the f5 future store has completed the pilot phase by the end of 2016。
Previously, f5 future shops had secured $2 million in angel wheels and $10 million in pre-a rounds of tcl. For its part, the company indicated that it planned to open 30 to 50 shops within three to six months。
On 3 july, the pick-up box announced the completion of the a round of financing, which amounted to more than $100 million, with the leading party being the ggv documentary capital, pioneers, source capital, silver thai capital, etc. It is understood that the project started testing in guangdong in august 2016 and landed in shanghai in early june。
The founding team stated that it was ready for large-scale production “to complete the laying of 5,000 sites within a year”
Development prospects industry disputes
The emergence of unretailed retailing has to some extent responded to the trend. According to the founders of the malay message, who are engaged in micro-intelligence, the cost of domestic labour has now doubled; the cost of land rental has risen dramatically and demographic and land dividends have been lost; and the services sector has been ageing and left unconnected. Against this background, there is a tendency for future convenience stores to become less humanized and unincorporated。
The idea of unretailed retailing has been strongly promoted precisely because it has partly addressed the “ache spots” of traditional retail sales. The president of the chinese self-sale association, shen chul-ming, also stated that, at a time when the retail industry was generally overwhelmed by labour, rents and costs, no-one-friendly shops should be the dominant trend in the future。
However, it is clear that industry is not absolutely optimistic about the prospects for unretailed development。
Supermarket distributors have indicated to journalists that consumers do not see staff in so-called “no-retail” stores, but that there is no one at the front, no one at the back, and it is equally labour-intensive。
From this perspective, the back-office management costs of unattended shops cannot be ignored。
On the one hand, while there have been savings in the human cost of the shop, back-office costs such as logistics and commodity management have not been reduced, and daily expenditures are equivalent to traditional convenience stores. However, according to data previously published by the 7-eleven convenience store, the labour cost was only 1. 8 per cent of the amount collected, and not 5 per cent of the amount collected, even when added to the rental cost of the shop。
On the other hand, in the case of last week's sudden stop at the no-man supermarket, there are reports that the temperature in the shop is too high, leading to the melting of commodities such as doughnuts and chocolates。
Although the official response stated that there was a sudden power outage of the shop's air-conditioning system, which required a shutdown, it would be back in operation at most in a week or two. However, it is not difficult to see that uninhabited shops need more property packages and more energy and funding for lights, temperature, equipment, etc。
In a recent interview with ceo chen haibo, deeplands tech stated that most of the retail outlets are not really retailed. He mentioned that a real move towards new retailing would ultimately involve the application of artificial intelligence technology to the unmanning, intellectualization and creditification of retailing。
On the other hand, according to research published by china king, sales revenues and management costs in the course of actual operations are indeed two kinds of unattended shops. First, no-facilitator shops offer a slightly lower unit price than traditional convenience stores, so consumers need to be attracted through a variety of channels. Second, management costs can be controlled if one person can maintain 6-10 uninhabited shops while maintaining a low rate of equipment depletion。
It can be said that the unattended shop industry is still in its early stages of development and that the unattended shop programme has yet to be improved in terms of technology, user experience, etc. The panda capital partner, mau san bo, stated that no-facilitator shops needed to balance costs with size income, and that profits would only emerge when no-facilitator shops developed to a certain size。
