Zhang Wenzhong'S Digital Transformation Can Rebuild The New Competitive Pattern?

On March 29, Wumart technology formally submitted its listing application to the Hong Kong stock exchange. According to the prospectus, the listing scope of Wumart technology includes Wumart supermarket business and the equity of Metro Sino German joint venture company acquired last year. Vice president Zhang Wen, founder of Wumart, will be the chairman of the company to be listed.

According to the financial report disclosed by Wumart, digitalization supports strong online and offline growth, and the integration of Metro has achieved initial results. Wumart's revenue increased by 71% last year. According to Wumart's financial report, the sales volume of Wumart technology in 2020 will be about 39.1 billion yuan, an increase of 71.7%. In 2020, the retail sales generated by app users account for more than 70% of Wumart's total sales.

"Wumart and multipoint dmall will accelerate our new retail transformation to ensure that Metro continues to expand in the rapidly changing and competitive Chinese market," said Claude sarrail, chief executive of Metro China Multipoint is a technology company founded by Zhang Wenzhong, founder of Wumart group, which empowers retail enterprises.

Zhang Wenzhong, founder of Wumart group and chairman of multipoint dmall, also said after integrating Metro: "we firmly believe that Wumart group and multipoint are the ideal partners of Metro Group. We have retail DNA and excellent digital advantages, have in-depth understanding of the local market, and have successful experience in integrating and developing multinational brands and improving customer experience in China. These will fully tap and realize the potential of Metro China. "

In fact, with the entry of Internet giants in the retail market, digitalization has become an important part in today's market competition. For both foreign retail giants and traditional retailers, the new situation has just begun.

Start again with Metro

In 2020, Wumart's acquisition of 80% equity of Metro China was officially completed. This means that Wumart's retail territory is further expanded.

Wumart's prospectus shows that Wumart and Metro serve the mass market, middle and high-end consumers and corporate customers with differentiated products and formats. Wumart's fresh food standardization services online and offline customers, and form an open and extensible fresh supply chain. Metro is famous for its high standard of food safety, with its own brand and imported goods accounting for 24% of the sales.

Metro is one of the top three European stores in China. Unlike Wal Mart, Carrefour and other competitors which mainly rent stores, Metro has a large number of self-sustaining properties in the Chinese market. In the fiscal year ending September 2018, Metro China had sales of 2.7 billion euro (about 20.9 billion yuan). At present, Metro has opened 97 shopping malls in 59 cities in China, with 11000 employees.

Compared with the general retail stores, Metro is more of a warehouse store mode. Data show that this kind of store combines retail and wholesale storage, which makes the store more efficient, but the user experience is poor. At the same time, Metro is characterized by to-b-based membership system, focusing more on b-end customers such as hotels, restaurants, small and medium-sized retailers and enterprise canteens.

"The so-called foreign monks recite scriptures. For a long time in the past, foreign retailing had a great influence in China, but localization and digitization are the practical problems that all foreign retail enterprises need to face under the new competitive situation. Carrefour incorporated into Suning has been closely managed by Suning since its incorporation, while Metro has maintained an independent management team. In today's competitive retail market, if we want to achieve sustained expansion, we must rely on capital support. " An analyst of a retail industry in East China told reporters of the 21st century economic report.

It is worth mentioning that this is the second landing of Wumart on the Hong Kong stock exchange. In 2003, Wumart's Wumart business was listed on the growth enterprise market of the stock exchange. In 2011, Wumart successfully transferred from the gem to the main board, becoming the first private retail enterprise in the mainland to be listed in Hong Kong. On October 20, 2015, Wumart announced the privatization and officially delisted.

Digital transformation of Veterans

The development history of the retail industry is a process in which the new and old formats are constantly integrated and changed.

Traditional retailing has made great progress in the past decade, but in recent years, it has entered a bottleneck period. The mode of physical expansion is limited, and the mode of growth through promotion in the established system is also limited. It is difficult for traditional retail to break through the inherent development mode for a time. On the other hand, the development of e-commerce has also encountered certain bottlenecks. The growth of the number of online shopping consumers tends to be stable, and the growth mode relying on the number of consumers is slightly single. E-commerce companies with capital advantages have entered the traditional retail business one after another, and the new retail business is born in the sky, hoping to realize the mutual empowerment of the two.

In October 2016, the concept of "new retail" was led by Ali and entered the public view. In a short period of two or three years, Alibaba and Tencent have divided their camps into two groups. Traditional retail giants are also passively or actively starting to "seek Prescriptions".

During this period, business innovation, capital influx and constant gimmicks have become the norm. In this new retail battle, traditional retail enterprises and foreign retail giants play different ways, but they are forced by the times to make digital changes. The first half of the e-commerce era (C2C) focuses on traffic, while the second half (B2C) competition will pay more attention to brand upgrading. Facing the bottleneck of online traffic growth, the new retail giants also began to explore the business model of demanding traffic from offline. Facing the new competitive environment, traditional giant retailers are also seeking transformation in the great changes.

Carrefour sold out to Suning soon after the news of independent IPO. On the other hand, Costco and Aldi have just entered the Chinese market, causing a stir in the market. Despite the hot start, there are still variables for retail enterprises to achieve rapid development in the current physical retail environment, and the industry competition will continue.

In fact, in recent years, great changes have taken place in the retail industry, and Wumart, an old player in the industry, has to face a new competitive situation.

From the listing application, we can see that Wumart not only emphasizes its own digital gene, but also specially indicates that it has started the second pioneering work of promoting the transformation of circulation industry with comprehensive digitalization since 2014. In order to prove the transformation, a convincing data is given, "in 2020, the retail sales generated by app users will account for more than 70% of Wumart's total sales."

Although zhandui technology company, the balance sheet and other financial data show that Wumart is still a circulation enterprise. For example, with sales revenue of nearly 40 billion yuan, the net profit margin in 2020 is only 1.9%. Such a profit structure is similar to that of supermarket enterprises in listed companies.

It is worth mentioning that on March 30, Wumart released the application form again through the official website channel, in which Zhang Wenzhong reviewed his self-report of starting his own business, unjust prison and starting again.

"I founded Wumart in 1994," he said. 2006 is the best period for Wumart's development. It was also in this year that an unjust case came down from the sky, and I was taken away for investigation on an unwarranted charge for seven years. " But he then said, "I'm still an optimist and an active fighter after the storm."

?