China Business Network Tang Yan/photo
Although he is backed by CITIC Guoan Group , the Guoan Community , which has been running for three years, still cannot avoid being "deep in the quagmire" in the series of problems such as store closures, wage arrears, and layoffs.
Recently, according to Beijing Business Daily, Guoan Community has not paid wages to employees since February this year. An employee of Guoan Community Store who did not want to be named revealed that the reason for not paying wages is also very simple, "it's just that there is no money." The employee said that many employees have chosen to leave because they do not pay their wages, and Guoan community stores have also closed one by one because they cannot afford the rent or employees leave. "Last year, there were more than 100 stores in Beijing, and now there should be only more than 30 stores still in business."
has not been long since it expanded from crazy expansion to closing stores, laying off employees, and arrears of wages. Just over a month ago, Guoan Community had just aroused employee dissatisfaction due to the "laid-off staff" incident. In March this year, it was revealed that Guoan Community had laid off more than 1,000 people again, including supervisors, managers, and director-level employees. Since the end of last year, the total number of people has exceeded 6,000.
What happened to the Guoan community, which was born with a halo?
is backed by Guoan Group. The Guoan community, which is not short of funds, appears rich and powerful as soon as it was born, and has a higher starting point than ordinary entrepreneurial companies. After opening its first Guoan community store in Beijing in July 2015, Guoan Community went out of Beijing that year and quickly opened stores in cities such as Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shenyang, and Kunming. As of June last year, Guoan Community had 481 stores in eight major cities across the country.
It is worth mentioning that Guoan Community has planned to enter 100 cities across the country by 2020 and build 25,000 community stores. Now, the scale has been greatly reduced, and the goal of 25,000 stores is obviously difficult to achieve.
It is undeniable that excessive expansion has led to rapid problems in the capital chain of Guoan community. According to Guoan Group's third-quarter financial report last year, after the consolidated financial statements, its liabilities exceeded 178.297 billion yuan, with a debt ratio of as high as 80.49%. In 2017, its liabilities were 177.332 billion yuan, with a debt ratio of more than 80%.
has high debt and most stores are poorly managed. Since the second half of last year, it has begun to close stores. In just nine months, it has closed from 481 to 155 stores, of which nearly 50 stores have been closed in Beijing.
In addition to offline closing of stores and laying off employees, online business has also almost stagnated. On the Guoan Community App, many of the products that could be delivered directly by stores have already shown "shop rest" status. Some products that can be purchased are all made appointments for delivery by brands, and the delivery time basically takes more than three days. In addition, the paid membership project of "Anxin Cooperative" previously launched by Guoan Community has also shown that "online business has been suspended and adjusted". The paid membership project charges a membership fee of 199 yuan/year. It was launched in August last year. Members can enjoy shopping cashback, freight reduction and other benefits, but these benefits have been stopped before the implementation of one year.
In the industry's view, radical expansion and unclear profit model are regarded as the main reasons for the "collapse" of the Guoan community. Guoan Community CEO Zhao Chenxi also told the media before, "We walked too fast and too hurry. At that time, we only thought about opening Guoan Community stores to various communities, as long as we enter the community, and we did not carefully study the store location, store structure, and product placement." Behind this logic of
is the reason why the community is in fierce competition. Whoever can occupy more high-quality outlets seems to have a more "secure" feeling. It is undeniable that in recent years, whether it is e-commerce, physical supermarkets or various venture capital funds, they have focused on community business formats. In addition to Guoan Community, Yonghui Life, Suning Store , etc. have also been competing for speed in store expansion, but few profitable people have been making profits. The Guoan community is backed by CITIC Guoan Group and has attracted many investments from JuRan Home, China Internet Investment Fund, etc., making it seem confident in expanding, but it still can't resist the high costs brought by expansion. According to public data, Guoan Community has invested a total of 20 billion yuan in three years, and a monthly salary requires nearly 100 million yuan.
"As an outsider in the retail industry, Guoan Group has invested heavily in the community retail industry, obviously it has not done enough homework before, and has not studied the market and consumers in depth, especially the lack of understanding of the community market, which has led to the failure of the final project." An industry insider said.
In the industry's view, Guoan Community's previous operational thinking was too extensive, and it simply superimposed various services. What the community business now lacks is not the splicing of various services, but the lack of profitable business points. Judging from the current community business situation, retail business is the real value. Retail is a breakthrough that the community must make at this stage. If there is no support for retail business, there will be no profitable places, because community consumers are still more willing to pay for goods, and the frequency and expenditure of service fees are still relatively low.
Another senior person believes that in community commerce, retail commodity consumption is only the first step. Only after basic commodity retail can other value-added businesses be considered, otherwise it will be difficult to maintain basic operating costs.
(Comprehensive from: Beijing Business Daily, Finance Network, Yiou.com, 36Kr)
