Fresh e-commerce is definitely a big market, and investors from all sides are competing for this field. Despite the rapid development of the industry in recent years, due to the bottleneck of the cold chain logistics capacity, the industry always has the problem of “both supply and demand, and poor circulation”. The industry generally believes that the fresh e-commerce industry has entered the most dangerous stage of reshuffle, and a large number of capital players are caught in the bottleneck, and in 2018 will become the golden age of fresh e-commerce to turn into a profit.
In recent years, the fresh e-commerce industry has developed rapidly. Especially since 2015, fresh e-commerce has become one of the main battlefields for various hegemony. The investment in each channel can be described as “wind and cloud”: Jingdong leads the investment in the orchard; Ali layout Fruit Net; COFCO I bought the network to complete the C round of financing, and then get the investment amount of about 200 million US dollars including Baidu and Taikang Life Insurance. For a time, fresh e-commerce has really become a popular outlet.
According to the data compiled by the Prospective Industry Research Institute “China Fresh E-commerce Industry Solution and Investment Report”, there are currently more than 4,000 fresh e-commerce companies in China, and many industry enterprises have cut into the fresh e-commerce market from different dimensions. In the first half of 2017, the scale of China's fresh e-commerce transactions was 85.14 billion yuan. It is expected that the market size of China's fresh e-commerce market will reach 165 billion yuan by the end of 2017.
However, due to high cost and inadequate refrigeration chain logistics system, more than 4,000 fresh e-commerce companies are only 1% profitable, and the remaining 4% are flat, 88% loss, and 7% huge losses.
Although fresh e-commerce frequently “closes”, fresh e-commerce is still considered to be the last blue ocean of e-commerce. At present, the penetration rate of fresh e-commerce in China is only about 1%, compared with 20%-30 of clothing. % penetration, there is still a lot of room for development. There is a trillion scale of fresh food, and even if it has a penetration rate of 10%, there is still a huge space of 100 billion.
In the face of the swaying of the business model of fresh e-commerce, the failure of corporate losses, and where is the future of fresh e-commerce?
The cooperation between fresh e-commerce and traditional fresh-keeping enterprises may be a way out. The pure e-commerce platform can no longer meet the shopping needs and shopping habits of current users, and the cooperation between fresh e-commerce and traditional enterprises can quickly make up the short-term offline.
In addition, logistics and transportation are the key to the development of the e-commerce industry. Without the support of the improved logistics system, the development of the e-commerce industry will not triumph. Therefore, the current strengthening of the cold chain transport capacity has become the most affectionate and urgent call for fresh e-commerce companies.
In general, the fresh e-commerce market is still in the process of rapid growth, and the pattern has not been established. The cold chain logistics capability is one of the core competitiveness of fresh e-commerce, and it has become a battleground for military strategists. For the competition of fresh e-commerce, it is a comprehensive strength competition that combines the capabilities of cold chain logistics, capital support and user operations.
