Unmanned supermarket, unmanned coffee machine launched in Wuhan

Can unmanned retail “turn over” after the epidemic?

Since the outbreak, in addition to some mainstream channels such as offline supermarkets and fresh e-commerce, unmanned retail has become one of the channels for people's daily necessities.

Not long ago, after the Vulcan Mountain Hospital was completed and delivered, the unmanned supermarket in the epidemic area went online immediately. It was constructed by Ali's Taoxianda and Hubei Chain Supermarket Zhongbai Warehouse. The supermarket opened 24 hours and received more than 200 customers on the first day of opening Fortunately, the unmanned coffee machine "Swiss Instant Purchase" has also been stationed in many hospitals in Wuhan. In the course of fighting the epidemic, unmanned supermarkets, unmanned distribution, and unmanned counters are particularly important.

In fact, unmanned retail was very hot as early as a few years ago, but in a short period of time, it went from instantaneous popularity to a place of feathers and then to a current of undercurrents. What is the reason for this? Where will unmanned retail go in the future?

Once glorious began in 2017

When the cost of getting traffic online is getting higher and higher, and development has almost reached the ceiling, in 2016, Amazon Go, the first unmanned experience store, opened, setting the industry first. Subsequently, domestic businesses quickly followed up. In 2017, the concept of new retail was born. Although everyone interpreted it differently, unmanned retail was quickly adopted due to the application of cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, and the gradual improvement of mobile payment and supporting facilities. Markets and capital have high hopes.

One day in May 2017, Auchan's Shanghai Yangpu store and its Chinese company headquarters quietly set up an unmanned convenience store. This store-like storefront has a trendy and internet name-Binguo Box. Since then, the curtain of unmanned retail has officially opened. At the end of June of that year, Binguo Box announced that it had obtained over 100 million yuan in Series A financing. When CEO Chen Zilin told the media about the business ideas and future goals, he said that the establishment of 5,000 outlets should be completed within one year.

His rhetoric did further stimulate the sensitive nerves of entrepreneurs, and various unmanned convenience stores opened even harder. In October 2017, JD.com opened its first unmanned supermarket, using face recognition and wireless radio frequency identification (follow-up to camera + sensor recognition) technology, to achieve unmanned shopping during the entire process.

At the same time, another form of unmanned retail, unmanned shelves, is also developing rapidly. In June 2017, the later star startups, Guo Xiaomei and Orang Convenience, were officially launched. If Xiaomei's angel round gets IDG's investment, orangutan's convenient round A financing is also led by Sequoia Capital.

According to statistics from IT Orange, a total of 93 unmanned retail events were financed in 2017, accounting for more than half of the annual investment events in the new retail sector. But no one expected that in just over a year, companies once sought after by capital had fallen like dominoes. Starting from the beginning of 2018, star companies such as Guo Xiaomei, Orang Convenience, GOGO supermarket, seven koalas, and bingo boxes have been exposed to losses and layoffs, and others have closed down. Some media even said that "the first generation of unmanned retail that happened in 2017 is dead."

Cost and technology are bottlenecks

Affected by the epidemic, under the "no-touch" appeal, unmanned retail has once again attracted market attention and has been accepted by consumers to a certain extent. But after the epidemic is over, the special scene of "no contact" will be eliminated, and some shortcomings of unmanned retail will be revealed.

In the view of Ren Feixiang, the founder of Beijing Zhuoweizhi Technology Co., Ltd., which focuses on the development of intelligent retail systems, unmanned retail has gone from hot to lonely, mainly because it is not yet possible to answer the question "Is it cheaper to buy food"?

The selling point of the early unmanned retail was to save manpower and material resources and improve efficiency. However, for the unmanned store itself, dozens of monitoring devices in the front storefront and a large number of cloud deployments in the background are not a small investment. Although the cost of offline traffic is much lower than online, unmanned stores only reduce the cost of cashiers compared to traditional stores. Replenishment, sorting, cleaning, and operation still need to be performed manually.

Xiao Yi, founding partner of Aoying Capital, believes that the large number of previous unmanned retail closures was mainly due to the high cargo loss rate. "Because its environment is open, goods are easily taken away." He analyzed, relatively speaking, Unmanned retail in closed or semi-closed scenarios is more suitable, such as unmanned convenience stores located in office areas, crowd-creation spaces and other places. As for the unmanned supermarket with a larger area, Xiao Yi said that its technology and system research and development require a lot of money.

The intelligent technology in unmanned stores is not mature, and often encounters failures such as users being unable to identify, settle, and fail to open the door. One occurrence may prevent customers from having the desire to enter the store a second time.

At the same time, people also have headaches about the tedious registration process and payment process of unmanned retail. "It is difficult for elderly people like us to operate, and there is no shopping guide in the store, and it is not convenient to find something." Aunt Wang, 56, told the Science and Technology Daily reporter.

Li Weihua, a retail expert, pointed out that practitioners should realize that the key word of unmanned retail is "retail", not "unmanned." "Many people define 'unmanned' as a keyword, so they mistake automatic payment, unattended, etc. as store highlights, but completely or greatly ignore the true meaning, curiosity and freshness of the keyword 'retail' Sense-driven business is, after all, impulsive and short-lived. "

Some experts concluded that from capital, technology, and manpower to supply chain, refined operation, and scenario value creation, each emerging industry needs stable construction of various chain links to develop in the long term. For the unmanned retail industry, both giants and startups have encountered obstacles at different stages. Therefore, in Xiao Yi's view, unmanned retail is still in the concept stage. "No matter what the retail is, the essence is to provide a better consumer experience. At present, unmanned retail can't do it," he said.

Comprehensive artificial intelligence business trend may become a trend

Nevertheless, Ren Feixiang is still bullish on unmanned retail. "After three changes in department stores, chain stores and supermarkets, the retail industry is currently undergoing a fourth revolution, which will bring humans into the era of smart commerce," he said.

The "2018-2023 China Market Forecast Forecast and Investment Strategic Planning Analysis Report" released by the Prospective Industry Research Institute shows that although at present, China ’s unmanned retail stores are still lacking in number and maturity, users enter the market The conditions are not perfect, and the scale of users has not yet been achieved. However, with the promotion of Internet technology and the penetration of unmanned retail concepts, the user scale and transaction volume of unmanned retail stores will usher in a blowout.

The giants did not give up exploring. Last year, retail giant Wal-Mart debuted with its new "Future Store." The "future store" is actually a testing ground for emerging technologies, including AI-enabled cameras and interactive displays.

Although Amazon's Amazon Go has only 10 stores in the United States, not only is it often seen that Amazon Go has technical updates and increased features, its stores are also expanding, and they hope to open more than 3,000 physical stores in the United States by 2021.

Royal Bank of Canada latest estimates that Amazon Go's revenue has increased by about 50% over ordinary convenience stores, with an average annual revenue estimated at $ 1.5 million, and predicts that Amazon Go will reach $ 4.5 billion in 2021.

In Ren Feixiang ’s view, “completely unmanned retail is not a big trend in the short term, and people need to be in stocking and replenishing. The time and money costs to solve these technical problems are very high, and there is no need to solve them. Short-term reduction It is easier to popularize smart retail that is manual and improves operational efficiency, and the consumer experience is also better. "

He said that any technological innovation ultimately needs to return to the commercial nature, that is, whether it can reduce costs and increase sales, which is also the direction of efforts of companies in the industry. "Zhuo Weizhi has deployed a complete set of smart retail solutions around this goal since its establishment." Including unmanned cashiers with an accuracy rate of up to 99.9%, a handheld inventory system that can realize rapid tally, and a recently developed Artificial intelligence systems for big data analysis and more.

"Everyone is trying to apply unmanned or high-efficiency retail in various scenarios from various dimensions, and at the same time adding artificial intelligence technology precipitation." Xiao Yi said, in the later period, it depends on whether the giants can combine various supermarket scenarios. Instead of using artificial intelligence as a singular application to reduce labor costs, form a comprehensive artificial intelligence business.

Reporter Xiuying