Electronic enthusiasts eight o'clock in the morning: the glass "box" with an area of ​​about 10 square meters is empty, clean, cold and technical. Inside the store, four monitoring probes watched everything, three shelves full of items and a freezer waiting for customers, an unattended shop.
Under a high-rise office building in Jing'an District, Shanghai, a man came to experience the new unmanned convenience store.
Scanning code into the door, there is no cashier's slightly tired smile, replaced by the white light flashing on the screen of the cash register, the customer selects the goods to scan the code to check out, 20 seconds to complete. Go to the door, the convenience store door opens automatically and thank you for your patronage.
Although it looks like a future world in science fiction films, in the corners of cities such as Shanghai, more than a dozen unmanned convenience stores have become the door to people's short-term future. It is conservatively estimated that at least seven brands of unmanned convenience stores have taken to the streets, and artificial intelligence is gradually replacing the simple repetitive work of human beings.
Behind the machine, the unmanned cash register technology is becoming more and more mature. The advantages of no-convenience stores being closer, faster and more affordable are favored by people. Newcomers and industry predators have also been invested in it. It became the next explosive new format after sharing bicycles.
Convenient and affordableUnder a high-rise office building in Jing'an District, Shanghai, a glass "box" of about 10 square meters is very conspicuous. The four cameras in the house are looking at three shelves, two freezers and an automatic cash register.
This is an unmanned convenience store called Binguo Box. In the office building next to it, there are many Internet companies. The office workers here can go shopping in a few steps.
"Scan code is successful, please come in." Through the WeChat scan code "sesame open the door", store products include snacks, coffee, yogurt, beverages, imported food, toiletries and umbrellas.
Put the selected products on the cashier, the computer will automatically settle and issue a voice prompt, and the customer can choose WeChat or Alipay to check the code. After all the items have been paid, go to the convenience store door and the door will open automatically. The whole shopping process can be completed in one minute.
The gate of the door detects the integrity of the shopper. If the payment is not completed, even if the same item has one payment, there will be a voice prompt.
In the two hours from 7:00 to 9:00 pm, a total of 12 customers visited this unmanned convenience store. Most of them purchased fast-moving products such as beverages and snacks. The unit price ranged from a dozen yuan to more than 20 yuan.
There are many frequent visitors among these people. "It’s been a few times, it’s closer than 711 and the whole family,†said Xiao Li, who went to work upstairs. Another reason for him to visit him many times is that the lemon vitamin is cheaper than 711. A dollar.
Small storefront, easy to lay, no labor costs is the natural advantage of unmanned convenience stores, it can be closer to the target users, and the price of goods is lower than traditional convenience stores, which have become the main reason for white-collar workers.
An unmanned convenience store like the Box of Fruits has a larger flow of people in the first-tier cities, but the sub-centre of non-astronomical rents is the target location.
Some unmanned convenience stores with special features are also emerging everywhere. In the Pearl River Delta, about 1,500 kilometers away from Shanghai, another unmanned convenience store F5 future store is laid in Zhongshan, Foshan and Guangzhou at almost the same time.
It is more like a fast food restaurant. After consumers choose food and scan the code, they can eat robotic curry fish eggs, fish balls and noodles and other wide-style daily snacks. This is new and fun for Guangdong citizens.
The F5 Future Store specializes in fresh food, ready-to-drink drinks and lifestyle department stores. In addition to a variety of hot snacks, it also offers 24-hour coffee, tea and other beverages.
Also optimistic about the unmanned convenience store and piloting the "Magic" Shanghai, there is a Swedish company Wheelys. This mobile coffee chain brand was specially opened in the early days to "grab the business" around Starbucks.
Its product Moby-store concept store is actually an unmanned convenience store with unmanned functions. After the customer places an order through the mobile phone, the convenience car will drive to the place near the order. But as of now, Moby-store is just a concept.
The influx of startups, the giants are gearing upAt the end of 2016, Amazon launched Amazon Go, a new concept retail store. It abandons the traditional supermarket cashier checkout process, customers no longer need to carry the basket waiting for checkout, just pick up what you want, and then walk out of the store.
Six months later, there was a blowout in the domestic convenience store. In just one week, the unmanned convenience store completed two rounds of financing totaling 130 million yuan. Not only that, according to investment bank insiders, at least two of the unmanned convenience stores have just completed financing.
The above-mentioned Binguo Box currently has two stores in Shanghai, and there are five stores in the Zhongshan area of ​​Guangdong, with a total of less than ten. At the beginning of the month, Binguo Box just completed more than 100 million RMB A round of financing. Due to its small size and lightness, it can be quickly copied. After the financing is completed, the Binguo box will open 200 in August. This year, 5,000 outlets will be laid, mainly for first-tier cities. High-end community.
The F5 Future Store announced that it had completed a 30 million yuan financing at the same time as the Bingo Box, and plans to open 30 to 50 stores in 3-6 months.
In addition to the colorful fruit boxes and F5 future stores that have already been introduced, there are many unmanned convenience stores in China that have been put into trial operation or put into use in the market, such as Magic House Smart Convenience Store, Small E Micro Shop, Monster Home, Gan Lai Smart Micro Super , EATBOX, etc.
Before the startup companies were favored by capital, there were giants like Alibaba and other giants, and even the traditional retail giant Wahaha was eager to try.
On July 8, Taobao unmanned convenience store officially opened to the public in Hangzhou. The store obtained the admission code through the mobile phone Taobao scan code. The system automatically identified the goods at the gate and automatically deducted from Alipay.
In addition, Alibaba also proposed the concept of “no coffee†in its own unmanned shop. Amoy Coffee is an offline store with an area of ​​about 200 square meters and can accommodate about 50 people. The actual capacity can be increased with the size of the site. At present, Amoy coffee is still in the experimental stage.
The leader of the retail industry, Wahaha, is also unwilling to be lonely, intending to test the emerging field of water. On June 25th, Wahaha and Shenlan Technology signed an agreement for three years of 100,000 units and 10 million sets of Take Go unmanned stores.
Take Go is a fast-serving unattended convenience store launched by Alibaba's Sesame Credit and Shenlan Technology in February this year, and a credit settlement system that “takes away and avoids on-site settlementâ€.
According to reliable internal news, the listed company Yonghui Supermarket will purchase unmanned convenience store equipment upstream from an intelligent hardware technology. Prior to this, Yonghui Supermarket had tried a new concept supermarket based on experience such as “super speciesâ€.
Low cost brings prevailing trendsUnder the upgrade of consumption, community convenience stores have attracted the attention of entrepreneurs and capitalists. After Ma Yun (microblogging) proposed a new retail concept, the field is extremely hot. First, the convenience bee opened five branches in Zhongguancun, and then the e-commerce giants such as Ali and Jingdong announced that they have separately laid out the small business super business for many years. Jingdong claims to open 1 million convenience stores, half of which are in rural areas.
Throughout the industry background, the convenience store itself is translating the traditional retail industry. According to statistics, convenience store sales have maintained double-digit growth for three years, and its growth rate is in stark contrast to the severe slowdown in sales growth in hypermarkets.
For hypermarkets, bulk commodities are diverted or even replaced by e-commerce shopping platforms; high-frequency fast-moving products such as cigarettes, beverages, and snacks are cut off by convenience stores and couples stores; at the same time, large-scale commercial supermarkets are generally large in size and have a large number of SKUs. Leading to the relatively high cost of rent and other. Under the impact of triple pressure, the growth rate of the hypermarket industry, including the department store industry, has dropped significantly.
As the demographic dividend recedes, aging will increase and the cost of manpower will be higher and higher. The rise in labor costs caused by these social factors is seen as a driving factor in robotic applications.
“China’s land rent and labor costs have risen year after year, while the price of convenience store customers has not increased simultaneously. The location of unmanned convenience stores is more flexible and the rental cost is lower.†Shanhang Capital told the Beijing News reporter, “However, warehousing, Whether operating costs such as replenishment and electricity are also reduced as expected by entrepreneurs have not been verified."
From the technical background, while the labor price is rising, the development of science and technology has led to the increasing cost performance of intelligent robots. At a certain point in time, human labor will naturally be replaced by intelligent robots. It is generally believed that simple repetitive work will be replaced first, and supermarket cashiers will be one of the first industries to be eliminated.
Under the influence of many factors, it seems that the unmanned convenience store has become the main force of the future retail industry.
Technology accurately identifies standard productsIn the era of cashless transactions, for unattended convenience stores, the first technical question people think of is how to prevent "little people", prevent theft of goods, and how to quickly and accurately settle all goods.
At present, there are basically four kinds of technical forms in the unmanned convenience stores on the market. The first one is a relatively simple traditional two-dimensional code scanning technology; the second is an RFID tag recognition technology; the third is based on convolutional nerves. The visual recognition technology of the network; the fourth is the technology of adding video recognition and sensor mixing on the basis of visual recognition, which is relatively complicated and difficult to implement.
The technical mode of the two-dimensional code is relatively simple, and the product is identified by the product two-dimensional code and the amount statistics are completed and paid. This model is relatively simple, but it cannot scan non-standardized products such as apples and oranges. Moreover, it is more troublesome for the consumer to have to find the QR code and scan code payment behavior.
RFID tag recognition is a technology used in the market. In short, the technology puts an RFID tag on each product. Each product has its own unique name, such as 100 bottles of cola on the shelf, when the customer pays. Coke 1, but took the Coke 1 and Coke 2, the gate will not let go.
"The technology requires RFID chips to be attached to each product. When the store is out, the camera scans again to make sure that the chip products have been paid to open the door," said an engineer at Weihai Beiyang, an RFID chip maker.
Wu Yili, founder of YI Tunnel, the upstream intelligent hardware manufacturer of the unmanned convenience store, told the Beijing News that "RFID identification technology is used more in unattended convenience stores. The advantage is that the goods are accurately identified. The disadvantage is that metal products cannot be encountered. Scan, and each chip adds about 3 hairs."
In the above-mentioned engineers' view, the cost per chip is 0.3 yuan, and the cost of manual labeling is about 0.2 yuan. Even if the cost of labeling is completed at 1 yuan per item, the cost of a small unmanned convenience store is 10,000 yuan per month. Ten thousand yuan will still be cheaper than the labor cost. The 24-hour convenience store has three shifts requiring at least four employees. The cost is much higher than this number, and the size of the unmanned convenience store is only half or one-third of the convenience store, and the rental cost will be lower.
More advanced convolutional nervous system technology can teach computers to understand goods through deep learning, and even identify non-standardized products such as apples and bananas, apples and snakes.
As for the technique of adding face recognition based on the visual recognition of artificial intelligence, the computer can identify the placement of the product and the face of the customer through a large number of cameras placed in the store, so that when a product is picked up, The computer immediately recognizes who bought what, and the technology is not mature at the moment.
Above the vent, how does the unmanned convenience store take off?The unmanned convenience store is essentially a self-service convenience store that is free of cashiers. It has many application scenarios, rapid copying and joining, and attracts a large amount of capital intervention in the short time in the past. It is estimated that there will be capital to enter the field.
When this new thing took the new concept, it was also mixed. But undoubtedly, with the influx of capital and the intervention of giants, unmanned convenience stores are becoming the next explosive new format after sharing bicycles.
Xu Bingdong, GGV Jiyuan Capital Management Partner, believes that unmanned convenience stores are an innovative attempt in the retail sector. “We are optimistic about the structural opportunities in the retail industry. As future technologies mature, we believe in new retail companies represented by Bingo. There will be greater development potential."
“The wind is not too small, but not every pig can fly.†According to An Liying, CEO of Yijiajiao Supermarket and EATBOX project leader, capital attention is naturally a good thing, but the key is not whether it is In the vent, it is the company's subsequent operational capabilities, selection capabilities and rapid decision-making ability of the team, back to the origin of retail, that is, how to make the retail format into a brand.
Shantou Capital is also holding a wait-and-see attitude towards unattended convenience stores. They believe that unmanned convenience stores are still in an early stage of development in technology applications and business environments, and subsequent development still needs time to verify.
The unmanned convenience store sector is still in its infancy, and its main function may be to save labor costs. In some people's eyes, it may be just automation rather than artificial intelligence.
But it is clear that in this era, it is difficult for any emerging technology to escape the gravity of big data and artificial intelligence. At present, companies have begun to analyze the sales information of traditional convenience stores.
Li Sixian, the founder of Super League data, found that the current traditional convenience store does not have a clear portrait of the consumer, and does not know what kind of products should be sold to different consumers. In his monitoring, Zhongguancun two convenience stores are only 300 meters away from each other. Because they are facing residential residents and white-collar workers respectively, the structure and placement of the shelves should be completely different.
For unattended convenience stores, it is more convenient and convenient to collect customer usage data. It is very likely that unmanned convenience stores will develop more possibilities in the future, such as data analysis and big data processing.
In addition to unmanned convenience stores, there is also a trend in the entertainment and catering sectors to replace human resources with smart devices. Recently, there are some other unmanned projects in the market, such as unmanned KTV, unmanned gyms and so on.
In any case, the "unmanned" business is quietly entering the daily life, and how to really break out is the next problem for entrepreneurs.
Disclaimer: The electronic reprinted works of E-Commerce Network are as far as possible to indicate the source, and all rights of the owner of the work are not transferred due to the reprint of this site. If the author does not agree to reprint, please inform the site to delete or correct it. Reprinted works may be subject to change in title or content.
Solar Generator,Wind Power Generator,Home Generators,Solar Generator
Shaoxing AnFu Energy Equipment Co.Ltd , https://www.sxanfu.com