Mysterious tobacco and liquor stores that are "not closed, not transformed and not subverted"

In this law of the jungle era, the Internet has transformed everything and subverted everything! One industry is very different. It has great market value and strong space. Its sales outlets are all over the country, pervasive, but very traditional, sales are very traditional. In this era of e-commerce eroding various industries, it only gets less than 10% market share, and this industry is a tobacco hotel parasitic behind the tobacco and alcohol industry.

No matter which city you live in, you can see tobacco hotels in the corner of the city. Shops are generally not very big, and the flow of people is pitiful. They open there quietly every day and will not close down for many years. No matter how the rents of local shops rise, these seemingly old and rigid business models live comfortably and are rich. Even most operators can achieve a turnover of hundreds of thousands to millions and a profit of 10%-20% every year. This industry is not big, but it is rare to see the scene of leather factories closing down at a loss and having a big sale.

Egg-smoking hotel under planned economy

Why can tobacco hotels have such a living condition? The fundamental reason is the planned economy of liquor retail. In the 1980s, the state officially liberalized the sales prices of 13 kinds of tobacco and alcohol, and gradually liberalized the price control of liquor. The liquor industry changed from a planned economy to a market economy, and the retail channel entered the ancient liquor industry for the first time. But in that era, no matter Maotai, Wuliangye or regional liquor brands, there was no real retail channel, and the biggest sales volume came from the consumption of enterprises and institutions.

In order to meet the double-sided construction of channels and brands, liquor brands started the model of specialty stores and began to build channels of specialty stores all over the country. Some powerful dealers have also begun to establish their own specialty store system. In the era when the Three Musketeers of Liquor (Maotai, Wuliangye and Jiannanchun) belong to hard currency, brand stores have ushered in a golden growth period of nearly ten years, and this "spring" has changed with the eight national regulations. After restricting high-end consumption, the specialty stores that once spread all over the country have been transformed, and the category of "tobacco+tea" has been added to the operation of liquor, and now it has become a tobacco hotel that we can see everywhere.

What really gave birth to tobacco hotels is not the promotion of head brands, but the promotion of many regional and small brands. First of all, they don't have the marketing and retail ability to cover the national market, but this small tobacco hotel has become the forefront of sales channels. At the same time, the biggest investment of a tobacco hotel is actually the application of license, and the scarcity of license also makes tobacco hotels have great policy protection and regional protection. "Raise the store with cigarettes, and make profits with wine+tea+daily drinks" has become the standard structure of this industry.

According to statistics, there are nearly 65438+ 10,000 people engaged in the management of tobacco hotels in Xiayi County, Shangqiu City, Henan Province, and the mode of wholesale+retail+cleaning up long tail goods occupies the most important channel of liquor retail. This seemingly rude sales model still occupies at least 90% of the liquor retail market. More importantly, the profit rate of small smoke hotels is even higher than that of specialty stores. "They often have some regular customers and a group of individual customers. Individual customers like to buy low-end liquor below 100 yuan or even 50 yuan. Although the price is low, the profit may be higher than some high-end brands. " Open a single order for three days "is a striking feature of violence in this industry."

A tobacco and liquor store that is not transformed and difficult to subvert.

Let there be no hard business in the world. In this era of e-commerce giants mastering the world's business, the channels of tobacco and liquor stores have shown strong vitality and willpower and will not be transformed and subverted. If the only thing that has been subverted at present is scanning code payment. It can be said that in the current circulation system of China's tobacco and alcohol industry, small smoke hotels "monopolize" offline retail terminals.

Why alcohol and tobacco don't take the fast-moving consumer goods mode stems from its own uniqueness. Just as the old saying goes, "alcohol and tobacco don't go out", it is not only an addictive product in terms of attributes, but also has many characteristics that other consumer goods don't have, such as cultural and regional characteristics, and some even have collection characteristics. Therefore, different categories of tobacco and alcohol show diversified sales models at the sales terminal, which is doomed to make it difficult for the e-commerce platform to change the sales ecology of tobacco and alcohol like other categories.

In addition, tobacco and alcohol source enterprises pay more attention to offline channels than online channels, which is caused by long-term habitual thinking. At the same time, if there is no problem in the production and sales of this business, why should the source enterprise break its arm? Therefore, in this era of e-commerce and de-intermediation, the tobacco and alcohol industry is very different. From the convenience of e-commerce, the dense outlets of tobacco hotels are not inferior to the convenience of e-commerce, or even better. The consumption habits of temporarily buying tobacco and alcohol actually do not conform to the mode of e-commerce. In the dimension of de-intermediation, the greatest significance of de-intermediation is the shortening of interest space, but it is obviously difficult to promote such categories as Maotai and Wuliangye, because the combination of wine enterprises and distributors is already half a hundred couples, and their feelings are deep, which cannot be easily shaken overnight.

Although the tobacco and alcohol industry has an ancient tradition, it is also actively changing. From Maotai to ZTE, LU ZHOU LAO JIAO CO.,LTD to Huawei, Wuliangye to IBM, these bosses are actively embracing the changes of the times. Take Wuliangye as an example. 20 18 speed up the layout of "Wuliang e-store" in China, and jointly speed up the construction of China liquor big data center with China Liquor Association, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and Inspur Group. IBM's cooperation is to help IBM's leading technologies such as cloud computing, cognitive technology, big data analysis, blockchain and artificial intelligence. To promote the digital upgrade of Wuliangye's marketing and management, and further realize the accurate positioning of target consumers.

However, from the actual development point of view, this special mystery of tobacco and alcohol specialty stores is still difficult to change in the short term. If the so-called tobacco and alcohol e-commerce sales platform and scanning code payment are regarded as the digital transformation of the industry, then the tobacco and alcohol industry is only an ancient industry in a digital coat, and its essence has not changed.