Many “successful” companies do not know how they succeeded.
The vast majority of private enterprises that have succeeded in starting their own businesses succeeded through trial and error, and seized opportunities with diligence, boldness and keen business sense.
When companies step out of the “high-speed elevator” of “macroeconomic take-off” and need to start climbing the stairs themselves, those companies that do not have a deep insight into customer needs will encounter unprecedented challenges.
For logistics companies, customer needs mainly come from the needs of business flow.
E-commerce-driven domestic express
The outbreak of e-commerce has driven the rise of e-commerce express, and all other logistics segments are only salivating.
The e-commerce boom in these years has been a process of business transformation from the traditional “tree sales network” to the “mesh sales network”.
Businesses large and small have a desire to send nationwide from a single point, so e-commerce express is striving for network coverage, because the network coverage of express delivery is equivalent to the network coverage of business flow, and business flow and logistics form a mutually-driven win-win situation.
Since e-commerce express has entered oligopoly competition, we will skip it for now.
Cross-border logistics driven by cross-border e-commerce
Similar scenarios are happening in cross-border e-commerce.
As cross-border e-commerce continues to heat up, cross-border logistics has also seen a spurt of growth.
The author’s core point of view when doing a strategic project for a leading domestic express delivery company around 2013 was: all focus on leading scale.
Because the demand from business flow is the largest network coverage and the lowest cost, this requires leading scale to achieve.
This view still applies across borders.
Although cross-border logistics has long chains and capacity bottlenecks in different links, the demand for business flow is the biggest driving force.
Cross-border e-commerce logistics needs to attach great importance to the global sales motivation of merchants and the global logistics delivery demand driven by it.
The author believes that global logistics delivery capabilities also need to consider “from global to global” rather than simply “star network” starting from China.
With the extension of the Belt and Road Initiative and the transfer of manufacturing to Southeast Asia, the “global to global” demand may become the basic demand for logistics companies in the near future.
Instant consumption-driven intra-city logistics
Whether it is food delivery or community purchasing, the logistics distribution model driven by instant consumption excludes almost all traditional express logistics companies. (In addition to SF Express, which already has a super time-sensitive experience, there are still opportunities. Traditional national network companies have already been eliminated)
The ultra-high time-efficiency requirements of instant consumption for logistics will inevitably lead to ultra-high density of orders and logistics resources. The source of economies of scale is entirely in the hands of platforms and large merchants with ultra-high order density. Traditional logistics companies lose their competitive advantage.
Moreover, in order to control and reduce costs, the business flow chain masters who master high-density orders will definitely split the logistics companies in the region (similar to the franchise network splitting franchisees).
In a big city like Shanghai, it is inevitable that the platform will subdivide the logistics distributors in the region into about 30 to 100 to achieve KPI-based assessment.
So please don’t believe in the foolishness of the business flow platform and lose money to subsidize the entry of this logistics market.
E-commerce-driven bulk logistics
Common in the business model of logistics companies are economies of scale (e-commerce express) and value-added services (international logistics).
With the continuous extension of e-commerce platforms to all kinds of large items, the logistics of large items e-commerce is also in full swing recently.
If you choose to take the large-scale logistics route, in fact, it will eventually move towards “large parcels.”
Because only “large packages” can form economies of scale (cost timeliness and quality will be fully optimized with the expansion of scale).
So the “big parcel” market is about to usher in more fierce competition!
If you choose the value-added service model, most of the bulk logistics must control the end.
All kinds of delivery services, payment collection and even after-sales maintenance are necessary activities to lock in profits.
Although the value-added services at the end are relatively independent in each city, the demand for national sales is still the same as that of ordinary e-commerce.
Therefore, whoever can build the end service capabilities of the category in the country can build irreplaceable barriers to entry.
Brand-driven supply chain logistics
As the competition and cooperation between brand owners and e-commerce platforms reach a new equilibrium state, brand owners need to restructure their supply chains based on the new demands of omni-channel sales.
This demand for supply chain reconstruction will impact the existing supply chain logistics model.
Brands are working hard on omni-channel sales at the front desk, but the supply chain is traditionally independent of channels, resulting in huge inventory and inefficient logistics operations.
Brands’ product update iterations continue to accelerate, and the extreme supply chain flexibility and logistics execution capabilities required for popular products pose a huge challenge to the traditional supply chain’s goal of “stability”.
For example, our customers in the food industry have gradually transformed from the previous “production-based sales”, and the entire supply chain has changed from push to push-pull. Supply chain planning and logistics execution have become huge challenges.
Therefore, in the process of transforming from the traditional push-type supply chain and logistics model corresponding to the level of wholesale wholesale (the small bully and push-type procurement supply chain in each region) to multiple sales models, if the supply chain logistics cannot focus on helping the brand Suppliers will lose the next decade by reducing inventory costs and increasing supply chain flexibility.