Who killed the unmanned shelf?RFID PVC Card factory

　　Who killed the unmanned shelf?

　　On December 19, a news that JD Daojia had stopped its unmanned shelf project Jingdong Daojia Go instantly exploded in the unmanned shelf industry.

　　Although this is a relatively independent player from Jingdong Group and is in the second echelon of the unmanned shelf industry, at such a time node, it revealed such a not very exciting news, and its name The addition of the word "Jingdong" is enough to make this industry that was already quiet in the winter of 2018 even more cold.

　　In fact, the exit of JD Daojia Go is not silent. As early as the 17th, some users have reported that JD Daojia Go has started a half-price promotion, and the top players of the same type in the industry, Guo Xiaomei and the seven koalas, are already sad. Leave. Even before the players left the market, capital had already made a choice in this market. Investors in 2018 were already silent under the double blow of the economic winter and the industry winter.

　　The brilliance of more than 3 billion capital investment in a single year in 2017 is long gone. The top players in some markets have already declined. The star entrepreneurs who have set commercial market records with ofo Dai Wei and Mobike Hu Weiwei are in the same situation as the current Dai Wei. Like Wei, he became an outcast of capital and left the market even earlier than him.

　　In January, the industry will cut about 60% of BD personnel;

　　During the same period, seven koalas were exposed to layoffs of more than 90%, leaving only the warehousing and logistics departments;

　　In April, Guo Xiaomei laid off 2,000 employees;

　　In June, the number of Hamidou was reduced from 600 to more than 100;

　　In October, Xiaoshan Technology applied to the Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court of Guangdong Province for bankruptcy and liquidation

　　……

　　Amid sorrow, people can’t help but wonder, who killed the unmanned shelf?

　　Looking at the entire industry, you will find that in the wave of layoffs and closures that lasted from the beginning of this year to the end of the year, the first to go bankrupt were those open unmanned shelf stars who had risen in 2017 with huge cost advantages and crazy speed. NS.

　　They represent the 1.0 model of the entire industry, using open shelves as the layout model, supplemented by crazy pushes, almost no cost capital investment, and huge supply chain construction. Blindness and irrationality are flooded with them, and they dominate the entire industry. Years of development.

　　The surviving players have supported the rise of the unmanned shelf 2.0 for the last ten-meter consumer market with AI and more scene-oriented operations.

　　In this process, smart containers driven by AI technology have emerged, and traditional vending machines have revived; refinement and platformization have become stage hotspots; capital enthusiasm has retreated from market rationality but rationally increased; products have moved from single to diversified, in addition to snacks, Cooked food, juice, and coffee have also become the focus of attention.

　　However, the market still exists and the demand is also strong. In the process of the 1.0 unmanned shelf model for the last ten-meter consumer market moving towards the 2.0 smart container model, a technology-driven closed-loop transaction has gradually formed, and transaction risks have been reduced, costs have become more controllable, and sustainable development has replaced it. Enclosure expansion has become a hot spot in the 2.0 stage.

　　▲ Representative players in the 1.0 era and 2.0 era

　　East wind came overnight, and unmanned shelves became the darling of capital

　　With Jack Ma’s cheering at the Yunqi Conference in October 2016, 2017 was declared the "first year of new retail".

　　The new AI technology has subsequently entered the retail sector. Unmanned stores, unmanned supermarkets, and unmanned containers have all been blown into the sky. Salespeople, cashiers and even convenience store owners are all in danger, but the aunts of the square dance are concerned. However, no one can give a satisfactory explanation for "Can the price of food be cheaper?"

　　In this period, the market facing the last ten meters of consumption scenarios has entered the 1.0 era. The speed of financing and expansion is like being pressed the fast forward button. Both the capital and the progress of the players have become extremely crazy and blind.

　　▲The trading model in the 1.0 era

　　The characteristic of this 1.0 era market is that open shelves are quickly copied for the purpose of solving consumer demand within the last ten meters. Its typical characteristics are heavy assets, capital blessing, lack of closed-loop transactions, uncontrollable costs, and crazy rapid expansion. Operators lack the emphasis on the inherent drive of technology and rely too much on humanity. At the same time, they are limited by the open shelf format. Most of the products sold are pre-packaged, low-cost, and low-margin standard products.

　　Someone once said that if players want to lead the market, they must have at least 300,000 outlets, and the corresponding capital investment needs to be 1 billion.

　　Guoxiaomei founder Yan Limin once stated that it would cover 1 million points in 2018, and Daily Fresh also set a goal of quickly completing 500,000 points of expansion in 60 cities.

　　Under the blessing of this concept of rapid market expansion, the hot unmanned shelves for a while, and forty or fifty players emerged in just two years. In 2017, the amount of financing for top players exceeded that. 3 billion yuan.

　　According to the data from Tianyan Check, only Amphibious Families raised about 500 million yuan within two months of 2017.

　　Guo Xiaomei, who has the aura of cost-effectiveness, also frequently funded mergers in the second half of 2017. The IDG family alone invested four rounds in a row and dominated its cooperation with Tomato Convenience.

　　At the same time, under the rapid expansion, the red-eye killers did their best to grab the spot.

　　There have been reports before that, in order to seize the market, some BDs between competing products will collude with each other and buy each other's points at a clear price; some will put the shelves together, and then they will not hesitate to squeeze each other away or push each other at the price of the loss-making product. Replaced goods with expired goods; what’s more, the capital chain of the rumored competitor company was broken, and the purchase page appeared BUG.

　　At the same time, the industry integration has also come extremely fast. In September, Guo Xiaomei merged with Tomato Convenience. In October, 51 snacks were sold at the convenience store. In December, Convenience Bee acquired Ling Frog...

　　On the one hand, people believe that this unmanned shelf operation mode can save a lot of labor and space costs in physical stores. On the other hand, entrepreneurs and investors have turned a blind eye to the immediate damage rate and its causes.

　　In order to be able to have an explanation for the capital, false reporting of the damage rate has become the default unspoken rule of the industry during this period. In actual operation, the damage rate of some projects has reached as much as 30%-50%, but since the market says that the damage rate has reached 10%, it should be withdrawn, so we are all 10%. In any case, like shared bicycles, first burn a market and occupy a sufficient share.

　　“Everyone sometimes thinks purely about the market. It’s not that if there are too many points of capital running out, a model can be developed.” In addition, the operation and maintenance method of unmanned containers is different from the concept of shared bicycles. “Shared bicycles are Originally there was no market for the last mile travel demand, but capital has broken out of this just-needed market. Unmanned shelves are different. Without this, we can also solve the problem by going to the convenience store downstairs. "Focus on being a smart container platform." Cat CEO Sun Xiangdong said so.

　　However, the paved market is like a bottomless pit filled with dissatisfaction. The larger the scale, the deeper the players will be trapped. While capital and players are chasing the outlet, the loss rate has become the last straw that crushes the entire last ten meters consumption 1.0 model.

　　In the middle of last year, "Snack Bar" withdrew from the track and kicked off the ebb of traditional unmanned shelves. Then, the big avalanche officially began.

　　In January, the industry will cut about 60% of BD personnel;

　　During the same period, seven koalas were exposed to layoffs of more than 90%, leaving only the warehousing and logistics departments;

　　In April, Guo Xiaomei laid off 2,000 employees;

　　In June, the number of Hamid buyers was reduced from 600 to more than 100

　　▲ 1.0 period

　　The shelves of Hamidou, which had not been replenished for several months, on the Zhidongxi floor, the door of the cabinet could not be closed, and the remaining products were also labeled as discounted.

　　So far, this market 1.0 era, which is represented by open shelves and the sale of standard products, has basically declared bankruptcy.

　　The open unmanned shelf killed itself in the frenzied competition and the overestimation of human nature.

　　The wind is fading, the reformers in the market 2.0 era seek change

　　A series of bankruptcies and layoffs in the 1.0 era directly led to the collapse of unmanned shelves, and capital has also become restrained. IDG, Jingwei, Zhenge and other institutions that were enthusiastic about this last year were also cautious in this field this year.

　　People are beginning to reflect on whether this model of rapid expansion without closed-loop trading and no profit guarantee is the most reasonable solution?

　　The players who survived by chance have also begun to look for changes in their own way, and the 2.0 era of smart containers for the last ten-meter consumer market has officially arrived.

　　Specifically, the most basic feature of the 2.0 era facing the last ten-meter consumer market is the emergence of closed-loop transactions with artificial intelligence and other technologies at the transaction level. The commodity level has also become more diversified from the previous single standard product sales. Non-standard products with high gross profit margins such as fresh, orange juice drinks, snacks and breakfasts have also become the mainstream of attention. At the same time, new players represented by platform operators and technology providers have also appeared on the market to participate.

　　The entire market is moving in a sustainable and profitable direction.

　　1. Old players use smart technology to upgrade to form a closed payment loop

　　In January, it was rumored to have laid off about 60% of the BD staff, Ape Convenience made a comeback, betting on a new round of market warfare on the smart shelf.

　　In the game, Ape convenient launched the intelligent unmanned container "Ape +", and has completed the investment point test and entered the market launch stage.

　　So what is an intelligent unmanned container? This is relative to the traditional open shelves.

　　Traditional open shelves, users only need to pick up the goods directly from the shelves and scan the code to shop or make purchases in the virtual shopping cart, but the merchants themselves have no way of knowing whether the user is actually paying and what the user behavior is.

　　After splitting this business model to the end, all business risk costs have been passed on to human nature.

　　The smart container is based on the traditional closed container research and development. After the user scans the code, the container will automatically open the door, and the device itself will identify the goods the user takes to avoid order evasion.

　　By connecting the scan code to open the door data with the user's WeChat Pay or Alipay, the use of smart containers on the one hand avoids the user's dishonest shopping, on the other hand, it saves the user's shopping time and avoids scanning the codes one by one. the process of.

　　Among the few market trends this year, the strategic financing of Ape convenient has provided a boost for the industry. The leading investment of Ant Financial has brought another big change to the chaotic market. According to According to the official statement of Apes, Ant Financial will also provide technical support to Apes, including biometric technology, credit consumption system and other resources in addition to funds.

　　At this point, the veteran player who originally came from the Ali department, Ape Convenient, has relied on the big tree of Ali. Along with the convenience of Ape, there are Magic Box and Youbao Online. With the help of Alipay's technology, they have installed a face recognition module on the container, and Alipay has obtained a huge amount of offline payment traffic. Entrance.

　　2. Foresighters go against the wind and lay the road to intelligence

　　Some people have gone through market changes and transformed into smart containers in the later stage, while others have aimed at this hard bone from the beginning, and started research on smart containers in the 1.0 era.

　　Technically speaking, the current smart containers can also be divided into genres, which is mainly reflected in the way of identifying goods.

　　In general, there are three solutions currently on the market. One is the RFID mode that recognizes goods by labeling them, the second is the image recognition mode that recognizes consumer behavior or changes in goods, and the third is based on The microgravity sensing mode of the weight change of the goods in the shelf, the three methods have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they have different advantages in different scenarios.

　　The most traditional method is based on the radio frequency RFID mode. By attaching the corresponding RFID tag to each product, the counter will sense the product after the consumer takes it out, thereby completing a series of processes such as identification and deduction.

　　▲RFID tag

　　The Hi Convenience team, which started its business in May last year, also set its sights on this mature technical route at the beginning.

　　In August of last year, the first generation product label cabinet based on RFID technology came out.

　　But soon, CEO Zhang Xiaolong and his team discovered the problem. Although this method of labeling goods solves the problem of damage to goods, it also brings new problems.

　　Based on RFID technology, the delivery process of the goods will have a series of operation steps such as writing labels, labeling, and packaging products; at the same time, the cost of a single RFID tag is 3 to 6 cents, and a snack on the shelf has a profitable space. It's also nothing more than that.

　　After some summing up, Zhang Xiaolong determined that RFID is not the real solution for retail in the last ten meters scene, so after this generation of products, the team decisively focused on image recognition technology.

　　At present, there are still two major schools in the market for smart containers based on image recognition technology.

　　One is static recognition. Players usually install cameras on each layer of the container to identify the user's consumption of products by identifying the reduction of the goods in the container before and after the purchase.

　　The second is dynamic recognition. The technical principle of dynamic recognition is to recognize user behavior. The entire container only needs to be equipped with a camera to determine if the user has extra products on hand when taking out the product to determine the consumption behavior. There will be a delay of about ten seconds between the user closing the door and receiving the consumer bill from the merchant.

　　Static identification has extremely high requirements for the placement of goods. First, the goods cannot be stacked, otherwise the camera will not be able to identify; secondly, the height of the goods must be adequately protected, so that the camera can see the changes in each layer of goods.

　　Dynamic recognition is not the case. The stacking of goods and the height of the floor will not affect the recognition of the goods, and the investment in the number of cameras is also greatly reduced, but this places great demands on the requirements of the algorithm.

　　In this regard, Hi Convenience has cooperated with experts from Zhejiang University and BGI to jointly optimize and upgrade the image recognition algorithm.

　　In addition to the optimization algorithm, the accumulation of data is also an important consideration. Zhang Xiaolong said that the current Hi Convenience data pool has accumulated 100,000 pieces of data and more than 1,500 products.

　　Based on these advantages in algorithms and data, the business model has chosen a light asset strategy that combines software and hardware.

　　First of all, Hi Convenience does not produce containers by itself, but only provides a combination of software and hardware services for some well-known manufacturers in the industry, and intelligently upgrades their products.

　　Secondly, Hi Convenience does not carry out container stores and logistics operations. It enters data through cooperation with suppliers such as Yili, Mengniu, and Wahaha, and the operation is left to dedicated players.

　　According to the data, each of the convenient vending cabinets can be reached every day

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