To be "small and new", but also to be "small and beautiful"
If you are an office worker, do you imagine that there is a shelf next to the office, and you can take the drinks and food on the shelves simply by scanning the code?
This is not a fantasy. After the unmanned convenience store, unmanned shelves became a new trend for retail. Sticking a QR code, the product is free to take, the mobile phone pays... Compared to the unmanned convenience store, it has a smaller footprint and no storefront rental cost, and the target customer is an office worker.
Regrettably, after a period of operation, the unmanned shelves did not seem to be as "beautiful" as they were supposed to be. According to media reports, although it has attracted a large influx of capital, the unmanned shelf industry is facing difficulties such as excessive competition, management difficulties, and profit blocking. Some unmanned rack stealing rates exceed 20%, and some even reach 50%.
It is undeniable that the emergence of unmanned shelves provides an infinite possibility to solve the close-range consumption in the office scene. However, it seems that the “small and new” unmanned shelves have not achieved the “small and beautiful” operation effect. The reason is the contradiction between the rapid expansion of its number of points and the lack of stamina in the supply chain.
In the current retail environment, in order to create new profit points, the online and offline integration model continues to evolve, and unmanned shelves are a new path for retail development. However, from the current situation, it is necessary to make “small and new” become “small and beautiful”. In terms of clarifying market demand and refined operations, unmanned shelf companies need to work harder.
The unmanned shelf stealing rate is high, the replenishment supply chain link is weak, and the user loyalty is not high. It reflects the problem that the unmanned shelf enterprises have too blind blindness in the early stage setting, low technical cost input, and limited commodity categories. It is these problems that make them passive in their operations once their follow-up funds are weak.
Therefore, before setting up the unmanned shelf network, it is possible to conduct in-depth analysis with indicators such as passenger flow to avoid waste of resources; in terms of product category selection, it can be based on the consumption habits of different consumers in the target group, such as online ordering. The way of picking up goods under the offline shelves to meet the needs of differentiated consumption; piloting containers with intelligent identification provides more possibilities for reducing the rate of stealing and expanding the target consumer groups.
With the continuous development of the retail industry, the unmanned shelves with the concept of “new retail” undoubtedly provide ideas for the transformation of traditional retail. I believe that if the unmanned shelf enterprises can further lay a solid foundation for their operations, there is hope that they will move from "small and new" to "small and beautiful."
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