The express delivery industry is booming and cannot stop at all
It has entered almost the entire life service field. We have to look at it calmly. The sharing and crowdsourcing whirlwind started by Uber and Didi has opened up the minds of technology companies. Will it bear fruit when the wind blows to the express logistics industry?
Recently, foreign Uber released news that it will establish cooperation with large retailers and fashion brands at the end of September or early October and officially enter the express delivery industry: when consumers shop online, they can directly choose Uber delivery at checkout, and Uber will be like giving away goods. The order is also sent to the driver, who goes to the store to pick up the goods and delivers them directly to the consumer. The cost may be "free shipping" or the consumer may pay for it themselves.
This same-day delivery service will start from luxury goods on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, and large retail stores in San Francisco. In fact, cooperating with retailers to deliver express delivery is not new. In May of this year, Uber began to integrate the couriers of UberRush (an express delivery service provided by bicycle couriers operating in Manhattan) with Uber’s hundreds of thousands of employees. Driver resources began to deliver express delivery, and at that time they also cooperated with fashion and luxury brands.
Also in May this year, in China, Liu Qiangdong, who once said that he would like to be a "square dancing aunt to deliver food," launched JD Daojia to test the waters of crowdsourcing logistics. According to the data currently released to the public, during the three-month period, the development speed is staggering: there are more than 50,000 couriers, expanding to 13 cities, the average daily delivery volume exceeds 20,000 orders, and the monthly growth rate is 219%. In addition, there are a number of companies such as Dada and Shanshuang that are using crowdsourcing models to enter the traditional express logistics field.
Just a few days ago, Didi launched cross-city hitchhiking. Although it is a product launched for people traveling during the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day, some people interpret it as the product is expected to enter the market of intercity logistics and traditional express logistics. Perhaps during the peak period of returning home in the future, at the entrance of the highway, many drivers will park their cars on the side of the road, scrolling through their mobile phones, waiting for someone to post information about carrying goods, while mentally calculating how much deductions can be made for this trip. Travel expenses.
Let’s go back to the basics and see what crowdsourcing is. The concept of crowdsourcing is actually easy to explain. In the past, we used traditional enterprise methods to run a business, which was corporate operation. Now we use idle social surplus power to undertake these businesses.
So, we found that when Uber appeared, the taxi industry was very scared. Because of the large amount of idle surplus power in society and the huge cost savings under the crowdsourcing model, it has indeed occupied a large share of the traditional taxi industry. As an industry on wheels, the crowdsourcing model has already appeared in logistics and express delivery companies. Will traditional express delivery and logistics companies be equally frightened?
I personally feel that is not the case. Although it is said that a thousand things are all physical movements of transporting a certain object from A to B, although as long as the upstream and downstream connections are smooth, traditional express logistics companies can do it. In theory, crowdsourcing model companies can They can all be done, but each has its own merits.
Let’s talk about the standards first. Regardless of whether you are tall or short, fat or thin, your butt will occupy such a large area when you sit down. Didi and Uber drivers will not be like the black cars that used to ply the streets, because there are still a few empty seats. You don’t have to drive, and the demand for transportation in the city is enough to ensure that drivers don’t have to worry about orders or even pick orders. But express logistics is different, especially trunk logistics. The profit margins are pitifully small, and the goods carried are all kinds of strange. The warehouse must be filled even if it is empty. This is also the source of various overloading problems that have been investigated and dealt with.
Although Didi has launched cross-city ride-hailing services, the current main battlefields of Didi and Uber are all in the same city. However, express logistics companies have spread across the country, covering 9.6 million square kilometers and even foreign lands. Scheduling.
The professionalism of the idle social forces recruited from outside also needs to be considered. The familiarity with the routes will lead to huge differences in transportation time, and the difference in time affects the state of the items themselves. For example, food has very strict time requirements, and fragile products have very strict packaging requirements. Crowdsourcing logistics, without exception, recruits idle social forces. Most of them have no experience in express delivery, and the disadvantages behind them are self-evident.
Converting crowdsourcing logistics to traditional logistics, the national layout is currently not very achievable. So what about the opposite? Can traditional express delivery and logistics companies also try crowdsourcing? After all, the biggest advantage of the crowdsourcing model is to effectively allocate social resources to achieve cost savings and maximize benefits. Whether from the perspective of enterprises, "part-time couriers" participating in crowdsourcing, or consumers, is it feasible?
Compared with crowdsourcing logistics originating from technology companies, traditional express logistics companies have massive geographical data and online store data, which are more authoritative and have more say. They should have advantages in formulating logistics distribution routes, and such as industry transportation standards Standards, etc., the advantages are self-evident. If the experience and standards accumulated in the traditional logistics industry for many years are copied and simultaneously exported to the crowdsourcing model, logistics companies such as SF Express may be more viable than crowdsourcing companies originating from technology companies in solving the distribution problem of long-tail orders. From a consumer perspective, professional people do professional things, which makes them feel more at ease when using them.
The virtual economy derived from the Internet may stand out through money-burning and other models, but in the future it still needs to return to its essence to flourish. Just like the gamble between Jack Ma and Wang Jianlin, there is no winner or lose in the virtual economy or the real economy. The real future lies in both. The mutual integration of each other will lead to the emergence of cooperation such as "Teng Wanwan", "Su Wanwan" and "Mao Ning" in the future. Nowadays, the sudden rise of e-commerce has begun to return to offline and expand to the omni-channel model. Although it is not certain whether the Internet attempts mentioned above can "reconstruct" or "transcend" the existing express logistics business form, it is certain that various Ubers will greatly promote the efficiency improvement of the express delivery industry and profoundly change it. Courier service form.