10 years of express delivery: how to grow from e-commerce to national infrastructure?
Release Time：2022-10-13 03:21:04
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Forwarded from Jiuzhou Logistics Network
In the past 10 years, the explosive growth of e-commerce online shopping has profoundly changed people's lives and consumption habits. Behind this, from 2012 to 2021, the annual business volume of express delivery in China has increased from 5.7 billion to 108.3 billion, an increase of 18 times. Since 2014, it has ranked first in the world for eight consecutive years.
Business flow determines the scale of logistics, and logistics evolves with business flow. 10 years ago, express companies were at a loss in the face of the "double 11" "warehouse explosion"; Now, the logistics express industry can not only quickly respond to the needs of fresh e-commerce, instant delivery and other new formats; In recent years, it has perfectly matched the fluctuation of live broadcast e-commerce.
The rapid development of China's logistics express has driven the surge of online shopping ecology and led to an extremely rich industrial chain upstream and downstream. From the "weekly delivery" or "semi monthly delivery" 10 years ago, people have become accustomed to "overnight delivery" and instant delivery.
According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, from 17.2% in 2011 to 2018 to 2020, China's total logistics cost/GDP values are 14.8%, 14.7% and 14.2% respectively. By 2025, China will "push the ratio of total logistics cost to GDP of the whole society down to about 12%". This means that trillions of logistics costs are saved every year.
The development of logistics express depends not only on the construction of economically developed and perfect logistics network, but also on the technical contributions of express companies represented by Shunfeng, JD Logistics, Alibaba Cainiao and Tongda. In 2018, Ma Yun and Liu Qiang Dongdu said that in the future, Chinese technology companies will be committed to building an intelligent logistics network to further reduce China's logistics costs to 5%, leading the developed countries in logistics costs by 8% - 9%.
While logistics express services for online shopping have profoundly changed the appearance and efficiency of people's lives, it has also become a part of infrastructure on a subtle level.
In the epidemic situation in recent years, I feel this very deeply. Jingdong's warehousing and distribution, as well as numerous express delivery boys such as Shunfeng and Cainiao who are active on the road, have become the key force to protect people's livelihood in epidemic prevention. At the beginning of the year, Shanghai's policy of "ensuring supply and production" also attracted people's attention to the supporting role of logistics in automobile, high-tech and other industries.
In addition, it is unknown that in the past 10 years of development, logistics express has not only completed its own scale evolution, but also used smart supply chains to feed back the industry, helping all industries reduce costs, plan geographical and warehousing layout, and improve efficiency.
Nowadays, in all industries, logistics optimization and customization are almost indispensable. The reliability, stability and cost performance of China's logistics and express delivery in the 10 years of internal competition have also taken the lead in the world, and the pace of overseas transportation capacity has been launched. For example, after its deep exploration in the Southeast Asian market, Polar Rabbit Express will be officially launched in Mexico and Brazil in 2022, with its business scope covering 12 countries; Cainiao Logistics has established overseas warehouses and distribution centers in Europe, America, Southeast Asia and other places.
01
10 years of "Double 11", from "breaking positions" to "showing muscles"
In the past year, Cross Express provided many semiconductor enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta and other places with the "migration" service of production lines in different plants. Within a few hours, the entire production line, including raw materials, parts, components and products, can be transferred intact to the new factory building thousands of kilometers away.
"Behind the transfer of the production line is the dense route network layout of the express companies, as well as a complete set of support from the data center to the warehouse allocation system." Luo Wei, the head of the brand of Kuayue Express Group, said. In the past, this refined operation was mostly completed by overseas logistics brands. Now, the customized services that local logistics brands can provide have become increasingly mature.
In 2011, Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, made it clear at the "Logistics Partner Development Conference" that the biggest obstacle for Taobao to reach 1 trillion yuan next year is logistics
At that time, private express delivery had just removed the label of "black house" for more than two years, but it still had not said goodbye to "reckless". In 2009, Taobao Mall was launched for the first time on the "Double 11", and the platform sales on that day were 52 million yuan. In the second year, the sales volume soared to 936 million, and the number of packages generated exceeded 10 million for the first time. Since then, "warehouse explosion" has become the key word of "Double 11". Ten years ago, when parcels flooded into express distribution and transit centers, front-line personnel were so busy that they had to sort them manually.
Today, China's express delivery has been able to cope with the "Double 11" wave. The "Double 11" is not only no longer the pressure of express companies, but also a stage for them to show their muscles. During the "Double 11" in 2021, various logistics companies began to maximize the timeliness: the records of minutes and hours were frequently refreshed.
The distribution speed can not be separated from the reasonable layout of trunk line storage, and is also closely related to the application of big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and other digital technologies. With this as the starting point, the express industry has emerged in small order fast return, cold chain fresh food transportation and other terminal forms with higher requirements for trunk line and terminal transportation capacity.
At present, the express industry bears the responsibility of building national infrastructure. In June 2022, eight departments, including the Ministry of Commerce and the National Post Office, further clarified that by 2025, there will be centers in counties, outlets in villages and villages, and services in villages and villages. The coverage of rural e-commerce and express logistics distribution has been further expanded. The county's rural e-commerce system and express logistics distribution system have become more sound. The two-way circulation channels of agricultural products from the village to the city and consumer goods from the countryside to the village have become more smooth.
The Guiding Opinions on Promoting the High Quality Development of the Logistics Industry led by the National Development and Reform Commission also clearly stated that by 2025, the logistics industry should basically form a high-quality development pattern with reasonable layout structure, stable resource supply, advanced technology and equipment, outstanding quality brands, high intelligence level, strong global competitiveness, and green, low-carbon and sustainable development.
To this end, each express and logistics company has its own capabilities. Ma Yun said in 2018: "Our ideal is to deliver goods 24 hours a day in any region, anywhere in China. In the world, in any region, 72 hours a day. Our goal is to reduce the logistics cost of 15% of China's GDP to less than 5%."
According to the idea of Ali Cainiao, this network will be composed of two parts, one is to build a 24-hour freight network in China. The other network is to achieve 72 hour arrival around the world along the "Belt and Road". This network is national and even global. "This network should connect all global and national logistics express companies, all warehouses, and form a network to connect the world."
What Liu Qiangdong created for JD is almost the only e-commerce logistics system in the world that integrates warehouse and logistics. JD has built its own logistics since 2007. Up to now, it has laid out 43 "Asia No.1" intelligent logistics parks and about 1400 warehouses nationwide.
China Express used to be weak. Its core lies in the low proportion of e-commerce in the overall business form, and the business form of B2C and C2C has not been fully established. With the changes in the retail and circulation fields, the supply chain and logistics services should also provide them with matching capabilities. At such a time point, JD Logistics entered into the overall supply chain service, and finally realized the "integrated supply chain" of business flow, logistics, capital flow and information flow.
From C-end service to B-end customization
UPS, one of the four largest international express companies, has such a case on its official website all the year round: a Japanese plane landed at Honolulu Airport, Hawaii, accidentally hit a ramp and damaged the hood, so it asked UPS for help. UPS first sent the new covers to Hawaii by truck and Boeing 747 charter plane, and then sent the damaged covers to the US repair shop by sea.
UPS is proud of this because this process not only involves the three modes of transportation by sea, land and air, but also needs to negotiate with the manufacturer and repairer of the hood. This kind of solution provided by express companies for B-end users is called "integrated supply chain".
In fact, although the concept of "integrated supply chain" has been mentioned frequently in recent two years, around 2012, under the dual influence of policy guidance and enterprises' attempts to avoid "price war", China's express industry has experienced a wave of transformation to the B-end.
In 2014, Ma Junsheng, then the director of the National Post Office, proposed to focus on the development of the express industry serving advanced manufacturing on the basis of standard express and domestic e-commerce express. The next year, Pan Yan, vice president of Shunfeng warehouse distribution logistics business group, publicly said that the development focus of Shunfeng would shift to integrated service providers. Its essence is that the enterprise delivers the inventory to the express company, which is responsible for helping the enterprise optimize the inventory and reach more potential customers.
At that time, Shunfeng, for example, said that if the customer had stock in seven cities nationwide, including Xi'an and Chengdu, Shunfeng could help the other party reduce the distribution cost by at least 30% through overall planning. "If the destination of the enterprise is in the northwest, it will be sent from Xi'an. If the destination is in the southwest, it will be sent from Chengdu. The timeliness and price will be optimized."
To this end, Shunfeng also proposed a "WeChat Business Plan". The final shaping effect is that the enterprise only needs to be responsible for production at the front end, and the logistics, sales, reconciliation, logistics and back-end operations are all handed over to the express company.
Coincidentally, JD has successfully put this concept of value-added services for enterprises into practice. According to JD, the specific cooperation mode with the domestic clothing brand UR is that UR connects the delivery, replenishment, allocation, return and e-commerce O2O logistics business of nationwide stores to JD in a unified way. Through the information platform of JD Logistics, UR can view the information of every node of products from delivery, transportation to delivery in real time.
In addition, JD Logistics can also help UR optimize warehouse deployment with the help of nearly 4000 warehouses nationwide, reduce the back warehouse area of UR through small batch and high-frequency store replenishment, and release space for product display and user fitting.
The reason why express enterprises can complete the transformation to the B-end is to build a digital system and improve the warehouse distribution system. Fu Bing, the former CSO of JD Logistics, said that in order to switch from the C-end to the B-end, JD Logistics has rebuilt its internal technical framework, including optimizing the middle office group, building the data middle office, and optimizing the user experience of the front office, so as to interact with customers through data.
At present, "integrated supply chain" and digital capabilities have become the competitive keys of logistics express companies. Taking cross express transportation as an example, the company spent nearly 1 billion yuan in 2 years to build an ERP system including more than 20 management modules, such as transportation system, vehicle management, middle office system, quality control system, etc., so as to realize the efficient flow of people, goods and fields.
03
From manual sorting to overseas export capability
It can be said that the last 10 years are the "golden development period" of China's logistics express. It emerged around the explosion of e-commerce and grew rapidly due to capital injection and infrastructure construction. Now, of course, the competition is not yet final. What is the development direction of the express industry in the future?
In 2005, the annual turnover of Taobao exceeded that of Wal Mart. Taobao hopes to find a reliable logistics company. At that time, Yuantong was willing to reduce the unit price by 1/3 and took over the olive branch. Three years later, Yuantong became the first in the industry. Its successors, Zhongtong and Yunda, also achieved exponential growth through Taobao orders. During the "Double 11" in 2009, the number of Zhongtong Express was more than 350000, and in 2013, it soared to 9.3 million; In just three years, the growth has exceeded 26 times. However, at that time, private express delivery was still in the stage of relying on franchise and their own turf. The capacity adaptation was slow, and it failed to keep up with the development of e-commerce.
During the "Double 11" in 2010, express companies all over the country broke their warehouses one after another. It takes more than a month for many express mails to be delivered from order. However, considering the input-output ratio of the site and facilities, the hardware input of the express industry can only be planned at a level slightly higher than the average business volume. The direct consequence of the warehouse explosion is that express enterprises have been repeatedly complained by consumers, and some businesses have been forced to hang up "apology letters" on their flagship online stores.
"At that time, most of the packages received by consumers were quadruple bills, and most of the packages were manually sorted, so they did not have the ability of automatic sorting at all. Now the mainstream distribution centers are automated, using electronic face bills to informationize the address." In July this year, Ding Hongwei, vice president of Newbie Technology and general manager of Logistics Technology Business Department, said on the "Newbie Open Week · Technology Day".
For e-commerce platforms, increasing the trading volume only requires increasing promotion efforts, or adding servers to deal with peak traffic. However, for express companies that are still in the rush stage, taking the trunk line, building transit stations, and purchasing vehicles cannot be completed overnight. Not only that, due to the lack of differentiation space, a number of express companies have been unable to get rid of the whirlpool of price war for many years.
However, e-commerce platforms have also seen the value and improvement space of logistics. On the one hand, they have widened the boundary of the express industry by building their own logistics and data platforms. On the other hand, capital with a keen sense of smell has entered the market one after another, providing enough "food and ammunition" for the digital transformation of private express.
After the capital ammunition was loaded, the express enterprises tacitly carried out a round of capacity expansion. From 2018 to 2020 alone, the sum of fixed assets, projects under construction and intangible assets of Yunda has increased from 3.7 billion yuan to 13.9 billion yuan. In the same period, the relevant data of Yuantong and Shentong also increased from 5.5 billion yuan and 2.3 billion yuan to 14.5 billion yuan and 6.8 billion yuan respectively.
At the same time, the airline, trunk line and warehouse allocation systems supporting the logistics competition are also increasingly improved in the "internal volume" of the industry. Only in the first nine months of 2022, Shunfeng Airlines will increase the number of all cargo planes in operation to 75, and the total number of domestic and foreign navigation stations will exceed 80. "The echelon capacity of long-distance, medium and short distance transportation has become a scale".
At present, this round of infrastructure arms race continues. Yuantong, Cainiao, Postal Service and Jitu are still enriching their transport capacity by introducing full cargo planes and signing belly cabin rental agreements with airlines. In August this year, with the official approval of JD Airlines to be put into operation, the battle of logistics giants to compete for the aviation market will be fiercer in the future.
Express enterprises are accelerating their capacity expansion to gain higher market share and lower costs. However, drawing on the similar growth history of international express giants UPS and FedEX, this expansion undoubtedly extends the breadth and depth of China's express delivery, and also precipitates experience.
On July 21, 2022, 27 ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Commerce, issued a document to promote digital culture and foreign trade. Earlier, the "Fourteenth Five Year" Postal Industry Development Plan of the State Post Office also clearly stated that it was hoped that express delivery would "enter the village, enter the factory and go to sea".
With this as the background, more express delivery enterprises began to copy their experience overseas: except for this year's fast layout and unique extremely rabbit; In August this year, Baishi International jointly launched a full link cross-border logistics service between China and Southeast Asia. In the same month, Shunfeng launched the "War Wolf Plan" for Southeast Asia, which is mainly aimed at import and export businesses in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc., under the personal supervision of Chairman Wang Wei. In April, the express delivery business in Vietnam has been well established for more than two years, and it was opened in Manila, Philippines; In February, Zhongtong launched a trial run at its transfer center in Bangkok, Thailand.
After ten years of development, China's express delivery has gone out of its former recklessness; With more precipitation and facing the international market, China's logistics express is facing a broader sea of stars.
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