Rebirth of the Wild Age

Speaking of supermarket chains, the first reaction will probably think of Wal-Mart, Carrefour and the like.

But around 2000, although these foreign supermarkets had entered China, their influence was far less than that of local supermarket chain brands in China.

At this time, the top three supermarket chains in China were: Shenghai Lianhua, Shenghai Hualian, and Jingcheng Hualian. The brand names were very similar. Those who didn't know thought they were triplets.

Hua Zhou is 56 years old this year. The Hualian Supermarket he founded has consistently ranked first in China's retail chain industry. It's a pity that we encountered the Asian financial turmoil, coupled with the introduction of advanced Western models by our opponents, and was overtaken by Lianhua Supermarket in one fell swoop. Now Hualian Supermarket has become the second in a million-year-old.

"Chairman, Boss Song is here!" the secretary knocked on the door.

"Please come in." Hua Zhou stood up immediately after speaking and walked to the center of the office to shake hands with Song Weiyang.

Song Weiyang was accompanied by two staff members, carrying large cardboard boxes respectively.

Hua Zhou was stunned when he saw this. A few days ago he received a call saying that Song Weiyang wanted to visit him in person. He immediately turned away everything this morning and sat in the office waiting patiently. This is not because Xifeng is one of the major suppliers of Hualian Supermarket, but because Song Weiyang has too much influence, he will be warmly received wherever he goes.

"Boss Song, are you giving me a gift?" Hua Zhou pointed to the box and smiled.

Song Weiyang smiled and said, "I really came to give a gift to Dong Hua today."

"Please sit down," Hua Zhou asked the secretary to make tea, and sat on the sofa himself, and said in a joking tone, "I am a leader of a state-owned enterprise and cannot accept gifts. Boss Song, please don't corrupt me."

Although Hualian Supermarket was founded by Huazhou, it is a state-owned enterprise and he does not even have shares in the company. Supermarkets are also a strong side. Many brands have to give gifts or rebates to leaders if they want to settle in. This has become an unspoken rule of the industry. But Hua Zhou is a well-known incorruptible figure in the industry. He is almost reaching retirement age, does not have any equity in the company, and it is very rare that he never accepts gifts.

Song Weiyang said: "Hua Dong, today's gift, you have to accept it if you don't accept it."

Hua Zhou smiled and said: "I have only seen forced buying and selling, and never seen forced gift giving. I would rather see what the gift Boss Song brought is."

Song Weiyang said to the two followers: "Let's work."

The two workers immediately unpacked the box and quickly took out the computer for assembly. This computer is very strange, with many extra parts and even a small iron drawer.

"What is this?" Hua Zhou asked curiously.

"Electronic cash register," Song Weiyang waited for the computer to be assembled, picked up the scanner and said, "This thing scans the product barcode, and the product information is directly entered into the computer. The computer comes with the full Chinese cash register software written by Jinshan Company. The amount payable is automatically calculated, and the amount of change is automatically calculated. The cashier presses this button again, and the drawer pops up. The drawer is divided into several compartments, which can hold different amounts of banknotes, which is very convenient to use."

Hua Zhou immediately thought of a scene: the cashier quickly scanned the goods, the computer software automatically settled, and then the drawer popped up to quickly find the change.

"Good stuff!" Hua Zhou said happily.

Song Weiyang smiled and asked, "Is this a good gift?"

"Yes, yes," Hua Zhou nodded repeatedly and asked, "How much does it cost?"

Song Weiyang said: "If you purchase a large quantity, you only need 6,000, with a full Chinese cash register software. The main reason is that the scanner is very expensive and there is no stock in China, so you can only rely on imports."

Huazhou immediately made a decision and said: "I need to try it out first. If it works, I will order 600 units at once!"

"Hua Dong is refreshed," Song Weiyang said cheerfully, "I thought it would take a lot of saliva, so I personally came to convince him. I didn't expect Hua Dong to have such a business vision."

Hua Zhou said: "If Boss Song doesn't come, I guess I will go to the United States to purchase next year."

With the increasingly fierce competition in the supermarket industry, major brands are trying to introduce advanced Western models.

The various management expenses of Hualian Supermarket now account for more than 4% of total sales, while Wal-Mart can control it below 2% in the United States. The gap of 2 percentage points is fatal to the retail industry, so this year we will start to build an "intelligent purchasing center": supermarkets use the ECR system to place orders in the supermarket with one click according to their needs, and each supplier immediately You can get detailed information.

And this kind of computer-based cashier is part of the supermarket POS system, and only a few supermarkets in China have installed it. Even if it is installed, there is almost no scanning gun, because there are a large number of product packages that do not come with a barcode, and there is no place to scan if you want to scan.

Even the big brands such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour are very backward in China. So far, the ECR system has not been fully constructed. Many Wal-Mart and Carrefour still use manual cash registers.

Again, thank the country and the government.

In order to expand the export volume of commodities, China established the "China Article Coding Center" in 1988 and vigorously promoted commodity barcodes in the early 1990s. In the first few years, only export commodities had barcodes, because the absence of barcodes would be greatly restricted.

With the continuous advancement of WTO accession negotiations, China revised the bar code standards for commodities in 1998, and finally standardized all kinds of domestic bar codes. At that time, nearly 50,000 companies and 500,000 products in China had barcodes, but in addition to export products, the barcodes of other products were perfunctory, and they were printed on the packaging to look like they could not be scanned with a scanning gun. This is also the reason why Wal-Mart and Carrefour do not have scanners in Chinese supermarkets. They are purely furnishings.

Until July this year, when China joined the WTO, the State Administration of Quality Supervision issued the "Implementation Measures for the Certification of Barcode Printing Qualifications for Commodities" to further standardize the printing and qualification certification of commodity barcodes. The goal is to achieve a pass rate of more than 80% of barcodes for Chinese products within three years.

Hua Zhou asked employees to bring dozens of products from the warehouse, and he personally carried out experiments with a scanning gun. As a result, I scanned a box of biscuits, a bag of instant noodles and two bottles of beverages one after another, but there was no response. Hua Zhou asked in doubt: "The machine is broken?"

Song Weiyang smiled and put a bottle of Xifeng iced tea over, with a beep, the computer immediately displayed the product information: "The machine is not broken, it is a product barcode problem. Some barcode printing is not qualified, and some simply invalid barcodes. For products produced after August this year, the bar code pass rate should be higher because the government has strengthened supervision."

Hua Zhou frowned and said, "If you can't sweep it out, it's useless."

Song Weiyang said: "You can directly enter the barcode number, and after the cashier is proficient, it can be done in a few seconds."

Hua Zhou tried to operate it by himself, and for the products that could not be scanned just now, there are indeed three products that can be displayed by entering the number. There is only one box of biscuits. No matter how you enter the number, it is invalid. Obviously, the merchant has fooled it casually.

Song Weiyang said: "For products with invalid barcodes, you can only use the supermarket's in-store codes, or simply settle them manually."

Huazhou had its own plan to use manual settlement for the invalid barcode products that had been purchased, and at the same time ordered the merchants to improve. If the next batch of goods cannot be scanned yet, then I’m sorry, this kind of product is no longer accepted in our supermarkets.

Hua Zhou experienced the cash register software again, and what made him most satisfied was the settlement of vegetables and fruits. The software can pre-set the unit price, and the cashier only needs to input the weight instead of manually calculating the total price.

Song Weiyang said: "If Hua Dong is willing to spend money, he can buy a printer to connect it and issue the invoice directly at the time of settlement~www.readwn.com~ and print the store code when selling fruits and vegetables."

"It's a good idea!" Hua Zhou was very satisfied.

The Shenzhou chip uses the ARM architecture and cannot support the Microsoft system, so naturally it cannot be used as a personal computer. Then change his mind. Song Weiyang selected a foreign linux system in advance, and asked Jinshan to develop cash register software on this basis, and then design the details of the cash register platform, only waiting for the success of the development of the Shenzhou chip.

This is a blank market. There are more and more supermarkets across the country, and there are currently no competing products.

Song Weiyang personally negotiated the Hualian Supermarket, the second largest in the industry, and the sales staff in China immediately took the order form of Hualian and went to Lianhua Supermarket, the leader of the industry, to discuss business. After Shenghai’s Hualian and Lianhua were settled, they went to "Shenghai One Hundred". Who knew that the leader of this broken company actually said that they would have a meeting to discuss.

"Shenghai One Hundred" has not yet met to discuss the results. Jingcheng Hualian and Jicheng Hualian have agreed to purchase, and six other supermarket chains have placed orders.

In fact, China's cash register computer started mass production at this time, and the one Song Weiyang brought was assembled manually.

The computer has not been offline yet, and a total of more than 5,000 orders have been received. Moreover, the profit is extremely high. The pre-tax profit of each computer can reach 2500 yuan, which has thrown out the profit of Lenovo's low-end computers a few blocks. Because this thing has very low performance requirements except for the heat dissipation of the motherboard (continuous work), in principle, it only needs to run a cash register software.

Next, China Technology will contact the printer company to launch a cash register computer with printing function.

As long as the goods are spread all over the country's big supermarkets, the scattered small supermarkets will follow up. Moreover, the number of such small supermarkets will increase, and they will even develop into several stores in one street. These are all potential customers of China Computer.