Is the existence of urban flower wholesalers necessary or is it becoming redundant? Are online platforms stealing business from wholesalers?

The birth of something new often means the old thing is eliminated. The old and the new are the laws of nature, and also the cruel rules of the market. With the rapid development of network platforms and logistics, "direct delivery from flower base" and "direct delivery from import" have gradually become one of the criteria for customers to select flowers. As for the city wholesalers who used to be sandwiched between the retail terminals and the source wholesalers, they are gradually becoming dispensable and are facing the danger of being eliminated step by step.

So, is the existence of city wholesalers still necessary? What is the future direction of urban wholesalers?

On August 25, hosted by Su Yong of "Flower Shop Owner Insider", more than ten guests from various fields in the industry were invited to break down the dilemma of urban wholesalers and provide strategies for the future development of the industry.

Content source: Chestnut business card

1. Zhang Fukun, Chairman of the Guangzhou Municipal Government

The epidemic has had a great impact on both the wholesale and retail industries, but in response to the current plight of urban wholesalers, I think first of all, the position of industry wholesalers is bound to exist. Because industry wholesalers help florists solve the pain point of storage, florists often have urgent orders from Kunming Guangzhou and other places to replenish the goods, so there will be the problem of timeliness. The second is service. Florists need city wholesalers to give them fast and efficient service.

But wholesalers also need to change. Now business is difficult, and money is increasingly difficult to collect, running capital problems will cause a lot of trouble. I think that as long as the industry wholesalers choose the products and the service well, plus some changes in Internet marketing, the industry wholesalers will have a great competitive advantage.

2. Zhao Yongneng, founder of Hanapower, general manager

Are online platforms taking away the business of wholesalers?

First of all, the answer is no. I think it is based on the following points:

First, urban wholesalers have their customers in the same city, and "faster and better" has always been the biggest charm and core competitiveness of localized wholesale and retail, as well as a methodology that gives the best experience to buyers.

Second, regardless of the florist's retail orders or demand, it is random, which can lead to uncertainty in the demand for flowers. For example, local florists often suddenly receive orders for 99 or 999 flowers, and the delivery time is this afternoon or tomorrow morning. When it is no longer possible to send directly from the source, the source channel must be in the local, so only city wholesalers can provide a rush delivery service.

Third, although flowers are more niche, the market is still big. They cannot shake the demand of the national city wholesale station, whether they are in Kunming or outside of Kunming, who grew up in the network trading platform.

3. Li Jiaqi, head of Yunnan Hydrangea Flower Gardening Co.

Our biggest source of channels as a product merchant is actually the city wholesalers. I personally think that some wholesalers must be eliminated. When an industry in the upgrade iteration will certainly eliminate some wholesalers with a low reputation, goods that are not complete, and in which bargaining competition is not fierce, these will be eliminated, but at the same time, they will also create a large number of large wholesale service providers.

In the past two years, our biggest feeling on the original side is that everyone is subtracting and proceeding to do their own small but fine and beautiful things. But I think urban wholesalers should do more. In fact, more urban wholesalers should provide services that add value to help downstream customers solve the pain point problem. In the past two years, everyone thought that business was difficult. The economic market is not good. In fact, good business is still good, the poor will only get worse. The fact that Doonan can change dramatically in just 4 years shows that the c-end market must have a demand for flowers gradually integrated into the life of the problem.

In fact, we all understand one problem: if we really go to do the c-end of flowers or some life with flowers, the local wholesalers and florists have the biggest advantage. If the city wholesalers can solve the shortcomings and pain points of the florists' guests, the product merchants and wholesalers can do a supply.

I think Yunnan direct delivery and origin wholesalers is no conflict, just a different intermediary. If the origin side and sales end can embrace each other, both to reduce the wholesaler's inventory consumption and to meet the florist's multi-category needs, while allowing the origin side to have a stable supply, stable supply means that part of the price can be stable, the degree of product standards will become higher and higher, so I think the next most important thing is that since change has come over, we might as well just go ahead and embrace the change.