Unmanned convenience stores are in high demand, and "Convenience Home" has received millions of yuan in angel investment from Feng Tao from Lianchuang Yongxuan

According to 36Kr, the unmanned convenience store "Convenience Home" has received millions of RMB in angel round investment, funded by Feng Tao from Lianchuang Yongxuan.

No one convenience store was at the right time. Players such as Binguo Box, F5 Future Store, Shenlan Technology, Easy Go and other players gathered. Amazon, Rosen, Alibaba, Wal Mart and other giants also tried the water one after another.

"Convenience Home" was founded in March 2017 and is located in Shanghai. Convenience Home offers two products: mini unmanned convenience stores and medium-sized unmanned convenience stores. Compared to a large group of players, the difference of Convenience Home lies in its flexibility.

Convenience Home's "mini unmanned convenience store" has a minimum unit area of less than 1 square meter (0.68 square meters) and more flexible placement locations, including subway stations, office buildings, universities, etc. The cost of a minimum unit convenience store is about 13000 yuan (which may be lower after mass production). The smallest unit of unmanned convenience store can be assembled into a larger unit area convenience store based on the distribution of foot traffic. Less than 100 people, one can be placed; About 100 people, two can be pieced together; More than 500 people can spell four. The "medium-sized unmanned convenience store" of Convenience Home is a combination of six micro convenience stores, and tables and chairs are added in the space to provide consumers with a rest area, which can be placed in relatively open residential areas, parks, etc.

Technically, Convenience Home has set up RFID in each layer of shelves and sealed and shielded the gaps in each corner, making the recognition rate higher. The process is very simple. Use Alipay to scan the code to open the door, and leave immediately after taking it. Alipay will automatically deduct the payment (WeChat is in negotiation). In the future, Convenience Home hopes to perform palm print recognition on door handles, which can be recognized when consumers perform the action of "opening the door".

Conceptually, the convenience home is actually closer to a vending machine. Founder Fan Shaowei believes that the convenience home is an improvement on traditional vending machines. On the one hand, the operating categories of traditional vending machines are mostly beverages and fixed packaged snacks, while convenience stores will mainly focus on "fresh food" that conforms to health trends; On the other hand, the traditional shipping process of vending machines is to make payment first and then ship. The display method of pipelines makes space utilization low. If it is a fresh food product, it may also deform during the falling process. Convenient homes, on the other hand, can stack and densely arrange their goods before deducting payments, resulting in higher space utilization. "Under the same area, our stocking rate is twice that of traditional vending machines."

The selection logic of Convenience Home is to choose different products based on different venues, such as meeting the brunch needs of white-collar workers in office buildings, providing bento, sandwiches, salads, and so on; Provide snacks, braised dishes, bread, and more in universities. Compared to the average unit price of a family (14 yuan), Convenience Home sets the average unit price at around 10 yuan. In addition, through the mini program, consumers can provide feedback on the food they want to eat and guide the selection of categories based on the data in reverse.

In addition to micro and medium-sized convenience stores, Convenience Home also has a third aspect of business - the transformation of traditional mom and pop stores. The characteristics of offline mom and pop stores vary in size and area. Convenience Home provides an unmanned convenience store renovation plan. Firstly, the mom and pop stores share space resources and share sales revenue; The second is the franchise method, which has a higher profit ratio. On the one hand, small shop owners do not need to spend more than ten hours a day guarding their stores. On the other hand, in addition to unmanned sales, they can also expand other businesses to gain more profits, such as milk tea, coffee, etc.

"Whether it's unmanned retail or manned retail, it's essentially a retail business," said Fan Shaowei. Since it is a retail business, in terms of network layout, it is necessary to take a global perspective, "I am most afraid of a hammer in the east and a stick in the west."

Reasonable layout of points, lines, and surfaces is essential to minimize operational and logistics costs. Two important factors need to be considered in this process: pedestrian flow and coordination of laying points. The idea of Convenience Home is to set up a medium-sized unmanned convenience store in a densely populated area, and then lay out 10 micro unmanned convenience stores within a 100 meter radius to form a "minimum replenishment unit", where one person can be responsible for replenishing 20 devices.

As for the cost of RFID labeling, Fan Shaowei holds an optimistic attitude. Currently, the label cost is between 0.5 and 0.6 yuan, but with the popularization of RFID in the retail market, the price of RFID tags will definitely decrease.

After this round of financing, Convenience Home will establish trial operation points in Shanghai, including medium-sized and micro unmanned convenience stores, with an expected deployment of 20 branches. Currently, Convenience Home is seeking Pre-A round financing to expand production and launch operations.

In terms of the team, CEO Fan Shaowei graduated from Harbin Institute of Technology and previously served as the Northern Region Manager of Shangpai Software Channel Department. He is a continuous entrepreneur. COO Wu Wei holds a master's degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and has been continuously starting a business in the field of fast-moving consumer goods; CTO Peng Genggeng graduated from Shanghai University with a major in Computer Engineering and previously worked as a Senior Engineer in the Advertising Platform Department of Tencent OMG Business Group.