Angel investors said: small and medium-sized shops "Internet", starting from the collection process

Since last year, we have been able to hear about the “Internetization” transformation of offline stores by Alipay and WeChat payment almost every once in a while. The idea of ​​Alibaba and Tencent is to start from the chain of large and medium-sized merchants and to “implant” their payment system into the existing cashier terminal through the strategic partnership. Whether it is the cooperation between Alipay and Intime Group, several chain supermarkets, or the cooperation between WeChat and top-grade discounts and New Century Department Store, it is nothing more than this routine.

The two companies also wanted to transform small and medium-sized stores by launching their own POS machines, but they all failed because of regulatory obstacles and low acceptance of offline stores. In fact, compared with those large-scale supermarkets that have financial resources and already have a certain IT foundation, the “Internetization” transformation of small and medium-sized offline shops is a more difficult topic: the flow of these stores is often small, and the degree of Internetization It is not high. In addition to participating in group purchases to drive traffic, it is not willing to spend a lot of money on the Internet. So the result is that their relationship with the Internet only occurs in group buying and some marketing activities based on WeChat and Weibo.

Not long ago, I had an exchange with Linsen, the founding partner of Inno Angel Fund. The core of this chat is how to let offline small and medium-sized shops access at low cost without transforming the original business process. The Internet, providing so-called "O2O" services? At the same time, as an investor, how does Linsen view the opportunities in this field and thus carry out a portfolio?

For small and medium-sized shops, because income and profits are not high, they will inevitably not spend a lot of money on the “reconstruction” of the Internet with unknown returns. What you can see about all of their current relationships with the Internet—such as group buying, WeChat, and Weibo marketing—are almost always motivating to drive traffic, and the more immediate benefit is that they don’t require them to spend too much. Big cost. The business process of offline stores is still mainly based on cash registers and UnionPay POS machines.

Lin Sen said that the cash register and UnionPay POS machine will still be the mainstream configuration of small and medium-sized shops in the future. In terms of cash registers, there are currently tens of thousands of software providers for collection systems on the market. Each industry and every store has its own cash register system. If it is completely rebuilt, the cost is huge; while the UnionPay POS machine is Compatible with the bank cards of major banks, but the function is quite backward.

Therefore, Linsen believes that investment opportunities should be in this key part. PingWest has reported on a project that Inno has invested in. This project is called “Kelelo” and the product is a “WeChat server” hardware. The advantage is that it does not need to modify the original cash register of the shop. Instead, it can access the “WeChat server” between the cash register and the receipt printer. The matching screen can display the QR code for customers to scan. . In addition, it can also attach the QR code of WeChat payment directly under the receipt when printing, which is equivalent to intercepting the information of the cash register and using this hardware for a “reprocessing”. And with a little change, you can access more mobile payment solutions, and can carry out CRM management such as membership information and promotions. This is Innolux's investment in the “Renovation Cash Register” section, which Linsen believes can solve most of the “intelligent” aspects of the store.

The Other part - the transformation of UnionPay POS machine, Lin Sen's choice is to start from the intelligentization of POS machine, the investment object is Huiyin intelligent cloud POS machine. This is one of the solutions for multiple intelligent pos machines on the market. Its products have been certified by UnionPay, based on the Android system. Lin Sen believes that the biggest problem with the traditional UnionPay POS machine is that it has low hardware configuration and poor scalability like a feature phone, and it can hardly be changed at the software level. The intelligent POS machine is superior to the existing UnionPay POS machine at the hardware and system level. More importantly, it has more imagination in software, and can even grow a business model such as MIUI in the future. Moreover, although this market capacity is not as big as that of a smartphone, it is big enough for the ToB business: At present, there are 3 to 5 million UnionPay POS machines on the market, and almost all of the UnionPay POS machines are used. Value" business.

Most offline shops will be equipped with cash registers. Those offline and valuable offline shops will generally be equipped with UnionPay POS machines, but not all types of shops are suitable for “Internet” transformation. E-commerce has in fact squeezed the living space of shops that sell less effective products. In Linsen’s view, those stores with service characteristics and effectiveness still have their future. Existence value - they include but are not limited to restaurants, pharmacies, beauty salons.

Therefore, Inno's investment has an interesting Call Center service called "easy to order." The market for easy-to-order is the take-away demand for small restaurants, which will transfer the take-out calls of each small restaurant that has been taken out to your own Call Center, through the operator and the pre-set menu of the day and the contact information of the orderer. The order information is sent directly to the restaurant's order system, and the order is printed using a wireless printer. It can even work with the WeChat server to print the QR code of WeChat payment to the order.

The other is the “micro pharmacy”. Choosing it is based on two considerations: First, the location of the pharmacy is often crowded in the city, and second, it is essential, with medical service attributes, but the flow of people is far less than that of restaurants and shops, and “micro The pharmacy can provide mobile phone orders and deliver drugs in a timely manner.

You can see some commonalities of these projects: "online" services are mostly based on super applications such as WeChat. Linsen believes that the form of super APP and public account will be the mainstream of the future. The service number form in the super application appears; on the "Offline" side, those offline service shops and industries with strong service have "reform space", and the products that provide cost-effective solutions around the necessary equipment of these shops There is potential for growth.