The Industrial Giant Reborn

Chen Zhiwen nodded and said: "I will entrust an investment bank to carry out this transaction. The price will be 1.3 times the average stock price in the last three months. It will be an all-cash transaction, but the premise of this transaction is that Mr. Pierce's team needs to stay at least In the next ten years of operation, we will sign a corresponding agreement, and the content of the agreement can be negotiated by our lawyers.”

"My team can work stably. I naturally wish for it, but I am almost 60 years old. Why don't Mr. Chen find a younger professional manager?" Pierce said with a light smile.

"The value of Mr. Pierce far exceeds the assets of fedmart. I will look for professional managers who focus on management and operations. I hope that Mr. Pierce can stay in charge of the company's operating philosophy, that is, you are responsible for the overall direction and details. It’s fine if someone else is in charge. So it won’t be too tiring, and age doesn’t matter that much. Among large American companies, there are quite a few CEOs who are over 60 years old.” Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

Old age does not affect people's business ability, and later generations have proved this point, and one of the advantages of being old is that after ten years, the company will have a huge scale, and he will not have any ambitions. In the original history, By the mid-1980s, Pierce's energy could not keep up with the expansion of his own second start-up company, Price club, and eventually merged with the people who started his business from his company. In fact, the scale of Price club was larger than that of Costco at that time. big.

If it weren't for the age factor, how could Pierce voluntarily withdraw from the management of the new company, or would not sell it at all, then the largest warehouse supermarket chain in the future will be Price club.

Of course, in order to ensure that Pierce has enough motivation, the shares that should be given will still be given. Whether it is him or other management staff, they must be motivated and motivated.

In addition, they deserve it. Anyway, the supermarket chain business in the United States has really reached a large scale, and it must be listed. Only when it is listed can the interests of all parties be balanced. But that's for later.

"Mr. Chen does not interfere with the company's operations?" Pierce asked.

"I will not interfere, I will only invest, how much money you need, as long as it is in the past, I will definitely give it, I just hope you can expand quickly, but there are a few aspects that I need to intervene in, and I will make it clear to you now, you If you have any opinions and ideas, you can also express them, and we will discuss them together." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

"Please." Pierce nodded.

Chen Zhiwen said: "First, it is about the operation mode of the supermarket. The warehouse-style supermarket chains including fedmart are actually not my ideal warehouse-style supermarket. My ideal warehouse-style supermarket should target all users, including ordinary people. The ordinary people, rather than a designated group, so that more than 90% of customers are rejected."

"It's impossible. The core of the warehouse supermarket is to have those commercial customers. This is our core." Pierce shook his head and vetoed: "We provide discounts for special members, and they spend with us for a long time."

"If you think about it this way, warehouse supermarkets will always be small-scale, and it is impossible to compare with supermarkets such as Sears and Kmart, or even one-tenth of the scale." Chen Zhiwen said with a light smile.

In the 1970s, all the previous warehouse supermarkets were also membership-based, but unlike later generations of Costco, their members were selective, some were civil servants, some were specific groups, some were nearby companies, others For non-member groups, if you go to the supermarket with cash, you will not even be able to enter the door.

In later generations of the mainland, if you went to a Metro supermarket before 2010, you would not be able to enter without a membership card, and it would be useless if you had money. In the 1970s, European and American warehouse chain supermarkets adopted such a business strategy.

Bind specific groups, give discounts, and then cooperate with each other to get what they need.

"Our customers like exclusive discounts. If everyone can enter, it will only disrupt the current system, and warehouses are all business models with fewer SKUs and more quantities. Will the masses consume like this? If the masses like it If you are shopping in an ordinary supermarket with a large number of SKUs, then such a change will destroy the once stable customers." Pierce frowned and analyzed.

"How to operate is a commercial secret. If I can acquire fedmart, I will tell you, and even if we reform, we can also establish another brand, and then open a store to try instead of changing the existing model. Come on, the risk will be much lower." Chen Zhiwen said with a smile.

SKU refers to the type of product in the retail field. For example, there are 50 brands of toothpaste in a supermarket, and each brand has an average of 3 models, so there are 150 SKUs in total. The number of SKUs directly determines the perfection of supermarket products. Also determines the cost.

The more SKUs, the more resources need to be invested in purchasing, and the higher the operating costs, but ordinary supermarkets have no choice, and enough SKUs can meet the different needs of thousands of customers.

The warehouse supermarket is different. Its core is to have fewer SKUs. Each SKU has a large reserve. It takes the route of selling specific products to specific groups. . It can even be said that warehouse-style supermarkets gradually appeared in the 1950s because of the special needs of specific business groups, which ordinary supermarkets could not meet.

However, with the development of society and economy, the situation after 20 years is completely different from that of 20 years ago. Warehouse supermarkets have also entered the era of change. As for how to change, Chen Zhiwen will naturally not say that the other supermarket has not yet arrived. , how silly it would be to say so.

In fact, many of the simple business models of later generations can be explained clearly in one sentence, and others can quickly understand them, but it is difficult to be the first to think of them. There are many such things in human history, such as industrial The assembly line, the early profit model of countless Internet companies such as Fuji Xun and Google, etc.

"Then I don't want to use my existing supermarket to test." Pierce said: "It will affect the entire fedmart brand."

"No problem, we can just buy another warehouse, and if we can't, we can build one." Chen Zhiwen boldly agreed. In the United States, except for big cities, land prices are not expensive in other places, not to mention that warehouse supermarkets are generally located in the suburbs. The biggest cost of building a supermarket may be the construction cost, generally hundreds of thousands of dollars is enough.

"Okay, then if we really cooperate, then we can discuss it." Pierce naturally doesn't care if it doesn't affect the current brand.

"Okay." Chen Zhiwen continued: "The second point is the procurement channel. I hope that the procurement of supermarkets will be tilted towards Asia, rather than mainly in the United States."