Chapter 443: Warehousing

Just as the launch of Gannan Navel Oranges was in full swing, Jiang Miao’s older sister, Jiang Xia, left Shanmei. She brought her son, Zhang Xiaolong, to Yangcheng to conduct some market research.

Vice Manager Gao Ying was briefing her on the situation at the Yangcheng warehouse center. “Manager Jiang, to improve overall efficiency, our Yangcheng warehouse center launched a warehouse supermarket business half a month ago. Business has been pretty good so far.”

The factory building, which had been converted into a supermarket, was a spacious 1,200 square meters. It was filled with tall shelving, stocked with products from the company itself, as well as its partner enterprises and individual collaborators.

Gao Ying continued, “We’ve leveraged the registered users of the Hailufeng Specialty Store app to launch a local city membership service. For now, this service is limited to Yangcheng.”

Zhang Xiaolong, who had been dragged along by his mom to get some work experience, could only force himself to take notes on the conversation. His writing speed had increased several times over in the past few days.

Jiang Xia asked, “Vice Manager Gao, what difficulties is the warehouse supermarket currently facing? Or are there areas that need improvement?”

“There are three main issues at the moment. First, our selection of fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural products isn’t broad enough. Second, customers have commented that we don’t carry other fast-moving consumer goods. And finally, we just don’t have enough locations.”

Hearing these problems, Jiang Xia fell into deep thought. After a moment, she shook her head slightly. “The first problem will be solved step by step. I’ll need to discuss the second one with headquarters. As for the third problem, that will also have to be handled one step at a time.”

“I understand headquarters’ considerations.” Gao Ying also understood that rolling out an entire industry chain wasn’t something that could be done quickly.

The warehouse supermarket essentially capitalized on the convenient location of the warehouse center. Its prices were even lower than the specialty stores; customers who drove over to shop received a flat 10% discount on everything.

For the many workers and local residents living in the suburbs, driving over on the weekend to buy in bulk was extremely cost-effective.

Furthermore, the warehouse center had a large quantity of products nearing their expiration dates. The warehouse supermarket provided a channel to sell these off directly at cost, just to recoup the investment.

Jiang Xia’s group stood at the entrance, observing for half an hour.

They noticed that many people were buying discounted fish products and ready-to-eat meals, which happened to be the products Hailufeng Company currently had in high inventory.

The high inventory of fish products was due to massive production capacity. Compounding the issue was an adjustment in the aquaculture industry that caused prices to drop, leading to sluggish sales for a range of items like canned fish, fish balls, fish cakes, fish floss, fish sausages, crispy fish skin, and fish skin dumplings.

To sell these products, the company adopted a three-pronged approach. First, it increased product diversification. Second, it stopped expanding the scale of its contracts. Finally, it resorted to discounts and promotions.

On the product diversification front, the fish product R&D department had launched over a dozen types of soft-packaged ready-to-eat meals. These included unagi kabayaki style fish, braised fish, sweet and sour fish, authentic fish-flavored shredded pork, and grilled fish. This diversification expanded the product line, indirectly boosting fish sales.

Meanwhile, the scale of Egyptian Catfish farming contracted by Hailufeng Company in the Shanmei area had stabilized at 18,000 mu. However, more than half of this was still in rice-paddy-based fishponds, from which the company would purchase approximately 500,000 to 600,000 tons of Egyptian Catfish annually.

Of this, 80% was used as raw material for fishmeal, with the remainder used for fish meat products. Additionally, other local enterprises like Guotai Food would also purchase a portion of the fish paste as a raw material.

Therefore, excess production capacity didn’t really affect Hailufeng Company. If there was truly too much overcapacity, they would simply increase the proportion used for fishmeal production and reduce the amount of fish allocated to meat products.

…

「Inside the warehouse supermarket.」

Jiang Xia carefully observed the surrounding customers.

She realized that what she had seen at the entrance was somewhat misleading.

“Xiaolong, look at these shelves. Any thoughts?”

Caught off guard by his mom, a bewildered Zhang Xiaolong scratched his head. “Any thoughts? A lot of the shelves are empty?”

Jiang Xia patted an empty shelf labeled ‘Green Peppers’. “Just now, we were outside tracking what customers were buying, and it was mostly fish products and ready-to-eat meals. What’s your take on that?”

“Huh? Is it because the supermarket doesn’t have anything else?” Zhang Xiaolong replied belatedly, staring at the empty shelf.

Jiang Xia nodded. “We were misled by what we saw at the entrance. It’s not that customers prefer fish products and ready-to-eat meals; it’s that our supply of fruits and vegetables is insufficient.”

As they were talking, supermarket employees were already pulling a cart from the cold storage in the back, laden with a dozen or so baskets of green peppers. They quickly packed them into large bags of 5-6 jin and slapped on price labels.

The five supermarket employees were running off their feet.

As soon as the fruits and vegetables were restocked, customers would quickly snatch them all up.

Whether it was broccoli, green peppers, eggplant, navel oranges, celery, cucumbers, small gourds, sweet potato leaves, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, or lotus roots, these items sold out incredibly fast.

Their main selling point was being great value for the money.

Many workers loved the “three-item combo”: a 5 or 10 jin bag containing three types of vegetables, enough for one or two people to eat for a week.

With navel oranges being one of the few relatively inexpensive fruit options, many customers were hauling them away by the case.

Gao Ying pulled aside the harried supermarket manager. “Yuzhang, how are sales today?”

“Manager Jiang, Vice Manager Gao, sales are excellent. We’re running low on stock for many fruits and vegetables,” Wang Yuzhang said, holding a tablet.

Jiang Xia picked up a bag of navel oranges. “And the navel oranges?”

Wang Yuzhang pulled up the sales data on his tablet. “The navel oranges just arrived yesterday, and we sold over 8,000 jin. Today, many members received a text alert, and we sold over 17,000 jin this morning alone. I expect the afternoon will be about the same.”