After watching the training classroom for voice actors, Zhou Fangyuan and Xu Qifeng chatted for a long time, Xu Qifeng couldn't see Zhou Fangyuan very much on weekdays, so he took this opportunity today to talk about many of his thoughts.

Many of Xu Qifeng's ideas are very good, which coincide with Zhou Fangyuan's plan, which makes Zhou Fangyuan feel even more that this subordinate is very well selected and is the person he needs.

After leaving the head office, Zhou Fangyuan did not go home, but went straight to a manor in the eastern suburbs.

This is a fixed place for him to gather with his classmates in the past two years, don't go to a hotel or anything, he is also a celebrity now, and he has nothing to do in any kind of restaurant, and it is easy to be harassed, so he simply makes a fixed manor out, and everyone will have dinner here again in the future.

Today's dinner is mainly for everyone to communicate their feelings, and there are two other things to say.

One of them is that it has now entered a white-hot takeaway war, there is nothing to say about this, Zhou Fangyuan will not end up in person, this is the tacit understanding of people at his level.

Just like the two Ma Ge will not be easy to play.

So far, no matter how good the personal relationship between them is, the friction between the three groups is unavoidable.

Because of today's development, their respective wills, to be honest, can only play a guiding role in the group, but cannot forcibly control the group. Because their respective groups have become representatives of capital, and capital is profit-seeking, unless a certain party really has no hope of victory, it will choose to back down in a certain industry. In terms of takeaway, it is now a sunrise industry, and after joining the Internet model, it can be said that the prospects are very impressive. Countless people up and down the three groups are eager to defeat their opponents, and at this time, even Zhou Fangyuan, who has the strongest control over the group, cannot come forward to say that he will completely stop the takeaway business.

If he dares to do this, then he will isolate himself from all employees.

So on this, he does not express an opinion.

The second point is to establish a logistics company based on the food delivery business, as well as the fleet and transportation departments owned by the group.

In fact, this matter is already being done within the group, but Zhou Fangyuan's classmates hope to join this business.

After all, logistics is really too important, and in the development of human history, this industry has never disappeared.

Logistics, the simplest understanding is "the circulation of things", although this proper name was introduced from Fuso in the 80s of the 20th century, but in fact, our ancestors began to do "the circulation of things" a long time ago. For example, in the past, when fighting a war, it was usually "the soldiers and horses did not move the grain and grass first", and the act of transferring "grain and grass" here actually belongs to the category of logistics activities, as well as "dart bureaus" and "horse gangs", what they do is also logistics activities, but in the past we did not call it "logistics".

The earliest documented activity of "logistics" is in the United Kingdom. In 1918, Lord Hamm of Unilifer, England, established the "Instant Delivery Company Limited" with the aim of delivering goods to wholesalers, retailers and users in a timely manner throughout the country. During World War II, starting from military needs, the United States first adopted the term "logistics management" in the supply of arms during the war, and carried out comprehensive management of arms transportation, supply, and cantonment. After World War II, the word "logistics" was borrowed by the Chinese people into enterprise management, and was called "enterprise logistics".

After the 50s of the 20th century, the economy has basically recovered to the level before the Second World War, the enterprise has carried out large-scale equipment investment and renovation, the technical level has been continuously improved, and the productivity has risen significantly, but the circulation efficiency of goods is relatively low, so in 1956, a group was organized to go to the United States to learn advanced. From the famous professor Mr. Kenbas, it is confirmed that the reason for the smooth development of the national economy in the past 30 years is that it attaches importance to both production efficiency and circulation efficiency. After returning to Japan, he proposed to the government to pay attention to logistics.

In the early days of China's reform and opening up, everything was waiting to be rebuilt, and seeking to accelerate the path of economic development became the goal of that generation. The country has also sent out a lot of delegations to learn advanced, a group of respectable scholars who introduced and "pioneered" the concept of logistics in our country, and their hard work has opened a window for us to understand and recognize modern logistics.

As early as the 90s of the 20th century and the first two or three years of the early 21st century, business activities were mainly concentrated in the business-to-business front, that is, the B2B model, where consumers basically went to physical stores to buy things. Because logistics at that time did not have much to do with the consumers themselves, most of us had no concept of logistics.

But in fact, there was already a wide range of logistics activities at that time.

Take a bottle of shampoo, for example.

First of all, raw materials and packaging materials.

A bottle of shampoo, its packaging materials include: preforms, pump heads, shampoo raw materials, water, shampoo, etc., these raw materials are transported from the material supplier's factory to the shampoo production plant, which is a transportation link in logistics activities.

For production and processing, the factory arranges for temporary storage of raw materials and packaging materials in the factory's warehouse to establish safety stocks. Then, according to the production plan, the goods are prepared and supplied to the production line in the workshop. The goods produced at the end of the line are stacked on pallets and transferred by forklift drivers to the factory's finished goods warehouse for storage.

Sent to the warehouses of the regional distribution centers, the planning staff of the factory makes a transfer plan to transport the goods to the warehouses of the regional distribution centers. Please note that the warehouse in the distribution center usually does not store just one product variety, but basically stores the entire company's assortment, as this ensures that the distributor's order is fulfilled at the first time. As a result, the distribution center warehouse usually receives the arrival of goods from many factories.

Distribution center warehouse management, the logistics activities of the warehouse of the distribution center include: arranging workers to unload trucks, inspecting goods, receiving goods according to the warehouse receipt, transferring goods from the stocking area to the storage location, product storage management, preparing goods according to orders, loading goods and a series of warehouse management activities. Orders are shipped to distributors or supermarkets. The driver transports the goods placed under the order to the consignee. The supermarket picks up the goods from the warehouse in time according to the safety stock required on the display shelf, dismantles the outer packaging of the shampoo, and replenishes the bottled shampoo to the display shelf.

Consumers buy shampoo at the supermarket and then take the shampoo home, and the process from the supermarket to the home is also a logistics activity.

The commerce of this period, which is the period of traditional retail, is based on B2B transactions. There were producers at one end and traders at the other, so, in the beginning, logistics services were basically self-sufficient.

Producers have their own warehouses and fleets, while traders also have their own warehouses and fleets, each playing their own game. The logistics activities of the manufacturer revolve around the transportation, warehousing and warehousing of finished products in the upstream and downstream of production, while the logistics activities of the trader mainly revolve around the management of the goods from the manufacturer's factory to their own warehouse and the self-built warehouse.

At that time, the logistics activities were based on channels, and the main logistics model was contract logistics.

Dealers rarely place orders from enterprises, and rarely only one or two orders, because in the early 21st century, good products are still marketable, and production-oriented enterprises are relatively strong. Normally, traders will sign a contract with a manufacturing enterprise for at least one year, so when a manufacturing enterprise outsources logistics services, in order to maintain the stability of logistics services, it will usually agree on a contract period. Therefore, in order to save trouble, people put this kind of activity of "providing services for the circulation of products between producers and traders during a contract period" into a more popular term - contract logistics.

Because it is a trader's order, under normal circumstances, a single order will not be like consumers shopping online, their order volume is relatively large, some of the stronger production enterprises, even stipulate that the total amount of an order cannot be lower than a certain base, and some production enterprises, in order to stimulate traders to place large orders, will use a certain amount of discounts.

Usually customers with short transportation distances, such as the warehouse of a production-oriented enterprise and the warehouse of a trader in the same city, will basically place an order once a day, at most two days to place an order, the order volume will be small, and the logistics company will arrange small cars to distribute. Customers with long transportation distances, because of the time when the goods are in transit and for the consideration of safety stock, will place an average of 1-2 orders per week, and the order volume will be relatively large, and logistics companies will arrange large vehicles to deliver.

In short, the cost is high, the consumption is large, and it is easy to have all kinds of problems.

However, in 2003, SARS made everyone panic, supermarkets and shopping malls because of the dense crowd, easy to become the hardest hit areas of the disease, everyone for personal health considerations, had to try to shop from the Internet, plus the state is also strengthening the security control of online shopping, therefore, after SARS, Dongdong, Dangdang, Taofeng and other e-commerce began to rise.

The model of the online mall is the business-to-consumer model, that is, the B2C model, the biggest difference between this model and the traditional logistics under the B2B model is that the order volume is very small, and the smallest unit is a piece of goods.

At that time, the third-party logistics service providers were interested in contract logistics, and they didn't look at this emerging thing at all, and their main considerations were as follows:

First of all, contract logistics pulls a cart of goods, less than a few hundred, more than a few thousand, and the average consumer single small piece, only a dozen yuan at a time, that profit for the tripartite logistics company, is too thin, the profit gap between the two is not an order of magnitude at all.

Secondly, the operation mode of contract logistics is relatively simple, that is, the goods are transported from the manufacturer's warehouse to the trader's warehouse, and the distribution of express delivery, a vehicle may have to send dozens or even hundreds of customers, which means that there are hundreds of receiving points, then, in addition to establishing sites in various cities, it is necessary to arrange personnel to do the last kilometer of distribution, this infrastructure construction and the early investment of personnel is very large, and the effect is not seen in a short time.

Third, e-commerce has just emerged and is still a new thing, and third-party logistics providers have no confidence in the development prospects of this industry.

As for the postal service, although the people themselves are from the courier service, the postal service is ...... Some are hard to put into words.

Therefore, whether logistics express delivery can be done well directly affects whether e-commerce companies can become bigger and stronger. When a suitable logistics service provider cannot be found, the enterprises represented by Dongdong have been promoting self-built logistics since 2007 in their previous life, and in the same period, the rise of Taochong C2C platform has also driven the distribution demand of the C-end. The logistics enterprises represented by "three links and one reach" developed rapidly from 2005 to 2007, and it can be said that Da Ma Ge achieved "three links and one reach" in his previous life. However, on the other hand, if there was no "three links and one reach", Taochong could not have rapid development at that time.

In the final analysis, whoever can embrace new things earlier and faster, and be the first to eat crabs, will be more likely to succeed.

In fact, I want to say here that in addition to the logistics industry, the mobile phone industry is also the same, such as Nokia, which is often used as a case study.

New companies that embrace new things, because they don't have the burden of the past, and they don't have too much family background before, when they do things, they will go all out, and those old enterprises, because they still have old books to eat, even if they try to cater to emerging things, they just do their best, because they have left enough back roads for themselves, big deal, we continue to go back to do the old business. Therefore, for those new companies that embrace new things, leading companies in the Internet field, such as Dongdong, Taofeng, Guge, Facebook, etc., usually do not set up a small company to do this by themselves, but achieve their own goals through equity control.

By the time the third-party logistics company understands the general trend of the express delivery industry, this segment has become a master and cannot be cut into it at all.

After the rise of e-commerce, express logistics began to connect closer to the lives of ordinary people, so now people's understanding of logistics, the most intuitive is reflected in the express delivery, they believe that logistics is express, express delivery is logistics.

The same is true for Zhou Fangyuan's classmates.

These classmates have now graduated from college, and after several years of experience, these people have also matured a lot.

It is precisely because they have matured, broadened their horizons, and improved their personal abilities that they have seen the signs of rapid development of the logistics industry.

Combined with the fact that they have been doing takeaway delivery for several years and have their own understanding of the logistics industry, they immediately perceived the opportunity when they learned that Yuanfang Group wanted to establish a logistics company in the real sense, so they thought about whether they could join it, at least to get a piece of the pie.

I have to say that the performance of these students is indeed beyond Zhou Fangyuan's imagination.

He didn't say much at the dinner, only said that he would think about it when he went back. Whether to bring your classmates to play with or not, although this can't be said to be a big deal, it definitely can't be regarded as a trivial thing worth mentioning, after all, it also involves the feelings of classmates. Zhou Fangyuan didn't plan to reply to them immediately, he really had to think about it, and in addition, he had to discuss it with others.