When it comes to supermarket chains, the first reaction is probably to think of Wal-Mart, Carrefour and the like.

But around 2000, although these foreign supermarkets had entered China, their influence was far less than that of China's local supermarket chain brands.

At this time, the top three supermarket chains in China are: Shenghai Lianhua, Shenghai Hualian, and Beijing Hualian, with extremely similar brand names, and those who don't know think they are triplets brothers.

Hua Zhou, 56 years old this year, founded Hualian Supermarket, which has been firmly at the top of China's retail chain industry. Unfortunately, it encountered the Asian financial turmoil, coupled with the introduction of the advanced model of the West by the opponent, which was overtaken by Lianhua Supermarket in one fell swoop, and now Hualian Supermarket has become the second in 10,000 years.

"Chairman, Boss Song is here!" the secretary knocked on the door.

"Please come in. After Hua Zhou finished speaking, he immediately stood up and walked to the center of the office to shake hands with Song Weiyang.

Song Weiyang was also followed by two staff members, carrying large cardboard boxes.

Hua Zhou was stunned when he saw this, he received a call a few days ago saying that Song Weiyang wanted to visit him in person, so he immediately put down everything this morning and sat in the office and waited patiently. This is not because Xifeng is one of the big suppliers of Hualian supermarket, but because Song Weiyang has too much influence and will be warmly received wherever he goes.

"Boss Song, are you giving me a gift?" Hua Zhou pointed to the box and smiled.

Song Weiyang smiled and said, "I'm really here to give a gift to Hua Dong today." ”

"Please sit," Hua Zhou asked the secretary to make tea, sat on the sofa himself, and said in a joking tone, "I am the leader of a state-owned enterprise, I can't accept gifts, Boss Song don't corrupt me." ”

Although Hualian Supermarket was founded by Huazhou, it is a state-owned enterprise, and he does not even own shares in the company. Supermarkets are the strong side, and many brands want to settle in, they have to give gifts or kickbacks to leaders, which has become an unspoken rule in the industry. But Huazhou is a well-known incorruptible figure in the industry, he is almost retirement age, does not have any equity in the company, and it is very rare to never accept gifts.

Song Weiyang said: "Hua Dong, you have to accept this gift today if you don't accept it." ”

Hua Zhou said with a smile: "I've only seen forced buying and selling, but I've never seen forced gifts, but I want to see what the gift Boss Song brought." ”

Song Weiyang said to the two followers: "Let's work." ”

The two staff members immediately unboxed and quickly took out the computer for assembly. This computer is very strange, with a lot of extra parts and even a small iron drawer.

"What is this?" Hua Zhou said curiously.

"Electronic cash register," Song Weiyang waited for the computer to be assembled, picked up the scanner gun and said, "This thing scans the barcode of the product, and the product information is directly entered into the computer." The computer comes with the all-Chinese cash register software written by Kingsoft, which automatically calculates the amount payable and automatically calculates the amount of change. The cashier pressed the key again, and the drawer popped up. The drawer is divided into compartments for different amounts of banknotes, which is very convenient to use. ”

Huazhou immediately thought of a scene: the cashier quickly scanned the goods, the computer software automatically settled, and then the drawer popped up to quickly make change.

"Good thing!" Hua Zhou said happily.

Song Weiyang smiled and asked, "This gift is not bad, right?"

"Not bad, not bad," Hua Zhou nodded again and again, and asked, "How much is one?"

Song Weiyang said: "If you purchase a large number of units, you only need 6,000 units, and you will receive full Chinese cash register software. The main reason is that this scanning gun is very expensive, and there is no stock in China, so it can only rely on imports. ”

Huazhou immediately clapped the decision and said: "I need to try it first, if it is easy to use, I will order 600 units at one time!"

"Hua Dong is refreshing," Song Weiyang said happily, "I thought it would take a lot of saliva, so I came to the door in person to convince me, how could I have thought that Hua Dong has such a business vision." ”

Hua Zhou said: "If Boss Song doesn't come, I estimate that I will go to the United States to purchase next year." ”

As the competition in the supermarket industry becomes more and more fierce, major brands are trying to introduce advanced Western models.

Hualian Supermarket now accounts for more than 4% of total sales, while Wal-Mart can control it below 2% in the United States. A full 2 percentage point gap is simply fatal for the retail industry, so this year began to build an "intelligent procurement center": supermarkets use ECR systems, according to their own needs, in the supermarket one-click order, each supplier can immediately get detailed information.

This kind of computerized cash register is a part of the supermarket POS system, and only a small number of supermarkets in China have installed it. Even if it is installed, there are almost no scanners, because there are a large number of product packaging that does not come with a barcode, and there is nowhere to scan it if you want to.

Even big brands such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour are very backward in China, and the ECR system has not been completely built so far, and many Wal-Mart and Carrefour are still manual cashiers.

Again, thank you to the country, thank you to the government.

In order to expand the volume of commodity exports, China began to set up the "China Article Coding Center" in 1988 and vigorously promoted commodity barcodes in the early 90s. In the first few years, only export goods had barcodes, because there would be great restrictions without barcodes.

With the continuous advancement of WTO accession negotiations, China revised the standards of commodity barcodes in 1998, and finally standardized a variety of domestic barcodes. At that time, there were nearly 50,000 enterprises and 500,000 kinds of goods in China with barcodes, but in addition to export goods, the barcodes of other products were perfunctory, printed on the packaging casually, and the results could not be scanned with a scanner - this is also the reason why Wal-Mart and Carrefour did not have a scanner in China's supermarkets, which was purely a decoration.

Until July this year, China's accession to the WTO is imminent, the State Administration of Quality Supervision issued the "Implementation Measures for the Qualification of Commodity Barcode Printing", which further standardizes the printing and qualification certification of commodity barcodes. The goal is to make the qualified rate of Chinese goods bar code more than 80% within three years.

Huazhou asked employees to bring dozens of goods from the warehouse, and he personally carried the scanner for experiments. As a result, a box of biscuits, a bag of instant noodles and two bottles of drinks were swept one after another, but there was no response, Hua Zhou wondered: "The machine is broken?"

Song Weiyang smiled and put a bottle of Xifeng iced tea over, and with a "drop" sound, the computer immediately displayed the product information: "The machine is not broken, it is a problem with the product barcode." Some barcodes are unqualified, and some are simply invalid barcodes. For goods produced after August this year, the barcode pass rate should be higher, because the government has strengthened supervision. ”

Hua Zhou frowned and said, "If you can't sweep it out, it's useless." ”

Song Weiyang said: "You can directly enter the barcode number, and after the cashier is proficient, it can be done in a few seconds." ”

Huazhou tried to operate it himself, and the goods that couldn't scan the information just now were really three that could be displayed by entering the number. There was only a box of biscuits left, and no matter how you entered the number, it was obviously a random fool of the merchant himself.

Song Weiyang said: "This kind of invalid barcode goods can only be settled with the supermarket's in-store code, or simply by hand." ”

Huazhou has its own plan in mind, and the invalid barcode goods that have been purchased will be settled manually first, and at the same time, the merchant must be improved. If the next batch of goods can't be scanned, then I'm sorry, we don't accept this kind of product in the supermarket, "state-owned enterprises + supermarkets" belong to the uncle of the uncle, and the merchant can only be honest and obedient.

Hua Zhou experienced the cash register software again, and what made him most satisfied was the settlement of vegetables and fruits. The software can pre-set the unit price, and the cashier only needs to enter the weight, instead of manually calculating the total price.

Song Weiyang said: "If Hua Dong is willing to spend money, he can buy a printer to connect to it, issue invoices directly at the time of settlement, and print the store code when selling vegetables and fruits." ”

"It's a great idea!" Hua Zhou was very satisfied.

The Shenzhou chip uses the ARM architecture, which cannot support the Microsoft system, and naturally cannot be used as a personal computer. Then change the way of thinking, Song Weiyang selected a foreign Linux system in advance, and on this basis, asked Kingsoft to develop cashier software, and then design the details of the cashier platform, just waiting for the successful development of Shenzhou chips.

It's a blank market, there are more and more supermarkets across the country, and there aren't any competing products yet.

Song Weiyang personally negotiated the second Hualian supermarket in the industry, and the sales staff of Shenzhou immediately took the order form of Hualian and went to the industry leader Lianhua Supermarket to discuss business. After Shenghai's Hualian and Lianhua were done, they went to find "Shenghai 100" again, but who knew that the leaders of the broken company actually said that they would hold a meeting to discuss.

"Shenghai 100" has not yet held a meeting to discuss the results, Beijing Hualian and Jicheng Hualian have agreed to purchase, and there are also 6 other supermarket chain brands to give orders.

In fact, Shenzhou's cash register computer began to be mass-produced at this time, and the one that Song Weiyang brought was assembled manually.

Before the computer came off the assembly line, a total of more than 5,000 orders had been obtained. And the profit is extremely high, the pre-tax profit of each computer can reach 2500 yuan, throwing the profits of Lenovo's low-end computers out of a few streets. Because this thing has very low performance requirements except for the heat dissipation requirements of the motherboard (continuous operation), in principle, you only need to run a cash register software.

Next, Shenzhou Technology will also contact the printer company to launch a cash register computer with printing function.

As long as the goods are distributed all over the country's large supermarkets, the scattered small supermarkets will also follow. And the number of such small supermarkets will increase, and even develop to several on a street, which are all potential customers of Shenzhou Computer.