学胖东来爆改，步步高只剩27家超市

Author | Zhang Xuemei

Editor | Li Qian

After learning from Pang Donglai and making significant renovations to its stores for more than half a year, the store closures of BBK (002251.SZ), the leading supermarket in Hunan, have not stopped.

Recently, Deng Jing, the president of BBK and the general manager of the supermarket, said in the sharing of the 2024 Lian Shang Donglai President Class, "BBK had 235 stores in 2021 and 84 stores in 2023. But by the end of this year, we will close all the stores that are not capable of operating well. By December of this year, only 27 stores will remain."

On December 5, BBK confirmed to Time Finance that as of now, only 27 of its supermarket stores remain.

In April this year, the Henan retail giant Pang Donglai Group officially launched the adjustment and renovation of BBK, optimizing the product structure, prices, store layout and customer flow, and employee salaries. According to BBK's data, the stores that have completed the adjustment and renovation have basically achieved a transformation of "a five to six times increase in sales, a three times increase in customer flow, and an average customer transaction value of more than 100 yuan."

However, the current store improvements brought about by the significant renovations have not reversed the downward trend of BBK Supermarket's overall performance.

Closing More Than 300 Supermarkets in 3 Years

As the "first private supermarket stock in China", BBK was once the largest chain enterprise in Hunan. At its peak in 2019, BBK had more than 400 stores with a revenue of nearly 20 billion yuan. However, in recent years, the traditional supermarket industry has declined, and BBK, which expanded rapidly in the early stage, has also fallen into difficulties with continuous store closures.

By the end of 2021, BBK still had 386 stores of various business formats (343 supermarket stores and 43 department store stores). By the middle of 2024, BBK operated 37 department store stores and 78 supermarket stores. And as of December, the number of supermarket stores has further decreased to 27. That is to say, from July to now, BBK has closed 51 supermarket stores; and in the past nearly 3 years, the number of BBK's supermarket stores has decreased by more than 300.

Reflected in the performance, BBK's revenue scale has dropped sharply from 19.661 billion yuan in 2019 to 3.087 billion yuan in 2023; in the first three quarters of 2024, BBK achieved an operating income of 2.525 billion yuan, which is not comparable to the 10-billion-yuan scale in the same period of 2021.

In terms of the progress of bankruptcy reorganization, on July 17, 2023, the Xiangtan Intermediate People's Court decided to initiate pre-reorganization of BBK. Since April this year, BBK has introduced several industrial investors and financial investors, including 4 industrial investors and 13 financial investors.

As of September 28 this year, the Xiangtan Intermediate People's Court has officially ruled that the reorganization plan of BBK and its 14 subsidiaries has been completed and the relevant reorganization procedures have been ended. At the same time, BBK's application to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange for the withdrawal of the delisting risk warning has been approved, and it has successfully "removed the risk warning symbol".

Learning from Pang Donglai to "Let Go"

In order to improve its performance, BBK invited Yu Donglai as a "mentor" this year.

From March 31 to April 2, Yu Donglai, the chairman of Henan Pang Donglai Commerce and Trade Group, led the executive team to Hunan, inspected some BBK stores and logistics centers in Changsha and Xiangtan, and then officially launched the initiative to adjust and renovate BBK supermarkets.

Among them, the Meixi Lake store completed the adjustment and renovation in April. In May, the total sales of this store were 41.28 million yuan, and the total customer flow was 361,000. On May 22, the Jiuhua store of BBK resumed business, and the sales on the first day reached 1.64 million yuan, an increase of 15 times. As of mid-July, the daily sales of the Meixi Lake store and the Xiangtan Jiuhua store have stabilized at around 1.2 million yuan and 1.06 million yuan, respectively.

On November 30 this year, the first Pang Donglai-guided adjustment and renovation store in the old urban area of Xiangtan, Hunan - the BBK Supermarket Jinhai store resumed business. This is also the 10th adjustment and renovation store guided by Pang Donglai. Despite the significant improvement in the store's performance after the adjustment and renovation, BBK's store closure pace has not stopped.

Deng Jing, the president of BBK and the general manager of the supermarket, said, "Learning from Pang Donglai's adjustment and renovation also made us learn that letting go is also a kind of love. Just as Brother Donglai said, don't do things beyond your ability. If you can't do it well, give this market to those enterprises that can do it well. This is also a kind of beauty."

Previously, Yu Donglai also said in a live broadcast, "Many entrepreneurs, once they have money, think about expansion. Blind expansion will cause various hidden dangers. Any hidden danger will make you very tired, even suffer a catastrophic disaster, or lose your dignity." Yu Donglai also pointed out that all the bad stores should be closed, and only open as many stores as you can. Even if you renovate one store, make the employees work very happily.

In the early years, when supermarkets such as BBK were expanding rapidly, Pang Donglai closed more than ten stores one after another; when other enterprises were competing for the market day and night, Pang Donglai started to "close the stores for rest every Tuesday" since 2012.

Currently, Pang Donglai has a total of 13 stores. As of November 26, the cumulative sales of Pang Donglai Group within the year reached 14.638 billion yuan.

According to Deng Jing's sharing in the president class, with the assistance of Pang Donglai, BBK Supermarket is about to achieve a break-even point in December, ending the situation of continuous losses for nearly three years.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Time Finance APP", author: Zhang Xuemei, and 36Kr has been authorized to publish it.