In most scenarios, the "sharing" of the automotive aftermarket is a false proposition.
Since 2017, the "sharing economy" that has been ignited in the Internet and entrepreneurial circles, the concept of "sharing" has long since subsided as the smoke in the travel field has subsided.
The sharing economy is a new economic model based on the general public and the temporary transfer of the right to use goods. Its essence is to integrate offline idle resources or labor. Some store owners believe that when “sharing” hits the post-market business scenario, it mainly depends on whether the real needs of car owners can be grasped and whether they can solve the pain points of the industry; otherwise, it is easy to use the name of sharing, but in fact it is to do leasing business.
Prior to this, Henan Suyangbao’s innovative operation model with the core of recruiting technicians and sharing 600 workstations caused widespread discussion and doubts in the industry as soon as it appeared.
It is understood that under the fast maintenance mode, investors invest in the construction of fixed assets such as factory buildings and lift equipment, share workstations with maintenance technicians, and charge fixed asset usage fees in accordance with a certain model. After investing more than one million, it is currently closed for adjustment.
The shared maintenance station broke and settled in less than a month after testing the water. Before this, many people explored "shared sheet spraying", but few successful cases were heard. Does the "sharing economy" model work in the aftermarket?
01. Two sharing modes
The characteristic of the "sharing economy" is a redistribution of resources for the purpose of saving costs and improving efficiency. On the one hand, the right to use idle resources is temporarily transferred, and on the other hand, repeated transactions and efficient use are required.
The current sharing economy has broken through the early allocation of "idle item resources" and expanded to other areas. For example, in the aftermarket, "sharing sheet spray" is no longer a new model.
Affected by the government's increasing intensification of environmental inspections of auto repair plants, three types of sharing have emerged: "maintenance enterprise joint construction", "government-led, enterprise or 4S shop establishment", and "sheet spray industrial park".
Take the Anyang Yixin Sheet Spraying Center in the Sheet Spraying Industrial Park as an example. It covers an area of 30,000 square meters and covers one-stop services such as beauty, maintenance, repair, sheet spraying, and insurance. The daily maintenance volume reaches 200 units and the annual spraying 7 Ten thousand sets can undertake 80% of the spraying capacity of Anyang.
Among them, the sheet spraying station adopts a shared mode, which is mainly open to repair shops.
According to AC Automobile's understanding, there are two main reasons why Yixin Sheet Spraying Center can be expanded. First, the Anyang government is very strict in environmental protection. Auto repair companies without relevant qualifications have closed down, and business outsourcing earns the difference. Become the norm; the second is to cooperate with insurance companies to obtain a certain amount of repairs.
The benefit of larger sheet spraying center is that it has a great cost advantage and can achieve prices close to water-based paint and oil-based paint. But this must be based on "efficient", how to maintain a stable source of customers has become the key to the success of the sharing model.
According to the auto repair shop owner, sharing the sheet spraying station with the repair shop. Under the premise that the C-end price has been locked, the sheet spraying center needs to set aside some profit margins for the repair shop, and bear the rent of the site and the wages of the employees. , Material costs, equipment depreciation and other costs, not much profit from it, its profitability is not a small challenge.
Under the inclination of government policy, it is still difficult to achieve self-blood formation in a short time as a shared sheet spray center, and it will be even more difficult for a business model to rely solely on market competition. This is also the most questioned part of Henan Suyangbao's shared technician model.
According to official announcements, under the fast maintenance mode, investors contract a large site, invest in equipment and tools, and provide 600 workstations for lease to entrepreneurial technicians. Vehicle owners are allowed to bring their own fuel and only charge 50 yuan for working hours. In terms of site (workstation), equipment, and source of customers, help technicians reduce the risk of starting a business.
In terms of the source of customers, the fast maintenance insurance plan envisages attracting customers through marketing activities such as "9.9 yuan membership" and "999 yuan membership", as well as sharing technicians with their own customers to achieve rapid and large-scale driving maintenance business.
Reality is more skinny than ideal, and a seemingly good business model has many hidden problems.
From the perspective of demand, first, within a radius of 3-5 kilometers from auto repair companies, how to attract customers to shop for maintenance? Can low-cost drainage solve the problem of customer trust? Second, under the premise that auto repair services cannot be standardized, each car owner has different expectations for maintenance and the level of technicians is different. How should the quality of service be controlled?
From the perspective of supply, there are few customers and technicians cannot support themselves; how to solve the contradiction between the shortage of service capacity and customer satisfaction due to the large number of customers? After all, it is difficult for mobile technicians to make car owners feel safe.
Some store owners believe that the so-called sharing of workstations and technicians by Suyangbao is actually a time-sharing lease, which is similar to the model of shared bicycles and shared power banks. It's just that the former has developed under normal supervision, and the latter has become a survivor of the sharing economy because of its rigid demand, which is all over the urban commercial zone.
The fast maintenance and insurance sharing model has encountered many challenges, but it has not touched the pain points of the industry.
02. Can shared technicians solve the problem of talent shortage?
In the auto service industry chain with a total of 360 million motor vehicles, there is a trillion-level auto after-service market on the one hand, and a shortage of maintenance personnel on the other, which has caused considerable obstacles to the development of the industry in full swing.
Many store owners interviewed by AC Auto mentioned that talents have become one of the key factors for store expansion, which may force post-market model innovation, transformation and upgrading.
The point is, can shared technicians solve this problem?
First of all, the technicians of various auto repair plants are shared, such as the paint mixing technicians in the sheet spray business. Due to their special work and characteristics that are difficult to replace, they have high labor costs. The "employment on demand" method reduces the labor of the auto repair plant. cost. However, the paint mixer is generally recruited and operated by the upstream supplier, which becomes a part of the service plan provided by the maintenance company.
Secondly, sharing from platform technicians can help technicians reduce entrepreneurial risks.
On the one hand, hard investment in the initial period of rent, equipment, and personnel salaries for opening an auto repair store is indispensable, and the platform will undertake all kinds of documents such as store operation, parts procurement and environmental assessment in the later period. On the other hand, technicians can also accumulate customers and experience during the service process, and reserve resources and technology for future store openings.
In theory, sharing technicians is more beneficial to the technicians. As the main service provider-the auto repair shop, what kind of benefits does it actually bring?
An auto repair shop owner in Henan believes that there may be three problems in the practical application of shared technicians:
First, the mobility of shared technicians is relatively high, which makes it difficult to retain customers;
The second is that shared technicians have no sense of belonging to the store and will not do their best for the store's sales and service quality;
The third is that the level of shared technicians must be certified, otherwise some may not meet the store requirements.
"If it is a husband-and-wife store, the owner may be a technician himself, and he can maintain the store operation with two young apprentices; if it is a gate store, in order to ensure the quality of service, he would rather train technicians himself."
The fundamental reason why young people prefer to deliver food rather than sink in to learn technology is the low salary in the auto repair industry. The fundamental reason for the "grabbing wars" of e-commerce chain stores is that the time cost of training auto repair talents is too high.
"The sharing of technicians cannot fundamentally solve the problem of talent shortage. On the contrary, it may also bring some labor troubles to the auto repair shop." A repair shop owner said that sharing technicians cannot succeed and should not be successful at this stage.
03. Is the sharing mode worth trying?
If the several models of the aftermarket are simply classified, they can be as shown in the figure below.
What is more important than assets and less operations is shared workstations.
It is the direct operation model that emphasizes assets and operations.
Light assets and light operations are flop stores (brand image stores),
It is the franchise model that is light assets and heavy operation.
In the automotive aftermarket, heavy asset investment is a characteristic, because in the closed-loop business of automotive services, offline stores, as the aggregation point of services, are always an unavoidable link.
At the same time, since car service stores are the foundation of service, customer experience is the essence, including professional capabilities, convenient services, and quality assurance. Therefore, re-operation of customers is also the core.
For example, directly-operated stores can guarantee customer experience by re-operation, accumulate private domain traffic and continuously increase the repurchase rate, so as to achieve sustained profitability of the store.
But on the other hand, a shared workstation that emphasizes assets and neglects operations is not a necessary option for customers.
First, compared to travel sharing, car maintenance is a non-immediate demand, which means that customers have more time to choose other stores for service comparison. Distance, time, price, etc. have all become consideration factors for service experience.
Second, car maintenance is not a rigid demand, and it cannot be used without maintenance in the short term. And when the vehicle really breaks down on the road, the first thing the owner thinks of is to quickly solve the problem nearby.
Third, it is cost-effective. For example, Suyangbao’s "Bring Your Own Oil Products, 50 Yuan Working Hours", in Zhengzhou where the "99 Yuan small maintenance" battle is actually attractive to customers, and how long it will last is unknown. But for customers who have requirements for price and quality, once there is a problem, how to divide the powers and responsibilities of the technician and the sharing party that provides the venue service is also a troublesome matter.
Therefore, when the 600-workplace sharing model appears, industry professionals are generally not optimistic. In the heavily vertical automotive aftermarket, it is better to implement a franchise model that emphasizes assets and operations, rather than focusing on assets and operations. But what is certain is that no matter which model, it is not easy to become stronger and bigger.