Author | Wang Xiaojuan

Editor | Zhang Xiaoling

Eight years ago, Ye Guofu, 39, shouted at Ma Yun in the air: “Confess your defeat early, I'll give you 100 million!”

At the time, Ma Yun was the king of e-commerce in Japan, China, and Ye Guofu's Mingchuang Premium was still just an obscure ten-yuan store; no one cared about his cries.

In a blink of an eye, 8 years have passed, and the former “Guangzhou Afu” spent 6.27 billion yuan to take 29.4% of Yonghui supermarket's shares from JD and others, becoming the largest shareholder.

On the other side, Ali spent more than 50 billion Hong Kong dollars to buy Da Runfa, but it was put on the shelves.

This person, who dared to beat Ma Yun many years ago, seems to have won Ma Yun's game in offline retail; once in and out, China's retail industry has also changed. Ye Guofu has also launched a sprint to become the king of new retail in China.

However, the rapidly changing consumer environment and consumption trends have caused the retail industry to face many challenges. Ye Guofu, who bought Yonghui, launched another big gamble. The road ahead of him is still full of thorns.

Snakes devour elephants

An astonishing event happened in the retail industry in China this yearmergers and acquisitionsThat is, the “Ten Yuan Store” Mingchuang Premium bought the established Yonghui supermarket, which also brought Ye Guofu to the forefront.

On October 29, during Ye Guofu's online speech, Ye Guofu once again responded to many questions about the acquisition of Yonghui. He said, “From famous products for optional consumption to Yonghui for must-buy consumption, without bold experimentation and innovation every step of the way, why today's success? If you don't have the courage, why luck.”

Earlier, he also revealed some details of the acquisition. He said it was a quick decision, but it was planned for a long time.

After visiting Costco ten years ago and Fat Donglai in 2021, Ye Guofu also wanted to have a similar commercial vehicle.

He finally waited for the right opportunity. In the past three years, Yonghui Supermarket has accumulated losses of about 8 billion yuan, and its stock price has also fallen to a low of nearly 12 years, putting sales on the agenda.

In the end, no one expected that the buyer would be Mingchuang Premium. On the day the announcement was issued, Mingchuang Premium US stocks plummeted 17%, and Hong Kong stocks plummeted 24% the next day.

In terms of revenue, Yonghui Supermarket is not on the same level as Mingchuang Premium at all. Although Yonghui is losing money, it also has revenue of nearly 80 billion yuan a year, while Mingchuang Premium is only about 15 billion yuan.

Funding is also stretched. After taking out 6.27 billion yuan of Mingchuang Premium, the cash balance by the end of June was only 6.233 billion yuan.

However, Ye Guofu, who is highly gamble, doesn't think so. He said, “It's right if everyone can't understand it; if everyone can understand it, I don't have a chance.”

What he saw was Yonghui supermarket after being “overhauled” by Fat Donglai.

On October 19, the Yonghui supermarket Shijingshan Xilongduo store, commonly known as “Beijing Fat Donglai”, officially resumed business 29 days after closing “Learn Fat Donglai”.

On the day of opening alone, the store received about 0.014 million paid customers, more than 0.05 million people entered the supermarket, and total sales reached 1.7 million yuan. Despite numerous on-site flow restrictions, first-day sales still exceeded 6 times the average daily sales before the restructuring.

This seems to prove that the market needs “fat donglai”. Whoever can quickly provide services comparable to fat donglai can reap the dividends.

Ye Guofu admits that the internal management of Mingchuang Premium is also studying “Brother Donglai.” For example, a grievance award of 200-1,000 yuan has been set for employees; if the customer damages something in the store, there is no need for the customer to pay compensation, nor the clerk to pay compensation, etc.

Ye Guofu also has his own reasons for firmly buying Yonghui supermarket. In his view, although consumption is being downgraded, China still has a huge middle class population, and consumption of necessities of life will always exist.

Ye Guofu has succeeded. A few years before that, he led Mingchuang Premium when the retail market was full of sorrow, and still bucked the trend and went overseas quickly.

It also gave him great confidence, and he wanted to take it to the next level. After all, the ten-yuan store business is still too small.

Big gamble

Looking back on Ye Guofu's past life, dramatization and gambling have always been in his blood.

In 2016, “Guangzhou Afu” covered the front page of the newspaper and shouted “Hangzhou Lao Ma”, “Confess your defeat early, I'll give you 100 million!”

The origin of the incident was in 2012, when Wang Jianlin and Ma Yun made a bet on whether e-commerce could account for 50% of the Chinese retail market in ten years and lose 0.1 billion to each other.

The two bosses didn't take the game seriously; they were hyped up by “Guangzhou Afu.” He was Ye Guofu.

He called Ma Yun at the time. Basically, it was an obsession with physical stores, believing that Ma Yun's “new retail” route was wrong.

In 2016, Ma Yun proposed the concept of “new retail” to achieve online and offline integration, the so-called O2O. Subsequently, Ali spent 22.4 billion to acquire 36.16% of Gaoxin Retail (parent company of Da Runfa), opened Hema, and also became the controlling shareholder of Yintai Department Store in 2017, and vigorously spent money on tests.

In the past 8 years, with the end of the expansion of Internet capital and the advent of consumption downgrades, Ma Yun's new retail dreams have been overshadowed. Hema, Yintai, and Gaoxin have all been shrunk or sold one after another.

And JD, which has been the majority shareholder of Yonghui for many years, is also planning to withdraw its shares.

While e-commerce bosses were thwarted in their entry into retail, Ye Guofu did a good job. His ten-yuan store name Chuangyupin was right, catching up with the downgrade in consumption. Like a reduced offline version of Pinduoduo, it began to expand drastically, and further targeted the consumer population at young people and younger people.

In 2023, Mingchuang Premium co-branded the Japanese cartoon “chiikawa”, which sparked long queues at major flagship stores, the first pop-up store in Shanghai's Jingda Joy City, and the 10-hour sales of a single store reached 2.68 million.

On October 29, Dou Na, executive vice president and chief product officer of Mingchuang Premium, revealed that Mingchuang Premium has reached diversified cooperation with more than 150 world-renowned IPs, and has sold more than 0.8 billion IP products.

By the end of the second quarter of this year, the total number of Mingchuang Premium (including TOP TOY) stores worldwide exceeded 7,000. In the first half of this year, Mingchuang Premium achieved revenue of 7.759 billion yuan, an increase of 25.0% over the previous year.

As for the future, Ye Guofu is also full of confidence. He said that Mingchuang Premium is committed to becoming the world's number one IP design group; in the next ten years, it will lead 100 Chinese brands to the world.

Famous products that focus on offline are still growing rapidly; e-commerce giants have long been weak in growth, and even this year's Double Eleven is not very loud.

Against the backdrop of an era where the bosses disappeared, Ye Guofu's acquisition of Yonghui's snake seemed particularly dazzling.

Wang Jianlin's gambling agreement with Ma Yun has long since sunk into smoke. Ye Guofu didn't make a bet with Ma Yun, but now everyone says he beat Lao Ma.

However, after he took over Yonghui supermarket, what Ye Guofu needed to tell the outside world would be a very different story from the “10 yuan store.” Whether Yonghui, which has not been revitalized by the two giants of Tencent and JD, can gain new life in Ye Guofu's hands is still largely unknown.

This is also a new big gamble between Ye Guofu, himself, and the financial owners behind him.

In 8 years, the retail market changed, business bosses had ups and downs, and Ma Yun and Ye Guofu's lives moved into the field.

Meanwhile, in the vast land of China, a new commercial war has already begun.