Chapter 469

Chapter 469: The ultimate warehouse.

Costco wasn’t like that.

Their products were piled up like a hill and occupied a lot of places.

Their shelves were huge and half of the shop was empty.

This type of arranging goods was normal for warehouse type supermarkets.

For example, Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club, Metro and other warehouse supermarkets were like this.

It didn’t matter if you never went to those warehouse supermarkets. They were like IKEA, you could imagine it by just replacing the furniture with food items or other department stores products.

Then there was the question.

Warehouse supermarkets were already done by Metro and Wal-Mart but why in his previous world, Costco could even do well against Amazon even when they weren’t the first to do so?

The reason for that was simple.

Costco had taken the price-performance ratio to the extreme.

Wal-Mart Sam’s Club required annual membership and also claimed their warehouse supermarket was very cheap.

But the thing was that the average gross profit margin of Sam’s Club was still between 20%-30%, which was actually a lot.

The highest profit of Costco was no more than 14%, almost half of Sam’s Club!

It made a big difference.

The Americans were definitely not how they were depicted in the movies where they would just spend money randomly.

They, especially the housewives, paid attention to prices.

Costco was so cheap, of course they liked that.

Coupled with the great customer services, especially the after sales refunds with no questions asked, it made the people more inclined to buy there.

Costco even had a policy that looked like fantasy to Sam’s Club.

Didn’t you need a membership subscription at Costco in order to shop in their supermarkets?

Costco stipulated if any customers were dissatisfied with their service, they could cancel their membership at any time and get a full refund and they wouldn’t use any reasons to stop that.

It meant that in 365 days in a year, they could cancel on the 364th day and get their full refund on the year.

They were naturally cheap and greedy people in the US but they were very few of them.

Unless they were abnormal, most normal people were unwilling to go against basic morals in society unless they had some urgency.

Costco suffered very little from that policy but instead immediately established a good reputation that made people trust them more.

Yongxing Supermarket was in China, which was different.

First of all, the membership card wasn’t suitable for China.

Chinese people were definitely not used to spending 100 yuan or 500 yuan a year to buy a membership in a supermarket so they could enjoy the discount and so on.

They would rather make a promotional offer each day than not spend that money in advance even if they knew buying the membership could make them enjoy it for a year and be more cost effective.

This was confirmed by the decades of experience with Sam’s Club and Metro.

So Yongxing Supermarket wouldn’t make any membership.

In addition to bulk purchase or even special custom goods purchases to lower the prices, what Yongxing Supermarket needed to do was a variety of services.

They had to learn from Fat Eastern and Haidilao Hotpot.

Only when the services were pushed to the extreme would they attract customers and have their loyalty.

The moment the people were accustomed to it, they would come to them for shopping whenever they could even if they were far away.

Fat Eastern and Haidilao Hotpot did well.

Why did the School Flowers’ families wanted to buy Yongxing Supermarket shares after Chen Huan suggested them to participate in the staff training when they weren’t convinced after two rounds of negotiation?

The reason was because they saw how they trained their staff.

Since November when Yongxing Supermarket suspended their operation in the five stores and all goods had been shipped to the stores outside of Lin’an for sales, the 1300 original staff began to concentrate on training.

The training was written by Chen Huan and Zhang Duocai took in everything.

He didn’t have much talent but he still had a good eye and knew what was good.

Chen Huan’s training plans alone were worth 100 million yuan.

It was precisely because of Chen Huan training that the wealthy families that came to visit were stunned.

They themselves felt like going there to buy so the ordinary folk would obviously feel it too.

That was why they changed their mind and actively participated in the investment.

Then even Li Miao and Du Xiaoling’s parents heard of it so they quickly asked them to go ask Chen Huan for a place.

So when Chen Huan came into the supermarket with Zhang Yaya, they saw the original employee training the new employee that came from the other stores.

They also saw 300 middle aged female employees in uniform squatting to wipe the floor.

They had the complete equipment, such as small brushes, water spray, disinfectant, towels, paper towels and so on….

Although the ground was already very clean, cleaner than their bed, they still wiped it over and over again.

In another area, there were more than fifty employees who were blindfolded with a cloth strip as they listened to the trainers’ questions and quickly answered them.

“In which area the Longqing Mineral Water is?”

“A-2-3, there are 150 bottles for display standard and they will get replete when it falls to under 100 bottles.”

“In which area the Jinniu Beef Jerky is?”

“C-5-7. The standard display is 300 packs and it will be replenished immediately when the quantity reaches below half of the box.”

“What is the standard process for the roasted chicken?”

“There are five steps to it. the first step is… it must spend a total of 27 minutes on the shelf and the shelf must be kept a constant temperature of 47 degrees. If it wasn’t sold after 30 minutes, it will be taken away immediately to be processed.”

…

Listening to the loud answers, Zhang Yaya looked at Chen Huan with blinking eyes and said, “I was worried we were paying them too much at first… but after seeing the results of their training, I felt that any other supermarket would feel reluctant to let go of such a good employee!”

Chen Huan laughed and said, “Then you should be careful, the business will be in trouble if they were poached away.”

“Don’t worry, we already signed a contract for ten years and if they joined another supermarket halfway through, we just have to report it to the police if we find out.” Zhang Yaya said, “Moreover, they will be given a monthly salary of ten thousand, which is already a lot even to an office worker so they are satisfied by it.”

Zhang Yaya felt proud.

The current average salary in Lin’an was around 3000 yuan.

For the cleaners, their salaries were obviously lower but Yongxing Supermarkets was given the high amount of 6000 Yuan.

The service personnel had an even higher salary as the minimum was 10k and they would receive a big bonus if they did well.

Apart from Yongxing Supermarket, which other supermarket did this?

Chen Huan just smiled slightly and didn’t mention it again.

This little girl didn’t understand the importance of an employee who was familiar with the business.

If they could have a good team, they could dominate the Zhejiang area, even in Jiangsu and Huhai areas.

So just a salary of 10k wasn’t enough.

They needed better incentives in the future so they could work at Yongxing Supermarkets with peace of mind.

Once they had the talents retained, then as Carnegie said, they would be able to build themselves back up again if they lost it all.

If the talent was constantly loss, it didn’t matter how good the system was since who would be implementing it if there was no one good enough?