In the middle of February, the "butterfly effect" caused by the COVID-19 epidemic continued. Production and consumption activities across the country were forced to press the pause button, and the offline service industry was the first to suffer a heavy blow and was in trouble. In recent days, the central and local governments have successively introduced and continuously improved the support policies, and taken multiple measures to support enterprises to overcome difficulties. However, the inflection point of the epidemic has not yet arrived, and the prevention and control situation is still grim. How to sustain and cope with the next changes in the market situation, it is urgent for the whole industry to save itself.

The whole service industry is in urgent need

The epidemic broke out before the Lunar New Year holiday, which coincided with the time when enterprises settled loans and paid year-end bonuses to employees. In addition, the traditional service industry, which relies on offline traffic, has made a large amount of initial investment in response to the consumption boom during the Spring Festival Golden Week. The unexpected situation caught enterprises off guard. Since the end of January, many provinces and cities across the country have successively launched the first level response to major public health emergencies, the constantly upgraded prevention and control isolation measures have led to a sharp decline in the revenue of catering, tourism, accommodation and other industries. The investment is difficult to recover, and the cost of rent, employee salary, loan interest and other costs that still need to be paid during the shutdown period has risen sharply. Whether it can survive has become a huge challenge for enterprises. The reports of enterprises' cash flow shortage and layoffs "surviving with arms cut off" have been repeatedly brushed off the screen, highlighting the industry pressure and practitioners' anxiety.

With the resumption of work in various places, the impact of the epidemic on the industry has further emerged. "At present, the domestic service business is almost at a standstill." 58 The head of the public relations department at Home said that unlike other industries, domestic enterprises are also trapped in a dilemma where employee reserves and customer demand are falling at the same time - according to the laws of previous years, domestic service personnel returning home for the New Year are generally returning to the city from the fifth day of the first month, while customer demand is rising from the fifth day of the first month, This year's emergency situation prevented many domestic workers from returning on time, and the time of returning to work was also limited by self isolation and property management and control of local communities at least 14 days after returning to the city. Moreover, current customers were afraid to let strangers come to their homes psychologically. As a leading Internet housekeeping enterprise with a certain amount of capital and business reserves, 58 Home also faces the severe test of how to control cash flow and optimize employees to "ensure the survival of the company".

Enterprises need to identify business opportunities for self rescue

Under the pressure of the epidemic, the industry is taking positive actions, on the one hand, trying to stop losses and save itself, on the other hand, exploring new business models and enterprise transformation.

In order to ensure cash flow, the catering industry began to turn to selling food materials and semi-finished products. Brand stores such as Xibei, Yunhai Cuisine, Meizhou Dongpo, etc. increased takeout and food station services, and actively cooperated with e-commerce platforms to reduce losses while also, to some extent, living nearby residents in special periods.

In the face of the current situation that offline passenger flow is cold and logistics has not yet fully recovered, physical stores around the country have started or accelerated the pace of expanding community sales and online sales. In many cities, branded physical stores and offline stores are trying to guide customers to online shopping through micro stores, small programs and other channels, calling on consumers to go shopping, attend classes and exercise in the cloud.

On February 10, Alibaba announced 20 support measures for special periods. In addition to reducing platform merchants' fees and providing financial support, it will also set up special funds to subsidize supply chain and logistics and provide flexible jobs. After cooperating with Yunhai Cuisine and New Century Youth Catering Co., Ltd. (Youth Restaurant), Hema further carried out "employee sharing" with multiple industries, and built a platform to help employees of catering enterprises temporarily transfer to delivery staff or supermarket convenience store employees, so as to ease the cost pressure of enterprises and employment difficulties of employees.

Zhou Dewen, vice president of the China Association of Small and Medium Enterprises and president of the Zhejiang Federation of Private Investment Enterprises, called for "industry cooperation", "strength cooperation" and "enterprise cooperation" in the face of the crisis. Industry associations and chambers of commerce should give full play to their role, communicate business ideas, organize industry activities, enhance industry brands and enhance the market competitiveness of the whole industry. He advocated mutually beneficial cooperation between large powerful enterprises and small and medium-sized vulnerable enterprises, and the enterprise should work together in the same boat

The epidemic accelerated the reshuffle and reshaping of the industry. "The current short-term income has some impact, but it is also a good opportunity to obtain a large number of potential workers and customers." 58 Arriving home said that in the past few years, the enterprise has been building online registration training for workers, online interviews for customers, online signing transactions and service processes, and the impact of the epidemic has accelerated this process, "We must use the Internet to connect aunts and customers, and can no longer rely only on offline stores." If we can take the opportunity to build a new operating system, it is possible to take the lead in the market after the end of the epidemic.

According to the analysis of Drama Jinwen, a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the household isolation and home office in the epidemic prevention stage have led to the change of residents' consumption habits in life services, and a considerable part of the demand has changed from going out in the past to looking for services to "self service", and may develop into a normal consumption mode in the future, with enterprises "saving themselves", It is vital to identify business opportunities from the crisis and adjust the business model and business strategy as soon as possible.

Some enterprises expect a blowout of "retaliatory consumption" to stimulate the market after the end of the epidemic. Ji Jinwen said that this may happen, but the release of such consumption capacity is short-term. Enterprises should also pay more attention to the long-term trend of the market and adjust to changes in time.

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