On October 18, Pagoda Group held a press conference in Shenzhen to launch the Banguo B2B platform. The press conference was themed “Gathering all kinds of good fruits and empowering thousands of merchants and stores” and invited a number of industry investors, analysts and media involvement. At the press conference, the management of Pagoda and Banguo Platform introduced in detail the business and advantages of Banguo platform, as well as the strategic goals of Pagoda after empowering Banguo.
Previously, on October 10, Pagoda Investment, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pagoda, entered into an equity transfer agreement with Shenzhen Tiantu Dongfeng. Pagoda Investment acquired approximately 19.58% of Shenzhen Banguo's equity for a cash consideration of RMB 14.3766 million (equivalent to a registered capital of RMB 3.9753 million). Upon completion, Pagoda will hold 51% of Shenzhen Banguo's equity.
It is understood that Shenzhen Banguo was founded in 2019. It is a B2B platform enterprise with the main warehouse as the distribution center and providing fresh fruit procurement and sales agency services to small wholesalers and retail buyers through city warehouses. It can effectively solve the pain points of difficult and expensive procurement for small terminal retail buyers, high circulation costs and low timeliness for upstream sellers.
At the press conference, Xu Yusheng, founder and general manager of the Banguo B2B platform, introduced the platform. The core advantages of Shenzhen Banguo are its rich categories, strong credibility, professionalism and efficiency. Banguo has no sales agency costs for upstream sellers, and prices are open and traceable; downstream buyers purchase directly from the platform, saving time and effort; the platform centralizes procurement and negotiates prices, making prices more advantageous. "We are committed to providing one-stop ordering services for all categories. Each buyer is an expert in subdivided categories and can effectively ensure the quality and cost-effectiveness of the products on the platform."
According to Cai Qinglai, the director of operations of Banguo, the Banguo platform has a huge delivery network and can deliver fruits to buyers in 125 cities in 14 provinces, including Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, and Shaanxi through RDCs located in Tianjin, Shenyang, Zhengzhou, and Jiaxing. As of September 2023, Banguo has established transit warehouses in 178 cities, the number of registered users on the platform has exceeded 500,000, and there are more than 1,700 long-term cooperative suppliers. The peak transaction amount in a single day was 21 million yuan, and the repurchase rate in the next month reached 73%. In the first nine months of 2023, the total transaction volume of the platform reached 2.4 billion yuan.
This time, Pagoda holds the Banguo platform. For Banguo, it can be empowered by Pagoda's resources, thus accelerating the channel layout process; for Pagoda, the synergy in supply chain expansion has a positive role in promoting the global layout of B-side business. "At the same time, it can also further increase Pagoda Group's market share in the fresh fruit industry and help Pagoda become the world's number one fruit company." Lai Xianyang, Vice President and Financial Director of Pagoda Group introduced.
Yu Huiyong, founder and chairman of Pagoda Group, said that the fresh fruit industry has a market size of RMB 1 trillion, and both the procurement and sales ends are large and dispersed. Large-scale service providers will inevitably emerge in the middle. Banguo seized this opportunity to solve a series of pain points in the industry. The cooperation between Pagoda and Banguo Platform still has a lot of room for growth. At present, Pagoda has established great advantages in the field of fruit retail, with a full industrial layout in all aspects from planting, procurement, processing, warehousing, and logistics to retail. As the group continues to develop, Pagoda's business territory will also continue to expand. "While further consolidating and developing the core advantages of chain retail, we will actively expand 2B business and serve a wider range of market needs professionally and efficiently."
The Q&A session at the press conference enabled participants to further understand the characteristics of the Banguo model. These include that Banguo does not earn the price difference; in the future, Banguo plans to set up 8 to 9 general warehouses across the country, covering more than 1,500 urban warehouses. The Banguo platform attracts customers with a full range of fruit categories. Many aspects of the contract fulfillment process, rely heavily on the professionalism and credibility of the platform system, which has become Banguo's competitive advantage and has been emphasized many times in the press conference. Yu Huiyong, founder and chairman of Pagoda Group, said that the Banguo platform has great room for development. Judging from the platform planning, it will exceed the total volume of Pagoda in the past ten years. Pagoda empowers the Banguo platform, which is conducive to jointly improving the market share.
As China's largest fruit retail operator, Pagoda was founded in 2001 and was listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2023. As of the end of June this year, Pagoda has opened more than 5,900 stores in more than 150 cities across the country, serving more than 79 million members, and has the largest distribution network in China's fruit industry.
The active measures taken by leading companies such as Pagoda will help further promote the standardization and quality development of the fruit industry and bring more affordable and diversified choices to consumers. Such a platform that gathers all kinds of good fruits will enter the daily lives of more consumers through the thousands of stores empowered by Pagoda.
Source: Pagoda
