Chinese retail technology company MissFresh has signed more than twenty regional grocery store chains to use its cloud services.

This will see 150 neighbourhood retail stores across 19 cities using MissFresh’s suite of proprietary SaaS tools, enabling growth and improving customer experience for over four million consumers nationwide.

MissFresh has inked agreements with more than 20 regional supermarket chains to equip more than 150 stores in 19 cities in China with its SaaS tools and AI-driven capabilities, such as smart omnichannel marketing, supply chain management and store-to-door delivery.

The retail partners include well-known regional retailers such as Shandong Aodelong Supermarket, Chongqing Jiameijia Department Store and Changchun Yatai Supermarket, who are upgrading and enhancing their digital operations through MissFresh’s retail cloud services.

MissFresh’s retail cloud business segment officially launched in June 2021 and continues to empower a growing number of neighbourhood retailers through digitalisation of their services, while laying the groundwork for the rapid expansion of cloud services across the neighbourhood retail industry.

Since partnering with Tencent Smart Retail, MissFresh has bolstered its cloud services by uniting Tencent’s smart retail ecosystem and its philosophy of partner empowerment with the company’s self-developed retail AI network and years of experience running neighbourhood retail operating systems.

With applications across numerous fields including cloud computing, digital marketing and ecommerce livestreaming, the retail cloud services enable small-to medium-sized traditional retailers to set up rapidly comprehensive online operations, which in turn accelerates the digitalisation and modernisation of the neighbourhood retail industry.

As online shopping continues to surge in popularity and the growing demand for high-quality goods and services sweeps across China, the offline retail industry is gradually moving online. According to iResearch, the neighbourhood retail cloud market is poised to grow rapidly in tandem with the accelerated pace of development in online retail, jumping from RMB207.7bn in 2020 to RMB2.2tn by 2025.

In China, as consumers increasingly turn to online shopping, the advent of the omnichannel retail era has left local small-to-medium-sized stores – which have a combined market share of 80% – struggling to keep up with consumer demands for multiple retail channels, and simultaneously lack a diverse range of purchasing options and better consumer experiences. Providing a higher quality consumer experience, achieving more customer conversion and repurchase rates, and improving operational efficiency became key areas to tackle as the traditional retail industry goes through its digital transformation.

Aiming to iron out these issues, MissFresh’s retail cloud services offer digital upgrades to traditional retail formats and AI-driven technology in place of human decision-making. This helps resolve a number of critical issues for retailers including SKU management, high inventory loss and wastage during transport, difficulties in attracting online customers, and store-to-door fulfilment.

MissFresh’s retail cloud business has already partnered with numerous regional retailers – including Shandong Quanfuyuan Commercial Group, Dongtai Guomao Group and Zhejiang Kaihong Group – to provide integrated online-to-offline retail technology and upgrade retailers’ online capacity. This includes setting up private traffic domains platforms, improving home delivery and enabling pre-sell and pick-up services.

MissFresh has also launched other initiatives to accelerate the digitalisation of the neighbourhood retail industry, such as recently hosting an online services workshop for neighbourhood retailers as well as a forum for ecosystem partners and neighbourhood retailers. These events aim to explore trends in the retail industry’s digital transformation, seek growth engines for the local retail economy, and pursue high-quality development of the neighbourhood retail industry.

MissFresh invented the distributed mini warehouse model to operate an integrated online-and-offline on-demand retail business focusing on offering fresh produce and fast-moving consumer goods. Through its mobile app and mini programme embedded in third-party social platforms, consumers can purchase quality groceries at their fingertips and have the finest products delivered to their doorstep in 36 minutes, on average.

Leveraging its core capabilities, MissFresh launched an intelligent fresh market business in the second half of 2020. This business model is dedicated to standardising and transforming fresh markets into smart fresh malls. MissFresh has also built up a full stack of proprietary technologies that empower a wide range of participants in the neighbourhood retail business, such as supermarkets, fresh markets and local retailers, to jumpstart and operate their business digitally and efficiently.