2017年11月，Ocado宣布与法国零售商Groupe Casino达成协议，为电商业务提供技术。两个月后又与Sobeys达成合作，Sobeys在加拿大经营1500家不同品牌的店面。“这是我见过唯一能实现大规模盈利的电商模式。”Sobeys电商业务高级副总裁莎拉·乔伊斯谈到Ocado时表示。
克拉克签了一年合同，任务是改进哈特菲尔德快速运转的传送带货品流动控制系统。克拉克说，Ocado的操作非常复杂，要重新设计的话，唯一方法就是搭建一系列数字“孪生体”，本质上是对操作的实时软件模拟。如此一来克拉克和团队能在实际仓库中实现配置改进之前进行试验，避免了代价高昂的测试和错误。施泰纳说，不久之后，新系统协助提高了设备效率，现在5加5能做到等于12。
Like most grocers, Ocado has faced skyrocketing demand fueled by social distancing measures and panic buying. Its U.K. grocery sales in March leaped more than 20% year over year. At one point, visits to its website were 100 times the normal rate—a level so high, it triggered the company’s cybersecurity systems to believe the website was under attack. “This is the peakiest peak we’ve ever had in the history of the business,” says David Shriver, Ocado’s group director of communications.
For many years, Ocado’s talk of becoming a tech platform seemed to be just that: talk. Equity analysts were skeptical, and the stock became a perennial favorite among short-sellers. But Ocado’s logistics prowess has gradually won converts. Beginning in 2017, the company announced a series of licensing deals with grocery chains on four continents—including a huge partnership with Kroger. Since then, Ocado’s market capitalization has quadrupled to north of $10 billion, while revenue has been growing at about 10% annually, reaching $2.2 billion in 2019. That kind of growth is nothing for a tech company—but it’s exceptional for a grocery.
2017年11月，Ocado宣布与法国零售商Groupe Casino达成协议，为电商业务提供技术。两个月后又与Sobeys达成合作，Sobeys在加拿大经营1500家不同品牌的店面。“这是我见过唯一能实现大规模盈利的电商模式。”Sobeys电商业务高级副总裁莎拉·乔伊斯谈到Ocado时表示。
苏格兰皇家银行资本市场的股票分析师谢里·马莱克表示，2022年之前Ocado都很难从许可经营业务获得正现金流。与此同时，巨额投资导致损失不断膨胀，2019年初，一家分拣中心又毁于灾难性的大火，导致损失进一步恶化。
病毒袭击之前，食品杂货店已承受巨大压力。“由于成本上升、效率下滑还有竞相降价，杂货店业务增长和盈利能力都在走低。”麦肯锡最近一份报告中写道。过去十年，北美和西欧的杂货店销售额增长率仅为2%。与此同时，咨询公司Mercator Advisory Group的数据显示，美国连锁杂货店平均净利润率只有1%至2%。不仅趋势令人沮丧，行业高层也很担心零售业的两大对头亚马逊和沃尔玛，两巨头均已明确表示要主导食品杂货业务。根据瑞银数据，沃尔玛已是美国最大的食品杂货销售商，市场份额为21.3%，比最接近的竞争对手超市连锁店克罗格份额高出一倍以上。
平日里，Ocado的机器人分拣仓库已业务繁忙，新冠危机爆发以来简直忙得不可开交。疫情蔓延也证明，即便人类劳动力面临前所未有的压力，杂货电商业务也能保持蓬勃发展。然而与此同时，危机也颠覆了日常生活，在Ocado有望在全球拓展业务之际可能影响业务增长。
2010年夏天，Ocado在伦敦证交所上市，估值为9.37亿英镑（按照当年汇率约合14亿美元）。在很多分析师预期里，一直赔钱的杂货店并不值这么多，上市首日公司股价下跌了10%。之后Ocado一直饱受怀疑情绪困扰，接下来10年里Ocado的股票经常像是市场上最爱卖空的股票之一，大帮基金经理在一边喝倒彩。
单纯做超市业务的公司自动化速度慢得多。但在2017年6月，亚马逊推出的重大举措为Ocado推广现代化销售提供了V型助力。当时，线上百货商店亚马逊斥资137亿美元收购了在全球有500家门店的高档商品商店全食超市（Whole Foods）。杂货商普遍担心亚马逊也会吞掉自己的业务，因为亚马逊在其他行业有过先例，对Ocado技术的兴趣也骤然汹涌。
Ocado于互联网繁盛时期创立，当时三位20多岁的英国人蒂姆·施泰纳、乔纳森·法曼和杰森·吉辛在高盛当交易员，投资创业公司亏了钱。2000年4月，三人联合成立了Ocado。（Ocado是个虚构的词，之所以选这个词是因为不属于任何一种语言，而且创始人喜欢这几个字母当标志的样子。）Ocado的首席执行官施泰纳是创始人里唯一留在公司的人。他看起来结实修长，短短的灰色头发，淡蓝色的眼睛，快速介绍Ocado的历史时散发出一种拳击手的气质。
Ocado is now preparing for other worst-case scenarios; it has held rehearsals for what will happen if its employees begin to fall ill and entire teams need to self-isolate. (One possible solution: drafting furloughed workers from other industries to staff warehouses and drive trucks. The company has already reached out to recruit idled Uber drivers.)
即便在新冠病毒爆发之前，一些观察家就怀疑Ocado与杂货商合作能否有回报。投行Jefferies的食品零售和分销分析师克里斯托弗·曼德维尔特别批评了跟克罗格的合作。他说，除了少数几座大城市，美国的人口密度还不够支持Ocado的分拣中心模式。如果说疫情期间有什么不同，就是证明了“店内拣货”可能更具弹性。如果发生危机导致需求激增，商店可以雇佣员工完成在线订单，而分拣中心的设计是多数时候接近满产能工作，没有那么灵活。
Such doubts haven’t stopped Ocado from raising capital. It issued a $187 million share offering in 2018. In February 2019, it sold 50% of its British e-commerce operation to U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer. The sale simplified Ocado’s proposition to investors, positioning it as more of a pure-play tech platform, while raising $982 million. (Marks & Spencer will also become Ocado’s new wholesale food partner; Ocado’s long-term supply contract with Waitrose comes to an end in late 2020.) Ocado also sold $655 million of convertible bonds in December.
Over the following year, though, Ocado eked out its first small operating profit. Around the same time, grocery consultants, investment banks, and, eventually, huge packaged goods companies—Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Nestlé, and Coca-Cola—began quietly asking to tour the company’s fulfillment centers. Steiner’s instinct was to refuse. “We were quite secretive,” he recalls. But he soon realized that while other companies might glean a few tips by touring the CFCs, they couldn’t replicate the integrated system of software, hardware, warehouse workers, and delivery drivers Ocado had built over a decade. In its 2012 annual report, Ocado for the first time made monetizing its intellectual property a strategic plank.
应用机器人后，Ocado最新的分拣中心每工时可拣选200件商品，意味着收到正常订单后，商品从供应卡车运到蜂巢，拣选、包装并装车等待配送，全过程不到15分钟。同时，由于蜂箱的模块化设计，可以很容易地复制和调整大小以适应新位置。
类似疑虑并未影响Ocado筹集资金。2018年公司发行了1.87亿美元的股票。2019年2月，Ocado将50%的英国电商业务出售给英国零售商玛莎百货。对投资者来说，此次出售让Ocado定位更单纯，就是纯粹的技术平台，同时筹集了9.82亿美元。（玛莎百货也成为Ocado新的食品批发合作伙伴；Ocado与Waitrose的长期合同将于2020年底终止。）12月Ocado还出售了6.55亿美元的可转债。
Ocado’s roots stretch back to the dotcom boom, when three twentysomething Brits working as traders at Goldman Sachs—Tim Steiner, Jonathan Faiman, and Jason Gissing—got bitten by the startup bug. The trio founded Ocado in April 2000. (The name is an invented word, chosen because it could work across languages and because the founders liked how it looked as a logo.) Steiner, Ocado’s CEO, is the only founder still involved with the company. Compact and trim, with close-cropped gray hair and pale blue eyes, he exudes a pugilistic intensity as he walks through Ocado’s history at a rapid-fire clip.
当时克拉克已擢升为首席技术官，他对平台的构想更加雄心勃勃。Ocado推出莫里森网店的第二天，克拉克在当地一家酒店召集员工开会。他首先祝贺短短六个月内就让莫里森网站如期投入运营，这是重大的技术成就。但他接下来的话让很多人倒吸一口冷气。“整个技术堆栈要重写。”他告诉员工。刚开始，重写主要意味着软件改进。但到2015年中，Ocado已经开始研发大批机器人，在“蜂巢”里忙碌。
Complementing the hardware is new software—lots of it, from cloud-based mobile apps to artificial intelligence. This integrated package, along with the engineering support to maintain and upgrade it, is what Ocado now offers to the world’s grocers.
Even before the coronavirus hit, grocers were under tremendous pressure. “Both growth and profitability have been on a downward trajectory due to higher costs, falling productivity, and race-to-the-bottom pricing,” McKinsey wrote in a recent report. Sales growth for North American and Western European grocers has been just 2% over the past decade. Net profit margins for U.S. grocery chains, meanwhile, average just 1% to 2%, according to consulting firm Mercator Advisory Group. On top of these dismal trends, executives in the sector fear the twin Death Stars of retail—Amazon and Walmart—both of which have made clear their intentions to dominate the grocery business. Walmart is already by far the largest seller of groceries in the U.S., with a 21.3% market share, according to UBS, more than twice the share of its nearest competitor, supermarket chain Kroger.
While Ocado breaks ground on CFCs around the world, Clarke, the chief technology officer, is peering around the next technological bend. He has experimented with new robots, including ones with human-like hands that could someday eliminate the need for human pickers altogether. He’s also helped research ones that could grasp delicate items, like fruit, without damaging them. And Ocado has trialed a robot called SecondHands, which travels on wheels but has a humanoid torso, head and arms, to help carry out repairs to the hive and conveyors. Eventually, Clarke says, “the goal is to move to an entirely dark facility”—that is, a CFC with almost no people.
Steiner and Clarke have also begun looking beyond food altogether in search of profitable business lines. Ocado’s expertise in logistics, A.I., robotics, and simulation could be deployed to tackle automated car parks, parcel sorting, baggage handling, rail freight, container ports and modular, configurable buildings. Clarke says the company has filed patents in a number of these areas. Ocado has already created simulations of a car-parking system, Clarke says, and has begun exploring scaled-up versions of its robots for handling freight far heavier than a crate of bananas.
Jeremy Kahn 2020年05月04日
It’s a common refrain among Ocado’s customers: They lack the resources to replicate Ocado’s technology. “We are a big company, but we are not a technology company,” says Anders Svensson, the CEO of ICA Sweden. Ocado, in contrast, employs more than 1,800 software engineers and 600 hardware specialists. That’s far less than Amazon or Google, but it’s a lot for a grocer.
面对大批许可经营协议，很多投资者不得不放弃怀疑，Ocado被大量做空的日子也一去不返。“之前我拼命做空，但Ocado跟克罗格合作后，我拼命做多。”股票研究公司伯恩斯坦负责欧洲零售商的分析师布鲁诺·蒙泰恩说。不过，相关交易并未增加太多利润，因为自动分拣中心建设完成后Ocado才能收到回报。
缺乏资源模仿Ocado的技术，也正是客户跟Ocado合作的常见原因。“我们公司规模很大，但技术并非专攻。”瑞典公司ICA首席执行官安德斯·斯文森说。相比之下，Ocado雇佣了1800多名软件工程师和600多名硬件专家。比起亚马逊或谷歌当然少得多，但在杂货行业里已经是很庞大的技术团队。
此类仓库又被物流专业人士称为顾客订单分拣中心（CFC），是全世界最先进和自动化程度最高的仓库之一，每周可以处理数万个订单。此处仓库属于业内领先的英国在线杂货商Ocado，其定位是像白衣骑士一样帮助陷入困境的杂货业在自动化时代展开竞争，也有可能帮助其他行业。
面对大批许可经营协议，很多投资者不得不放弃怀疑，Ocado被大量做空的日子也一去不返。“之前我拼命做空，但Ocado跟克罗格合作后，我拼命做多。”股票研究公司伯恩斯坦负责欧洲零售商的分析师布鲁诺·蒙泰恩说。不过，相关交易并未增加太多利润，因为自动分拣中心建设完成后Ocado才能收到回报。
由于Ocado核心的食品杂货业务仍在努力证明可持续性，向其他领域拓展听起来有点压力。不过，如果想知道Ocado为什么想做停车场或港口运营业务，施泰纳有个现成的答案：如果当初亚马逊只卖书，现在会怎样？（财富中文网）
本文另一版本登载于《财富》杂志2020年5月刊，标题为《新冠疫情前线上的杂货机器人》。
When Ocado made its debut, established British grocery chains such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Walmart-owned Asda already had e-commerce operations. Those chains were using their stores to fulfill online orders, with store clerks gathering the goods and loading them onto delivery trucks. This process, known as “store pick,” is the way most retailers have grafted e-commerce onto their existing operations. Store pick requires little additional capital or labor investment, but it has disadvantages. Many stores’ stockrooms are too cramped to accommodate a sizable picking operation, which means employees may have to fill online orders from the supermarket floor, putting them in competition with in-store customers. With smaller inventories, there’s also a greater chance that items won’t be available—a leading driver of customer dissatisfaction.
The robots’ grid is actually the top of a giant three-dimensional lattice—a modular cage packed with groceries. Each time a robot stops, it drops a clawlike attachment into the bowels of the lattice (“the hive,” as human workers call it), descending as many as three stories. The claw grabs the sides of a white plastic crate containing fruit, vegetables, cereal—any of 55,000 different items—and retracts it up into the robot’s belly. The robot then carries the crate to another grid square and lowers it into the “pick tunnel,” which sits beneath the hive on the warehouse’s ground floor. There, workers pick items out of the crates to fill customers’ orders, placing the groceries into red plastic bins, which are then loaded onto trucks for delivery.
Ocado’s partners are responsible for acquiring land, building external structures, providing a delivery fleet, and hiring workers. But Ocado has to build the hives, supply the robots and software, and provide training and on-site engineering support. It costs Ocado $40 million to $45 million in “peak cash outflow” for each average-size CFC, Steiner says. Only after construction does Ocado collect a fee based on the warehouses’ available capacity. In its most recent fiscal year, just 6% of Ocado’s revenue came from licensing.