How did the virus outbreak impact the business of New Ruipeng

INTERVIEW OF MR. LIU LANG

Vice Chairman of Asia Pet Alliance

Vice Chairman of the Board, New Ruipeng Pet Healthcare Group

  • How did the virus outbreak impact your business since January?

The outbreak of coronavirus pneumonia in early 2020 had a much greater impact than SARS in 2003. With the development of online and offline networks, the outbreak spread more widely than before, causing a tsunami to the whole society. Pet health care has been heavily impacted as the same as all other industries that require face-to-face contact (travel, aviation, catering, offline education, etc.).

At present, the Group has more than 1,300 branches and nearly 16,000 employees. Due to the virus outbreak, hospitals in many areas of the Group were temporarily closed to coordinate with fighting against the outbreak. The operation of the Group’s offline chain stores has been affected by various factors, such as the social isolation, rumors of pets carrying viruses and blocked distribution business in the short term. But the impact is limited, because the outbreak can isolate people, but not high quality products and brands, and the rigid demand for pet health.

  • How does your company manage to keep the business going?

Starting from the beginning of the Chinese New Year, the Group has started the online business such as Pet Private Doctor, Awen Aishengqian, Jack Pet online shop, online consultation (cooperated with sina). In addition to the early strategic deployment of new retail, supply chain, and online service systems, the business related to private domain traffic is growing rapidly.       Pet health care card and products sales are increasing rapidly every day and distribution within three kilometers of the city has been launched. The company has taken advantage of the Internet to launch online business and achieved remarkable results.

  • During this period, how do you help your customers and the pet industry in general?

In view of the current situation that many pet hospitals are closed and the daily medical channels for pets are blocked, New Ruipeng has taken such counter measures. In this period of time, all the veterinarians in the store provide 24-hour online consulting service to answer customers’ daily questions. Meanwhile, we have launched a large number of online free open courses for veterinary practitioners to seize the opportunity to conduct online learning.

On the client side, concerning the difficulty in seeing veterinarian during the outbreak, we have comprehensively upgraded our online service business and pet protection business so as to ensure that pets can receive better medical services with greater discounts and sincerity. Besides, we have released a lot of popular science knowledge in time to help people rationally distinguish either rumors or scientific feeding and to enhance the public’s confidence in dealing with common pet diseases.

  • How do you see the Chinese pet industry 6 months from now?

This year is crucial for completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects and bringing the 13th five-year plan to a successful conclusion. The whole domestic economy has great development and the per capita disposable income is rising as well. With the comprehensive improvement in the level of social education, the change of population structure, the rise of pets-keeping, and the exuberant vitality of the pet industry, the short-term outbreak will not affect the long-term trend of the industry.   

With the outbreak getting better, we have recently observed a rapid recovery in the pet consumption market. It is believed that once the outbreak is entirely eliminated, there will be a small spurt of pet consumption demand. Because of the impact of the outbreak, the structural changes of the pet industry will be accelerated, such as the acceleration of the industry integration, stratification and differentiation of pet owners and the qualitative growth of the overall benefits of the industry, and the deepening of information Internet and digitalization. It could be a small trend in the coming months.