Weidian24, China
Company overview
BEIJING KOUDAI SHISHANG TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD has been deeply engaged in the field of store opening software tools for 14 years. It is the No.1 e-commerce SaaS platform in terms of customer scale with strategic lead investment from Tencent, with a registered capital of 380 million RMB, serving 90 million merchants, accumulating GMV of over 100 billion RMB, and the download volume of Weidian APP exceeding 100 million. The company currently has more than 1,500 employees, 55% of whom are R&D personnel from top universities, and has set up more than 9 branches nationwide. As a core business segment, Weidian24 is a leading domestic provider of cloud attendance smart store solutions. Relying on the “Human + AI” model, it creates 24-hour business capabilities for retail stores, has cooperated with more than 32,000 stores, covering convenience stores, pharmacies, snack stores and other formats, and has in-depth cooperation with leading brands such as Hongqi Chain, Fook Convenience Store and Furong Xingsheng. It has won many honors such as the member unit of CAICT “Trustworthy Big Data Plan” and the “Excellent Cloud Attendance Service Provider” of Guangdong Convenience Store Ecosystem 2025, promoting the digital and intelligent upgrading of the retail industry with technological innovation.
Set the Scene
Under the dual trends of the post-epidemic era and the digital transformation of retail, offline retail stores are facing core pain points such as high labor costs, difficulty in nighttime business and low operational efficiency, while consumers’ demand for 24-hour convenient shopping continues to rise. Weidian24 has created a “Human + AI” cloud attendance smart store solution, breaking the business hour limit of traditional stores, and helping retail stores achieve 24-hour business with a low-investment, high-return and low-risk model. This project integrates core capabilities such as AI intelligent recognition, real-time cloud monitoring, remote real-person attendance and digital management, providing an integrated smart operation solution for multi-format stores such as convenience stores, tobacco and alcohol stores, and pharmacies. It has been implemented in 359 cities across the country, helping cooperative stores achieve a breakthrough in nighttime turnover from 0 to thousands of yuan, and promoting the transformation of the retail industry from “fixed offline business hours” to “all-time smart operation”.
Innovation Overview
Weidian24 Cloud Attendance Smart Store Solution is a core innovation for offline retail, with the core goal of “keeping stores open 24/7”. It belongs to the innovation category of store intelligent management and operational efficiency improvement, and is highly consistent with the company’s overall strategy of promoting the digital upgrading of the retail industry. Adopting the “Human + AI” integration model, different from the high cost of pure manual attendance and the high investment of pure AI unmanned stores, this solution realizes integrated capabilities such as real-time store monitoring, AI intelligent recognition, remote real-person attendance, digital operation and goods loss compensation through 8 intelligent systems, 2 core services and 1 management APP. The innovation inspiration comes from the actual business pain points of offline stores, solving the three core problems of labor cost, business hours and operational safety through technical means, and providing merchants with a low-threshold and implementable 24-hour business solution. This innovation not only helps merchants increase revenue and reduce costs, but also meets consumers’ all-time shopping needs, optimizes the consumption experience, and at the same time promotes the format upgrading and service innovation of the retail industry, achieving a win-win situation for merchants, consumers and the industry.
Challenge & Opportunity
The current offline retail industry is facing multiple development challenges: First, labor costs continue to rise, with 1-2 people required for nighttime attendance in a single store, and the average monthly labor cost exceeds 8,000 RMB, which most stores can hardly afford; Second, traditional stores are limited by business hours, unable to meet nighttime consumption demand and missing a lot of revenue opportunities; Third, pure AI unmanned stores have high hardware investment (about 300,000 RMB for a 50-square-meter store), and lack manual intervention, which is prone to poor consumption experience and inability to handle abnormal situations in a timely manner; Fourth, the digitalization level of store operation is low, and inventory, sales and passenger flow data cannot be synchronized in real time, resulting in low decision-making efficiency. At the same time, consumers’ demand for 24-hour convenient shopping is growing day by day, and the digital and intelligent transformation of retail has become an inevitable trend of the industry, providing a broad market opportunity for smart store solutions. Weidian24 accurately seizes this opportunity and creates a cost-effective 24-hour business solution with the “Human + AI” model to fill the industry gap.
Partnerships & Ecosystem Collaboration
The successful implementation of Weidian24 is inseparable from in-depth ecological collaboration and partner support. On the technical front, we independently develop devices such as cameras; the Weidian24 Smart Host V4 is equipped with Huawei chips, which ensures the safety and stability of stores with powerful computing capacity. At the insurance level, we have reached a strategic cooperation with China Pacific Insurance, configuring 100,000 RMB insurance coverage for each store, realizing 48-hour fast compensation for goods loss and unexpected disasters, and reducing the operational risks of merchants; At the brand level, we have in-depth linkage with more than 32,000 cooperative stores such as Hongqi Chain, Fook Convenience Store, Furong Xingsheng and Zhaoyiming Snacks, and customize and optimize solutions according to the needs of different formats; At the offline delivery level, we cooperate with local construction service providers in various regions across the country to establish a standardized installation and after-sales system, ensuring the efficient implementation of the solution in 359 cities. In addition, Weidian24 accesses food delivery platforms such as Meituan Flash Purchase to realize the interconnection of online and offline traffic and create an omni-channel retail ecosystem.
Setup & Early Experiments
The rollout of Weidian24 originated from an in-depth research into the pain points of retail stores. In the initial stage, our team visited stores of various formats across many cities nationwide, collected core demands such as labor costs, business hours and operational safety, and formulated the core design concept of the solution. At the beginning of 2023, the project launched technological R&D and built the core system based on AI chips and an edge-cloud architecture. In the middle of 2023, the first round of pilot programs was carried out in Chengdu; meanwhile, remote attendance centers were set up in Hangzhou, Chongqing and Tangshan, with a professional customer service team of over 600 staff members to provide real-person remote store monitoring. During the pilot phase, technologies including AI data analysis, real-time monitoring and intelligent recognition were applied to continuously collect store operation data, optimize the attendance process and AI recognition algorithms, and solve the initial problems such as low accuracy of commodity recognition and delayed handling of abnormal situations. The pilot stores saw an average 30% increase in nighttime turnover, laying a solid technical and operational foundation for the subsequent large-scale promotion.
Digital & Data Enablement
Technology and data are the core driving forces of Weidian24’s innovation, rather than just auxiliary tools, building a full-link operation system of “AI Intelligence + Data-driven”. At the hardware level, the store is equipped with an AI chip host, 360° panoramic monitoring and 4 million pixel cameras, realizing real-time data transmission combined with the edge-cloud architecture; At the AI level, relying on Transformer and YOLO algorithms, it achieves 99% accuracy in commodity recognition and theft/underpayment detection, 99% fire/smoke recognition rate, and at the same time completes dynamic and static detection through the VLM large model to quickly lock abnormal orders. At the data level, a digital management background is built to synchronize store data such as the number of visitors, order amount, commodity sales and inventory data in real time, analyze customer flow lines and commodity popularity through AI heat map, and provide data support for store commodity placement and inventory management; At the same time, the visual analysis of business data is realized through the multi-store data dashboard, helping merchants and brand owners grasp the operation status in real time, optimize business decisions based on data insights, and realize the transformation from “experience operation” to “data operation”.
Scaling the Innovation
First, we formulated standardized systems for hardware configuration, installation and delivery, and operational monitoring. Based on store area, the hardware cost per store ranges from 6,960 to over 10,000 RMB, and a standardized delivery process has been established to ensure consistency in nationwide rollout. Second, we adopted a regional layout, setting up three directly-operated remote monitoring centers in Hangzhou, Chongqing and Tangshan to achieve multi-active disaster recovery and dynamic load balancing, which can support the monitoring needs of stores in 359 cities across China. Meanwhile, warehouse and distribution service teams and local construction service providers have been established in various regions to address offline delivery and after-sales issues. Third, we customized and optimized solutions for different business formats including convenience stores, pharmacies, snack stores, and tobacco & alcohol stores—for instance, adapting a third-party pharmacist intervention system for pharmacies and upgrading the commodity inventory function for snack stores. In addition, we launched comprehensive merchant training with online courses and offline guidance to help merchants quickly master APP operation and store management skills. As of 2026, Weidian24 has partnered with more than 32,000 stores covering 32 provinces in China, emerging as the country’s largest provider of cloud-based remote monitoring smart store solutions.
Operational Transformation
Weidian24 has fundamentally reshaped the daily operation mode of offline retail stores, realizing an all-round improvement in operational efficiency, cost control and decision-making response. At the human resource level, it replaces the traditional manual nighttime attendance, the average monthly operating cost of a single store is reduced from more than 8,000 RMB to about 1,800 RMB, a drop of more than 70%, and merchants can invest the saved labor cost in store operation and commodity optimization. At the operation level, 24-hour unmanned attendance is realized, with real-person customer service remote monitoring + AI intelligent recognition, which can handle customer shopping problems and store abnormal situations in real time, with the response speed increased by 90%. At the same time, integrated management of commodities, inventory, orders and monitoring is realized through one APP, the inventory counting efficiency is increased by 80%, and the order processing time is shortened by 60%. At the decision-making level, relying on the real-time data dashboard and AI analysis, merchants can grasp store business data anytime and anywhere, quickly find hot-selling/slow-moving commodities and passenger flow rules, realize accurate replenishment and commodity layout optimization, and the decision-making efficiency is improved from “weekly/monthly” to “real-time”. In addition, chain brands can realize standardized and digital management of multiple stores through the five-level management system of headquarters – region – store, with the operational standardization level increased by 95%.
Setbacks & Pivots
The development and implementation process of Weidian 24 was not smooth sailing. In the early stages, two core issues were encountered and prompt strategic adjustments were made. Initially, the accuracy of AI product recognition was low, and the recognition of irregular and similar products was prone to errors, leading to frequent cases of missed payments/incorrect payments and affecting the experience of merchants and consumers. The team quickly adjusted its technical strategy, implemented real-time iteration of the AI model in combination with the edge-cloud architecture, and added a secondary verification step by human customer service, thereby increasing the accuracy of product recognition to 99% and solving the problem of recognition errors. Secondly, during the initial stage of scale-up, the capabilities of the offline delivery team were uneven, leading to long installation cycles and delayed hardware debugging in some stores. In response, the company established a standardized construction delivery system, formulated unified standards for offline survey, point mapping, and construction installation, provided professional training and assessments to construction service providers nationwide, and established regional warehouse and distribution service teams to achieve rapid hardware delivery and installation. This shortened the installation cycle from 7 days to 3 days per store, ensuring the efficiency of scale-up implementation.
Impact & Results
Weidian 24 has achieved quantifiable commercial, operational, and industry values, becoming a benchmark for the digital transformation of offline retail. At the financial level, the average daily sales of partner stores reach 354.2 yuan, with a unit price of 23 yuan. The nighttime turnover has achieved a breakthrough from 0 to several thousand yuan, such as the Hongji New Road Store 2 of Hongqi Chain with a monthly nighttime turnover of 62,500 yuan, the Wangping Store 3 of Wudongfeng with a monthly nighttime turnover of 45,500 yuan, and the Zhaoyiming Snacks Nanning Xiulong Store with a nighttime turnover exceeding 2,000 yuan per day. The average monthly operating cost per store has decreased by over 70%. At the operational level, over 32,000 partner stores nationwide operate 24 hours a day. At the industry level, Weidian 24 covers 359 cities in 32 provinces, adapting to various formats such as convenience stores, pharmacies, and snack shops, driving the retail industry from “fixed-time operation” to “full-time smart operation”. At the same time, it has created an innovative “human + AI” model, providing a replicable and feasible reference solution for the digital upgrade of the industry. It has won multiple industry honors such as the “Outstanding Cloud Duty Service Provider” in the 2025 Guangdong Convenience Store Ecosystem and the “Innovation Award” in Yunnan’s chain industry.
Scalability & Future Potential
The innovative model of Weidian24 has extremely strong scalability and future potential, and will continue to evolve from three dimensions: stores, formats and technologies. At the store level, we will further sink the market, cover county and township-level retail stores, and plan to exceed 100,000 cooperative stores in 2026 to achieve full coverage of all regions across the country. At the format level, expand from the existing formats such as convenience stores and pharmacies to more offline retail scenarios such as community supermarkets, fresh food stores and gas station convenience stores, and custom-develop functional modules adapted to different formats. At the technical level, deepen the integration of AI large model and store operation to realize more advanced intelligent functions such as intelligent replenishment, precision marketing and passenger flow prediction; At the same time, build a retail digital ecosystem, connect online malls, food delivery platforms and member systems to realize omni-channel data interconnection and integrated operation. In addition, we will expand to overseas markets, replicate the “Human + AI” cloud attendance model to markets in the digital transformation of retail such as Southeast Asia, and promote the intelligent upgrading of global offline retail.
