Liu Qiangdong'S Talk About The Secrets Of Retailing

I once said that unless one day, all the products you need can be printed directly and sent to 3D, the meaning of retailers is to continuously improve efficiency, reduce the cost of intermediate links, and create value for consumers.

In fact, this is exactly what Jingdong's self operated e-commerce system is striving for.

We build our own warehousing and logistics and reduce intermediate links. We hope to bring lower price and greater value to consumers with lower costs and lower losses.

Of course, like WAL-MART's intervention from the "system", the efficiency of Jingdong has been under pressure from the traditional distribution system.

Walton's (WAL-MART founder) counterattack on similar criticism has also given Jingdong great encouragement in this direction.

He pointed out bluntly: we are only responsible for the customers. Only the customers are satisfied, your job is guaranteed. No one should be responsible for the livelihood of others.

Similarly, because Jingdong is confident that its business model is tested and can create value for customers, Jingdong can face up to misunderstandings and doubts such as "big black and thick" and "breakup of capital chain" in the process of growth.

It is interesting to see that the road of WAL-MART's rise has found that such misunderstandings and accusations are sometimes beneficial to a new retail mode. It enables WAL-MART to develop rapidly without notice and to make Jingdong uncompetitive, creating unique competitive advantages that others can hardly surpass.

Proudly, Mr. Walton said, no competitor has been able to distribute such a quantity of goods with the efficiency of WAL-MART, nor can it reduce the structural cost to such a low level as WAL-MART.

Today's Jingdong can also be proud to say that our stock management is nearly 100 times larger than traditional large retail establishments. We have reduced the cost of traditional retail industry by 50%.

Road to Jane, the same way, WAL-MART's first practice has given us more confidence.

But it is based on confidence in my own business model that I do not even spend as much energy as my old Walton to study competitors.

Today, I think more about Jingdong, which is growing rapidly. In order to maintain our proud efficiency, break the regional restrictions in the electricity industry, and expand our territory rapidly, how do we keep our close distance with customers and perceive customers' demands to satisfy customers' needs?

Just like twenty years ago, Walton, who was over seventy years old, reminded his successor: when WAL-MART reaches 100 billion dollars in sales, can it still operate as efficiently as it should do? Will it be better if it is divided into 5 companies that sell 20 billion dollars?

The development of WAL-MART has given us the direction to find answers.

Before Mr. Walton died, WAL-MART's sales had just exceeded $40 billion. Today, its sales volume has exceeded 470 billion US dollars (2014 fiscal year). It has more than 10000 shopping malls in the world and manages more than 2 million employees.

But enough to console Walton, WAL-MART is still one of the most efficient retail businesses in the world. It has maintained a sustained profit for decades and is truly the world's largest retailer.

WAL-MART broke through the curse of scale economy. The secret may be that the core idea accompanying the rise of the retail empire is still summed up by Mr. Walton twenty years ago: WAL-MART can always maintain a good momentum, because it has been constantly satisfying the needs of customers. Managers have been constantly encouraging, caring for employees, team spirit, family friendship, steadfast and pragmatic dedication and enthusiasm for the retail business, so that they can be inherited and developed in the new era.

The above idea is not what Walton thought out of thin air. "It is the product that we have been doing all the time since the Newport period. It has been brewing for 20 years" and has finally been precipitated as the six major methods and ten principles of retail business in the book.

These principles and methods seem simple, but have countless details, and have rich connotation. It may have been shaped by Walton's visit to a shop at first. It may also have been born in a promotion of WAL-MART, a combination of occasional merchandise display, and a salesman's glitz.

Walton was recorded in the small yellow book carried by himself, and with the growth of WAL-MART Empire, Xiao Huang Ben became a unique treasure house of retailing.

Every retailer knows that retail is the details.

Today, WAL-MART's "Xiao Huang Ben" is still of great significance to the retail enterprises including Jingdong.

Perhaps some people will say that the changing of the Internet and other new technologies has greatly changed the traditional retail appearance. Walton's experience in the American town can adapt to the changing commercial reality today?

What I want to say is that commercial retail is a system that has evolved over thousands of years with human society. It has its own rules. Any emerging technology must follow the objective laws of retailing so that it can play its due role.

Today's hottest "Internet +" does not mean that the Internet is completely subversive to traditional industries including retail, but to find an effective meeting point for improving the efficiency of traditional industries in the sense of tools.

Even if one day, the so-called "singularity" is coming, I believe that human factors will still play an irreplaceable role in the service sector including retail.

Just as WAL-MART embraced computers and other modern technologies in commercial retailing earlier, Walton knew more clearly that "without all the dedicated staff and truck drivers in the whole system, those computers and laser guided distribution centers are useless."

Moreover, because Mr. Walton has always been committed to "ensuring that change is an essential part of WAL-MART culture and sometimes even changes for change", in addition, the WAL-MART created a huge and profound business practice under the trend of modern business, making Walton or WAL-MART's business thinking based on this foundation a bright future.

Taking WAL-MART's business exploration as an example, we can see that the future of e-commerce and retailing in China today may make us more awe and calm towards the development of the whole industry, and less impetuous and false.

We can see today's rural electric business in China through WAL-MART.

After the rise of World War II and the Korean War, a large number of young people in the United States began to flock to cities to find jobs. But most of them really settled in the suburbs, plus the popularity of cars, and the formation of the interstate highway network in the United States,.

The retail business is beginning to change, and the strong demand of customers in suburban towns makes WAL-MART's birth possible.

At the beginning of the development of WAL-MART, it was once criticized as "the enemy of business in the small town of the United States". I think this is a great criticism, because it shows that WAL-MART has participated in and led the reconstruction of the commercial system in the small town of America, and eventually grew up in the small town and moved from the American town to the whole world because of the idea of better life for the community residents.

Any great commercial practice must conform to the development of the times.

Today, the process of urbanization in China is accelerating, and in the field of e-commerce in China, with the gradual saturation of urban market competition, the electricity supplier goes to the countryside to become a hot spot.

The tentacles of the big businesses are beginning to extend to the grass-roots counties and townships, and even to the countryside. In the future, they will inevitably face conflicts and integration with the local business systems.

Old Mr. Walton himself was a resident of a small town, and no one knew more about what kind of retail services his neighbors needed than him.

What kind of attitude is China's electricity supplier going to the countryside? Many of our generation are from the countryside and are eager to change their faces in a drastic way.

However, it is impossible to solve the problem of the reunification of the family and the longing homesickness and wishful thinking.

In the face of the "frozen ground" which has been ignored by the market for a long time, we need to really lean down to do meticulous exploration and feel the sense of responsibility to build a patient foundation.

I also see Mr. Walton's inspiration for today's O2O practice.

When Walton wrote this book, WAL-MART was already a super giant retailer who covered the whole country.

But Walton said, "a smart hardware shop owner can beat us to pieces, as long as he thinks about what he wants to do, and is determined to fight WAL-MART to the end."

This is not modest, because Walton, who also started in a small shop, understands that if an independent shop owner, if he can personally meet every customer, personally operate cash registers, let every inhabitant of your community know how much you appreciate them, he will establish an unmatched competitive advantage.

Such a giant commercial system can not be done no matter how it is imitated.

Mr. Walton painted a warm scene of a small shop's consumption.

I think such a small shop has a fatal attraction to consumers in the increasingly tense pace of life today.

Recently, there is a saying in the field of electricity supplier that "people who get the scene get the world".

The key to O2O is to reconnect consumption scenes after offline and offline.

The scene is three-dimensional and multidimensional, which means that we must design more temperature and emotional connections besides simple and quick convenience.

For some time, Jingdong began to try to graft more abundant additional services in the self distribution system.

I believe that, based on our own system, linking the ends of consumption and supply, we have inherent advantages in exploring the new scene of O2O and are on the right road.

In addition, many people who explore Internet business today will be called "big data".

But if you read this book, you will find that relying on big data base, flexible pformation of upstream production chain, and even reverse customization, WAL-MART began to play in the 80s of last century.

At that time, WAL-MART and Procter & Gamble jointly established a team of cooperation with a view to establishing a brand new supplier retailer relationship.

The basic mode of cooperation is to share information through computers.

Procter & Gamble uses WAL-MART's sales and inventory data to develop its own production and delivery plan. The efficiency is greatly improved and the cost is greatly reduced, so the sales price of WAL-MART is greatly reduced.

。

Perhaps, from today's point of view, the reverse customization is relatively elementary at the time, but this cooperation is more macroscopic and realistic. It means that manufacturers and retailers turn from the antagonistic relationship between each other to a partnership that is committed to better serving consumers.

For Chinese manufacturing enterprises that are facing pformation and upgrading, I believe that this is the correct position to embark on the Internet fast lane.

Today, along this line of thinking, the Jingdong explores the openness of the intelligent industry, hoping to help more manufacturing enterprises.

Of course, for me, the most respectable thing for WAL-MART is that it has been comfortable with the life of ordinary people, and has become an integral part of people's life style.

When old Walton talked a lot about what changes and values created by WAL-MART for American life, perhaps the ultimate dream of many retail practitioners was also inspired by the efforts of Jingdong to become a national enterprise.

I hope that Jingdong employees, or aspiring young people in the retail industry, can take this book as an introductory book to understand the retail industry. Of course, you can also walk into a WAL-MART nearby to have a good observation and experience.

To tell you the truth, the secrets of retailing are on WAL-MART's shelves.