Two Years Of New Retail Test: Where And Where To Go?

Since 2016, new retail has been exploring history for more than 2 years, whether it is similar to the new format of the box, the impact of the electricity supplier on the small supermarket with high consumption frequency, or the department stores with a higher price and a focus on consumption experience are actively embracing new retail.

Alibaba and Tencent, led by the "two super strong", have basically completed the carve up of physical stores in retail enterprises.

Because "offline physical entity scenarios, it is difficult to replicate indefinitely, with limited space". Therefore, adopting the central approach, the deep integration of Ali is expected to continue to take the initiative in the long term exploration.

Tencent needs to introduce new strategies to boost its attractiveness in the retail sector.

Ali, the first to practise new retail, did not occupy a big advantage in the early days. Instead, Tencent was less popular because of its low share of participation, and was favored by more retailers in the exploration of new retail.

Now, in the exploration of the new retail field, the smell of smoke between the two sides gradually dispersed.

New retail map

However, after 3 years of expansion and exploration, especially with the Tencent's efforts to focus more on cloud computing based toB business, Tencent's "de centralization" of new retail has lost its voice for a long time.

2019 will be an important period in the digital pformation of the retail industry and even the entire business world. The Tencent and Ali, which are far from the new retail sector, will not miss this change. This year, the two sides are likely to open fire in more areas.

New retail search

Who can dominate the new round of retail revolution? If the problem is misunderstood two years ago, two years later, it is clear that the essence of new retail is beyond retail itself, and the Internet has already led far beyond traditional retail businesses.

"So far, all the traditional retail businesses are undergoing reform. I think that Wumart is at the forefront because it has a APP of its own, which is the difference between today's retail pformation and the new retail business."

Not long ago, at the ideological forum held by Ali and Tsinghua economics and Management College, Zhang Wenzhong, the founder of box horse, praised the new retail of Wumart.

In the pformation of all traditional retail businesses to embrace new retail, wumi is undoubtedly at the forefront and the most typical one.

But it does not mean that Wumart can rest easy on the way of new retail pformation. Like most traditional retailers, it faces a dilemma.

Even Zhang Wenzhong himself admits: "go forward, challenge is very big; do it yourself, the cost is very big."

In fact, it is not difficult to understand Zhang Wenzhong's anxiety. When Luo Zhenyu delivered his speech in 2017, he said that new retail is essentially an all-around way to improve efficiency without any means.

That is to say, new retail is a new efficiency war.

From the Internet, big data to artificial intelligence, from online business to offline stores, it will be mobilized and integrated to fight for efficiency.

And this new efficiency war has no advantages for the traditional retailing industry.

Liu Guihai, a multi-point partner, once said: in the past, for a traditional retailer, competitors are mainly around 3 kilometers of shops, so long as they keep their advantages in this area, they will be able to survive well.

However, the business of the electricity supplier is facing the national market, and it has become the biggest competitor of traditional retailers directly beyond the limitation of time and space.

As the focus of traditional retail industry has been focused on the Internet, it has made it difficult to realize the new retail pformation in the process of building its own electricity business and linking online and offline.

Before investing in Ali's embrace, Gao Xin had independently operated over three years of electronic business around the flying bull network, burning more than 1 billion yuan, and finally ending up in a dark end.

WAL-MART has also tried an independent e-commerce business, but for several years, it has not been able to get rid of the situation of burning money and losses. Finally, it has to sell the wholly owned 1 shop to Jingdong.

Another self built e-commerce platform late Carrefour, although has been struggling, but progress is very slow, and has not yet achieved access to all physical stores.

The current situation of Wumart is obviously better than those. The stance of not standing in line with the company has shown that neither the capital nor the business depends on the giants. But in the process of pformation, a series of problems are also very painful, such as the poor shopping experience of consumers, the failure of business and so on.

On the Internet, there are consumers from time to time to come out Tucao wumi, "there was an activity in front of us, 200 times to 100, and today is going to spend 300. When I checked out, I was told that I didn't basically buy it in this activity. I just want to ask," why didn't I tell me that some products were not involved when I saved 200? "

Wuming line store and multi point

"In the first two days, there are two or more points, APP has a full 99 reduction of 50 yuan activities, think it is a good deal, it has been placed, and has not been delivered. At 8 o'clock in the evening, there was a phone call saying that it was out of stock."

After placing the order again, it shows 14 distribution. Until now, not only has not received the goods, even the telephone has not... "Similar sound is not uncommon.

Two, two super strong

"What exactly do you mean by new retail? What kind of changes will happen to the retail industry before it can be called new retail?"

When Ma Yun put forward the concept of "new retailing" as a concept at the 2016 cloud habitat conference, it also encountered the embarrassment of the Internet just in the embryonic stage of China. Almost a lot of people did not understand what it was so much that most people regarded it as a gimmick.

Often speaking on the lips, it is not believing in heart.

Until the birth of the box horse, overnight, we suddenly believe the three words of the new retail business.

And in the next two years, its development speed is staggering.

To what extent is it coming? As soon as the online business tycoons are changing, Jingdong and Suning do not immediately propose a similar concept word. They do not launch a Jingdong 7Fresh or Su Ningsu, which is similar to the box horse life mode. They are embarrassed to say that they are still mixed up in this circle.

Offline retail businesses, such as Shang Chao, department stores and convenience stores, have also been trying to pform themselves. Unmanned shelves, unmanned supermarkets and vending machines have sprung up like mushrooms. Even the OTA field has been jumping out of the new retail outlet.

All the players who participated in the new retail pformation experienced various difficulties in 2017's horse race enclosure and the rapid expansion and iteration of 2018.

If we say that the self built e-commerce platform is a barrier to the pformation of retail enterprises such as Gao Xin and WAL-MART, then the brand representatives represented by Li Bai can not build their own electricity supplier platform. That sounds like a contradiction.

Li Bai, from founding to starting, adopted a distinctive marketing mode.

That is, find a dealer everywhere, ask the dealer not to sell in the wholesale market, move out to rent a warehouse, buy a car, and then send it directly, 25 years ago, they were sent directly to the small and medium-sized stores by their own cars.

When Li Bai was founded, he couldn't build factories and had no money to do credit because of financial reasons, so they began to help the factory to do the OEM, and gave the exclusive sale rights to the exclusive sales area, and made profits for them, but the premise was that the goods must be paid on delivery.

Chen Kaixuan, founder of Li Bai, said: "over the past 20 years, we can say that we do not have the capital and help the factory to sell the advertising business".

But in the face of the new retail revolution, Li Bai suffered unprecedented trouble.

Li Bai is very strong in the original sales channels, almost can not be copied and firmly occupy the market, but with the rise of electricity providers, consumer groups buying habits and buying methods have also changed, so that many consumer groups continue to drain.

Thus, Li began to pform online, but when they did online, they found that online prices always hit the bottom line, which was like selling the life of a dedicated salesperson, thus triggering the "rebellion" of dealers, which is obviously more serious than the loss of consumer groups.

This also means that Li Bai wants to realize the success of the new retail pformation, and must take the pformation of the distributors together and move forward together with them.

So Li Bai needs more than just an online platform, but a business system that can communicate with employees and distributors in real time.

Qian Libo, the chairman of the red dragonfly, said recently: "when the general change happens, the boss has been yelling at the company, calling for a few years or consulting many companies, and the traditional companies have almost become customary actions. Basically, they spend seven million dollars a year, but when they spend money, they know that everyone is justified and can not solve the company's problems in a comprehensive way.

Whether it's the traditional retail business that is built by itself, or the urgent need for a brand of business systems that can solve a series of problems, they are just the epitome of this retail pformation.

Obviously, on the new retail track, there are advantages in terms of user migration costs, commodity prices, technology iteration and user experience of online shopping mall, and technology enterprises with electricity providers and technology genes. Among them, Alibaba and Tencent are represented.

In short, in the new retail revolution, to win the final victory is not to see how much resources you have, but to see how much resources you can mobilize at the same time.

Therefore, the traditional retail industry wants to run farther on this track and seek to cooperate with the third party science and technology giants such as Ali and Tencent.

Of course, it is not as smooth as other new things to replace old things, but it can help them to attract customers who are "unable to catch" and to bring them the real benefits.

For example, many brands with ALI cooperation, with the aid of automatic trafficking machines, flash stores, and so on, to realize the new source of the development of the course.

Ali's new retail layout

On the other hand, in the exploration of the new retail channel, many offline retail businesses are relatively conservative in finance, and more can only accept the business model with low risk and successfully landing.

After all, Ali spent 2 years and spent hundreds of millions of dollars before trying out a box of horses.

For offline retailers and branding firms, this is likely to be higher than their profits for a year or even a few years, and not everyone can afford it.

The traditional retailer will not spend more than 10 billion to make a "multi point".

Three, "centralization" or "de centralization".

Wang Tian was a very farsighted man. He went to sea in 90s to do business. He set up a BBK group called "Southwest king" from the wholesale of food, enjoying a good reputation in the retail industry.

As a representative of the traditional retail industry, Wang Tian used the proposal of "electricity supplier tax" to "get ahead" for the industry. He also had a conflict because of his retailer's position and suppliers.

In the mighty new retail force, BBK is also a special one.

The net profit of "retail southwest king" in 2014, 2015 and 2016 is 345 million yuan, 214 million yuan and 133 million yuan respectively.

Wang Tian continues to pform the electricity supplier while expanding the new store online.

The concept of new retail has turned out to be the darling of the capital market.

At that time, there were rumors that Hunan and Changsha had close contact with each other. It is said that the future of BBK Changsha will become the first pilot of the two sides. At the same time, BBK's performance in the stock market has been improved with rumors.

After the Spring Festival in 2018, BBK, which had been suspended for a month after the stock exchange, has abandoned cooperation with Tencent.

It not only helped the Tencent to plough the southwest deeply, but also avoided the limelight of Ali.

Before someone said Ali is the Empire ecology, Tencent is the Allied ecology, Wang Tian gave a new view.

He said that in the new retail business, Ali is apple, and we play with everyone in the system. Tencent is Android, bringing everyone into the system and playing with each other.

This is actually the different ways of Ali and Tencent's "centralization" and "de centralization" in the new retail business.

The strategy of centralization is to say that Ali is preparing to build the core of the ecosystem itself and support the front-end of the platform. The strategy of centralization is that Tencent provides resources, and the cooperative partners can connect all the scenes.

This difference depends on the attitudes, abilities and needs of the two sides, and the results are quite different.

In fact, there are widespread differences in these factors among the numerous enterprises involved in new retail.

Attitude depends on the beginning.

The essence of new retail is not to escape retail. The traditional retail business is difficult to get rid of. The traditional electricity supplier has encountered a bottleneck for more than ten years.

As an absolute tycoon in the retail business field, Alibaba is making new progress in its new retail business, and at the same time binding itself with its upgrading and pformation. While Tencent is doing new retail sales, it mainly stems from defensive pursuit, or wants to get a share in the new retail business after the failure of the electricity supplier era.

Speaking of the essence of retail, this is the concept that new retail can not get rid of at any rate. The combination of online and offline is only the foundation, and the ability to reconstruct "people, goods and fields" is the core.

In today's new retail "two super strong" pattern, traditional retailers are more inclined to stand up Ali or Tencent.

Both sides have the ability to help partners to get through online and offline, but there is a certain gap when it comes to reconstructing the retail experience needed for "people, goods and markets".

The lack of experience in retailing may also be one of the reasons why Tencent chose to "de centralization".

Tencent is holding massive traffic because of social games and games. But in the previous electricity supplier era, Tencent failed to make any contribution, and no advantage of its own scenes was exploited. However, there was no traffic flow in the real retail business, which was intended to enter the new retail business.

Therefore, the cooperation between the two sides is more like taking what they want, not thorough enough and not too thorough. Therefore, there is a legendary legend that Tencent has frequently launched the "stake 5%".

Alibaba, because of its own retail business, has more professional experience and higher demand expectations. Therefore, it has deeper ties with partners, and every acquisition is a great spectacle.

We know that the new retail needs to open up the various parties and complete the reconstruction of "people, goods and markets" in the retail process.

Among them, the main body and interests are complicated. Even if we throw away the lack of retail experience in the "de centralization" side, we must manage different interest teams to coordinate and carry out exploration work, and the difficulty can be imagined.

Take the simplest example, the box horse fresh life is a special army in the new retail field of Ali, its field is the new format that Ali creates, and everything is completely controlled by Ali.

Under such control, after exploring the first shop, it takes nearly a year to open second stores.

Since then, the team's expansion speed and management capability have become the benchmark of the industry.

And BBK, known as "100 stores a year," has chosen the strategy of "de centralization" in order to be able to carry out "taxing" cooperation and ensure that it can explore new retail expansion under its own leadership.

Only four months later, BBK's share price has been cut off by the market. Wang fill firmly in control of the 40% stake to become the biggest loser.

BBK's main content of cooperation is WeChat's small program entry and Jingdong's supply chain capability.

But Zhang Xiaolong, the father of WeChat, hardly mentioned the word "retail" in the four hours' speech in the previous few days. From last year ten, together with Tencent, it was basically toB's "AI" and "cloud". The Jingdong in the storm, the result of external stimulation can also be imagined.

In short, it seems that after the loss of cross-border electricity providers, BBK's new retail business for its own planning seems to be bogged down.

This once again confirms that there is no reliable external force to help traditional offline retail rely on self driven change.

Four, "practicing internal strength"

Now that there is a problem, we might as well go back to BBK's early theory that "Ali is a IOS system and Tencent is a Android system".

Tencent has repeatedly stressed its "connection" attributes, more for partners to provide "small program" tools, "WeChat payment" tools, rather than to come up with a system of solutions; Ali side also changed the view, not long ago officially launched the "Alibaba business operation system", to help the retail industry to do digital pformation.

One is selling the sword, and the other is in the rush.

Link attribute of Tencent

In addition, the launch of the "Alibaba business operation system" has played an inspiring role in the new retail industry and brand business as a whole.

The "business operation system" turned out to be a magic weapon for Ali to realize the new retail business.

The birth of this operating system comes from the precipitation of the electricity business in 20 years, and also from the exploration of new retail direction in the past two years.

Its role is to make manufacturing, sales, logistics, finance and other 11 business operations in the business elements, all online, and then digitalized.

As mentioned above, one of the reasons for traditional retail enterprises to cooperate with Tencent and Alibaba is that they need to provide technical support.

One of the important issues is the need to further upgrade the category optimization and inventory optimization scheme with the help of the cloud computing and AI capabilities of the Internet factory.

Alibaba business operation system

Unfortunately, as the earliest garment industry to contact Tencent's new retail business, Hai Lan's home always has inventory problems.

In 2017, a letter from the Shanghai Stock Exchange informed the public about the daily inventory of Hai Lan's home.

In the third quarter, the inventory was close to 9 billion yuan, and the risk was enormous.

In February 2018, Tencent injected capital into Hai Lan's home to earn its income in its new retail camp.

It should be explained that the high storehouse of Hai Lan's home came from the crazy expansion, and only more than 1000 stores opened in 2017.

In the same year, with Ali's new retail strategy cooperation, "double 11" sales broke 400 million on that day, ranking the top of Tmall men's clothing.

It can be seen that in 2018, when Tencent was put into arms, more consideration should be placed on improving the efficiency of offline stores through the technology and traffic of Tencent.

But the new retail business in the clothing industry is the first one in Hai Lan. In 2017, the performance of the water test was good because of Tmall's experience in the field of clothing.

And under the exploration line, it is not just simple traffic tools or technical tools.

To solve the problem of clothing inventory, we need a breakthrough in the whole link, which requires a system solution rather than a local problem tool.

In the end, the inventory problem of Hai Lan's home was not solved, and the share price continued to decline for a long time, and there was a time limit for halfway.

Three

Hai Lan home line shop

This is the difference between the local tool and the global system.

Tools can only solve local problems, and the system can solve global problems.

The new retail business in the early days was more focused on the sales side and the marketing side, and the Alibaba operation system was intended to digitally improve all the factors needed for the operation of the enterprise, not limited to sales.

New retail wants to set off a major revolution in the retail world around the world. It is the key to pform the business structure and push the supply side reform.

An economy has a set of capabilities such as sales platform, logistics, supply chain, and cloud computing. It can start from all aspects, and combine the past retail experience and the strong control brought by "centralization" to complete this task.

Over the past ten years, Ali has been able to precipitate the whole set of capabilities. For example, Starbucks, the first empowered Starbucks business operation system, is ready to "return" to the US market.

Six

Starbucks line store

The two member systems have been opened up, and many APP have been placed at the same time, and the speed of distribution has been greatly improved.

Starbucks enjoyed the empowerment of the whole ecosystem of the Alibaba, and its share price rose steeply and the effect was remarkable.

John Culver, President of Starbucks international and channel development group, picked up such momentum and decided to apply the experience of the Chinese market to the US market. Soon, it launched the UberEats business in the US.

Five, the future of digital economy

If we take achievement as a criterion, although the final pattern is uncertain, the current situation is that the strategy of "centralization" is better.

However, "centralization" also has shortcomings. Deep participation and full link empowerment are extremely stressful for enterprises.

Ali as a large platform, to support all front-end entries, to use the entire "Alibaba business operation system" to empower, Ali cloud, Alipay, rookie, Gao De, nails and other commercial infrastructure and Taobao, Tmall and other sales platforms all need to face pressure.

In order to ensure enforcement, Alibaba's investment in equity trading is sky high.

Three

New retail industry map

"New retail", "smart retailing", "unbounded retail" and other competing arguments and capital struggles have been bubbling with excitement. But it is very different to ponder over the participation of all parties, whether in terms of money input or participation.

For example, the "de centralization" side, most of them tasted and practiced the strategy of "stake 5%".

Such a binding force determines that there is a hidden danger in the implementation of "de centralization" in the pformation.

This investment is not worth mentioning to Tencent. Instead, it is a shopping mall supermarket under the cooperation. The consumption data, experience, advertising revenue and WeChat payment scenarios are helpful to Tencent.

In the past two years, more participants in the new retail business have taken the mentality of "catching up with the wind and telling stories".

The era of electronic commerce is coming. The era of digital economy is already in sight. The original business format is facing reconstruction.

At this time, more enterprises should focus on how to complete their digital pformation instead of blindly following suit.

Don't you know, Handan's learning is not like the East.

If we can not keep pace with the times, the current business will eventually be a dream and a turning point.