Scan the QR code in the image to register Recently, I wrote several articles about community group buying, and the comments were thought-provoking. Many people said the comments were more interesting than the articles, with intense language. Lately, I've been thinking about why this is happening and what the current situation is for traditional FMCG practitioners. No previous new retail model iteration has caused such a huge reaction. It seems that community group buying will indeed take away the jobs of many grassroots FMCG workers. If it didn't affect their livelihoods, they wouldn't be so heart-wrenching. Technological progress inevitably brings massive unemployment. It's not just community group buying; this has happened countless times before. For example: After the steam engine was invented, industrial countries saw various riots due to worker unemployment. A few years ago, the emergence of Didi ride-hailing led to collective strikes in some cities as taxi drivers feared unemployment. The appearance of shared bikes severely suppressed the survival of motorcycle taxis and completely overturned the bicycle theft trade. Currently, the large-scale emergence of chain convenience stores has squeezed the business of mom-and-pop shops within the third ring road of cities. This is a normal phenomenon; don't be a mantis trying to stop a chariot before the wheels of history. China has tens of millions of FMCG practitioners. A large portion of grassroots workers earned four to five thousand yuan a month ten years ago, and their income is still the same now. The emergence of community group buying has made it difficult for some to even earn that amount now. This uncertainty about the future and the unknown rules have spread fear. You can't change the status quo, but you can improve yourself to adapt. Below, I list the four capabilities that traditional FMCG professionals must possess. Ability to Raise Your Cognitive Level I believe: There is no right or wrong in cognition, only levels of depth. I remember a story Mr. Fan Xianguo, chairman of Jinmailang, told us about the "Four in One" concept. To quickly reach Beijing, there are two methods: one is to use the existing horse-drawn carriage, adding more horses and maintaining all parts to optimal condition; the other is to abandon the carriage and build your own car. Obviously, both methods can increase speed, but the levels are different, and so are the speeds. The former is evolution, which can treat symptoms; the latter is differentiation, which can cure the root cause. Our cognition is the same. Many traditional FMCG practitioners have prematurely achieved their cognitive closure. The longer they engage in traditional FMCG models, the more they understand the business environment, the more fixed their cognition becomes, and then they continuously self-validate and reinforce their judgments about FMCG in vertical fields. It's like comparing yourself to a hammer, seeing everything as a nail, unable to expand new cognition. The emergence of new things like community group buying inevitably makes them feel lost and powerless. Looking back at the Beijing example, evolving the carriage and differentiating into a car are both correct, representing two groups with different cognitive levels. Both can increase speed, but the efficiency is different, and the results are vastly different. A few years later, these two types of people will show different cognitive levels in many fields. Living in a fixed cognitive loop brings familiarity, security, and comfort. The core of raising your cognitive level is breaking the comfort zone. Take community group buying again: If you stop rejecting and complaining and choose to accept it, it shows your cognition has risen a level. If you not only don't reject it but also delve into understanding and researching it, learning its internet thinking and applying it to practical work, then your cognition has risen another level. Of course, this process requires continuous exploration and research, constant breaking and rebuilding. Only through repeated nirvana can you be reborn. Improve Your Learning Ability In fact, many FMCG practitioners haven't changed much between ten years ago and now; they just repeat work, going from novice to skilled. The professional quality they feel good about is just something that can be summarized in a few words. If you lose the ability to learn, your ten years of work experience may not be as valuable as someone else's three months of practical experience plus learning insight. Traditional FMCG people have a common problem: "iron legs and earthy buttocks." Iron legs means being diligent and good at running around; earthy buttocks means being unable to sit still and think deeply. This directly leads to the frequent phenomenon of only pulling the cart without looking up at the road. Learning ability includes many skills, but two are urgent. 1. Ability to accept new things: For FMCG, the pandemic accelerated two new things: one is the digital transformation of enterprises, and the other is community group buying. Up to now, I believe many FMCG practitioners still know nothing about them, or even have no concept. They only know that their existence lowers their value and challenges their survival environment, but they don't realize that all their concerns stem from not understanding new things. So the first hurdle of learning ability is the ability to accept new things. 2. Ability to change thinking patterns: Human thinking patterns have four stages: a. Point thinking—seeing the mountain as a mountain, dealing with things as they are, b. Linear thinking—thinking before and after, cause and effect, c. Structured thinking—looking left and right, interest games, d. Three-dimensional thinking—foreseeing the future, seeing all mountains at a glance. In my view, FMCG practitioners within one year should have point thinking; within three years, linear thinking; within five years, structured thinking; and above five years, cultivate three-dimensional thinking. But in reality, many FMCG people with over ten years of experience are still at the initial stage. For example: You arrange someone to go to the supermarket to check if a new product is in the store. The result he brings back is: Is it in the store or not? As for the product's price, specifications, production batch number, and competitor information, he knows nothing. This is typical point thinking. Again, with community group buying, some people only see that capital is burning money, slashing prices, and affecting the price system. But they can't think that behind community group buying is supply chain optimization, the practice of internet thinking, and the necessity of digital transformation. I won't comment on whether it's good or bad, but this improvement in thinking patterns is indeed the second hurdle in improving learning ability. Improve Your Adaptability Our growth itself is about constantly adapting to new things, continuously fine-tuning the existing comfort zone. It's just that the adjustments are small, not easily noticed, and easy to accept. But the emergence of community group buying broke the situation of boiling a frog in warm water. Originally, the water temperature was gradually rising, but suddenly it jumped from 30 degrees to 90 degrees, making many traditional FMCG people unable to bear it. Currently, China's retail innovation is at the forefront globally, especially with the rapid development of social platforms and internet fields, and the continuous innovation of e-commerce companies. There have been major breakthroughs in retail format innovation, online-offline integration, retail technology innovation, and social community retail model innovation. Retail innovation has entered a highly active period. New retail brings a major industry transformation opportunity to FMCG, affecting not just the retail end but driving the reconstruction of the entire industry. Community group buying is just one of those changes, and traditional FMCG practitioners can only adapt. 1. Convince yourself to participate: The industry trend of de-intermediation is inevitable. Especially in the face of niche market changes and consumer demand changes, without more efficient distribution channels and systems, it's hard to operate. Many products that don't innovate in new retail will find it hard to survive, so to adapt, you must first participate. 2. Have a clear understanding of market diversification: Driven by new retail transformation and innovation, the market has undergone structural changes, from a single retail channel and format to market diversification. Only with clear understanding can you adapt better. 3. Recognize the value of technological change: Internet thinking and technology have already affected marketing efficiency. Traditional FMCG practitioners can only adapt better if they recognize the value. Improve Your Thinking Ability Thinking ability needs to be emphasized separately. Borrowing a passage from Zhao Bo's (New Distribution) Moments: Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor, once said, "To have a second language is to possess a second soul." The process from information acquisition to output is essentially the brain's processing of information. It's point-like information acquisition, the brain uses networked thinking to sort out tree-like logic, and finally outputs linearly. The efficiency and quality of this information acquisition, organization, processing, and output are determined by a person's thinking ability, which is also the most essential difference between people. To train this ability, besides learning a lot of knowledge, you must also engage in deep thinking, which will connect the acquired information with other knowledge in your mind, generating memory and sparking creativity. You must learn to write, because writing is the most efficient way to train logical ability besides mathematics. Networked information, if not logically sorted, makes it hard to have a structural view of things. Finally, communicate more, acquire information, and after logically encoding your networked knowledge, output it linearly. In short, the methods to improve thinking ability are: learning, thinking, writing, and communicating. Why mention the improvement of thinking ability? Because a large part of the relatively excellent traditional FMCG practitioners still complain and even curse about new retail formats like community group buying. At the root, there's a problem in one of the links of information acquisition, organization, processing, and output efficiency and quality regarding new retail, making it impossible to view new retail macroscopically, thus trapped in it. I believe that when you break through all the links of thinking ability, one day you can communicate without barriers with experts in the community group buying industry. You won't treat community group buying as you do now; you might even become its supporter and beneficiary. Community group buying, backed by capital, has deviated from the track. We can't change it, and we won't judge it excessively. But the deficiencies in traditional FMCG personnel's abilities exposed by community group buying must be deeply considered. Technology is advancing, times are changing. As FMCG people in the internet era, only by keeping pace with the times can we avoid being washed up on the beach by the waves. Review: Asher -END-