Follow and star ↑↑ 「New Distribution」 See how many friends are with you, paying attention to industry trends As of September, with the merger of "Ni Wo Nin," one of the veteran and leading companies in community group buying, into "Shihui Tuan," also a leading company, the two parties established the new Shihui Tuan. Meanwhile, Squirrel Pinduoduo, founded by former Meituan co-founder Yang Jun, entered a strategic adjustment period (not the rumored closure, but a shift from direct operation to joint operation). The duopoly pattern of the community group buying track is emerging, with only Xingsheng Youxuan and the new Shihui Tuan remaining as leaders. This has put severe pressure on the mindset of small and medium players and group leaders in this track. Many group leaders have reported to Brother Dong that due to the consolidation, platforms have started to harvest, leading to reduced commissions, reduced subsidies, and fewer competitive hot products, resulting in decreased customer traffic and income. Many group leaders do not want to rely on any platform or company. In a previous article, I mentioned that group leaders would eventually revolt, and now signs are emerging. Excellent group leaders have started to organize their own supply sources, use SAAS tools to operate independently, leverage social infrastructure, and evolve from KOC (Key Opinion Consumer/Super User/Group Leader) to KOL (Key Opinion Leader), and then to KOT (Key Opinion Channel). They use the fan marketing approach of "community channelization, channel communitization" to take charge of their own territory. Because excellent group leaders are the best buyers, the best customer spokespersons, and the ones who know best what residents in the community want. Brother Dong thinks that the group leaders cultivated through the community group buying wars over the past two years have become an organized force of "cloud merchants." Who can empower them, connect with them, integrate into them, replicate them, and fission them to the greatest extent is the primary issue for subsequent participants, disruptors, and ecosystem builders. For the more than 300 small and medium players in community group buying scattered across the country, who do not want to be acquired by large platforms, what should they do next? Brother Dong believes that valuable things follow capital logic, while profitable things follow business logic. Since it's business logic, we need to consider how to increase customer unit prices and do niche marketing well. Since my first article on community group buying in 2017, I have repeatedly emphasized that community group buying is just one operational mode of community e-commerce, not the whole. If we position our business as community e-commerce, or more precisely, niche e-commerce, and view it through the lens of "community business theory" (see Teacher Bao Zheng's "The Essence of Marketing"), our vision and operational thinking will become clear. From the cases and data of profitable community group buying companies I have collected, this is a viable path—some companies achieve a comprehensive gross margin of 36%, not the usual 26%. From the Xiamen Community Group Buying Forum in May, to the Changsha Community Group Buying Salon in June, to the Central Plains Community E-commerce and Community Group Buying Salon in July, to the Shanghai Community Group Buying Conference in August, Brother Dong had extensive exchanges with participating CEOs. For small and medium community group buying companies, commodity resources and selection capabilities, local full-temperature warehousing and distribution capabilities, and IT technical support are the three major pain points that have been unresolved. There are two reasons: first, they truly lack funds for initial investment; second, due to scale, regional, and talent reasons, they cannot grow stronger. Former HP CKO Gao Jianhua said that in business, sometimes you need to swim against the current. Don't fight price wars, subsidy wars, or capital wars with giants. Tang Guangliang, CEO of Kaola Select, said in a speech at a media conference: "I have been entrepreneurial for over a decade and found that losses are actually the biggest threshold." Community e-commerce, in a sense, is distributed business. My previous articles have already observed this: with the improvement of third-party social infrastructure, "making business easy" is no longer just an empty phrase. It is precisely this trend that JD has begun to take action, confirming my earlier judgment that community group buying is only at halftime, not the final whistle. On September 10, 2019, after a year of thinking and deliberation, the JD Community Group Buying Alliance was established! (JD Community Group Buying Alliance strategic launch ceremony; New Distribution partner Ren Xiaodong is one of the co-founders and industry advisor) Although capital investment and operations have changed the industry landscape of community group buying, they have not brought the truly needed infrastructure capabilities such as supply chain, warehousing and distribution, and SaaS. The JD Community Group Buying Alliance, together with JD 3C and Consumer Goods Business Group, JD Fresh, JD Logistics Cloud Warehouse, Community E-commerce Insider (the most professional community in China's community e-commerce field), Order Rabbit (China's leading community group buying SaaS service provider), New Distribution (China's most authoritative FMCG B2B media), Aike Duo (an excellent local community group buying platform based on offline stores), Youjing Youtian (an excellent community group buying platform based on local high-quality fresh supply chain), and Mai Marketing (an excellent brand channel strategic transformation consulting company), these excellent enterprises have joined forces to provide the industry with the capabilities it truly needs and do beneficial things for the industry. The alliance's vision is: Build community group buying infrastructure together, help everyone do their own business well. The alliance welcomes excellent local community group buying platforms to join, and welcomes those platforms that refuse capital and want to do business steadily and down-to-earth. Capital has driven the integration of community group buying platforms, making the snowball bigger and market value higher, with the ultimate beneficiaries being investors and entrepreneurs who cash out and leave. The acquired, franchised, or still-persisting local community group buying platforms have not benefited from the industry consolidation. What the industry lacks is not capital, but a complete supply chain and comprehensive warehousing and distribution capabilities. So far, no platform with such capabilities has emerged, and it will not appear in the short term. Connect, integrate, empower, symbiosis, replicate, fission. This is our slogan. We welcome excellent local community group buying platforms to join! You can also register with Brother Dong, and I will pull you into the community. 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