Scan the QR code in the image to register -01- Platform War Enters a Chaotic Era Whether you like it or not, the relentless attack of community group buying on the old world shows no sign of weakening in 2021, unfolding wave after wave. Despite the recent maximum penalties on several giants, they are apologizing, rectifying, and simultaneously escalating their market attack intensity. Meituan Youxuan has internally set a target of 300 billion GMV for 2021, and other giants have set similar or even higher goals. Before this year, it was hard to imagine a track growing from tens of billions to a trillion-dollar club in just two years. The giants' current strategy is "enter the village quietly, no gunfire." Publicly, they are extremely low-key, almost silent, and when they speak, it's to admit mistakes and promise immediate rectification. In the market, their tactics are extremely sharp, with no nonsense—they want users, orders, and GMV. On the platform side, national giants will face off against regional platforms more directly in 2021. The battles among giants are fierce, with heavy casualties, but focused on high-frequency, low-price necessities. Due to immature supply chains and teams, the user experience of internet giants is clearly inferior to that of Xingsheng Youxuan and excellent regional platforms. Users complain about unstable product quality, while suppliers grumble about high product damage rates. According to our information, Meituan Youxuan is relatively friendly to suppliers, while Chengxin Youxuan and Pinduoduo are much less so. Some Pinduoduo staff even tell suppliers, "This is how it is in the early stages; if you can play, stay; if not, leave." Suppliers are left speechless, swallowing their curses. In 2021, the platform war in community group buying will continue. National giants are locked in a death struggle with no ceasefire in sight, each keeping an eye on the other. Regional platforms are working hard, honing their skills, differentiating products, being more supply-chain friendly, and uniting group leaders—so far, they are doing well. While the platform side is in full battle, the supply chain side of community group buying is not idle; a wave of "barbarians" is approaching. -02- "Barbarians" Invade the Community Group Buying Supply Chain While "old world" brand owners and distributors are morally outraged and attacking community group buying, we observe another phenomenon emerging in early 2021. A large number of supply chain players from the "new world," with internet cooperation experience and genes, are approaching the community group buying supply chain market. Shanghai Maichun E-commerce is a strong TP (Tmall Partner) company, a strategic partner of Kimberly-Clark China, operating online businesses for over ten brands including Tsingtao Beer and Zihaiguo. Wukong, founder of Maichun E-commerce, positions community group buying as the "first strategic direction" for the company, joking, "We absolutely cannot miss this opportunity; whether we succeed in entrepreneurship depends on this." Similarly, Kangzhicheng E-commerce shares this attitude. Its core team includes members from international brand companies like Mondelez, providing long-term online marketing services for brands like Budweiser and Johnnie Walker. Its founder expresses great interest and confidence in community group buying, even purchasing the New Distribution practical course "Teach You How to Do Community Group Buying from 0 to 1" for team members to accelerate their progress. These are not isolated cases; in fact, the participants in the community group buying supply chain are undergoing profound structural changes. Besides traditional distributors and wholesalers, new participants mainly include the following categories. 1. Traditional TP operators and e-commerce entrepreneurs. Although community group buying involves heavy offline warehousing and distribution, it still has strong characteristics of online e-commerce operations. Undoubtedly, platform procurement in community group buying communicates more smoothly with these supply chain players who already operate online platforms. After all, although community group buying is a relatively new model, both its procurement and e-commerce operators have primarily been in the internet e-commerce field. They speak the same language, and people from the same world communicate much more smoothly than those from the old and new worlds. Although offline warehousing and distribution require e-commerce operators to learn, it's not a big deal, as a large number of third-party warehousing and distribution service providers for community group buying are springing up like mushrooms. Where there is traffic, there is business, and this is vividly demonstrated here. 2. Some livestream supply chain organizations. Livestream e-commerce boomed in 2020, but only influencers made real money; supply chain organizations and many MCNs didn't profit much. However, these supply chain organizations have honed their ability to find products nationwide and developed an intuition for what products will become popular. This ability is formidable! They learned how to deal with brand owners to get ultra-low prices for traffic and orders. With livestream promotion as a cover, they can sell these ultra-low-priced products in bulk through community group buying, generating massive orders. Conversely, high orders boost their influencer livestream promotion effectiveness. 3. Traditional large group buying companies. For traditional group buying companies, they often secure stable scale orders through corporate clients, with over 80% of their business being employee welfare product group buying. These products are often the main standard products in community group buying. Large-scale group buying companies usually have strategic cooperation with major brands, developing customized products. Since companies only need to produce without promotion, the profit margin is substantial. Therefore, a group of forward-thinking group buying companies established dedicated departments in 2020 and began cooperating with community group buying in 2021. Beijing Kunyuan Technology is a group buying company with revenue over 100 million yuan. Due to stagnant corporate group buying growth in recent years, it positions community group buying as its largest growth channel in 2021. Kunyuan has long-term, in-depth product cooperation with major FMCG companies like COFCO. It's foreseeable that once its products enter the community group buying channel, it will inevitably squeeze a significant share from local distributors. -03- What Are These "Barbarians" at the Door Like? Why would these companies, which seemed unrelated to traditional regional markets last year, swarm into community group buying in 2021? 1. Various business dividends are fading, and the entire consumer goods industry is inevitably becoming involuted. By 2021, no one's business is easy. When business is tough, like sheep eating all the grass in one area, they naturally seek new lush pastures. When everywhere is not lush, the entire consumer goods industry enters an era of substitutive competition. Every yuan of growth you make comes from someone else's loss. The online dividend of traditional e-commerce has completely ended. Traffic costs on JD and Tmall are rising, meaning merchants don't make money, and operators don't either. It's like the early days of hypermarkets: making money initially, but a few years later, "doing hypermarkets is suicide, not doing them is waiting to die." Frankly, the essence of internet e-commerce genes is traffic, not brand; often it erases brands rather than builds them. So, after fifteen years of e-commerce, truly successful brands born from e-commerce are few and far between. This is why teacher Liu Chunxiong has always emphasized that the internet and brand owners are absolutely not in the same camp. Operators also follow traffic. When they see giants using capital to amplify community group buying traffic, they react fastest. As for livestream e-commerce supply chain organizations, they currently treat community group buying as a "sewer" for moving volume from livestream sales. So far, we haven't seen livestream supply chain companies with deep thinking and clear strategic intent toward the community group buying channel. Group buying suppliers are similar; they used to live comfortably off a few big B clients, but now business is declining day by day. When they count their assets, their strongest is products—big brands, low prices—where else to go but community group buying? 2. Whether TP operators, Jingpaidang, or livestream supply chains, they are more sensitive to opportunities, more action-oriented, and more digitally experienced than traditional distributors. From day one of their business, they know they live by "opportunities." The internet is an opportunity, e-commerce is an opportunity, operating rights for big brands are an opportunity, livestream is an opportunity, and a big corporate order is an opportunity. They may engage in "intensive cultivation," but they never believe that "intensive cultivation" alone can sustain them. They are born of "opportunity," so they are most sensitive to it and understand it deeply. They know "opportunity" is changeable: when dividends come, it's an opportunity; when dividends fade, it's a chicken rib. So they chase change, never cling to stability, are more realistic, and lack loyalty. Often, they are purely profit-driven, not always "righteous," indifferent to others' troubles. Essentially, they behave like the community group buying giants. Of course, they are most accepting of any outcome; they expect nothing from anyone but themselves. Therefore, we never see them complaining or condemning others like distributors do against brand owners. -04- Distributors Must Start Acting I want to say that traditional distributors really don't need to complain about upstream or blame downstream. In the field we once excelled in, a group of "barbarians" from the internet, digital, young, and agile, are rapidly approaching the community group buying supply chain system. This is what truly deserves our vigilance. It's time to stop complaining and start acting. If we bet on "community group buying will definitely fail" or "community group buying will never grow big," then of course we can do nothing now. If we believe that future retail and channels will undergo profound changes, and if you also see more and more young people becoming community group buying partners, then you should start acting. At least, you should take that cautious small step toward the future, right? How to take that small step? We believe you should at least come to this China Community Group Buying Conference in Chengdu to see and explore. 300+ community group buying platform founders and buyers, 3000+ attending distributors, community group buying supply chain companies, including the new-type supply chain companies I mentioned earlier, will all be at this conference. The spirit of the internet is sharing and communication. We hope that at this conference, friends from the old and new worlds can sit together, open their hearts, and speak freely. Together, we can find ways to cooperate with more imagination and space in the new world, in ways acceptable to all.