【听杨姐说】 Today we're talking about something big—something that could multiply Jack Ma's future business many times over. Alibaba's B2B division has been aggressively promoting "City Partners," which is similar to its earlier "Rural Partners" program. These City Partners are tasked with visiting small supermarkets and shops scattered across city streets, getting them to register as users of a new product called "Retail Link" (零售通) for their procurement needs. For small shops, City Partners can bring stable, quality-assured supply sources; for merchants, channels that were previously impossible to cover or control might be rebuilt through Alibaba's City Partners; for City Partners themselves, this is a golden opportunity to start a business—you can build your own network, acting as a channel hub, connecting quality supply on one end and hundreds or thousands of small shops on the other. For Alibaba, the new "City Partners" can use "Retail Link" to connect countless offline mom-and-pop stores with various online wholesale resources, including seasonal fruits and agricultural products from rural areas, as well as many "services" that pure e-commerce cannot provide. Yes, it's currently called "Retail Link," seemingly an attempt by Alibaba's B2B division to build a procurement network for offline mom-and-pop stores—but trust Sister Yang, Retail Link's future will inevitably become a breakthrough for Alibaba to transition from online to offline physical economy. Following the procurement network will be an information network based on big data, a logistics network as fine as capillaries, and a financial network far larger than today's Ant Financial by N times... Breakthrough: Mom-and-Pop Stores I suspect Alibaba may have found inspiration from "Rural Partners," as they've developed a mature playbook for tapping the offline market. The current City Partners are just the "urban version" of that. Thus, "mature model" + "Alibaba's super execution" = "a rapidly rising offline network." Yes, large retailers like Carrefour and Walmart have long built their own powerful supply chain systems, but those street-corner shops never have that capability. As cities grow larger and community street shops multiply, their small size and flexible business strategies are attracting attention from various parties—some apps (reply "108" to see the article "The Future Will Be the World of Physical E-commerce") are trying to enter through the consumer end, stringing these shops together into a large network with demand at the core. Meanwhile, Alibaba's B2B division also sees the opportunity: why not connect all the small shops scattered across city corners, consolidate their procurement, and become their common "upstream supplier"? This idea was officially launched three months ago at the "Global B2B Ecosystem Summit" in Hangzhou on January 12—the trial phase started even earlier. There are plenty of related reports online, so I won't go into detail. Today, Sister Yang wants to tell you the results of this move. Wang Chunxiao, the e-commerce general agent for Perfetti Van Melle (a candy brand), told Sister Yang in casual conversation that City Partners have been developing for two to three months. As of the end of March, the single-day sales of Perfetti products through Retail Link had already exceeded the daily sales of the brand's Tmall flagship store... and this is only with Retail Link having expanded to just over 3,000 APP merchant users. But Alibaba's intentions with Retail Link are clearly not limited to this. N Networks It's this community economy that enables Alibaba's City Partner plan. In this plan, Alibaba provides products, warehousing, logistics, technology, IT, finance, and a series of services. City Partners only need to serve community retail stores; they don't need extensive connections or capital to start their own business through their own efforts. To put it bluntly, information flow, logistics, and capital flow are all handled by Alibaba B2B's "Retail Link." First, "information flow." Originally, mom-and-pop stores had slow information flow; merchants had to visit in person to learn about product and price changes, which was inefficient. Now, these individual operators can be equipped with websites or apps, so they quickly learn about good resources, place orders online, and restock conveniently. Second, logistics. Originally, small shop owners had to go out to purchase and transport goods themselves. But in the future, Alibaba, through Cainiao Logistics, will deliver directly to the shops, improving logistics efficiency. Capital flow: Clearly, Retail Link will work with Ant Financial to provide financial services to small shops—since shop data will be on Retail Link, Alibaba will naturally have insight into their operations (procurement alone isn't enough; adding POS machines would make it perfect). Just as Alibaba does with online Taobao and Tmall stores and B2B merchants, if I know your operations, I can confidently lend you money. Additionally, Retail Link can offer credit-sale financial products, giving small shops extra payment terms to help with cash flow. From a financial flow perspective, small shops face pressure when they need cash to purchase goods. Now, through the Retail Link app and website, information can be transmitted efficiently, and through City Partners' communication and service, information comes back even faster. This naturally excites many people looking to start a business. A City Partner named Yan Sunxing joined at the end of January. In March, he achieved GMV over 30,000 in three days, currently ranking first nationally in GMV. In Sister Yang's view, these City Partners are currently in a state of "claiming territory." In the future, the more offline shops you can claim, the more income you'll have—doesn't the future City Partner feel more like a regional general agent? But if all these small shop owners learn to use the Retail Link app, will City Partners become unemployed? If Sister Yang Were Jack Ma Sister Yang remembers that over a decade ago, Jack Ma did something: he set up physical small shops offline to teach people how to use computers to go online and shop on Taobao. Later, Alibaba also distributed "Taobao World" offline, which was essentially an advertising magazine. Products had a string of numbers called "Tao Codes." If you selected a product from "Taobao World" and filled in the Tao Code when shopping online, you'd get more discounts. Clearly, at that time, Alibaba's main growth came from pulling consumers online... but today, it's the opposite. Netizens C have basically all heard of Mr. Ma. To continue driving Alibaba's growth, you need to pull new B-end users. The big B's have mostly been brought on board; now it's the small B's—but because of physical stores, transactions move online, yet people come offline—because there are more "services" that can be done offline that can't be done online. Yes, after City Partners complete their territory claiming—say, each person claims 20-30 shops—they'll serve these shops as consultants. They might be required by Alibaba to connect one by one all the services Alibaba can offer to these countless mom-and-pop shops. So they won't be unemployed; not only that, Alibaba will even train them and manage them as part-time employees. OK, now the mom-and-pop shops joining Retail Link will become Alibaba's "pipes" in residential areas. If I were Alibaba, what would I do? First, I'd immediately invest in Focus Media stock, or simply create my own "small shop media" and raise funds. Then I'd install a large electronic screen for free in each shop (or on the window) to display ads. Besides fixed ads, when each customer enters the shop, the system could identify the customer (I'll leave the technical details to Sister Peng Lei's team; I'm sure Alipay can handle it—they already have facial recognition, and aren't the customers just neighbors?)... After identifying the customer, combine it with Taobao and Tmall big data to show targeted ads. That's one thing. Second, install a system in each shop, arming these mom-and-pop owners to the teeth with informatization. The system would naturally encourage scanning codes—no need to ask, it would only allow scanning Alipay QR codes. This system could automatically alert: "Boss lady, boss lady, 'Little White No Veggies Cola' is out of stock, please confirm restock... Cainiao can deliver in N hours"... Third, add a service to each shop: accepting and sending express packages. If the shop's public account followers, they can receive packages for free—this way, when new products arrive, they can promote them to neighbors and do community operations. Fourth, use big data to help merchants adjust their product mix, making everything digital. For example, if Taobao orders show an increase in baby formula buyers in the area, remind the shop owner to stock up on diapers or bibs—plus a basic service: provide loans and credit purchase services to merchants. (This is too basic; even a kid could think of it, so consider it filler.) Fifth, install facial recognition devices in shops. Customers willing to pre-deposit 1,000 yuan as a daily consumption account get a 2% discount; 10,000 yuan gets 10% off; 100,000 yuan gets wealth management services... Of course, the system behind this would be Ant Financial's asset management products. In this way, wouldn't each small shop become an invisible bank counter? I firmly believe that in business, there are no conspiracies, only "open schemes"! I'm just throwing out a brick to attract jade. Think about it: if Alibaba takes over these countless mom-and-pop shops across the country, what else could Alibaba do? —A dividing line for those who like to guess others' "open schemes"— We are novices, but we are not rookies! Awarded 2014 Best Self-Media Media Training Camp 2014 Best Self-Media Baidu Know Certified Expert 2015 Media Training Camp Annual Media Star You can read this on Baidu Baijia, Toutiao, QQ Public Account, Tencent News Client, NetEase News Client, NetEase Cloud Reading... and other platforms. You can also "listen" to these wonderful contents on the leading "Qingting FM." Xiaobai Bucai is a member of the universe's number one self-media alliance, WeMedia.