Introduction This supply chain reshaping is primarily a direct confrontation between brand owners and retail platforms. One cannot help but admire Ma Yun as a born business genius, who casually threw out the concept of "New Retail" and turned the industry upside down. The retail industry was naturally the most shaken, with the most success in the fresh food sector. After Alibaba's Hema Fresh emerged, Yonghui had Super Species, Better Life launched Fresh Food Legend, RT-Mart introduced Youxian, and online players Meituan and Suning also joined the fray. Behind all this, one can see the capital layouts of Alibaba and Tencent, acting as "fathers" everywhere. Alibaba took stakes in Sanjiang, Intime, Bailian, and RT-Mart, while Tencent invested in Yonghui, Better Life, and others. The seemingly less successful ones were also lively, such as the quickly hot and quickly fading unattended retail, and the later-dying O2O, which often shouted "We are New Retail" before dying gloriously. Now, WeChat business operators and even offline pyramid schemes also claim to be "New Retail." Additionally, Pinduoduo, which targets "beyond the fifth ring," and NetEase Yanxuan, which goes straight from brand to channel to retail, as well as FamilyMart, which introduced "light dining" and looks more like a small food court, have become "New Retail" in another sense. Previously, e-commerce platforms shouted "no middlemen to take the difference," which only scared distributors. This time, "New Retail" has scared many brand owners as well. Professor Liu Chunxiong mentioned that when he attended a manufacturer's meeting, the theme was actually "New Retail." This situation is quite common. Lao Miao has also received invitations from brand owners to talk about "New Retail," and my reply is: "New Retail" is mainly about the retail industry; why are you brand owners joining the fray? I'll talk to you about Master Ye Maozhong's 'Conflict' instead; that's the real business. Some people were confused and continued studying "New Retail" with disdain for Lao Miao's "old-fashioned" ways, while some brand owners truly understood and invited me to share Master Ye's "Conflict," realizing it was indeed their real business. Fortunately, most brand owners are quite wary of New Retail. Recently, at the "Digital Innovation Conference" organized by New Distribution, Liu Zhao, founder of Waiqin365, said, "New Retail is a nightmare for brand owners," which resonated with many. Many brand owners feel that "New Retail" has "something wrong," but can't figure out "what exactly is wrong." Today, Lao Miao will tear it apart; whether you've fallen into the pit or not, let's all see what this pit looks like. The most impressive thing about "New Retail" is that for the first time in history, it stands from the retail perspective, attempting to comprehensively interpret business. Different perspectives lead to different interpretations and different revolutions. Is it really that mysterious? Yes, it is! Mainstream marketing is from the brand owner's perspective: here, retail is a link in marketing, more precisely a link in the marketing value chain, which was previously called the channel chain and now the supply chain. This supply chain includes brand owners and channel distributors, with channel distributors further divided into wholesalers and retailers, each having their own upstream and downstream. Generally speaking, brand owners are responsible for value creation, while channel distributors are responsible for value delivery. The key word for brand owner operations is growth. That's why Coca-Cola replaced its Chief Marketing Officer with a "Chief Growth Officer." Here, growth refers to value growth, not performance growth (performance growth should be the result of value growth; otherwise, it's "fake growth"). The key word for channel distributor operations is efficiency, including distribution efficiency, transaction efficiency, and communication efficiency. But from the retailer's perspective, especially now that large retailers have evolved into another species—retail platforms—they are unwilling to remain just an ordinary link in the channel chain. In platform thinking, "cross-border robbery" and "wool comes from pigs" are the norm. No matter how complex your supply chain is, in the eyes of retail platforms, there are only two types: customers (internet companies prefer to call them "users") and suppliers. Whether you are a brand owner or a distributor, whether you have a brand, its size, or clear positioning, you are all suppliers here. Alibaba Research Institute states that the essence of New Retail is "providing consumers with 'content' that exceeds value at all times." There are four keywords in this sentence that must be circled: "at all times," "always," "exceeds value," and "content." There's a lot of information, but it can be summarized in two words: first, unlimited, meaning unlimitedly pleasing customers; second, borderless, as they use the term "content," covering products, services, experiences, and the entire pre-sale, during-sale, and after-sale process. It looks very beautiful; this is the "wool"—the wool that pleases customers, and it's extremely generous, with no boundaries or limits. So who is the "pig" and "how much will they be shorn" goes without saying. Retailers are closest to consumers and naturally tend to gain greater market power. The logic of retail platforms has always been to bind customers and squeeze upstream. Offline, they are "real estate developers" collecting rent and tolls; online, they are online real estate developers, also collecting advertising fees. But traditional retail relies on physical stores, which don't move, have high opening costs, and are limited by trade areas, so the retailer's influence is confined to a limited range. New technologies and applications (mainly mobile payment, express delivery, and mobile ordering platforms) allow stores to extend many tentacles to capture more customers, theoretically unlimited customers, making the "borderless robbery" of retail platforms possible. Brand owners spent nearly a decade educating distributors to transform from "sitting merchants" to "traveling merchants," thereby forming an efficiency advantage in delivering products to consumers. New Retail, however, seemingly overnight, changed from waiting for customers to actively acquiring customers, instantly dismantling the advantage of distributors transforming from sitting to traveling merchants. The original game pattern of production, supply, wholesale, and retail has been broken, and a new pattern is forming. This time, the main battlefield is the direct confrontation between brand owners and new retail platforms. Both sides are competing for control over C-end traffic and discourse power over customers. In this battle, new retail platforms have every advantage: closer proximity to consumers, payment advantages, connection advantages, first-mover advantages in technology application, and information asymmetry advantages. Some brand owners, before they even understand what's happening, have "surrendered" and gone to embrace "New Retail." Many traditional brand owners still have a B-end mindset, treating distributors as customers and retailers as customers. But they are far from the end customers. A piece of frontline market information takes layers to reach the boss, passing through terminal staff, procurement, distributor business, distributors, grassroots sales, sales management, marketing, etc. Many decision-makers receive "sixth or seventh-hand market information," and crucially, this information is interpreted from the start by people lacking market information interpretation skills and with various positions. But the brand owner's ultimate trump card is that in the commodity transaction chain, they play the role of the main value provider. Channel distributors and retailers can add value to products, but they cannot replace the brand owner's dominant position in product value. When I go shopping, it's good to "always enjoy content that exceeds value," but what I care most about is whether the product I buy is good, worth the money, durable, likable, and whether it helps me show off—these are the brand owner's responsibilities. If terminal platforms forcibly implant more value, they may end up like Didi Hitchhiking. Didi forcibly implanted "social relationships" into the simple ride-sharing relationship and repeatedly created ambiguous communications. In the recent incident where a Didi driver killed a girl, the previous remarks of Huang Jieli, former general manager of Didi Hitchhiking, were dug up, sparking public anger. Huang Jieli once said: "(Hitchhiking) is a scenario that has never existed before. Like cafes and bars, a private car can become a semi-public, semi-private social space. This is a very futuristic and very sexy scenario." You got sexy, rebuilt the "people-goods-scene," attracted more drivers, and increased their willingness to accept orders, but a girl might lose her life because of it. If it's yours, do it well; if it's not yours, don't forcibly implant it. This is also a business rule. In fact, Alipay, with its flashy features, also suffered from this. In 2016, the "Campus/Diary" feature almost turned Alipay into "Payment Madam," but fortunately, it stopped in time. This can explain why New Retail started with fresh food and FMCG categories rather than going after 3C and apparel, where e-commerce was previously successful. Because these categories, first, have high consumption frequency and wide coverage, making it easy to build customer loyalty; second, in these categories, brand power is weak, and brand owners are far from consumers, making them the weakest link, easier for retail platforms to gain the upper hand in the game. Once they have more massive traffic, they can "New Retail" those tougher categories. The channel chain should be a cooperative relationship, but when there is a major structural change in the channel chain, any channel member will use this to reshuffle and compete for greater discourse power, which means greater benefits. At this time, competition among stakeholders outweighs cooperation. Facing the new era, New Retail is a new set of rules proposed by retail giants, most conducive to forming retail platform discourse power. If brand owners operate according to these rules, they are undoubtedly crippling themselves, being sold and still counting money for the seller. Brand owners facing New Retail should not simply resist. First, they need to understand it and look at it separately. Anything that improves value delivery efficiency should be firmly supported; anything that competes for our traffic, competes for C-end discourse power, or tries to turn us into a pure OEM supplier should be firmly resisted. For example, this discovery from New Retail is worth brand owners applying. "Display is the life of sales," we in sales have all accepted this concept. There is a "golden position rule" in display, which is to try to make your product occupy a better position. The so-called golden position generally refers to a position parallel to the average person's line of sight, with a certain range up and down. For example, in a supermarket's six-tier shelf, it usually refers to the third to fifth tiers. However, new technology now tells us that we've been wrong for so many years. Foreign retailers recorded what customers actually saw by having them wear smart sensing devices. They found that many consumers ignore products at eye level; the true golden display position is between the customer's waist and chest. This is a discovery that can improve brand display efficiency. The so-called "resistance" to New Retail is not about refusing to cooperate, but about competing for our own discourse power around the brand's core advantages. Teacher Liu Chunxiong believes: "Using the internet for business transformation, from the retailer's perspective, is 'New Retail'; from the brand owner's perspective, it's 'New Marketing.'" The knife is the same knife, but whether it's in Brother Long's hand or a white knight's hand, the results will be vastly different. To this end, Teacher Liu wrote the book "New Marketing," compiling a set of methodologies and execution routines for new marketing in the mobile internet environment. I strongly recommend readers to give it a read. In Lao Miao's view, regardless of whether "New Retail" exists, traditional brand owners need to make major transformations. First is a shift in thinking: change from the past B-end thinking to C-end thinking, and from centralized thinking to connected thinking and horizontal breaking thinking. In this sense, all enterprises can become internet enterprises, and all marketing organizations can become internet marketing organizations. If we also extract a few keywords at the operational level, I'll offer four: Self-generated traffic, product empowerment, circle communication, and brand resonance. Source: Lao Miao Tears Marketing (ID: yiheyingxiao) -END-