---
title: "How Alibaba Retail Link Helps Brands and Distributors Seize the Opportunity to 'Fly'?"
description: "At the 4th FMCG + Internet Conference, Yuntong, General Manager of Alibaba Retail Link Marketing Center, explained the business model of building an intelligent distribution network. From the perspectives of brands, distributors, and retail stores, he detailed how Retail Link creates precise channel marketing for brands, reduces costs and increases profits for distributors, and empowers millions of small stores."
author: "云通"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2018-03-27"
language: "en"
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# How Alibaba Retail Link Helps Brands and Distributors Seize the Opportunity to 'Fly'?

> At the 4th FMCG + Internet Conference, Yuntong, General Manager of Alibaba Retail Link Marketing Center, explained the business model of building an intelligent distribution network. From the perspectives of brands, distributors, and retail stores, he detailed how Retail Link creates precise channel marketing for brands, reduces costs and increases profits for distributors, and empowers millions of small stores.

Recently, at the 4th FMCG + Internet Conference, Yuntong, General Manager of Alibaba Retail Link Marketing Center, was invited to participate in the 'Brand Channel Digitalization' forum, where he explained the business model of Retail Link's co-building of an intelligent distribution network. From the three dimensions of brand owners, distributors, and retail stores, Yuntong elaborated on how, under the new retail background, Retail Link creates precise channel marketing for brand owners, reduces costs and increases profits for distributors, and empowers and improves efficiency for millions of small retail stores.
**△****Alibaba Retail Link Marketing Center** General Manager Yuntong
In Yuntong's view, driven by big data in new retail, brand owners all have the opportunity to 'change lanes and overtake'. Whether they can lay out in advance, connect the channel value chain, and win-win with new channel players, and reconstruct the core elements of new retail—'people, goods, and places'—will determine the development of brands in the next decade.
**Eight Columns Gather, Retail Link Powers Offline New Retail**
It is understood that since Jack Ma proposed the concept of 'new retail', Alibaba has taken the lead in laying out in different fields, forming a system with Tmall and Taobao as the sky, Cainiao as the ground, and offline channel consumption formats mainly including Suning, Intime, RT-Mart, Easyhome, and Koubei. In addition, there is a county and village network mainly based on Rural Taobao, and Retail Link serving offline community stores. The data and methods accumulated by the eight columns of new retail across the whole market and all channels enable Alibaba to build the entire new retail with more merchants and consumers.
During the just-passed New Year Goods Festival, Retail Link, as one of the eight columns of new retail, gathered nearly 1 million offline small stores to participate. Compared with last year, the entire platform achieved 140 times sales growth, with more than 4,000 brand owners and distributors participating in the system. In response, Yuntong said, 'This is a great encouragement and recognition for Retail Link, and it also shows that for brand owners and distributors willing to participate in creating new retail and new channels, the path Retail Link is taking is correct.'
Regarding the goal for 2018, Yuntong also proposed Retail Link's goal. 'This year, our goal is to make the GMV ranking of related FMCG categories impact the top three in offline retail. But in fact, many brands on the Retail Link platform are already the largest offline channel merchants or suppliers for these brands, but that is not the most important thing. What matters is how Retail Link brings value to this ecosystem, to our brand owners, distributors, and the most important offline small stores.'
**Retail Link's Three Major Values, Co-building an Intelligent Distribution Network with Brand Owners**
When talking about how to find an efficient balance point among strong control over channels, low channel costs, and broad and deep coverage of terminals, Yuntong believes that building an efficient distribution network, constructing a precise channel marketing system, and integrating comprehensive data services in the system are the keys to creating value for brand owners.
**First is an efficient distribution network.** Yuntong said that for 2B business, people are still an indispensable part. But how to maximize human efficiency and turn a person into an 'Iron Man' with the help of internet tools is the core of building an efficient distribution network. 'Take a typical example: in Retail Link's existing FMCG channels, salespeople can use an intelligent visit plan called 'Compass' to efficiently visit small stores and make precise product recommendations based on the store's needs. In addition, there are 'Ling Xiaobao', the dealer system on Alibaba Cloud backend, and brand workstations. Based on these internet tools, Retail Link turns ordinary salespeople into 4,000 efficient city partners covering different provinces, and also makes Retail Link truly have an efficient distribution coverage network.'
**Second is precise channel marketing.** All along, Retail Link has been customizing marketing strategies based on real small stores. In this regard, Yuntong directly gave a marketing example: 'For example, we once served an international brand. At that time, their deep distribution in China was not yet mature. Through the regional live broadcast system, Retail Link helped it sell in one hour what it had sold in the previous month. This is because Retail Link's marketing actions captured precise stores for the product, and behind these small stores are the precise consumers that brand owners need.'
**Finally, connect all-round data in the system.** Yuntong specifically pointed out that the original brand owner data was more like isolated islands, but in the future, Alibaba will connect all the islands in traditional channels and connect the data of the entire business chain. From brand owners to distributors to small stores and customers, real-time and precise data types are provided at each link of the data chain.
In addition, Yuntong also revealed that Retail Link has joined forces with Ele.me and Mobile Taobao to connect the scenarios of in-store, home delivery, and interaction with consumers, helping brand owners truly connect the B2B and 2C marketing chain. 'At present, we are conducting pilot tests with some product brand owners. In the future, we will cooperate with large brand owners to truly connect the B2B and 2C systems this year.'
**Upgrade Distributors to New Retail Service Providers, Fully Empower**
Yuntong introduced that Retail Link hopes that based on the different depths of brand owners and the differences in distributors' products, warehouses, merchants, people, and stores, distributors can upgrade to new retail service operators under the new retail system. 'If you have salespeople, you can bring them in as our enterprise partners; if you have products, you can bring them in as our virtual warehouse suppliers; if you can meet Retail Link's distribution conditions, you can accept our distribution system. In this way, different distributors can be customized to connect.'
In such a scenario, when distributors become virtual warehouse distributors and Retail Link merchants, with the help of the Retail Link platform to continuously expand the categories of sellable products and use customized internet tool systems such as 'Ling Xiaobao', distributors' business income has increased significantly, and more importantly, their profit growth has outpaced sales growth. Yuntong frankly said, 'For distributors, this situation is truly giving them value, empowering distributors, and also allowing distributors to truly connect to the entire new retail system.'
**'Smart Selection' Plan, Let More Good Brands Land**
It is also worth mentioning the 'Smart Selection' plan launched by Retail Link last year. Yuntong said during his speech, 'The launch of "Smart Selection" mainly aims to allow more good brands to land. For example, let regional brands go out of the province to cover the whole country, let imported brands better sink, and let industrial belt brands directly supply to this system.'
'Here I especially want to mention the example of Pepsi Blue Cola. Not all stores are suitable for Blue Cola. How to find more suitable stores to sell such an expensive cola and meet consumption upgrades is a problem that brand owners must solve.'
Yuntong pointed out that many brand owners may choose to try on Tmall first, and then try to lay out the network offline, but through the Retail Link platform to precisely distribute products for the brand and find corresponding small stores, while letting city partners efficiently distribute, and finally put Blue Cola into Retail Link's 'Sky Eye Plan'. On this basis, connect data feedback, and then figure out who actually bought Blue Cola today, to help the brand land better.
Finally, Yuntong concluded, 'We bring the B2C marketing system of these head small stores in, bringing value to small stores. Of course, we cannot do all stores, so we segment small stores and require that a group of shelves in the small store all purchase from Retail Link. We help stock the main shelves so that this group of shelves can come alive. We serve millions of small stores and also help our brand owners and channel merchants embrace the new retail era together!'
Click **Read Original** to see more highlights of the 4th FMCG + Internet Conference...
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