--- title: "How Should the Food, Beverage, and Alcohol Industry View New Retail?" description: "Some traditional marketers have dismissed Jack Ma's New Retail as worthless, but it is not a panacea. However, leveraging mobile internet, online traffic, and data, it still holds some significance and should not be entirely rejected. This article specifically addresses how the food, beverage, and alcohol industry should correctly approach New Retail." author: "谭长春" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-05-10" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-should-the-food-beverage-and-alcohol-industry-view-new-retail-c4917724/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-should-the-food-beverage-and-alcohol-industry-view-new-retail-c4917724.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/5MaIRyeaweeRbYl4DhHgTw" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E9%A3%9F%E5%93%81%E9%A5%AE%E6%96%99%E9%85%92%E4%B8%9A%E5%BA%94%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E7%9C%8B%E5%BE%85%E6%96%B0%E9%9B%B6%E5%94%AE-c4917724.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-should-the-food-beverage-and-alcohol-industry-view-new-retail-c4917724/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # How Should the Food, Beverage, and Alcohol Industry View New Retail? > Some traditional marketers have dismissed Jack Ma's New Retail as worthless, but it is not a panacea. However, leveraging mobile internet, online traffic, and data, it still holds some significance and should not be entirely rejected. This article specifically addresses how the food, beverage, and alcohol industry should correctly approach New Retail. **Introduction:** Recently, some traditional marketers have written about Jack Ma's New Retail, as if it were worthless. New Retail is not a panacea that cures all ills, but it borrows advantages such as mobile internet, online traffic, and data. Relatively speaking, it should still have some significance and cannot be dismissed outright. Today, we specifically address the food, beverage, and alcohol industry to see how to correctly treat New Retail. Jack Ma's New Retail Whether it is the basic concept of New Retail as defined by Baidu Baike—integrating online and offline, combined with new logistics—or the actions being piloted by Jack Ma, Daniel Zhang, and various Alibaba personnel, we attempt to break down and understand New Retail as follows: 1. It starts from the existing Alibaba system, not from China's 60 million enterprises. Even if Ma says there will be no more pure e-commerce in the future, it is understood within his own Taobao and Tmall domain, which is his own territory. Except for virtual products and services that do not require delivery, logistics for other physical products has always been offline, whether in the so-called pure e-commerce era or in the future. This is not new. Therefore, the integration of online and offline should be the focus. But the combination of online and offline is not new; many startups tried and failed during the O2O era. How to combine them will also make a big difference. 2. Alibaba emphasizes online-offline integration, with the main effort being to connect its online platform with offline. Mobile internet has various bottlenecks, which we won't detail here. Alibaba has been seeking offline integration paths and physical entities for its online Taobao brands and Tmall brands. 3. The mention of new logistics. Ma runs such a large e-commerce business but basically has no logistics of his own; Cainiao is also not focused on retail logistics. So, when mentioning new logistics in the context of online-offline integration, we might suspect they haven't thought it through, but they have already penetrated some of the essence of business. More on this below. 4. Currently, they are experimenting with New Retail in Hangzhou with Intime, in Chengdu through cooperation, with Sanjiang Shopping, and recently with Bailian. These are all exploratory. But the pattern is still discernible: pulling online brands to offline entities, using their cloud platform to integrate information flow, complementing online traffic with offline foot traffic, and leveraging big data to achieve more people-centric retail. There are capital partnerships, business collaborations, and trial-and-error cooperation based on ideological alignment. ...... **Based on the above points, our understanding for the food, beverage, and alcohol industry is:** 1. Ma has strongly felt the bottleneck of continued independent online development and knows that offline has advantages, so online-offline integration is inevitable. FMCG companies are ubiquitous; if true online-offline integration is achieved, it can still demonstrate certain communication and transaction advantages. 2. Ma may have foreseen the future trend of e-commerce development. Although he may be very clear about online e-commerce, there is still a long way to go in combining traditional commercial flow, logistics, information flow, and capital flow. So, he is eager but must proceed step by step with various tentative cooperations. It is far from success. For FMCG, there is still much room for improvement in the original commercial flow, logistics, information flow, and capital flow. Perhaps the combination of online, offline, and logistics can help FMCG companies break through the current dilemma of underperforming pure e-commerce and insufficient performance contribution. 3. Currently, it mainly involves apparel, design, Taobao brands, and well-known Alibaba brands. It should still be quite difficult to cover the entire industry and build for all enterprises. That is, the transformation of New Retail still leaves some time and space for the FMCG industry. 4. Alibaba is trial-and-error, but from the Alibaba system's perspective, the direction is correct. During the trial period, companies cooperating with it also have dividends. Whether it will charge fees in the future, and how, is the nature of Alibaba as an intermediary commercial company. It is building highways or exclusive roads; if you use them, you have to pay tolls. So, the FMCG industry may not only expect New Retail to bring huge dividends; it might also bring greater constraints. In the first half of mobile internet, we already saw the loss of autonomy; in the second half, it may be even worse! Basic Characteristics of the Food, Beverage, and Alcohol Industry 1. We originally did not do business (i.e., self-operated) but basically relied on agency or distribution, leaving commercial gaps that have always been dangerous. Why do we feel the huge impact of e-commerce? Because some market autonomy has been gradually lost, and you can't get it back because the dividend period of mobile internet has ended. 2. However, traditional food, beverage, and alcohol companies can achieve channel control through cooperation, such as offline agency, distribution, distribution, and self-owned stores or terminal management. They still have a certain channel system. So, if recognized, New Retail still has a certain foundation. In fact, it may have a better foundation than Alibaba's online-to-offline approach. That is, our offline is relatively robust. 3. Now is the time to build new online-offline integration channels. As long as you gain insight into the major processes of business essence and integrate them, there are still opportunities. Integrating offline with offline should be more difficult and costly than integrating offline with online. However, mobile internet has entered the second half. If companies remain confused, and if Alibaba succeeds in New Retail integration first and then charges you, you will have to pay obediently (which is also deserved). To be honest, regarding online-offline integration, Alibaba may not understand it as deeply as traditional companies, but it has no inertia costs or mindset constraints. Traditional companies are constrained by mindset and find it hard to change. So, how to forge a New Retail path for the FMCG industry may be a long-term topic. **Therefore, specifically for the food, beverage, and alcohol industry, our understanding is:** 1. Don't be afraid. We have advantages. After all, it's about online-offline integration. You have always been offline. Of course, if you haven't been offline either, and you've always been an absentee owner, with the market in the hands of channel distributors, then there's nothing to do! 2. Don't panic. But please first establish a presence on mobile internet, or gain a deeper understanding of it. Of course, if there is an integrated traditional enterprise management e-commerce upgrade attempt, that would be even better! 3. Don't be stagnant. If you don't prepare now, you'll wait until the New Retail highway is built and then pay the toll! And even if you pay the toll, you might end up like the small sellers on Taobao, exhausted from working for New Retail. Because even if New Retail expands offline, online is still one screen, one position, one family deciding life or death! 4. Don't be foolish. Be brave and willing to accept new things. Now traditionalists are still resisting and slandering the new, which is inappropriate. New consumers and users are in the hearts and hands of new technology and new explorers; they are the ones sweeping away the old! Even if Ma's New Retail fails, they will find a right path in the process. So, the food, beverage, and alcohol industry should boldly move forward; that should be right! Don't believe those outdated arguments anymore! They are just gasping for breath! 5. Don't be reluctant to invest. In the early stages of New Retail, investment will far exceed output! And if you are the leader, only you will reap the dividends! So, for those with decent traditional channel control and their own stores, I think you can start preparing to build your own New Retail! Isn't Ma's New Retail just using his years of experience in e-commerce, retail, and business from his original e-commerce platform? When you break it down, it's not as magical as it seems! Isn't it? --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671