The annual 618 shopping festival has begun again. From New Distribution's perspective, although the entire market environment and merchants are currently facing many challenges, the support measures introduced by major e-commerce platforms are clearly continuously boosting market confidence. According to reports, Jingxi, JD.com's lifestyle consumption mall, has started its official 618 promotion on time. According to Jingxi's official statement, this year's 618 will bring a more responsible and lively promotional carnival. Indeed, what is needed now is not just a consumption carnival, but more importantly, the responsibility to drive win-win cooperation with upstream and downstream partners and bear more social value. During this promotion, Jingxi will, as always, let consumers enjoy a wide range of low-priced, worry-free source goods and brand products. Activities such as Special Price Vegetable Market, Super Save Friday, and Inflation Subsidy, along with Jingxi APP, Jingxi Pinpin, and Jingxi Tong's online and offline business layouts, provide consumers with various consumption experiences and services such as buy-in-store, home delivery, and pre-order pickup. Similarly, this promotion is also what any participating merchant needs. Affected by the uncertainty of the epidemic, for every merchant, stable growth is the main theme and core strategy of current operations. But if relying on individual efforts, frankly speaking, it is weak and difficult to achieve. The market needs a national carnival festival to activate consumption. 618 comes at the right time. This year's 618, Jingxi, with the theme "Jingxi is by your side", connects more than 300 core industrial belts nationwide, over 1,000 direct procurement bases, tens of thousands of brand merchants, and over one million offline stores for deep participation. With such a large scale, for any merchant, direct sales growth is inevitable. But beyond that, from these strings of numbers, we also see deeper value behind them. As a platform, Jingxi is not just a business for different merchants, but also opening up a high-speed network of full-link channels, penetrating all channels and scenarios into the consumption life of the entire population. Shorter Linkage for Industrial Sales Support 300+ industrial belts, nearly 1,000 direct procurement bases. Behind the industrial belts and direct procurement bases are tens of thousands of merchants. In the past, these merchants deep in the industrial belts, although holding good products, were limited by long sales links, difficult quality control standards, and hard-to-grasp demand, resulting in sales radius limited to the local area. Even if cross-regional sales were possible, due to intermediate links and multiple logistics transfers, prices were high and sales were low. In response to these challenges and difficulties, Jingxi integrates multi-channel sales resources such as Jingxi APP, Jingxi Pinpin, and Jingxi Tong, leverages supply chain, technology, and marketing advantages, and uses rich social gameplay such as online marketing venues, live streaming, and social games, as well as integrated online-offline operations, to open multi-directional high-speed networks for agricultural products and industries. Help industrial belt merchants truly expand sales radius from local to regional, from regional to national. For example, during this year's 618, the Jingxi APP also launched corresponding measures to help merchants reduce pressure and costs. Centered on the two dimensions of improving quality and efficiency, and reducing costs and burdens, it released the "Three Increases and Two Reductions" measures to help merchants overcome difficulties. In addition to expanding sales radius and helping merchants overcome difficulties, to further assist industrial belt merchants, Jingxi is deeply involved, based on its professional supply chain capabilities built in the past, empowering merchants from the source to solve the problems of difficult quality control standards and hard-to-grasp demand. Taking the co-branded crayfish created by Jingxi Farm and Qianjiang as an example, Jingxi Farm deeply cooperates with the industry-leading enterprise Hubei Crayfish Industry Holding Group, selecting high-quality crayfish from ecological breeding bases as processing raw materials, establishing quality control standards, and strictly controlling every link from crayfish appearance, processing environment, process flow, plating and packaging, to cold storage, ensuring good raw materials become good products. At the same time, Jingxi Farm also analyzes and gains insights into consumer demand, establishes corresponding cooking techniques, and repeatedly adjusts them to restore the authentic Qianjiang flavor while maintaining taste. By establishing quality control standards and grasping consumer demand, it feeds back to crayfish merchants, further enhancing the industry's scale advantage and helping it go nationwide. These measures and actions are the best proof that a platform can help origin merchants and industry upgrade, that is, on the basis of optimizing cost, efficiency, and experience, to generate greater industrial pulling power. Faster Downward Market Coverage Compared with industrial belt merchants and agricultural product partners, brand manufacturers are relatively complete in R&D and product aspects, and are also known as "standard products" in the industry. For brand manufacturers, their pain points seem more focused: how to sell farther and sell more. Although brand manufacturers have their own sales channels, due to input-output ratio considerations, they often take root in first- and second-tier markets. With the saturation of consumption in first- and second-tier markets, growth is becoming increasingly weak. Therefore, third-tier and below emerging downward markets are an important lever for brand manufacturers' sales growth. Of course, due to cost, logistics, information, and other reasons, relying solely on individual strength is difficult to achieve large-scale coverage of downward markets. At this time, leveraging the Jingxi platform and its linked over one million stores can achieve efficient reach and coverage. Of course, the leverage here is not just traffic and one million stores, but also the ability to create all-channel penetration and all-scenario coverage marketing solutions for brand manufacturers. During this year's 618, the "Super Save Friday" activity, by linking brands in mother and baby, home, and food categories, attracts consumers with activities such as 50% off big brands and 100-yuan coupons. With the help of the Zhangguibao supply platform's coupons, red packets, naked price flash sales, and tiered full reduction activities, Jingxi helps hundreds of major brands such as Mondelez, P&G, and Blue Moon reach consumers in emerging markets. In addition to platform-themed promotional activities and the Zhangguibao supply platform, around Jingxi convenience stores and JD convenience stores, Jingxi, together with many brand merchants, distributes store-exclusive brand coupons through JD Convenience GO, JD Daojia, and O2O channels to increase sales. With Jingxi's strong supply chain advantages and all-scenario, multi-channel distribution business model, it can provide strong support for brand manufacturers in business growth and market coverage. More Lively Store-Group Services What was mentioned above are industrial belt merchants and brand merchants. Finally, let's talk about the small merchants closest to community residents and the last mile of life consumption under the Jingxi Pinpin platform—store groups. Centering on the needs of people's livelihood goods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, rice, flour, and oil, Jingxi fully leverages the grid effect of community service group points to enhance the immediacy and convenience of residents' daily supply. During 618, Jingxi Pinpin launched activities such as "1-yuan special vegetables" and "Super Member Festival", relying on source industrial belts and localized supply chain direct procurement and direct sales models to open "source good goods" value-for-money themed activities, and through local group leaders, deliver many good products directly to community residents. Whether it is Jingxi or local group leaders, they all expect to bring consumers a better and more convenient consumption experience. While Jingxi delivers low-priced, worry-free good products to consumers, it is also empowering group leaders in each community, providing good products and good service support. What community group leaders need to do is connect with consumers and serve consumers. What does serving consumers mean? A case can prove it: Wang Yewei, a group leader in Qingdao, Shandong, joined Jingxi Pinpin in April 2021 and is currently the TOP1 group leader in daily sales in Qingdao's urban area. According to his description, the street where he is located is a community with a serious aging population. Most customers are elderly men and women who do not know how to use smartphones. Wang Yewei patiently teaches them how to download the mini-program, how to place orders, and how to use coupons. For customers with limited mobility, he delivers to their doors. Commodity transactions are only the final result. Group leaders, with the help of the platform, provide consumers not only with goods, but more importantly, with convenient and considerate services. This is why it is called more lively store-group services. Summary: Obviously, this year's Jingxi 618 is not a carnival for Jingxi alone, but a fusion and participation of multiple roles, from industrial belt merchants to brand manufacturers to community group leaders. What does a more lively Jingxi 618 mean? My understanding is to let consumers enjoy benefits and let merchants gain more business. Only with win-win across multiple ends can it be called a national carnival! Are you "watching" me?