Recently, Ren Xiaodong, Secretary-General of the FMCG Industry Branch of the China Electronic Commerce Association, exclusively interviewed Zhu Zhentao, Chief Product Officer and CEO of Jumi Intelligent, hoping his views and opinions on the industry could bring some food for thought. For the sake of reading fluency, New Distribution has made slight deletions and arrangements without changing the original meaning. The following is the text version of the interview: Q: Welcome to the China FMCG Digital Innovation Conference. First, please give a brief self-introduction to the readers of New Distribution. I am from Guangzhou Jumi Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd. Our company focuses on the design and manufacturing of intelligent hardware, software development, supply chain management, and online agency operations. I am the Chief Product Officer and CEO, and I prefer to be addressed as Chief Product Officer. Q: The theme of this conference is digital innovation. How do you view traditional marketing versus digital marketing? Digital marketing is primarily driven by the increasing fragmentation of consumers, manifested in more fragmented and mobile consumption time, and more dispersed attention, which is essentially a trend of decentralization. Digital marketing is definitely an inevitable trend in the future, while traditional marketing methods will encounter certain obstacles at this stage. Q: Since last year, the entire unmanned retail market has seen a boom, with a large influx of capital into this trend. How do you view this situation? There is a difference between retail and new retail. New retail cannot be defined solely by being unmanned; there is no actual correlation between new retail and being manned or unmanned. Last year, most unmanned retail companies adopted a rough approach to quickly acquire transaction data and traffic, followed by massive market expansion, which is also the traditional internet company's way of rapidly gaining traffic and seizing the track. However, in reality, many unmanned retail companies have encountered a cold reception in the market, with some being rumored to have withdrawn their cabinets. This is due to their objective neglect of operational complexity and overemphasis on efficiency, leading to a series of problems. Therefore, the industry is now entering an adjustment period, which is normal in the process of development. Q: What is the level of intelligence of your smart vending cabinets? Could you elaborate? Through unmanned equipment, we can determine what sales are generated, who the customers are, including how they make purchases, and whether they have joined your membership system. All of this can be achieved through our smart cabinets. Q: On the user experience level, what specific processes are involved? This is actually quite simple. There are multiple ways: scanning a QR code with a mobile phone to shop within a mini-program, or placing an order in advance and picking up goods with a pickup code. We mainly adopt these two methods. Q: Do you only provide cabinets, or do you also operate the backend product supply chain for the cabinets? We do not do direct operations; we only provide cabinets. We focus solely on standardized services and standardized products. For product operations, I think cooperating with others is a better approach. Q: In actual operation, many smart cabinets in China often have issues like unresponsive buttons and inaccurate product dispensing. How do you solve these? These issues arise from technical processing, software and hardware backend data calls, or possibly poor network environments. Q: How is the maturity of the industry's information technology integration and machine integration? Do they have corresponding advantages? After doing this for a while, there are many compensatory algorithms and processing methods, using mechanisms of mutual verification to solve these problems. For example, if the network is poor, technology can immediately initiate a reconnection mechanism to address potential user experience issues. Q: Now, brands like Wahaha and Coca-Cola have started laying out unmanned retail. Why do you think this is happening? What opportunities and challenges does unmanned retail bring to brand owners? These brands are quite forward-thinking. I believe new retail is not necessarily suitable for cross-border internet companies; rather, it is more suitable for traditional brand owners and retail enterprises because they have natural supply chain and operational advantages, as well as product advantages. They are the ones suited for it, while cross-border internet companies may not necessarily have more advantages than traditional enterprises. Q: Currently, the unmanned retail industry faces issues like product loss, single product variety, and low average transaction value. How do you view this? We are also working on technologies like gravity sensing and RFID, but we have not promoted them in the market. We prefer using intelligent solutions for traditional vending machines because those who have actually operated know which solution is most stable and reliable. We also have unmanned cabinet technology products, but at this stage, there are still many problems that cannot be solved for operations, and any method will have its issues. Q: What value can unmanned retail bring to brand owners, distributors, and the entire FMCG supply chain? Or in what scenarios do you think your products are particularly suitable? First, unmanned retail itself is born for traditional brand owners and FMCG companies. For example, in Japan, there were originally many channel operators, but eventually, almost all channel points were acquired by large beverage companies because they had supply chain and price advantages. The original operators transformed into professional service providers. This is a fate. For brand owners and distributors, online channel traffic has dried up. If they move offline, they also hope to establish a channel that allows them to master data, create a new sales channel, and integrate with the market. This is what traditional brand owners and enterprises need. Q: In one sentence, summarize your biggest takeaway from serving enterprises. Digital transformation is about solidly focusing on data as the core, improving supply chain efficiency and service quality, and enhancing product selection capabilities. I think that solidly doing every step well is enough. New retail is not that complicated or mysterious. It is not exclusive to internet companies; traditional retail enterprises can do it well too. -END-