Scan the QR code in the image to register Ebang Power has compiled the wisdom of nearly 50 industry leaders to guide us through market cycles. In 2020, the retail e-commerce market showed an attitude of "infinite scenery at the perilous peak." Facing sudden changes, retail e-commerce companies quickly made proactive or reactive responses, but encountered some problems in the process of active practice: Companies that urgently moved their business online were not entirely clear on how to digitalize; the prematurely matured live-streaming e-commerce often experienced "unstable" outbreaks; community group buying with billions in funds fell into endless wars; and the new consumption track, where hundreds of brands received financing, saw bubbles growing larger and larger... In this 10-trillion-yuan super market, there are new opportunities bursting from struggle, and questions that need answers. For the various doubts left by 2020, Ebang Power has compiled the wisdom of nearly 50 industry leaders to point us in the direction of crossing cycles. -01- How should we rationally view live-streaming e-commerce? Douyin's top seller, Luo Yonghao: Live streaming can essentially be a large-scale group buying. Previously, even with e-commerce platforms, group buying could only organize hundreds or thousands of people, but live streaming can effectively organize millions of people for group buying, so this can change many things. For example, inventory is one such thing, and there are many other business forms, such as launching new products, which live streaming can achieve. So we think it is very valuable and decided to start live streaming. Taobao Live's top host, Viya: Variety show + live streaming is not an iteration of e-commerce live streaming; it is a new entrant in the e-commerce live streaming ecosystem, a new development potential. These variety-show-style live streams are refreshing for fans and open a new door for e-commerce live streaming. It will not replace e-commerce live streaming but will enrich its content. Beauty influencer, Li Jiaqi: The so-called "viewership" in live rooms is actually "cumulative viewership" and does not represent GMV. Merchants pay more attention to concurrent online users and "conversion rate." The e-commerce live streaming industry is rapidly developing and changing, and the content and structure of live rooms cannot remain static. CEO of ByteDance, Zhang Nan: "People" are the foundation of Douyin; short videos and live streaming are just tools for people to express themselves, and people are natural, vivid, full of vitality, and have infinite possibilities. I never think that any function or service can constitute a product's competitive barrier. If there is a so-called "barrier," it is the user's tangible sense of gain. Head of Taobao Live, Yu Feng: The essence of live-streaming e-commerce is the e-commerce-ization of content, not live streaming itself; it is essentially an upgrade of the "business venue." Taobao and Douyin/Kuaishou are partners. This essentially reaffirms Taobao Live's supply chain advantage. Taobao Live is a product of Taobao's content strategy, holding over 60% of the live-streaming e-commerce market share, and is the earliest and most authoritative testing ground for live-streaming e-commerce. E-commerce content improves conversion, and content e-commerce creates demand. Founder of Xiaohongshu, Qu Fang: I never think that live streaming can only follow the sales logic. Live streaming brings new content supply to consumption; initially, forms with "direct and strong conversion" may come first. But I think live streaming will become an important form of content creation in the future. When content forms change, new creators and scenarios will emerge. Founding Partner of FreeS Fund, Li Feng: From the law of development, live-streaming e-commerce will eventually become more like "shopping guides," not a model of large traffic, deep discounts, and high commissions. The above model needs to meet two characteristics: first, manage the supply chain; second, manage traffic. But for an individual host, who can manage a sufficiently large supply chain? Only e-commerce platforms can manage the supply chain. Head of Kuaishou E-commerce Operations, Bai Jiale: The essence of live streaming is shortening the production chain, transaction chain, and marketing chain. For example, real-time feedback from live room users, or evaluating transaction conversion from the previous live stream, can inversely affect the production side, determining product styles and SKUs. Kuaishou is strengthening its supply chain capabilities through four direct supply channels: brands, factories, farms, and influencers. At the same time, it is forming a "mature sales venue" through functional improvements and cooperation with JD.com on billion-yuan subsidies. Founder of Lin Qingxuan, Sun Laichun: Live streaming has three major functions. First, it plants seeds in consumers' minds, even without a purchase link, it can still plant seeds. Second, it effectively pulls customers into stores. If the young ladies and gentlemen do a fantastic live stream, invite customers to the store for an experience, and send a coupon, then customers will come. Third, shopping malls can do live streaming with us, inviting customers to the store, and that is reliable. President of Ebang Power and Founder of Mati Club, Jia Penglei: If live streaming is a trend, did individuals take off because of the trend? Did merchants get through difficulties because of the trend? Did platforms reshape the landscape because of the trend? This time, it was not capital that created the trend, but demand; this time, it was not upgrades that destroyed the trend, but survival; this time, the so-called trend further weakened companies' long-termism.
-02- With massive cash inflows, what is the underlying logic of community group buying?
Founder of Meituan, Wang Xing: For Meituan, same-city retail is also a "No. 1 project," but the logic differs from Alibaba's. First, offline retail is more closely related to Meituan's core business, and extending from food delivery to more categories is a natural progression. Second, Meituan has a huge rider network, but food delivery demand is high-concurrency in short periods; outside peak dining hours, riders are idle. Using the existing network to increase order density for same-city retail and reduce costs. Founder of Pinduoduo, Huang Zheng: External media say that grocery shopping is community group buying, and it is somewhat similar in early forms, but we do not define this business that way. Over the years, we have seen that it is still not easy for farmers to sell agricultural products online, and the production and circulation of agricultural products still need improvement. Many resources are in short supply on one hand, while a large amount is idle on the other. As our online volume of agricultural products continues to grow, our influence on the upstream and circulation fields is increasing. With the pandemic, consumers also have the need to order groceries online, so we decided to do grocery shopping. Grocery shopping is a good business, a tough business, a long-term business, and a touchstone for us Pinduoduo people. President of Chengyou Preferred, Liu Zicheng: From the platform level, community group buying indeed has differentiated needs in each province, which is why everyone now establishes operation management centers by province. But it is still in its early stages, and defining the final form is premature. The first stage of business expansion is to execute the strategy; the second stage is the evolution process, where user needs and industry changes combine with the business's own iteration and evolution, ultimately forming a business model that adapts to the market. President of Xingsheng Preferred, Zhou Yingjie: Although community e-commerce has rapidly experienced flourishing, reshuffling, and elimination in the past year or two, the industry is not yet a red ocean. Even in highly competitive markets, the average coverage rate of community e-commerce in residential areas has not peaked, and there is still market to develop. In provinces and cities where community e-commerce is not prevalent, there are even more opportunities. Co-founder and CEO of Shihuituan, Chen Ying: The beauty of the community group buying model lies in the deepest level of its operating philosophy: it is a platform philosophy that builds an ecosystem. It outsources the core links in the value chain to more professional and self-driven people, reducing costs and improving efficiency. It crowdsources customer acquisition, marketing, sorting, delivery, and customer service to group leaders. While creating value for them, it also improves the platform's efficiency. CEO of Tongcheng Life, He Pengyu: Community group buying should be called community e-commerce. Essentially, the group leader has a physical location, and based on this area, provides product transactions online and fulfillment offline. Calling it community e-commerce might be more precise. It essentially meets the daily household consumption needs for food and daily necessities, and then expands to other categories. Our judgment of the endgame is that community group buying will not have a monopoly. The landscape should be similar to offline retail, showing regionalization, with a few head players emerging. At the individual community level, there may be two or three platforms and three to five group leaders coexisting, and there may even be specialized supply chain suppliers serving these group leaders. Vice President of Dingdong Maicai, Xiong Wei: Competition among enterprises is divided into three stages. The first stage is competing on business and execution capabilities. Some companies have unique strategic vision, some are lucky, and both may develop their own models. For example, Xingsheng Preferred may have carved out a new model through innovation or strategic vision. The second stage is competing on technical capabilities; you must use technology to consolidate the previous foundation, improve efficiency, and build a moat. The third stage is competing on capital capabilities. Partner at China Growth Capital, Wang Daoping: The entry of giants is very challenging and even high-risk for startups. Startups have educated consumers to a certain extent, but internet giants are entering in various forms with great force, basically as their core strategy. For startups, the pressure for independent development and survival is enormous, but the benefit is that the market's development may accelerate. -03- How can you become a long-lasting brand that crosses cycles? Chairman of Five Star Holdings, Wang Jianguo: If you just bury your head in work all day, things will become endless and increasingly complex. If you grasp the big gear of "people," when the big gear turns once, the small gears turn dozens or hundreds of times, forming a flywheel effect. Don't just stare at trends, because no matter how good the trend, wind speed will change. What we need is to find the eagle that can spread its wings and fly at any wind speed. Founder of Zhong Xue Gao, Lin Sheng: We have always been thinking about how to be different from others. This difference is differentiation. Differentiation is not a point but a line. A point only keeps you different from others at a certain stage. If you want to survive 5 or 10 years and lead or be different at every stage, you must take the path of differentiation, which is connected and longer, not just supporting a point. Founder and CEO of Handu Yishe, Zhao Yingguang: Sales-oriented "traffic thinking" suits the dividend period of the live streaming industry; value-oriented "brand thinking" suits the stock period of the industry, where growth is often achieved through specialization, such as optimizing brand positioning and being more precise and focused. To build a brand, you must first answer three soul-searching questions: Who am I? How am I different? How do you know? The moat of a brand in the new era = precise positioning + ultimate product + sustained buzz. CEO of JULEE JULEE Jewelry, Hong Jun: The core of a brand is "group belonging." What kind of person you are determines what brand you choose. From the beginning, a brand must understand its brand spirit, establish a positioning system based on customer group positioning and product positioning, focus on team building, and focus on original design. General Manager of Xiaohongshu Effect Marketing, Xi Guan: No matter how much you sell through Viya and Li Jiaqi, it's useless because the results come from their personal brand effect. During the incremental period of the internet and mobile internet, the speed of buyers entering was higher than sellers, and all marketing tools were useful. But at this stage, it won't be so easy. Brands must build their own "brand." Co-founder of a1 Snack Research Institute, Lin Zeshen: To be a long-lasting brand, first, you must follow the trend and be user-oriented; second, you must do the underlying construction well, including product innovation, supply chain reserves, and other aspects; third, brand building is a process of occupying user minds, requiring long-term accumulation, such as product development, channel layout, brand communication, digital application, service experience improvement, and organizational building. -04- Are there still new opportunities in the new consumption track? Global Executive Partner of Sequoia Capital, Shen Nanpeng: There are three main points to judge a good project: first, the judgment of the entrepreneur. Behind a great company, there must be a vibrant, excellent entrepreneur; second, the size of the industry. Successful companies should focus on industries with huge development space; third, the business model. Some business models naturally form competitive barriers, while others are prone to homogenization. Founder and CEO of Hillhouse Capital, Zhang Lei: 2020 was indeed a year full of black swans. Many people say we have entered an uncertain year. Only uncertainty is the most certain thing. The more uncertain the year, the more great companies are born and tempered. In the next five years, first, I still favor innovation; there are still many opportunities brought by innovation. Second, I favor the huge consumption opportunities brought by the middle class. Third, I favor the financial and asset management industry; this industry is large, and its demand in China is far from being met. Founder and CEO of Three Squirrels, Zhang Liaoyuan: New consumption can be understood as: creating goods online, selling goods in three dimensions. Simply put, in the past, we moved offline goods to sell online; in the future, we will move online goods to sell offline. Online should let consumers understand the product faster and more efficiently, and once the product matures, quickly push it nationwide. Founder of Perfect Diary, Huang Jinfeng: This year (2020), international beauty giants' attention and investment in the Chinese market may have reached a historical peak. A batch of domestic brands still made progress even under such high-pressure competition. Chinese brands should be more patient when facing pressure from international beauty giants. From the results, based on knowledge of the local market, China has the world's top supply chain, and with continuous investment in talent reserves, product R&D, and production in various dimensions, the beauty market will definitely give birth to some local enterprises that can gain larger market share. CEO of Pop Mart, Wang Ning: This industry still has very strong competitive barriers. On one hand, there are operational thresholds, team thresholds, and industry thresholds; on the other hand, the most important threshold is IP, using quality IP to create commercial value in various ways. Founder of Genki Forest, Tang Bingsen: The next 5 to 10 years are the golden time for new consumer brands. Really, don't rush; this time window is quite long. Chinese consumers are too many, 1.4 billion! China's supply chain is too strong, the world's factory! China's communication is too agile, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu! Excellent product managers, your spring has not just arrived; your summer has already come, and it's a blazing summer for five to ten years. Chairman and CEO of China Renaissance, Bao Fan: In the consumer track, investors pay special attention to generational changes in consumer groups. Last year, we did a market research on Generation Z and found that their new consumption of trendy toys is mainly spiritual consumption, not just material satisfaction. Material satisfaction was achieved early for this generation. Digging deeper, among the things young people like, trends are the fastest-growing field, and it's a new form of consumption. Founding Partner of FreeS Fund, Li Feng: The structure and media of traffic are constantly changing. For niche brands in consumer entrepreneurship, going from 0 to 1 is relatively easy, but from 1 to 10 is full of challenges. However, the future is bright; China will always give birth to the largest international brands in all categories worldwide, but the process will be more painful than before. In 2020, online new brands launched new products when big brands didn't, did marketing when big brands didn't advertise, and filled the gaps. But this special situation is unlikely to happen again next year. Traditional offline retail consumer goods companies may compress two years of innovation into one year, and after a year of investigation and planning, produce and launch next year. It's not that new brands won't have opportunities next year, because some habit shifts will not change. Founding Partner of Qingsong Fund, Su Wei: First, it is still a good time for consumer entrepreneurship because the market infrastructure is complete, capital is paying attention, and there are many blue ocean market segments. Second, entrepreneurs can pay attention to new opportunities brought by new demographics, such as post-90s needing health supplements, makeup users rapidly getting younger, and Chinese consumer goods can now also do mid-to-high-end; the supply chain is mature, young people are not blindly worshiping foreign things, and domestic brands also have the opportunity to make high-end products. You can look at subcategories where foreign brands occupy the top three; in five years, they may be replaced by emerging domestic brands. That is the opportunity. Partner at N5Capital, Qian Kun: The dividend of this wave of new consumption has passed. Not just consumption, but any subdivision field's outbreak is often driven by changes in the external environment. Competition in any non-monopolistic industry is fierce. If the external environment doesn't change, it's competition in the stock economy, where market giants have strong advantages. Only when the external environment changes will there be new opportunities for startups. The emergence of this wave of new consumer brands is because several new social media platforms were formed in the past few years, and each social media's traffic dividend lasted about eight or nine months. The rise of new media platforms has a strong rhythm, one after another, so this wave of social media traffic dividends lasted for 3 years. Three years of dividends can already develop a brand to a relatively large scale. -05- Is private domain traffic really the "involution" of the stock market? Founder of WeChat, Zhang Xiaolong: WeChat has a live streaming entrance, and live streaming has e-commerce capabilities, allowing third-party links. But we don't want to do traffic promotion for live streaming; it's entirely based on user spontaneity. We don't need to buy content, and we won't do it in the future. Creators can rely on their own efforts to create returns. Founder & CEO of Youzan, Bai Ya: The development experience of WeChat Pay (overtaking Alipay) will repeat on Channels. You (Douyin/Kuaishou) spent 6 years building the infrastructure, I (Channels) will catch up with you in one year, and then lead you absolutely in 6 years. The opportunity is here. In the next 1-2 years, the 400 million people using Douyin/Kuaishou will start using Channels, and the 800 million people in WeChat will also be drawn in. This probability is extremely high. In about three to five years, the e-commerce scale driven by Channels will reach 1 trillion US dollars annually, and the accompanying advertising budget will be 100 billion US dollars a year. Vice President of Zhong Xue Gao, Zhou Bing: The characteristics of users in the WeChat ecosystem are fragmentation, requiring constant fragmented touchpoints to let users get the brand's point. Fragmentation and diversification are the characteristics of brand-user touchpoints in the WeChat ecosystem, where complex human nature is fully reflected. This also gives enterprises and users opportunities for diversified interaction. Here, as long as it matches user interests, all creativity has a chance to stand out. Co-founder of Lianka Information, Liu Dongyue: Brands should have the same products and prices online and offline. Don't let mini-programs benchmark against Tmall; instead, benchmark against offline products and services, and build more brand power. Everyone needs to be served; sales conversion is just the final result of brand and service. When doing mini-programs, you need to know when to brake, when to do IP and interaction at the right time, rather than emphasizing sales. Blindly discounting and promoting is very harmful to the brand. CEO of Xiaoxiao Ma Baoma, Jia Wanxing: The short video market on other platforms is already saturated, and entering now is easy to be eliminated. Channels is just starting and has good development prospects. What's most impressive about Channels is that it connects WeChat, subscription accounts, mini-programs, and communities, helping creators build the most efficient way to establish trust with customers. The scenes of "selling goods with respect" and "buying goods with good service" are realized. Vice Chairman and Vice President of Red Dragonfly, Qian Fan: The core of a community is the circle. There are many circles: internal employees and shopping guides are one circle, brand fans are one circle, friends and family are one circle, and member fans are one circle. It's very difficult to break into each circle, but once you break into that circle, your returns will multiply. Many brands are doing communities and circles, and they can also exchange with each other. Only with better circles and fission can you build a good community foundation, plus high conversion rates and operations, and the business will take off. -06- What problems are "choking" retail digitalization? General Manager of Tencent Smart Retail Vertical Industry Ecosystem, Li Yang: For a retail business, the digitalization of "goods" and "venue" is based on the digitalization of "people." After that, the second step is refined operations, including precise analysis of your audience, achieving personalized recommendations, and precise distribution and efficiency improvement. The third stage is the extension of new business models, such as a retailer or channel provider transforming into a media platform after digitalization, and R&D of new businesses. President of Bosideng, Gao Dekang: Enterprise digital capability is not only a technical capability but also a business operation capability. It must achieve a high degree of integration between technology and business to get good results. Mainly do three aspects: first, build new retail capabilities; second, build fast-response product capabilities; third, build a data middle platform. Chairman of Five Star Holdings, Wang Jianguo: Digitalization is not a slogan or a trendy word, but the changes brought by information technology in recent years. Now information technology is centered on smartphones. The biggest change brought by smartphones is that users have changed, so digitalization first means the digitalization of users. As an enterprise providing services to users, if you don't digitalize, you are far away from users. CEO of Youzan, Bai Ya: When everyone does these online businesses well, we will find that what follows is that we are forced to digitalize the entire business process, and this process must be relatively slow. Because our digitalization level is still at the stage of accounting computerization, meaning your finance manages it, and the rest is not connected. Because our needs are unclear, processes are unclear, and we lack talent and systems, our digitalization is a gradual forced process that cannot be achieved overnight. Moreover, we are facing another reality: platforms force brands to digitalize for governance needs, not to truly empower merchants. Merchants need to find more third-party service providers to solve digitalization problems. Co-founder and CEO of Huibo Technology, Wang Lijun: Digitalization does not mean lying in a pile of data in an IT system. If digitalization cannot drive business growth, it is meaningless. In customer acquisition, you must control the transaction rate in the process; in users, you must establish a user-centric digital membership system; in marketing, you must use digitalization to make brand-user interaction more efficient. Chief Operating Officer of Weimob Group, Yin Shiming: Internet companies play with traffic and data, using data to judge traffic, guide traffic, and make recommendations. Many big data companies can provide good big data technology to enterprises. If enterprises can use their own data well, they have a good chance to run out impressive models. The foundation of these is the full-chain digitalization of the enterprise. Founder and CEO of Shuyun, Song Xiangping: There are two engines for omni-channel consumer growth: consumer digital management and consumer asset operation. Consumer digital management has four key points: data collectability, data identifiability, data analyzability, and data operability. Consumers are the assets of the enterprise and the brand, and the long-term driver of business growth. There are always some consumers who are destined to buy your products this year; we just couldn't see them before.