---
title: "Players with Hidden Agendas: How Can New Retail Break the Ice in a Chaotic Landscape?"
description: "Perhaps people still haven't figured out what new retail truly means, but they are already on the path. Capital hype and tech giants' support have repeatedly focused attention on new retail, prompting proactive adoption and layout. However, we must admit that new retail remains a nascent species. Despite its rich potential, if we merely treat it as a concept, once the trend fades, its development will regress to square one."
author: "辉常观察"
publisher: "New Distribution"
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published: "2019-04-22"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/4k19Pq1I4o7lgHrruoJacg"
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# Players with Hidden Agendas: How Can New Retail Break the Ice in a Chaotic Landscape?

> Perhaps people still haven't figured out what new retail truly means, but they are already on the path. Capital hype and tech giants' support have repeatedly focused attention on new retail, prompting proactive adoption and layout. However, we must admit that new retail remains a nascent species. Despite its rich potential, if we merely treat it as a concept, once the trend fades, its development will regress to square one.

Perhaps people still haven't figured out what new retail truly means, but they are already on the path. Capital hype and tech giants' support have repeatedly focused attention on new retail, prompting proactive adoption and layout. However, we must admit that new retail remains a nascent species. Despite its rich potential, if we merely treat it as a concept, once the trend fades, its development will regress to square one.

In embracing new retail, we cannot simply follow the trend or push concepts. We must deeply consider its connotations and significance from an implementation perspective. Only by abandoning the approach of treating new retail as a mere concept can we draw nourishment from it, rather than using it solely to attract capital attention. Unfortunately, in our current embrace of new retail, we often treat it as a concept without genuinely seeking breakthroughs.

Thus, we see the emergence of concepts like social new retail, content new retail, and live-streaming new retail. If we promote new retail's implementation through such conceptual gimmicks, we will inevitably fail to grasp its essence. When the new retail trend passes, people will seek new concepts to sustain development and gain capital favor.

Essentially, the current purpose of embracing new retail is still to attract capital, not to truly implement it. If we only focus on the concept without practice, new retail will inevitably become cliché.

1. Players with Hidden Agendas: New Retail Gradually Becomes a Concept

If we use "crowded" to describe the current new retail track, it might be apt. One key reason for this crowding is that various players have joined the race. Traditional e-commerce, micro-businesses, "Internet+" ventures, and traditional manufacturers have all entered. However, because these players have hidden agendas, new retail is drifting away from its essential meaning and may even be reduced to a concept.

New retail is increasingly seen merely as a sales model, not a new species. The fundamental reason behind players endorsing the new retail concept is that **they want to continue selling products through new retail, rather than truly viewing it as a channel connecting upstream B-end and downstream C-end.** If we only see new retail as a channel, it has no real difference from traditional e-commerce; their so-called new retail is just a new sales model.

New retail actually has essential differences from traditional e-commerce, as detailed in many analyses. If we only treat it as a means to sell products, then players' endorsement aims merely to delay e-commerce's decline, not to change the industry's essence.

Many players joining the new retail track see it as just a new sales channel, unable to change the industry's essence. Thus, they practice it following traditional e-commerce models, failing to treat it as a new concept. Only when players truly see new retail as an independent and diversified existence, not just a sales channel, can it become a genuine new species.

**New retail is increasingly used as a financing tool, not a real implementation.** As the mobile internet era's dividends fade, many are distancing themselves from what once offered immense imagination. Even Taobao dropped "mobile" from its name, signaling the end of that era. When mobile internet is no longer novel, those accustomed to traditional financing models seek new means, and new retail naturally comes to the fore.

Projects that survived on concepts and so-called innovation in the mobile internet era now resort to endorsing new retail to secure funding, filling the gap left by the waning era. At this point, new retail emerged, born with a silver spoon, backed by giants like Alibaba and Tencent. Players desperate for new financing avenues seize this opportunity, endorsing new retail to attract investors.

By integrating new retail with their existing mobile internet businesses or viewing it as an extension, new retail increasingly resembles a concept used to gain capital support. When new retail is treated as a concept, these projects race ahead on the path of pandering to capital.

New retail is increasingly seen as a label, not a real existence. Amidst giants' and capital's attention, new retail is used as a label to align with giants and capital, rather than a genuine implementation. As Alibaba and Tencent engage in close combat over new retail, players who align with these giants use new retail as a label to get closer.

Through the blueprints painted by internet giants, these players see opportunities to endorse new retail by handling processes and links the giants avoid, positioning themselves as complements to the giants' systems. From this logic, new retail is just a label, not a real, implementable existence.

**When new retail is increasingly treated as a label rather than a real, implementable existence, all endorsements and attempts are mere concepts without true significance.** Thus, many new retail projects appear glamorous on the surface but are rotten inside upon implementation. The proliferation of unattended shelves and unmanned supermarkets at the outset is a direct reflection.

Despite being hyped as a trend by various players, their hidden agendas have caused new retail to lose its initial glory. People now see it as a concept, a channel, or a label, lacking substantive implementation. New retail, born with a silver spoon, has fallen from grace. Many no longer believe in it, even declaring "there is no new retail in the world." So, how can new retail avoid becoming a concept as it calms down after the hype?

2. Calm After the Hype: How Can New Retail Avoid Becoming a Concept?

As an existence endorsed by many internet giants, new retail's connotation and significance are far greater. The current chaos stems largely from blind reliance on internet-style development models. As people's understanding deepens, they may abandon mere concept-pushing and make new retail a real, implementable existence.

**Understand and practice new retail's connotation, and treat implementation as key.** People's dependence on internet-style models leads them to see new retail as a concept, avoiding real practice, ultimately making it a concept. The root cause is a failure to truly understand and practice new retail's connotation.

When various players join the track with hidden agendas, new retail risks becoming a concept. To prevent this, we must clearly understand what new retail is, its business model, and its uniqueness. By continuously practicing its logic, we can discover more new models for its development.

In my view, new retail's key lies in implementation, especially reliable implementation. Reliability means conforming to basic business laws, not just treating it as a concept. Only by implementing new retail practically and using new technologies, models, and means to solve problems can it mature, not just remain a concept.

**Identify new retail's functions and attributes, and avoid seeing it as a financing tool.** As a new species, new retail's greatest role is not merely a financing concept or label; it lies in satisfying both B-end and C-end needs. From this logic, new retail is far more than a financing tool; it represents a new species.

For players in the new retail battlefield, identifying its functions and attributes and using them to break free from internet-style models can maximize its role, not just as a financing tool. When we find these functions, we can apply new retail where it excels, not just as a concept.

Through new retail, we can reshape supply-demand relationships in traditional commerce, making industry operations more efficient; we can address pain points that the internet era couldn't, ushering in a new stage; we can find ways to meet new user needs, creating more mature models than internet-style ones. Therefore, another way to avoid new retail becoming a concept is to identify its functions and attributes.

**Deeply layout new retail's processes and links, and abandon the practice of deriving concepts.** By benchmarking internet giants, we can find ways to solve current dilemmas. After endorsing new retail, giants like Alibaba and Tencent have invested heavily in its layout. The offline scene wars are obvious, and their investment in new technologies shows their commitment.

Following the giants' lead, we must also abandon treating new retail as a concept and actively participate in its specific layout. Through deep layout, we can find suitable ways and methods for its development, bringing it to a new stage. Whether in new technologies or new scenarios, we can find ways to deeply layout new retail. As the layout deepens and improves, we can naturally find suitable models, truly making new retail an implementable existence.

Deeply laying out new retail's processes and links is essentially an active practice. Only by truly implementing new retail can it cease to be a concept and become an actively implementable process, no longer relying solely on giants and investors for survival, but becoming self-sufficient.

Various players joining the new retail battle have made this nascent market exceptionally hot, but their purposes differ. Many join merely to catch the trend, treating new retail as a concept or label. Clearly, this will lead new retail into a vicious cycle of concepts. Only by truly seeing new retail as an implementable existence can it become a genuine trend, not just a concept.

Source: Hui Chang Guan Cha (ID: menglaoshi007)
Author: Meng Yonghui, senior writer, columnist, author

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