Charles Robert Darwin, as one of the smartest people of the 19th century, long ago used 'On the Origin of Species' to tell us the truth that curiosity killed the cat. Just like in today's society, why are only a few people who maintain curiosity and act on it? Because exploring the unknown is always full of risks, and the probability of failure far exceeds the possibility of success. The natural result is that those overly curious babies often don't live long enough to pass on their genes to the next generation before they're Game Over. Yan Yan, known as the 'godfather of venture capital,' once had the argument that the startup success rate is less than 1%. Regardless of whether this conclusion is slightly exaggerated, looking at the latest casualty lists of O2O and P2P startups, and then thinking about the recent new retail trend, it's indeed enough to make startup babies want to drink a glass of 1982 Sprite to calm their nerves. To avoid becoming an early Game Over target, the marketing world once proposed an innovation theory of 'half a step ahead,' but this theory only provided a case study for 'all for naught': 'Half a step ahead' is just a concept, not operational. Some people have long legs, like Yao Ming; some have short legs, like Pan Changjiang. So, whether this half step is 50 centimeters, 30 centimeters, or even 10 centimeters, no one can say clearly. The master leads you to the door, but practice is up to the individual. As a result, companies that are doomed to die still die. And now, entrepreneurs who just crawled out of the pits of O2O and P2P, nine deaths to one life, see the new retail trend whistling loudly. Follow or not? The two little people in your mind are indeed having a fierce struggle! Just on April 22-24 this year, at the 2017 (10th) China Green Companies Annual Meeting, Ma Baba (Jack Ma) added fuel to the fire regarding the new retail trend: The future of new retail has arrived. If you don't understand or can't keep up, don't blame us for not warning you if you become a 'loser.' This is a naked 'threat'?! But... even if it's a threat, what can you do?! When the rules are made by those who break them, any skills or postures of the conservatives are futile. Just like the recent match in Chengdu between the MMA fighter and Lei Gong Tai Chi, although 20 seconds is a bit short, according to the routines of free fighting, the Tai Chi prelude hadn't even finished performing before the game came to an abrupt end. In fact, which channel reform hasn't seen the blood and tears of conservatives? At the beginning of the reform, during the decade when the state encouraged the rapid development of individual wholesale trade, it was the decade when enterprises that didn't understand the market economy suffered the most severe imbalance between production and sales; When exclusive channels began to take shape, they ended the good dream of most people making money just by opening a store; The rise of supermarkets and hypermarkets pushed distributors, who had just enjoyed a few good days, into the abyss of endless price wars; When e-commerce came, supermarkets cried again. Not to mention the embarrassment of stores with more salespeople than customers, even among internet entrepreneurs, the waves behind drive the waves ahead. Ask today who still knows Zhang Shuxin of Yinghaiwei, Wang Juntao of 8848, or Su Qiqiang of Yabao? From ancient times, only the new laugh; who has seen the old cry?! The iron law of channel replacement is nothing more than the truth that the Qing Dynasty, through over 100 years of humiliation, exchanged for an unbreakable truth: Falling behind leaves you vulnerable to attack! New retail, from a conceptual perspective, seems like a new form of terminal development, but in essence, it's a great opportunity for channel expansion. The subversion and segmentation of traditional retail methods by flashy black technology is enough to make all kinds of people who rely on existing channels restless and sleepless. In the next decade when e-commerce becomes a thing of the past and new retail takes the stage, whether we like it or not, new retail has already arrived. Even the inventors of the new retail concept haven't fully explained what new retail is. Perhaps this is exactly what makes new retail so attractive. The emergence of new channels is always the best time to redraw the hierarchy in the industry. China's first batch of rich people were born among self-employed individuals; among existing traditional advantageous brands, a large proportion were beneficiaries of the exclusive channel era; and there are the 'a lean camel is bigger than a horse' examples of Gome and Suning, and then look at Tmall and JD.com that have grown over the past decade. Channel dividends creating channel overlords has long been not a secret but a marketing common sense. Of course, most people who ride the channel dividend may make the mistake of 'only seeing the thief eat meat, not seeing the thief get beaten.' In the next decade, or even five years, new retail may bring a battlefield strewn with corpses and rivers of blood to channels. Those who make common sense mistakes will become the cost of this channel reform. 1 Doing new retail for the sake of new retail, rushing in a crowd and squeezing to death in the new retail channel. The original definition of a channel is not a point of sale, but a point of purchase. In simple terms, wherever consumers will buy things, we should appear there. Any channel only targets specific groups of people, and even new retail armed to the teeth with big data is no exception. The degree of civilization of a society depends on the diversity of choices, especially in a market economy. As for dominating the world, exclusive store channels once had this idea, and large supermarkets also came with force. Later, Tmall and JD.com figured it out and rarely mentioned dominating the world again. What exists is reasonable. Hegel's dialectical thought, even when guiding modern marketing, doesn't seem outdated at all!

  1. The development of new retail itself includes the transformation of existing stock (such as the informatization upgrade of existing retail outlets) and incremental expansion (such as Amazon's 'pop-up stores'). Vending machines and pop-up stores are channels, and community small stores and online shopping are still channel options;
  2. New retail itself is also a process of crossing the river by feeling the stones, so bugs in new technology are inevitable. Therefore, even if you don't ride the channel dividend, at least you won't become a guinea pig for new technology. Moreover, new technology itself is a tool, and the more it's used, the better it gets. When your risk resistance is insufficient, focusing on the business and product itself is more important than focusing on where the trend is. New retail is coming, don't be afraid, and don't crowd. Be ahead in concept, cautious in introduction; new retail is just a channel. At worst, think about hypermarkets and e-commerce. How fearful we were back then, and today, aren't we just as calm and indifferent? 2 From standardization to customization, products die from imitating blindly and ending up like a dog trying to be a tiger. Flexible production has always been a gimmick of new retail. The leap from B2C to C2B seems to be the ultimate means to solve the inventory nightmare. I know a cabinet company in Shenzhen. The boss keenly captured the demand for customized cabinet products, made bold moves, and spent heavily to renovate the production line. Finished goods inventory was greatly reduced, but the inventory of spare parts actually shifted. As a result, conflicts between upstream suppliers and the company intensified. Customization does not mean going against standardization; on the contrary, customization is flexible production based on a large amount of standardization. In other words, any product is disassembled step by step down to the smallest unit, and these smallest units must be largely standardized products. Will all products need customization in the future? I'm not that optimistic! On the contrary, future manufacturing enterprises will need at least three types: 1. Enterprises that insist on standardized production. They can once again use large-scale production to reduce costs and continue to be the market share leaders in price wars; 2. Upstream suppliers that do standardized production for customized enterprises. The inevitable result of social division of labor is that all products are disassembled to the smallest unit and then distributed to various OEM factories. The standardized production of upstream suppliers is the foundation for the rapid response of customized production enterprises; 3. Consumer brand enterprises that are fully customized. To some extent, customized enterprises become assembly plants, and they are better at channels, branding, and rapid assembly. 3 Mistaking the channel dividend for the norm, not becoming a 'martyr' but a 'late martyr.' Since new retail is a channel dividend, there must be a window period. Since it's a window, there will be times when it opens and closes. During the window period, there will certainly be no shortage of stories about lucky ones striking gold in the new retail channel. Coupled with the need for marketing publicity, tales of overnight wealth will also stimulate the nerves of small and medium-sized enterprises and distributors. Those who missed the window period may eventually have a day when they can't hold back. After the window period closes, they'll cling to others' successful experiences like a fool marking a boat to find a lost sword, and with the spirit of 'agriculture learns from Dazhai, industry learns from Daqing,' they'll rush to build new channels in a 'more, faster, better, cheaper' way, and then... there's no then. Such cases are too numerous to list. The most painful might be those who started e-commerce after 2013. In fact, without the channel dividend, what difference is there between e-commerce channels and traditional channels? So, if you also take 5 million yuan to start a business, planning a post-window-period startup plan with the standard of becoming a 'martyr,' you'll basically only be classified into the 'late martyr' group.