Source: Lu Jiu Finance (ID: liujiucaijing69) The increase in the number and duration of shopping festivals has had a greater impact on offline merchants while also reducing consumer excitement. Online and offline are just different sales channels, and the underlying demands of the times are similar for both. Regardless of the channel, those with personality and core competitiveness can maintain their own pace, while those without characteristics can only engage in price wars, either being rolled up or dying. Image source: Lu Jiu Finance In the early autumn in a small city in southeastern Shanxi, the streets are bustling, with loudspeakers at various merchants' doors playing discount information on a loop, or shop assistants standing on chairs loudly soliciting business. In stark contrast to the lively streets, most stores are nearly empty. In spacious clothing stores, only a few customers wander around and leave empty-handed. Shoe store walls are covered with various products, and the boss sits alone behind the counter playing with his phone. In home appliance stores, salespeople chat happily across the aisle, rarely interrupted by customers throughout the day. Double 11: the excitement belongs to e-commerce platforms, seemingly unrelated to offline businesses. On October 20, Li Jiaqi's first Double 11 live stream began, selling 36.1581 million items with sales of 10.653 billion yuan. After the live stream, Li Jiaqi posted on Weibo that about 250 million people watched the live stream. After "3, 2, 1, link up," thousands of people rushed to place orders, and many who failed to buy thought their phones or networks were slow, angrily posting on WeChat Moments that they must change their phones. In recent years, e-commerce shopping festivals have become more frequent, and each one lasts longer. Many small merchants say that if 618 and Double 11 don't die, offline businesses won't revive. Are offline and online really so conflicting and incompatible? Whose home turf is Double 11? Is there still a way out for offline businesses? Double 11 Without a Home Turf In the past, we often regarded the e-commerce platform that invented a shopping festival as "playing at home," with Double 11 being Alibaba's home turf and 618 being JD.com's. Now, all platforms want to get a piece of the action during shopping festivals to boost sales. "Double 11 and 618 are no longer limited to specific e-commerce platforms; all platforms value them equally. Competition has intensified, and e-commerce has also become involuted," said Gao Jianfeng, founding partner of Shanghai Bogu Consulting. In addition to the increase in participating platforms, other factors have diluted the concept of home turf. For example, the duration of shopping festivals has extended from one day to over 20 days including the pre-sale period; from waiting for a midnight flash sale to being able to pay deposits for purchases over more than ten days. The extension of people's decision-making period allows time for comparison during the shopping festival, similar to normal shopping, further leveling differences between platforms. While each shopping festival cycle lengthens, the number of shopping festivals is also rapidly increasing. Double 11 and 618 were the only two e-commerce shopping festivals for many years, but later Taobao's Double 12, Vipshop's "419," Pinduoduo's "55," Kuaishou's "616," Douyin's "818" were launched one after another, along with almost continuous New Year's Goods Festival, Goddess Festival, Fans Festival, etc. The successive bombardment of shopping festivals has basically revealed the bottom prices of manufacturers. The discounts each platform can obtain from manufacturers are similar, and unless platforms subsidize themselves, the preferential strength is also similar. Although the home turf is no longer obvious, differences still exist among e-commerce platforms. Since the start of this year's Double 11 shopping festival, the three giants Alibaba (Taobao + Tmall), JD.com, and Pinduoduo still dominate, with the largest discounts and most participating categories. Various carefully compiled Excel sheets are everywhere, and Li Jiaqi's GMV has reached a new high. Douyin's interest e-commerce and Kuaishou's trust e-commerce seem more like joining the fun without much noise; the M2C model of Biyao Mall, following its usual practice and personality, did not participate in Double 11 at all. Now e-commerce platforms are either holding shopping festivals or on the way to holding them. Since the first Double 11 in 2009, e-commerce shopping festivals have grown from one to N, from single-platform activities to almost all platforms participating, from one day to over 20 days, becoming increasingly involuted. Initially, the activity period was short, and consumers had to choose between platforms to grab midnight flash sales. The platform that created the shopping festival was considered the home turf with the largest discounts, such as JD.com for 618 and Taobao/Tmall for Double 11. Now, with more discounted products and longer durations, midnight flash sales have been replaced by long pre-sales, and the concept of home turf has gradually faded. In short, sometimes e-commerce shopping festivals are an involuted game that one must participate in. Even online platforms that have to join e-commerce festivals may not do well, such as Secoo. Offline businesses, on the other hand, have undergone greater changes due to shopping festivals. Offline Formats That Can't Catch Their Breath E-commerce festivals come one after another, almost uninterrupted throughout the year. The involuted competition among e-commerce platforms is undoubtedly a disaster for offline formats. Originally, shopping festivals occurred only twice a year, each lasting one day, plus the surrounding anticipation and recovery, at most one or two weeks. Offline merchants only needed to endure the brief impact once or twice a year, which was acceptable; now, waves of online impact come one after another, leaving offline merchants almost no time to catch their breath. "(The longer Double 11 in recent years has) a significant impact on offline formats, with offline consumption weakening for up to 2 months. The first month is consumption anticipation, and the latter month is post-consumption slowdown. Low-frequency big-ticket items like home appliances are most affected; clothing, cosmetics, consumer electronics, small appliances, and other products with long shelf life and high purchase frequency are also greatly affected; relatively less affected are high-frequency, short-shelf-life food and beverages," said Gao Jianfeng. A clothing store owner told Lu Jiu Finance: "During Double 11, many people come to our store to try on clothes, note the style and size, don't buy, and go home to search online. Later, we had no choice but to offer discounts like 'spend X get Y off' or give gifts, and sometimes new products also participate. Now we also have longer activity periods. Do you think it has an impact? Anyway, I'm just clearing stock now and not doing it anymore." Many small merchants even say that if 618 and Double 11 don't die, offline businesses won't revive, "because the massive short-term online shopping disrupts the normal consumption rhythm offline." Lu Jiu Finance believes this statement is somewhat extreme, as the impact of online on offline started long ago, and the "normal" consumption rhythm should also change with changes in consumption channels and methods. Cui Lili, director of the E-commerce Research Institute at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, believes: "As consumers' deterministic demand decreases, it indeed affects the daily consumption rhythm. Deterministic demand has e-commerce festivals, and uncertain demand has live streaming and content seeding. In fact, from the perspective of the times, there is no longer a so-called 'normal offline consumption rhythm'; that era has passed." Zhu Zhiyong, founder and CEO of Xunwushe, also said: "For product procurement alone, Double 11 is not like Spring Festival or National Day, but even the Spring Festival discounts and National Day specials before Double 11 did not involve 'disrupting consumption rhythm.' Compared to Double 11, the long-term, low-price, high-volume live streaming format has clearly affected offline formats. But existence is reasonable; offline businesses need to adapt to the times and innovate." It seems that traditional offline businesses, if they don't innovate, may always live in the shadow of e-commerce. The Counterattack of Offline Consumption Zhu Zhiyong's claim of "adapting to the times and innovating" is backed by confidence. His Xunwushe is an offline outlet supermarket that holds activities every day, with no tricks, just discounted prices. This year, it has opened over a dozen stores. In October, it opened several new stores in more down-market cities. Recently, it opened a clearance discount warehouse in Zhengzhou High-tech Zone, which has been extremely popular, continuously setting new sales records and showing good development momentum. "The initial reason is that in the scenario of immediate consumption, giving customers lower prices than planned procurement or similar prices to online shopping is clearly a good shopping experience, reducing the difficulty of consumption decisions," Zhu Zhiyong said when discussing Xunwushe's model. Over the years, e-commerce shopping festivals have been similar, with little breakthrough innovation. Coupled with extended battle lines and complex gameplay, they have essentially transformed from initial platform subsidies and genuine discounts to routine discounts, such as raising prices by 30% before discounting, and complaints that Double 11 is more expensive than usual appear every year. Offline immediate consumption and experiential consumption have gradually become standardized in development, with services and characteristics improving, thus having more development space. The demand for high-quality offline consumption scenarios is growing, and merchants who do well are still scarce. If more offline merchants can seize and amplify their advantages, they can launch a counterattack. In fact, over the years, facing the impact of online commerce, a small number of offline merchants have chosen to mix genuine and fake products to increase profits, most merchants don't know how to change and can only protest uselessly, while other brands that know how to use offline advantages have not been greatly affected and continue to develop rapidly. Similar to daily low-price outlet supermarkets like HotMaxx and Xunwushe, there are also convenience stores like Meiyijia and Bianlifeng, and collection stores like HEMA and KKV, among others. When total consumption remains basically stable, online consumption indeed substitutes for offline consumption. But when a company has sufficient personality or other competitiveness, price is not the first factor influencing consumer purchases, and in the wave of price cuts during shopping festivals, the impact is relatively smaller and recovery is faster. "The ways for offline to respond to online impact include providing experiential selected products (for example, a good new product that you wouldn't buy online or see often, but seeing the physical packaging, display, introduction, etc. offline makes you want to experience it), price advantages (the same product at a price similar to online shopping, pure price comparison, not the cheapest, but how much more expensive), which requires greatly improving product selection ability, supply chain capability, and control of discount product turnover, while ideally combining quality content and marketing," Zhu Zhiyong summarized based on his experience. Integration of Online and Offline Product selection, supply chain, turnover rate, content marketing... These terms are not limited to requirements for offline merchants; in fact, when discussing e-commerce competitiveness, these terms appear again and again. JD.com's supply chain system and relatively low turnover days are its advantages, and Douyin's interest e-commerce focuses on content marketing. In the final analysis, online and offline are just different sales channels, each with advantages and disadvantages, but the underlying demands of the times are similar. Cui Lili said: "All e-commerce festivals should now become promotional festivals for all merchants. From my observation, offline merchants or brand merchants all want to get a piece of these festivals. The expansion of consumption festivals should involve all merchants, all in competition. If you insist on the opposition between online and offline, I think this statement has a specific perspective; it's also correct to say it's competition among all merchants for a share of the consumption cake." Now, it's not easy to find purely offline formats. Offline merchants seeking development either join food delivery platforms or learn to use online tools for precise traffic attraction, enhance experience, and then achieve large consumption. "I think this era no longer calls for confrontation; everyone needs to go online, just depending on how to go or how to combine online and offline to better retain consumers. " Cui Lili said. Many merchants have realized this and begun to combine online and offline to maximize their business value. Earlier this year, Lu Jiu Finance found in Jingdezhen that many stores were almost unattended, but the owners were doing live streaming. After communicating with some owners, we learned that many customers had been to Jingdezhen, bought products in the store, and now repurchase on e-commerce platforms; some new consumers feel more assured about the products because of the physical store. ** Attributing offline weakness to e-commerce shopping festivals is inevitably biased. When total consumption remains basically stable, online consumption indeed substitutes for offline consumption, but when a company has sufficient personality or other competitiveness, price is not the first factor influencing consumer purchases, and in the wave of price cuts during shopping festivals, the impact is relatively smaller and recovery is faster. Many offline stores without characteristics are forced to either mix genuine and fake products to increase profits or join the shopping festival ranks through price cuts, buy-one-get-one, etc. Some brands know how to amplify offline advantages like high immediacy and strong experience, and can compete without activities. In future shopping festivals, the home turf advantage of online platforms may gradually disappear, eventually becoming an integrated carnival of online and offline. For example, Xunwushe, an offline brand discount store based in Zhengzhou, increased its investment in short videos exploring stores on Douyin and Xiaohongshu in October, bringing efficient traffic. Are you "watching" me?