Click to read the original text for details. A few days ago, I was shocked to hear that Huidanxia was acquired by Mengniu. Although Mengniu later denied it, this incident sparked a major industry discussion. In the past two years, the voice of brand owners building their own B2B has been endless. For example, Haitian launched Xiaokang Maimal, Budweiser launched Yingxiao+, COFCO Coca-Cola launched Cola Go, Uni-President launched e-Mall, Master Kong launched Shifutong, and other brands are also planning to build their own B2B platforms. When chatting with some brand owner friends about the reasons for building their own B2B, the biggest concern is: the trend of platforms growing bigger is unstoppable, and if sales volume becomes too large, there will be a phenomenon of the store bullying the customer. Look at the exploitation of brand owners by hypermarkets over the years, and you can see a glimpse of it. This is the result that all brand owners least want to see. In addition, if transaction data leaks and is used by competitors, uncontrollable market prices, and disruption of market prices are all multiple factors that drive brand owners to build their own. At the same time, the digitization of brand owners' own channel distribution is also an inevitable action. Because once it succeeds, the entire chain is digitized, data is accurate and transparent, and there is no risk of leakage; at the same time, price, promotion, and market expense投放 through self-built channels will be more convenient and precise. From an application perspective, most brand owners who build their own platforms want to use it for themselves first, and then after opening up the channel, some gradually open it to other non-competing brands. Only a few brand owners consider it merely as an ordering tool for their own company, or as a backup. But after a round of communication, my biggest feeling is that the effect of brand owners building their own B2B may not be as good as imagined. It may even be a pitfall, investing huge human resources and energy, and may not necessarily lead to good results. Why is the logic of self-building not valid? 1. Although the sales scale of first-line brand owners is large, the penetration rate per store is insufficient. A small store normally operates 900-3000 SKUs, but if a brand owner can place more than 30 SKUs in the store, that is already an extremely high number. Calculated by SKU count, a single brand's SKU count is less than 1-3% of the total products in the store. From a sales perspective, many brand owners have sales of tens of billions, which is indeed large, but the problem is that if distributed among more than 6 million small stores nationwide, you will find that no brand's single product, except China Tobacco, can account for more than 20% of retail sales in small stores, and the annual average is less than 10%. Most brands' best-selling products in mom-and-pop stores are usually just a few SKUs. More importantly, most products do not need to be ordered daily. Without the intervention of salesmen, small store owners have no motivation to actively order from the brand's APP. So from the perspective of SKU and sales share, it is difficult for brand owners to convince a small store owner to actively download or install an APP or mini-program that accounts for a small proportion of their business. 2. The needs of brand owners and the needs of small stores cannot be unified. In the small store B2B survey released by New Distribution in March, it clearly reflected that the needs of small stores are complete goods, low prices, and fast delivery. But the needs of brand owners we surveyed are: stable prices, full coverage of single-store categories, full channel penetration, and full terminal sales. These two needs are not in the same value direction. What small stores hope for is exactly what brand owners least want to see. Similarly, what brand owners want to do is not the need of small stores. When the value needs of brand owners and small store owners are not unified, how can we expect brand owners to design an APP or operating system that is very popular with small stores? 3. It is difficult to convince "other" brands to use your APP. In order to make it more convenient for small stores to order, many brand owners hope to gradually open it to other brand owners after building it successfully. This is actually a false proposition. Find some non-competing large brands to cooperate. First, other large brands also have the ability to build their own, so why should they use your platform? Second, pure matching, in order to protect the interests of offline distributors, the online price cannot be low. If it is not low, there is no order. If it is a small brand, the above problems can be solved, but then, small brands themselves have weak channels. If you open the APP, should the supply chain be shared? If not shared, the delivery of small brands will have problems. So in summary, sharing with other brands for matching orders is meaningless. In addition, if you open sharing, will it affect your distributors' focus on selling your products? Some brand owners just want distributors to put all their products online, but the problem is that distributors are also afraid. They are afraid that if all data is online, you can easily control them. In addition, other brand owners and distributors have their own salesmen running, so why should they sell on your APP? Of course, this does not include other complex issues such as backend supply chain management. Many brand owners may have a budget of only 500-600 million yuan for B2B. Many B2B companies have invested nearly 10 billion yuan, only to operate in dozens of cities, and still have not figured it out. In summary, small stores will not install an APP for a brand owner, and other brands will not actively seek cooperation with you just because of your high coverage density. Think about it in another field: where do you book airline tickets? Ctrip or Qunar? I believe few people actively book tickets from China Southern or China Eastern. Division of roles: B2B is naturally a super second-tier distributor. From a business logic perspective, B2B is naturally a super second-tier distributor, providing one-stop services for small stores by aggregating products. If the purpose of a brand owner building a B2B platform is not to serve small stores, not from the perspective of a super digital second-tier distributor, then your B2B cannot be called B2B; at most, it is a self-use ordering system for the brand owner. The core logic of channel digital transformation is to change the operating system. Most brand owners think about channel digitalization only from the perspective of current channel problems and needs, without analyzing from a higher time dimension and deeper underlying logic. So regarding self-built B2B, I suggest that unless it is a brand like Liangpin Puzi that integrates production, supply, and sales, the significance of self-building is not great. For brand owners, if the B2B platform does not do close franchising with convenience stores, there is still a long way to go before it becomes mature. So at this stage, brand owners should consider how to digitize their own distribution network. This digitalization includes three online aspects: transaction online, inventory online, and data online. If brand owners can first complete the onlineization of transactions, inventory, and data, it is already a very impressive thing. Because only with these three online can they avoid being eliminated in the next market competition. In fact, market competition has already shifted from channel competition to traffic competition and scenario penetration. At this stage, the existing operation and management model of traditional FMCG enterprises is an efficiency system, oriented to maximize production efficiency. Enterprises' current attitude towards B2B is mainly to patch. On the premise of ensuring the original efficiency system is not destroyed, new members are added. But this kind of supplement is not aimed at reconstructing and designing for future diverse consumer needs and fragmented retail scenarios. True reconstruction requires enterprises to evolve from an efficiency system to a value system. The efficiency system is production-oriented; the customer value system is consumer demand-oriented, which requires brand owners to redesign products, marketing, and supply chain systems based on consumer needs and scenarios. This system is by no means as simple as building a B2B:
Based on different consumer needs, different retail scenarios, and different categories, re-sort and build a new supply chain delivery system;
Middle-platform, small teams, amoeba organization;
Separation of people and goods, services and goods, funds and customers;
Professionalization, systematization, onlineization, financialization;
Efficient, flexible, precise, low redundancy. Of course, to achieve these, there is still a long way to go for large enterprises.