What exactly is new retail? Finally made it clear!

For many things, we must be in awe, and we can also use subversive logic or innovative thinking to do it. But no matter what, some fundamental things still have to return. Nowadays, most people who are talking about "new retail" are talking about "new", and few people think about "retail".

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Since "new retail" is "new" at the front and "retail" at the back, what we have to think about should be how retail evolves and develops? Compared to yesterday, where is our retail today "new"?

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From primitive economic barter to small shops and small capital management, and later department stores and chain stores. The retail industry has evolved in the market for nearly a hundred years, and the real retail started from department stores.

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Everyone knows that at that time commodity production began to be industrialized. After industrialization, cross-regional circulation of retail occurred. After the problem of product integration and deployment was solved, the real retail business emerged. After the supermarket solved the efficiency problem through the information revolution, and then to our storeless retail operation today, the concept of "new retail" came into being.

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Looking at all the changes in the evolution history of the retail industry, the logic of the retail industry's evolution has fundamentally failed to break through the three core elements of "goods, market, and people". Commodity production needs to be mass-produced to solve the problem of circulation, so the origin and focus of retailing at the beginning is the goods.

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Everyone needs to organize the goods and sell them in one place, and then the mass production of goods becomes larger and larger, and the stores become larger and larger, and there will be a change in the "market". From the very beginning it was department store retailing to the category stores at the back. Gome, Suning, Wal-Mart, and today's popular convenience stores, these series of developments and changes are actually "market" changes.

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China's old retail has always been centered on the integration and deployment of commodities and the location of the market's flow of people. Including today, there are still some very good retail companies, such as Gome, Suning, and Smith Barney hypermarkets. They use the assembly of goods as the core of their operations, and they have never focused on the collection of consumers as the core of their operations.

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The focus of the old retail is not on "people", but now the fifth round of changes in retail is precisely the changes caused by "people".

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To be precise, the retail industry has undergone five major changes and developments, and now we are in the process of transforming from the fourth to the fifth. In this change and transformation, I think there are two key points:

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1. The first four changes in the retail industry are very distinct, and there are obvious dividing points. But so far it is very vague, including when Jack Ma defined "new retail", his key word is the integration of online and offline, in other words, it is the result of the fourth revolution in the retail industry and the result of the fifth revolution that is about to be completed. A fusion between.

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2. The second point is data assets. This is another very vague concept. Since entering the IT era, we have always had data assets. The changes brought to it today are mainly changes in focus and direction. In the past, big data may be more about the integration and distribution of statistical enterprises, but now it may be more converted to the integration of customer resources and the integration of online and offline traffic.

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The inherent advantage of online companies is the grasp of "people" and the grasp of "users". Instead, "goods" and "fields" have become disadvantages. Therefore, online companies must develop offline, integrate offline "goods" and "field" resources to the greatest extent, and complete the comprehensive scale expansion of the enterprise. This is why "new retail" is a challenge from online to offline. In other words, online companies want to carry the flag offline to make a concept.

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The focus and focus on the three factors of "goods, market, and people" are different in each era. In our era, if the focus of retail is still on "goods" and "market", and there is no good grasp of the resonance between consumers and consumer demand, then this is not "new retail."

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Similarly, if there are good data resources and operational plans on the client side, but the two elements of "goods" and "fields" are not included in the development plan, this is not new retail.

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The Four Evolutions of "New Retail" in the Future

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The core of "New Retail" is the accelerated evolution of the online and offline interfaces. The problem of "goods, fields, and people" I talked about before is actually a problem of back-end efficiency and a problem of front-end experience. The front desk is for our users and consumers. The background is mainly for enterprises to improve the efficiency of enterprise management and resource integration and distribution.

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For all companies, the transformation of "new retail" is a superposition of elements. Just like the front desk of a convenience store is still a convenience store, but the backstage has undergone drastic changes. For example, in Japan's 7-11, the changes in the background are not the same, and the current level of profitability is not the same.

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Another example is Liu Qiangdong of JD.com, who is also concerned about the changes in the background. He said he did not pursue profitability, because if he reduced the cost of one point in logistics, for JD.com, if the back-end material supply chain is 100 billion, one point is about 1 billion cost savings, which can be greatly improved. Turning into profit.

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Of course, the reduction we are talking about here is not the reduction in the quality and efficiency of his back-end supply chain, but the opposite. To improve the quality and efficiency of the back-end supply chain from all aspects, and reduce the investment in capital ratio, we can achieve cost savings and achieve Industry profitability.

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In the era of "new retail", what is our core logic? What can we change? What can't we change? Each company will reap different results after doing this multiple-choice question. Where is the "new retail" going? In other words, what kind of situation will the current state of "new retail" evolve into in the future?

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The first is the evolution and upgrade of business formats. MINISO is a typical "new retail" enterprise discussed today. Its counterpart in Japan is Daiso, which is the 100 yen shop in Japan.

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In a sense, MINISO is doing a hundred-yen shop business in China, because our economy is about to fall into a state of depression and austerity just like the previous Japan, and consumers have also entered A particularly tired stage. There is no such business format for 100-yuan stores in China, and MINISO has broken out of the market in a brand-new form.

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The second is the change in business logic. The Japanese consumer market we are seeing is actually very large. For example, drugstores appeared in the U.S. in 1944, drugstores in Japan appeared in 1961, while drugstores in my country have only just begun, and Japanese drugstores have been in the past few decades. It has gone through three or four changes, so now everyone can see a cosmeceutical brand like Matsumoto Kiyoshi.

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What is behind it? It represents pharmacy + daily groceries + entity + part of daily necessities. This product combination is completely inconsistent with the combination logic of supermarket products. It is actually the business logic that is changing.

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The third is the brand change. This is a point that I feel particularly deep. I have done brand research for so many years and have been strengthening the concept of branding in the market. But what I want to talk about today is the underlying design. Where is the underlying design currently?

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It can be said that it is a basic component and an element that your business must have for development. If this is not done, you will have lost the ability to compete with others and you will not even be able to get admission tickets.

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Therefore, we used to call retail collection stores, and in the future, they will gradually transition to SPA mode. Whether it is MUJI or Uniqlo, they are all SPA models, that is, a retailer business model with brand expertise. The future of "new retail" development will also begin to slowly transition from the production of specialty stores to the SPA model, which is a very important retail leap.

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The fourth is to pay more attention to experience. As a brand, as a "new retail" company, no matter what kind of external logical expression you are, in essence it is still serving customers, so customer experience becomes particularly important.

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Like the current proposal-based sales and retail industry in Japan, it is what we often call a lifestyle proposal company today. In the past, retail did not make proposals, such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour. Why they are now being overwhelmed by e-commerce is because their business model is a accumulation of goods, allowing customers to choose what they need.

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If our offline retail industry wants to survive, some people must provide goods and some people provide services. But it does not mean that the offline retail industry has to provide customers with unlimited services from scratch.

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I think this is a core business format and a core business model for future development. Of course, there are also the Internet celebrity business and themed business we are facing today, which need to be explored and dig in depth in the future.

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In fact, the development of "new retail" is a transformation centered on customers and users. Fundamentally speaking, the essence of business is to serve people, to be seen by others, and to create value points for customers that are different from traditional fields. This is the development opportunity faced by enterprises in the era of "new retail".

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Including what we call the business logic, it is also generated with the customer as the core, and the upgrading of the "market" in the "new retail" era is also based on the customer, from the previous upgrade of the store to the current upgrade of the buying market. The customer-centric venue change is completely different from before.

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However, many companies regard big data as the core of the development of "new retail". There is no company in China that can do a good job with big data, including Alibaba. Because the data we have collected is incomplete, no company can produce complete closed-loop data.

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And the current big data is used for tracking, analysis, and mining, but in the environment of "new retail", the core of big data is to make consumption prediction and insight. If this is not possible, the so-called big data is all It's useless. Too many companies with big data have died as a result.