Author: Qian Dehu

Anyone can see that Tencent and BABA are engaged in a new round of arms race.

The Spring Festival in 2018 has not yet come, and the flames of war have already raged. In addition to a small number of giants such as China Resources Wanjia and some regional players, most of the offline supermarkets with a large volume have finished standing in line, among which, Da Runfa, which went to BABA, and Carrefour, which joined Tencent, are the most eye-catching. There is a growing sense that the powerful capital and cash reserves of technology giants are becoming a "black hole" for offline businesses.

RT-Mart and Carrefour are just one of the battlefields, and the convenience store chain has long been the site of a secret battle between BABA and JD.com, both of whom are building a new retail circle of friends. Tencent, who was originally hiding behind the Jingteng alliance, also went to the front of the stage and finally wanted to face BABA in the new retail battlefield.

(picture from China Merchants)

Both sides have their own strategies: one side focuses on new retail, the other focuses on unbounded retail, and both are trying to use capital to pry more offline resources into their own strategic system.

Whether it is "new retail" or "online and offline integration", the most fundamental driving force and starting point is that the online traffic cost is getting higher and higher.Even with the current development of e-commerce, offline retail still accounts for more than 80%, and more importantly, online and offline costs have become more and more similar.

In this case, the two horses invade offline, and offline has become a must.

BABA seems to be ahead of Tencent in terms of technical reserves and actual case operations in terms of new retail. As can be seen from the picture above, BABA's camp obviously started early, had more sites, and spent a lot of money.

We can also see the clue from the technology input. The financial report shows that BABA's technology investment in fiscal year 2017 was 17 billion yuan, which has already exceeded Baidu, Inc. 's 10.15 billion, Tencent 11.8 billion and JD.com 5.4 billion in the same period. In the next three years, BABA's technology investment will be 100 billion yuan. In fact, the total R & D investment of Tencent Alliance in the retail field is still far less than that of BABA in the retail field. This determines the ability of the scientific and technological foundation in the retail field. In addition to the scientific and technological foundation of retail, BABA's investment in retail surrounding technology is also more extensive and in-depth than Tencent Alliance.

If Tencent does not do new retail, merchant super payment portals, data entrances, traffic entrances and so on will all be affected by BABA's growing new retail business.

The biggest card in Tencent's hand is that Wechat has its own endless traffic and Mini Program, which can connect all effects. Its essence is to integrate WeChat Mini Programs and JD.com retail, Tencent's social platform, content platform and JD.com 's trading system, and fully integrate online shopping, offline shopping and media social networking big data. Tencent's strategy seems to be a kind of "decentralization", but in fact it revolves around the centralization of the flow entrance of Tencent Empire.

Throughout the strategies of both sides, it is not difficult to see that BABA can not be in a hurry, step by step to build a new retail empire, and gradually make himself in an invincible position. While Tencent cannot wait, he must quickly seize resources and position through the explosive resources in his hands.

In this context, Hailan House as a representative of a large category, as a data gold mine with 5500 offline stores, A-share clothing brand with the highest market capitalization naturally jumped into the eyes of Erma.

In August last year, Jack Ma paid a high-profile night visit to Heilan Group and said he hoped to achieve more and deeper cooperation with Heilan House in the "Internet +" era in the future. Unilateral also reached strategic collaboration on the "new wholesale" level. During the "double 11" period in 2017, Hailan House was also a representative case of "Tmall going to sea" and offline "wisdom store".

The cooperation model between BABA and Hailan House is to get more key data of "people, goods and markets" through intelligent transformation of offline stores.And once the transformation of the new retail under the BABA system is completed, it will be a transformative change for retail enterprises: getting through the online and offline crowds and traffic, and fine management, including members, supply chain, financial system, card coupons, activities, distribution and so on, to provide more accurate services to customers.

Who would have thought that just a few days ago, Tencent bought nearly 2.5 billion yuan into Hailan House, holding 5.31% of the shares. At the same time, the two sides planned to jointly set up an industrial investment fund of 10 billion yuan.

It is not difficult to imagine that after "taking down" Hailan House by way of shareholding, Tencent and JD.com will spare no effort to give support in the flow, set up an example, and let Hailan House make "fast money" quickly. Hailan House can get the traffic of Wechat fission, official account and Mini Program, which far exceeds the traffic in Taobao system and can bring huge development opportunities for Hailan House in the short term. This kind of example will make more offline giants shine their eyes and quickly fall into the arms of Tencent.

This is also in line with Tencent's consistent practice. To put it simply, it is to choose efficient enterprises (JD.com, Yonghui, Vipshop Holdings Limited, Hailan House.) to cooperate, give relevant enterprises the resources they need, and eventually empower and connect all the scenes. Tencent's new retail layout pays more attention to the output of capabilities.

(Liu Qiangdong, the important core of Jingteng Alliance, speaks for Hailan House.)

The choice of Hailan House, and its performance after the choice, symbolizes the future of a major business category.

Clothing category due to the long industrial chain, non-standard, can affect the terminal sales of too many factors, resulting in this market is not easy to control, the whole market concentration is not high, can not form a high market concentration.And it is precisely because the seasonal change of men's wear is relatively slow, the user loyalty of men's wear is also higher than that of women's wear, the degree of standardization of goods is higher than that of women's wear, the market concentration is also relatively better, and it is relatively easier to form a threshold of scale. and digital integration of the upstream industrial chain. It is better to realize WYSIWYG. Hailan House itself is one of the few brands in the clothing industry that have the ability to control goods.

Therefore, as an excellent "experimental field", its output naturally represents how and who to play with the "new retail". For Tencent, the Mini Program e-commerce template that is being built at an accelerated pace and the relatively mature offline ordering system all indicate its great offline ambitions. There are not many commercial targets like Hailan House that can validate imperial ambitions.

In the battle of Tianwangshan, the two horses dared not take it lightly. Despite the fact that Tencent seems to have the upper hand at present, BABA may not be without a new killer mace. And whoever finally brings Hailan House into his new retail circle of friends must create a template effect and a demonstration effect. To be able to knock on the clothing industry, and then more offline retail system doors.