Black swan events also give opportunities to new He Tuber entrants in the private sector.

The contradiction between supply and demand during the epidemic has given community group buying a shot in the arm. The group buying market of Pinduoduo and Meituan has been further consolidated, and the main scene of their sales is precisely in the private sector. Countless team leaders, like ant soldiers, work tirelessly to help giants connect users and trading opportunities in the private domain.

Similarly, regional group buying companies that were once crippled by giants have once again used the group store model to become popular in the past two years and develop their own characteristics. Standardized private domain operations such as violently attracting followers in seven days and placing orders quickly in three days have also led to new exploration and innovation. In this track, like other private sector vertical tracks, scale has been formed from group batch companies and group batch platforms on the supply chain side, to team leader incubation and training, to industry service providers.

Due to the impact of the epidemic, instant retail in the same city has entered a rapid development lane. Whether mainstream players are Meituan, Ele.me, JD.com, or Douyin, whether they are offline physical merchants connected in an open mode or a self-operated model, their customers in addition to paying from the platform A considerable proportion of advertising also comes from the private domain pool of offline retail companies.

At the other end, the social group buying model represented by Kuai Tuan Tuan and Qun Solitaire began to rise rapidly.

In 2020, Kuai Tuan Tuan's transaction volume is still at the tens of billions level. This level only belongs to a medium position in the e-commerce industry. Many social e-commerce platforms are also of this size. However, due to the impact of the epidemic, a large number of community residents and group leaders were involved in group starting, and Kuai Tuantuan ushered in rapid growth.

Compared with the heavy operation of community group buying, community group buying is light enough and has a lower threshold for participation. It is a bit like Taoke. However, compared with Taoke, Kuai Tuan group leaders can control the supply chain and pricing power themselves, and users are also in control. On the hand, because of the positioning of the tool, it quickly won the favor of the group leaders.

During the epidemic in Shanghai alone, hundreds of thousands of people participated as group leaders. After the epidemic, the tide receded, and middle and tail group leaders gradually withdrew from the market, leaving a number of loyal channels for Kuai Tuantuan.
Similar to the historical evolution of the Taobao Alliance, the traffic division with Kuai Tuan Tuan as the core has grown rapidly, and product selection service providers, industry activities, suppliers, and channels have all settled in. The 28th effect also appears here. Although the team leader has the power to price the supply chain, not all team leaders have the ability to integrate the supply chain.

And Alimama’s tangled mentality back then was also played out again on Kuai Tuan Tuan. On the one hand, Kuai Tuantuan is positioned as a tool, but on the other hand, it cannot restrain its desire to become a platform from time to time. It hopes to control the upstream of group leaders and reduce them to Pinduoduo’s distribution channels, just like the Taobao Alliance supported and attacked the Taoke channel in the past.

These vacillating moves of Kuai Tuantuan also quickly attracted a group of new market sharers. Meituan, Tencent, JD.com, Youzan, Fenxiang, Yunji, Weidian, Jingling, etc. have all entered the market with their own differentiated products.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it always rhymes.

Whoever is user-centered, who can truly help the private sector retail industry improve efficiency and reduce costs, whoever is open enough to insist on decentralization, will be supported by users and the private sector channel army.

In decentralized private sector retail, it is not feasible to build a centralized empire.

What Tencent can’t do, no one can do.

In 2023, the e-commerce industry will be shocked.

On November 29, Pinduoduo’s market value surpassed Alibaba for the first time.

This is the beginning of the return of decentralization and the inevitable cyclical contraction of centralized business models.

In the new economic cycle, new players have a place, which means that they cannot stand without breaking.

Break, start with decentralization.

In the retail sector over the past ten years. The centralized e-commerce empire giant adopts a discriminatory and suppressive strategy against small and medium-sized sellers on the supply chain side, and adopts a method of both utilizing and suppressing on the traffic side. This is all to safeguard their own security and interests, and they do not intend to use the spirit of Internet platform to make the entire private sector retail industry chain bigger and stronger.

There is a huge difference between what they can do and what they actually do.

That’s why Munger said before his death: I discovered that Alibaba turned out to be a damn retailer.

Then the old man decisively sold his stocks and fled.

Looking back at Taobao in 2003, Alibaba and Jack Ma were so high-spirited at that time.

eBay wants to build an empire, like a shark, buying up advertising in an attempt to strangle Alibaba.

Jack Ma, with his alligator spirit, cooperated with many decentralized website alliances and led a group of ant soldiers to defeat the empire.

At that time, Ali, a young man, regarded himself as a hero of the open Internet. He talked about swordsmanship in the West Lake and led a group of grassroots to conquer the world. The ten characters of "Make it easy to do business in the world" were clearly written on the banner of the rebel army.

This is the simplest spirit of Jack Ma’s generation of Internet entrepreneurs, the original ecology of the Internet spirit, and the essence of the Internet economic model.

However, as the country grows bigger and bigger, Alibaba becomes further and further away from making it easy to do business in the world.

Back then, the dragon-slaying boy was surrounded by centralized retail empires both online and offline. He could only rely on a decentralized business model to break through the blockade. Now, the young dragon-slaying boy has an empire, but he is once again facing challenges from new decentralized opponents.

The reason is that with the expansion of scale and the consolidation of status, bottlenecks in the centralized e-commerce model will inevitably appear. When things are scarce and expensive, Alibaba can only adopt a bidding advertising model, and small and medium-sized merchants are forced to leave. On the traffic side, the bigger the company is, the more uneasy Alibaba feels, and support and support for the traffic side appear periodically.

After the siege of the city in October of that year, Ali had already made his choice.

Today's Alibaba is not surpassed by Pinduoduo, but tripped by its own imperial model.
The root cause is not the mentality of Alibaba’s top management, but the self-locking of the business model.

Can Alibaba defeat the decentralized model with its centralized model?

If it can, why can’t it do the centralized opponents it defeated back then?

Just like in 2011, if Tencent had not decisively adopted a thorough open platform strategy, what would Tencent be like today?

It’s hard to imagine, but certainly not optimistic.

Openness is the gene of the Internet business model and the most economical path for the Internet. Decentralization allows nodes to be more fully connected. More open connections will bring more trading opportunities and create more value. Centralized platforms need to resist the urge to make huge profits from this connection.

The bidding advertising model has created a centralized profit empire, but also tied its hands and feet, just like Baidu's predicament in previous years.

Private sector retail naturally has the gene of decentralization and is destined to be a market where a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend. There is no possibility of a centralized empire. Whoever tries to build an empire will be ruined.

There may be the city-state of Athens here, but there certainly will not be Qin Shihuang.

Those who follow the crowd will gain big profits

Get small profits from those who desire

Looking back at the history of private sector retail development over the past thirteen years, it is a heroic epic of mass decentralized entrepreneurship.

Fortunately, Lao Zhang has been involved in the industry and personally participated in many key nodes in the rapid change cycle of the industry. It spans multiple industry cycles of CPS, social e-commerce, and group buying, so I can share a little bit about history and the future.

Through the development of private sector retail for thirteen years and four stages, we can see that the blueprint of the private sector retail industry has gradually become clearer, the supply chain side is constantly being optimized, users’ business awareness is constantly being improved, and infrastructure builders and industrial chain service providers are constantly improving. , doing construction work one after another. On the user side, consumers’ consumption experience in private retail scenarios is gradually improving, and cost-effectiveness, convenience, and efficiency in matching supply and demand are gradually improving.

A closed-loop private retail market has been formed.

Private retail is no longer just a distribution channel, but a main retail scene that requires careful management.

This is a rapidly evolving industry and the most active entrepreneurial stage.

Thirteen years of private sector retail development, gold and troughs

Enough experience and lessons have been accumulated, and enough inspiration has been given to the future.