What is small and beautiful?

In recent days, Alibaba's most-mentioned words are not trading volumes, not c2b, ecosystems, but a word we rarely hear before-small and beautiful.

Small and beautiful, refers to those who are not large, but have unique value of enterprises. We give a daily example, you may only sell dumplings, your service radius only around 2 kilometers of residents, but your steamed stuffed bun is very delicious, everyone likes, then you are small and beautiful.

But why does Alibaba advocate small and beautiful? I think there are probably three reasons for this: first, for the health and stability of the Taobao platform, most people have to make money, not just a handful of people. Second, the consumer market is entering a personalized era, The popularity of the brand gradually can not meet the personalized needs of consumers; third, if everyone is small and beautiful, it will not be as simple as now to spell low prices, competition will be more benign.

But how can small and beautiful be realized? This is a question to think about.

To achieve small and beautiful, requires two conditions: first, you must be "beautiful", your product to have characteristics, this is determined by the ability of the merchant's own; second, because you are "small", so you can pay the marketing and sales costs are not much, whether to achieve sales goals, depending on the business's own capabilities and external business environment two factors.

In fact, it is difficult to do small and beautiful online, because offline is a resource-intensive market, commercial real estate supply is limited, only the company with strong strength to get good location, and then make more money. It's hard for small companies to get good channel resources, so it's hard to grow.

On the reverse line, seemingly open shop cost is very low, but the resource-intensive mode of competition does not change in nature. Whether or Taobao platform, the number of sales are directly linked to the flow, and the amount of traffic depends on whether you have a good entrance, the entrance is equivalent to the location under the line, the higher the cost of the entrance. Therefore, in the current type of portal traffic distribution mode, to make small and beautiful is actually very difficult.

Fortunately, things are changing now. This year Taobao double 12 transmission signal is very clear, Taobao is trying to change the previous platform to allocate most of the flow of the situation. Prior to this, the business to obtain large flow of the way is on the activities, on the gathering cost-effective, the first Coke, flow distribution right in the hands of the platform. And this time the double 12, is designed by the platform 249 tags, merchants to pick out their own products can be labeled on the activity, the display order of 12 of the day is determined by the consumer preferences (depending on the display during the collection of merchandise, put into the number of shopping carts, etc.), the platform only played a role in Taiwan, The distribution of traffic is in the hands of consumers.

But to really realize what Ma said "double million", in the birth of Taobao 1 million small and American companies, only a double 12 is certainly not enough, Taobao should be in peacetime also "to center." In fact, Ali's management is not without ideas, thousands of people face, SNS and other strategic objectives is to provide more access, so that the flow of more evenly distributed.

In the long run, Taobao's portal model is sure to change. It is likely that, like social networks, each consumer's Taobao home page is completely different, tailored to the individual preferences of consumers. This change is clearly a good thing for companies with strong product and brand strength, but for companies that rely too much on channel power, such as the annual target of a couple of times, they may have to play a more pragmatic game.