Gome, a former home appliance retail giant, is now in a dilemma. According to its 2020 financial report, the annual revenue last year was 44.119 billion yuan. Although affected by epidemic factors, the absolute value of revenue also fell too seriously - the annual revenue in 2020 was even lower than that of 49.1 billion yuan in 2008. At the same time, the cost expenditure remained high, resulting in a loss of RMB 6.994 billion in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 170%. The development of online economy and the decline of physical stores are constantly impacting Gome's retail system. On the one hand, the performance of continuous losses and the doubts of the capital market, on the other hand, the market of offline physical stores, Gome has come to the crossroads of transformation. On October 11, Gome retail signed a custody agreement, forming a situation of coordinated development of six platforms with Gome retail as the main and five subsidiaries managed by Gome as the auxiliary, and put forward the strategic layout of the whole retail ecological sharing platform. Can the so-called "all retail" become the touchstone on Gome's transformation? Failed to catch the last bus of e-commerce and new retail, Gome tried to create a new retail concept What is the whole retail ecological sharing platform? In Gome's view, the full retail ecological sharing platform is "full scene + full link + full business + full mode + full sharing". Specifically, at the business level, it is to open up the closed loop of family retail transactions in the upstream and downstream of the supply chain, the combination of online and offline, the coexistence of multiple marketing means and the comprehensive expansion of commodity categories. Putting forward such a concept of "big" is the breaking direction set by Gome under the background of increasing retail competitive pressure. Gome, founded in 1987, is now a 34 year old "Youth". In the process of development, it has experienced not only the "brilliant period" of dominating offline comprehensive stores, but also the "trough period" of e-commerce with new consumption impacting traditional retail. Today, both offline comprehensive stores and online e-commerce have ushered in a development bottleneck. Almost all retail practitioners are thinking: can the retail industry break the ceiling? In this context, Ma Yun put forward the concept of "new retail" in 2016. "New retail" adopts the business model of online ordering and offline distribution, which has indeed injected new vitality into the retail industry. However, for Gome, which takes offline home appliance retail as its main business, the landing of new retail is bound to face more difficulties than other retail enterprises. Ali, Jingdong and other enterprises can quickly complete the new retail layout largely because of their huge traffic. In the Internet era, the accumulation of traffic basically comes from online, and online channels are just the weak link of Gome. According to the statistics of Biwan e-commerce, in the field of e-commerce in 2020, most of the market share was almost divided up by several major platforms. Alibaba continued to lead with a 60% share, followed by JD with a 20% share, and pinduoduo continued to grow, with a market share of nearly 15%. In the remaining market, Gome also has to compete with platforms such as Suning Tesco and Netease strict selection, which is conceivable. In fact, Gome's online layout started very late. Until 2019, Gome officially entered the field of e-commerce by virtue of "Gome store". After nearly two years of trial and error, it really set off a little splash after renaming "zhenhappy" at the beginning of this year. With the development and progress of science and technology, the trend of e-commerce platform becoming the main retail scene is irreversible, and Gome is too difficult to break out against the trend without first mover advantage. Therefore, Gome urgently needs to find a new way to continue its survival and development. This is also an important reason for Gome's "all retail" strategy. For Gome, the whole retail ecological sharing platform focuses on "whole" and "ecology". "All" means that Gome will go out of the comfort zone of home appliances and start retail layout around "family"; "Ecology" means that Gome will no longer stick to sales, but go deep into the upstream and downstream of the supply chain, and make efforts at the b-end and C-end at the same time. Gome's advantage as a full retail ecological sharing platform is that it can fully mobilize more than 4000 stores across the country, turn the store into a family ecological display area, and use the advantages of offline touch to create a shopping atmosphere for consumers. So, can "full retail" really improve Gome's flagging situation? If the head platform is squeezed, can Gome "reverse the future"? Most of the traditional retail scenes focus on products. Consumers can't control the goods settled in the store, so they can only accept them passively; The whole retail takes people as the core and provides a one-stop service scheme around the family scene. To this end, Gome's retail network extends to home appliances, home furnishings, home decoration, daily necessities, etc. at the same time, all offline stores and businesses settle on the online platform and operate together online and offline. Theoretically, this is in line with the law of market development. The reason why "ecology" can be frequently mentioned in recent years is that in the comprehensive scenario, it is easier to arouse people's consumption desire and user stickiness. However, the question before Gome is, how many people are willing to enter its "ecology" against the background of the continuous decline of market share? According to the 2020 annual report of China's home appliance industry, in the home appliance retail market, Suning has the highest market share of 23.8%, Jingdong and tmall rank second and third with 17% and 10.6% respectively, and Gome's market share is only 5.3%. Under the Matthew effect, consumers will only flock to the head platform more and more intensively. If Gome can't complete user accumulation in a short time, Gome still can't reverse when Suning, Jingdong, tmall and other platforms also begin to test the water for full retail. To get rid of the shadow of the head platform, offline stores may become the key. Obviously, Gome is also aware of this. At the retail global investor conference in April this year, it proposed a plan to break the number of stores from 3000 to 6000 in the next 18 months by focusing on franchise and supplemented by self-operation. The small-scale business format of community post station is formulated, which is bound to complete the "last kilometer" of community penetration. The author believes that subject to the store specifications, the community post station should mainly undertake the display function and drain consumers to online channels. Although this model can expand rapidly in a short time, it should also consider the input-output ratio. Household appliances, home furnishings and home decoration are not FMCG products, so it is difficult to produce a high repurchase rate. Fortunately, however, the full retail model may help Gome control costs and turn losses into profits because it goes deep into the upstream and downstream of the supply chain. Can full retail become the key to Gome's reversal of the future? Theoretically, it is possible, but in practice, it also depends on the specific implementation of Gome. The response of the secondary market is the same. After Gome retail signed the custody agreement, its share price rose briefly, and now it has fallen back to its initial state. Will all retail become the main business model of retail enterprises in the future? Three years later, let's look at Gome. (Xinhua News Agency)