PXAF Salon | How traditional retailing achieve positive interaction between online and offline

At PXAF, not only is it an interesting space to create beautiful living experiences and share art, design and originality, we also hope to grow and progress with many excellent brands and explore the future development of business together, so we will hold business-related sharing salons from time to time and invite professionals in related fields to do sharing. This is a discussion on how traditional retailers can leverage online to achieve breakthroughs in our space at 1788 Plaza in Jing'an Temple, and we invited a senior person from Douyin's (Chinese equivolent of TikTok) Mass Consumption Commercialisation Department to do relevant sharing and analysis.

We will also launch a new brand growth programme to serve more growing brands with our resources, knowledge, experience and network, hoping that we can co-exist and co-prosperate in the network of "PXAF", and perhaps some outstanding brands can be co-created together.

If you are interested in learning more, please feel free to contact us and we will do a second salon sharing at a later date.

Written by Team Member Meng

Keywords: DouYin(TikTok); traditional retail limitations; small brand survival; mastering the laws of the TikTok leveraging algorithm; supply chain appraisal; business principal

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The theme of the first salon event after the opening of PXAF Jing'an Temple branch was "How to break through traditional retail and achieve online and offline interaction".

PXAF invited Nico from an online multi-channel operation and management organisation, Bob, a veteran of the offline business and consumer market who has been cultivating the market for many years, Ji zhidou, the owner of a trendy play shop, Ms. Chen, a partner of an outdoor brand, Chris, a senior operation manager of the Chinese side of a foreign company, and a senior person from Douyin's mass consumer commercialisation department, to share and exchange ideas. Their backgrounds covered all aspects of online and offline retail, and each provided a different perspective on traditional retail breakthroughs and online/offline interactions, allowing the discussion to unfold in a more comprehensive way.

The event started at 3pm on the 11th. Those who participated in the salon first briefly introduced themselves and also talked about their insights or confusion about traditional retail and online channels, followed by a Q&A-based discussion.

The group began by discussing the differences between online and offline retailing. The offline body appeared to be less fixed as online sales can cover a wider geographical area.

The discussion about online sales revolved more around the DouYin platform. This was partly due to the fact that there were senior people from DouYin's mass consumption commercialisation department sharing their experiences, and partly because from their knowledge and research on online platforms, DouYin is better suited to the promotion of small brands, which have a higher spending power in comparison.

DouYin uses a different algorithm than online shopping platforms, which are content platforms. After a piece of content has piqued a user's curiosity, DouYin catches users who are the audience of the content and pushes them in a targeted way, which can make lesser-known start-up brands more visible, whereas on platforms that push through user searches with a centralised logic, it may be harder for smaller, lesser-known brands to get noticed. For small brands, choosing the right platform is crucial.

For traditional retailers, keeping up with the times is particularly important in this era, and they need to incorporate the most popular ways to attract "popularity" for brick-and-mortar shops, such as online live streaming, which has gained a wider and wider audience in recent years. One of the criteria for the promotion of DouYin live broadcasts is the number of purchases per unit of time among the total number of viewers.

Therefore, the online can do for offline shops to attract traffic, and help the brand to form their own private domain, thus further increasing the repurchase rate. Of course, it is important for online retailers to be able to handle the flow of traffic, so as to avoid the situation of insufficient products. In addition, online retailing can help offline shops obtain more intuitive sales data, and its flexibility also allows offline shops to better adjust their marketing programs, for example, by testing groups of products and observing the data in order to formulate a more appropriate plan.

Finally, everyone recognised that, whether online or offline, the final return to the essence of the goods, that is, quality. Although the information explosion in the era of traffic plays a very important role, "fragrant wine is also afraid of deep alley", but a commodity, a brand to maintain vitality, sustainable development, the most important thing is "wine should be fragrant".