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Likewise, the customer lies at the heart of Alibaba’s ‘New Retail’ strategy. For example, Alibaba’s Hema Supermarkets will deliver groceries to customers in 30 minutes if they live within a 3km radius of a Hema Supermarket. Alibaba Founder Jack Ma is renown for being a people-oriented businessman who once said that he would “do everything to make sure [his] customer is happy,” and his philosophy is evident in Alibaba’s ‘New Retail’ strategy.

New Retail: Focus on Convenience
With this consumer-first approach, products and retail services are then tailored around the customer’s lives, instead of vice versa.
Traditional modes of retail force consumers to carve out a time in their daily schedules to shop for groceries, visit a mall to return a product, or even devote a weekend to purchasing a new car.
However, this new mode of retail comprise of systems and services that empathise with the consumer’s busier lifestyles and personalised needs, therefore delivering a more seamless shopping process for the customer.

New Retail: Adopt A Customer First Approach

In new retail, products are important, but the customer is key. A lot of effort and resources are dedicated to sourcing products of the highest quality at the lowest cost. Even more resources go into optimising logistical and distribution strategies. But how much do retailers know their customer and their individual needs?

Leading eCommerce players adopt a contrarian approach to retail, by placing their consumer at the core of their operations and expansion strategies.

For instance, Amazon is known for identifying Customer Obsession as one of their 4 Pillars of Success. Its founder Jeff Bezos has also been especially vocal about his “obsessive compulsive focus” on customer service. When asked about predicting customer needs, he believes that “it is difficult for us to imagine that ten years from now, customers will want higher prices, less selection or slower delivery. Our belief in the durability of these pillars gives us the confidence required to invest in strengthening them.”

“With New Retail, goal is to allow businesses to succeed in the digital era. This means helping traditional retailers to restructure and enhance the way they operate, which can touch everything from customer experience, to inventory management, and retail spaces,” .

To help illustrate how it works, think of recently set up two temporary pop-up stores in Sydney and Melbourne featuring augmented reality mirrors, facial recognition payment and interactive in-store mobile phone games.

“This has the potential to reshape what retailers can offer and how they interact with their customers,”.

Recently, Tmall partnered with Ford to unveil the Super Test-Drive Center. Customers were able to choose from up to 100 Ford cars from an unmanned vehicle vending machine for a three-day test driving using the Tmall or Taobao app. All up, the experience of ordering a test drive vehicle took less than 10 minutes.

“This created a new and convenient way for a traditional retailer to engage with their customers through digital and mobile technology,”.

"How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case."

Investing is all about making money, and that's pretty tough to do if you're afraid to venture off the safe path. Never be afraid to take chances. The bottom line is if you're trying to build wealth, you can't afford to keep all your funds in savings accounts that are barely earning interest. To earn money, there is some risk you will need to take on (only you can decide how much you can tolerate). After all, when there's no risk, there's no reward.

Quotes on the future of Retail
If history repeats itself, ecommerce is in for a treat. The industry has seen incredible growth in just a little over a decade, and many analysts see it overtaking their brick and mortar counterparts in the near future.
“I can’t overstate how mobile is changing how we interact with our consumers,” -Joel Anderson, CEO of Wal-Mart.

Why Alibaba’s ‘New Retail’ revolution is all about AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being implemented as a part of Alibaba’s New Retail strategy, blending the online and offline worlds to create seamless experiences for consumers.

“New Retail is instrumental to the strategy in providing consumers with more choice and experiences that benefit the traditional shopping model,” says Alibaba. “By using AI technologies, one can be able to enhance New Retail offerings and lead innovation across the global retail sector.”

The Chinese ecommerce giant’s Ali Smart Supply Chain taps into AI to help merchants predict regional demand for certain products – something that is vital for same or next-day delivery services. Building on this is the company’s logistics affiliate, Cainiao, which uses AI to speed up parcel deliveries.

Through a specially designed computer model and other AI techniques, the Cainiao platform is able to determine the fastest and most cost-effective delivery routes, and also to predict what size box should be used to ensure that orders are efficiently packed.

Another Firm Practicing the New Retail model as Chymall

Another firm practicing the new retail model as Chymall is Pinduoduo. Pinduoduo, the $1.5B Chinese startup is also another Chinese e-commerce company, engaged in new retail. The startup is challenging the giant Alibaba in China’s towns and villages. In January, Pinduoduo had 114 million active users, surpassing that of New York-listed Chinese discount retailer Vipshop. Currently, the startup has captured a projected 7.0% of all retail e-commerce sales in China this year, not a bad showing for a firm that launched in 2015. In three short years, Pinduoduo has emerged as one of China’s fastest growing shopping startups, with as many as 55 million users accessing the site per day.

Pinduoduo’s idea of new retail comes by way of offering group discounts..

*If you're absent on earth today what will be missing?*

Will the world be a much better place for others as a result of your efforts? That is how we live a purposeful life.

Whatever you enjoy today is the result of people who are absent from the earth . Think about Thomas Edison, think about Henry Ford, think about John Reckeffeller etc.

Touch somebody with what is available today which is Chymall. Get into this industry thinking about the opportunity you will create from it to help others up.