In January 11, official from MOFCOM Department of Circulation Industry Development introduced China’s typical retail enterprises development in 2017.

The official said that MOFCOM and the related departments have conscientiously implemented the Opinions on Promoting Innovation and Transformation of the Real Retailing Industry (Document of the General Office of the State Council NO. 78, 2016) issued by the General Office of the State Council and continuously optimized the development environment for the retailing industry. The retail enterprises have actively transformed and upgraded themselves and speeded up the pace of innovation constantly, which has brought increasing contributions and influence. The stable and upward trend of the retailing industry has been confirmed largely. The entity retail sales showed sound development trend. Firstly, the increase rate of retail scale speeded up. In 2017, the sales of 2,700 key typical retail enterprises monitored by MOFCOM (hereinafter referred to as typical retail enterprises) rose by 4.6% year on year, 3 percentage points higher than that of last year over the same period. Among these, the sales of e-commerce increased by 26.8%, 3.2 percentage points higher. Secondly, the profitability of enterprises increased. In 2017, their operating profits and total profits rose by 8.0% and 7.1%, 6.5 and 11 percentage points higher than that of last year over the same period. Thirdly, the operation of main businesses picked up. The statistics of different businesses of typical retail enterprises showed that in 2017, the sales of specialty stores, pro-stores, supermarkets and department stores increased by 8.3%, 6.2%, 3.8% and 2.4% respectively, 6.6 , 3.3, 1.9 and 2.7 percentage points higher respectively than those of the first half of this year over the same period of time.

The official pointed out in 2017 that the innovation and transformation of China’s entity retail sales showed the following highlights. Firstly, new business forms were developed. The retail enterprises actively knock through the online and offline sales, the upstream and the downstream to promote the deep integration of coordination development of multi-business mode and cross-industry aggregation. For example, Bingo Box and Taocafe have explored self-service shelves and cashier-free convenient stores to enhance the efficiency of shopping. Yonghui Super Species store has tapped the new mode of “Supermarket+Catering business”. Secondly, omni-channel was built, fully taking advantages of modern information technology, the retail enterprises have comprehensively expanded marketing channels such as physical stores, cashier-free stores, mobile terminal, PC terminal and TV shopping. For example, Alibaba has teamed up with Kroger, Yintai and RT-Mart to speed up the integration of online and offline sales; Wu-Mart has cooperated with Dmall to build a free shopping platform and help the customers enjoy the integrated shopping conveniently and efficiently. Thirdly, the supply chain was reconstructed. The retail enterprises have actively promoted the supply chain to extend to the production side and cut the costs. Their production is decided by the demand, aiming to realize the goal of “thousands of stores with thousands of faces.” For example, Dashang Group has acquired foreign enterprises and built its own private brand; Pagoda has entered into the fresh market to improve cold-chain logistics and fresh food supply chain. Fourthly, promote its popularity. Retail enterprises have speeded up their pace to take inroads to the markets of small-and medium-sized cities, new type of towns and rural areas. For example, JD.com launched the “Tour of JD supermarket in Hundreds of Cities” and Suning Corporation plans to open 1,000 outlet stores in rural areas.

The official said that in 2018, considering the favorable conditions of the upward macro-economic situation and fast-growing modern information technology, the innovation and transformation of retail enterprises have been constantly upgraded and the entity shops have again become the competitive focus of online and offline enterprises. All these will continuously strengthen the uptrend of entity retail.

Next, focusing on the two major tasks of innovating circulation and promoting consumption and striving to build an economic and trade power ahead of schedule, MOFCOM will speed up the special action on upgrading consumption, develop towards quality retail, smart retail, cross-business and green retail and improve the supply quality and benefits to constantly satisfy people’s increasing need for good life.