In March 31st P, Alibaba, which is applying for listing in the US, announced that it would make strategic investment in Yintai business with HK $5 billion 370 million.

After the paction is completed, Ali group will hold 9.9% of Yintai business and a total convertible bond of HK $3 billion 710 million.

In the next three years, the shareholding ratio of Ali group will be no less than 25%.

According to this ratio, Ali will become the second largest shareholder in Yintai business after Shen Guojun.

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It is not surprising that P is investing in Yintai business.

Both Ma Yun and Shen Guojun belong to Zhejiang merchants. The two have been closely cooperating for many years. They are members of the Jiangnan Association and Yunfeng fund. They have invested in the rookie network and Ali small loan. Before that, Taobao and Yintai online also had close cooperation.

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< p > but if we put aside personal relations, we will have a different meaning when we look at this investment.

This is the largest "integration" between the traditional department stores and the Internet industry so far. Looking back in the future, it may be a turning point in China's retail industry. Before that, the offline retail industry and the online e-commerce mountain are mountains and water is divided, but after that, the retail and online will gradually merge into the O2O mode.

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< p > > a href= "//m.pmae.cn/news/index_c.asp" > O2O < /a > Online To Offline (online to offline) refers to the combination of offline business organizations and the Internet, making the Internet a front desk for offline pactions. The concept comes from the United States, and is also very fashionable in China's Internet community in recent years. However, due to the lack of realistic paths and successful cases, the traditional industries, even though the retail industry, are shocked by the impact of the Internet, but are still not very receptive.

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< p > this "fusion" means the change of wind direction. From the stock market reaction, we can see that on the day of the news release, the concept group of Yintai group strengthened, and the stock prices of many department stores rose against the market. It made many people see that the original online and offline integration is possible. The traditional retail industry is not the only way to go online or wait for two deaths.

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< p > Ali investment < a href= "//m.pmae.cn/news/index_c.asp" > Yintai < /a >, it is easy to recall the outcome of Wang Jianlin and Ma Yun's sensational gambling game more than a year ago.

At that time, the two giants on the offline auction bet on the future of China's retail industry, saying that if 10 years later, the share of electricity providers in China's retail market accounted for 50%, Ma Yun would win, otherwise Wang Jianlin would win.

But only a year later, Wang Jianlin changed his mind and said that gambling was just a joke. E-commerce and the real economy could coexist completely. After ten years' gambling expires, there may be no pure electricity supplier or entity business, and the two have merged.

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< p > If a href= "//m.pmae.cn/news/index_c.asp" > Ali "/a" and Yintai cooperate successfully, in the future, it is very likely that every department store's giant will have an online "tyrant" as a friend, and both sides have new opportunities.

Of course, the premise is that online and offline can "successfully open up", this is a difficult task, because consumers need to cooperate, consumers do not recognize, everything is disillusioned.

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< p > look closely at this cooperation, the resources of both sides are no problem. Ali side naturally needless to say that the department store, which is mainly owned by department stores, operates 36 stores, including 28 department stores and 8 shopping centers. There are 10 million commodity data base system for commodity data, and 1 million 500 thousand member membership system.

In the imagination, the marketing, payment and commodity between Ali and Yintai should be put through, including the electronic store of Yintai and the opening of membership accounts. The two sides can also analyze the consumer behavior based on the large data of the users, and excavate new commercial value.

The best result is that after the integration, Yintai will become an open O2O platform to help all department stores and other retail formats, and achieve two-way convergence between the entity business and the Internet economy, that is to say, it will become the so-called "big data driven consumer plan provider".

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< p > of course, there are other important backgrounds in the integration of Ali and Yintai, for example, the increasingly fierce and brutal enclosure war between the Internet giants. In order to attack or defend, Tencent, Baidu and Ali have carried out almost all kinds of mergers and acquisitions in the past year. O2O and offline business are important or vital plates for the giant to maintain monopoly. For example, Ali has announced IPO in the US, eager to show its performance to investors... < /p >