Direct Selling New August 2^th(Southern Metropolis Daily) It’s obvious that E-business has great impact to traditional retail business and the influence to direct selling model and direct selling enterprise also shows up day by day.

It’s well-known that direct selling industry always boasts C2C business, but recently Amway as the big brother in global direct selling industry has announced to media that they will speed up the introduction of web2.0 system.

According to the data released by Amway, the sales through E-business channel have accounted for about 80% of total sales in North-America area. After last year’s low-key testing of web2.0 system in China, the sales generating from this system have also accounted for 14% of Amway’s China business.

 The escalating influence of E-business to direct selling industry

“Why we didn’t put forward youth mode 20 or 30 years ago? At my age, there is no big difference of their growth for the people over 40 years old, it’s a age without information explosion or science and technology explosion. While the growth of children who born in 80’s and 90’s is totally different with those in 50’s,60’s and 70’s,which reflects in their growth, the information they got and the way of communication.”As explained by Yan Zhirong, who is the president of Amway Greater China, about Amway’s youth strategy background and the partial reason for entering into E-business.

E-business has great impact to traditional retail business as well as to direct selling. According to the data of 10^th World Chinese Direct Selling Conference, till December 31^st,2013, there are over 58% enterprises have already opened the micro-marketing platform among more than 40 direct selling enterprises with licenses. The important reason for the change of marketing thoughts which based on internet is E-business’s influence to direct selling.

However, E-business marketing also exists unavoidable negative influence to direct selling cause which based on the interpersonal relationship. In the view of most direct selling entrepreneurs, their enterprises have today’s success because of the partner relationship between enterprises and marketing personnels, this trust should be 100%,if company deviates from this point when making any decision must do fully self-criticism.

Yan Zhirong has no any doubt about this, he said,” Many direct selling enterprises didn’t make great success in China because of the deviation, they use another channel to compete with the original channel and break this partner relationship.”

At the same time he didn’t want Amway to become “the Chinese Women’s Soccer Team”.

He explained like that,”10 years ago, the Chinese Women’s Soccer Team was successful and was the world’s second, but today they are not successful as before. Then why Brazil Team and European Team are still so strong? Because they do youth mode and have youth strategy. Why our gymnastic team and diving team so strong till today? Because we have youth mode and have a youth strategy that is to cultivate since childhood.

  Amway’s breakthrough with O2O mode

It’s well-known that direct selling industry is full of competition, which are the competitions of personnels and the whole product industry, as per many enterprises in direct selling industry, they cannot break their 95% market offline because of 2-5% market online.

Because of the above obvious reality problems, to introduce web2.0 system and establish  0 20 system have being the best choice to Amway.

“Most large E-business are using web1.0 system which means you can buy our products through E-Business in the present circumstances, but it’s relatively unidirectional. So we hope to introduce in 2.0 which is a relatively bidirectional system, but we will not be away with this channel or let E-business become our direct selling channel which may form competition to our marketing personnels.”Yan Zhirong pointed out furtherly.

In the opinion of Yan Zhirong, what web2.0 has done is not a E-business system which combined with direct selling system, but as a tandem system to add the wing of E-business onto the enterprise’s direct selling system, this wing can help marketing personnels to improve efficiency better. In other words, What Amway will built in China is a O2O system.

According to the data which Amway revealed to media,Amway’s sales amount in USA which achieved through O2O E-business channel have accounted for 80% of total sales,while 60% in Taiwan. 

“Now we have no such large network system,just regard to entire E-business we can also reach 14% ,of course this 14% is very small if you take it just as data.But to me what I have seen is its fast growth from less than 5% to today’s 14% in just two years.”Said by Yan Zhirong.

According to the open data, Amway has realized the sales of RMB 29.3 billion in 2013,that 14% means RMB4.1 billion through the online shopping system,which have already exceeded many B2C E-business websites in China.

editor:Jack