Gong Jingqiang: Leading the Transformation of the Packaging Industry and Building an E-commerce Ecosystem

E-commerce Committee of China Packaging Federation, Gong Jingqiang

Distinguished guests, dear colleagues:

Good morning, everyone! I am very glad to have this opportunity today to gather with colleagues from the packaging industry on the scenic banks of the Suzhou River. My topic today is "Leading the Transformation of Packaging Enterprises and Building an E-commerce Ecosystem", which closely follows the theme of "e-commerce, transformation and development". Now I would like to talk with you about the road of transformation and development for China's packaging industry.

In recent years, e-commerce has developed rapidly across all industries. The introduction of the Internet has accelerated the arrival of the information age. The packaging industry is a very traditional industry, and many traditional business owners still have only a vague understanding of e-commerce. I would like to start with the development history of e-commerce. Since 1990, China's e-commerce has begun to take off, and it now has a history of more than 20 years. E-commerce has grown into an important part of the national economy. E-commerce refers to transactions and related services conducted through electronic trading on the Internet, intranets and value-added networks; it is the electronization and networking of every link in traditional business activities. For anyone doing business or running an enterprise today, whether selling flowers or home appliances, there will certainly be no future without an understanding of e-commerce.

Because of its characteristics, the rise of e-commerce has successfully opened up a brand-new customer-centric business model. In the e-commerce environment, customers can obtain information about relevant products quickly, accurately and in large quantities. E-commerce features low payment, low cost, no time or space limits and a broad user base, and customers and enterprises can communicate directly, which has also given rise to and driven the development of personalized products, making personalized customization possible and greatly reducing costs. So why should e-commerce be combined with the traditional packaging industry?

Especially during the 12th Five-Year Plan period, China's e-commerce industry developed rapidly, the scale of the industry expanded quickly, and service enterprises in e-commerce information, trading and technology kept emerging. As an important pillar industry of the national economy, the packaging industry appears somewhat weak in the face of the impact of e-commerce. With the arrival of the Internet, traditional industries fell behind in an instant. If the packaging industry wants to reach its peak of development, it must assess the situation and follow the market, and must adjust its business approach and industrial structure to adapt to the development of e-commerce. The development of e-commerce is the general trend, and one must go with it, keep up with the latest trends in world development, join the tide of e-commerce and strengthen the competitiveness of enterprises.

The rapid momentum of information development is colliding with the times, prompting more and more traditional enterprises to plan for transformation, and a brand-new e-commerce ecosystem has taken shape. In this asymmetric competition between newcomers and veterans, how traditional packaging enterprises can both "attack" and "defend" has become the focus of many traditional enterprises.

It is understood that among the operating costs of traditional enterprises, costs from various physical operations take up most of the space. If traditional packaging enterprises cooperate with light e-commerce platforms, this can help them save a great deal of capital cost, such as human resources and actual operating expenses, while also expanding their business scope accordingly. In addition, rising labor costs in China have greatly weakened the advantages of processing and manufacturing enterprises, so transformation has become the only choice to change the fate of enterprises. Brand owners and distributors in all industries have already gone online one after another, forming an enterprise transformation and upgrading and profit model innovation system that integrates business model, profit model, operation model, capital model, and sales and channel model innovation.

Therefore, enterprises should fully combine their own advantages and disadvantages, analyze the risks and opportunities of transformation, and reasonably control risks during the transformation process, so as to determine a transformation strategy that suits their own characteristics and ensure sustainable development during the transformation. Choosing the e-commerce approach that suits the enterprise itself is the real key to development.

China is still at the primary stage of Internet e-commerce. Although it has started, much work remains to be done to develop it vigorously. What exactly is the biggest obstacle for the packaging industry to get involved in e-commerce? In summary, it comes down to internal and external factors at work.

The internal reasons mainly revolve around enterprise managers: vague concepts among enterprise managers; an inability to break away from traditional marketing thinking; insufficient attention to Internet e-commerce; and a single profit model that is hard to scale. These problems are the key constraints on internal transformation within enterprises. For packaging enterprises to transform, they must first raise the awareness of enterprise managers. The essence of the Internet should be de-Internetization, treating networking as a habit rather than something done deliberately - "fighting for survival".

The external reasons mainly lie in the operating background of e-commerce transformation: resistance from traditional distributors and middlemen, which squeezes the living space of traditional enterprises to a certain extent, a shortage of e-commerce talent, and an incomplete legal framework for e-commerce in the broader environment, all of which hinder the further development of e-commerce transformation.

The E-commerce Committee of the China Packaging Federation was approved by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council and filed with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and was established in July 2014. It is a professional committee under the leadership of the China Packaging Federation. By building a bridge for communication between e-commerce service agencies and the government, it is a cross-regional, multi-level and diversified national e-commerce association organization, aiming to promote the application of e-commerce in the packaging industry and accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional packaging enterprises.

It promotes the deep integration of industrialization and informatization, the "two integrations", in the industry, and plays an important role in grasping the pulse of industry development, expanding the scale of the industry, helping the industry transform and upgrade, building a public service platform for e-commerce, and promoting the popularization and application of e-commerce in a wider range of fields. The E-commerce Committee of the China Packaging Federation takes it as its mission to uphold and implement the Scientific Outlook on Development, safeguard industry interests, regulate the order of the market economy, build a credibility certification system for enterprises, and serve industry enterprises comprehensively. The E-commerce Committee of the China Packaging Federation is composed of packaging organizations, professional committees, packaging enterprises and relevant colleges and universities.

The development of e-commerce in China's packaging industry has ushered in a brand-new opportunity. We hope the E-commerce Committee will set sail and accelerate the development of e-commerce in the packaging industry. The E-commerce Committee of the China Packaging Federation has proposed an overall e-commerce solution strategy that integrates e-commerce strategy, e-commerce training, e-commerce operations, e-commerce transactions and the mobile Internet. By integrating resources of the packaging and related industries, it will achieve data sharing and make full use of the resources of China Packaging Network to play a huge role in developing e-commerce. This will promote the rapid upgrading of enterprises and achieve the ultimate goal of transformation, innovation and development of the packaging industry. It will accelerate transformation and upgrading and promote the integrated and innovative development of the packaging industry and the Internet. It will play an important role in the development of China's packaging industry.

In my view, e-commerce in the packaging industry must be closely integrated with electronic system applications, industrial cluster and industry chain models, online customization, e-commerce transactions and brand enhancement, and be operated from these aspects:

First, electronic system applications. For the vast majority of packaging enterprises, to get electric, they should start with the electronization of internal management. China Packaging Network has developed and launched the EPS system, an online application software for enterprise informatization, to improve the business strategy of B2B e-commerce websites and advance the requirements of deep integration of the "two integrations". It should be said to be at the forefront of the times. The EPS system not only realizes electronic management of the existing customer management, procurement management and inventory management within the enterprise, but more importantly, it integrates upstream and downstream customers in the packaging and printing industry for users, enabling users to carry out their own e-commerce marketing and complete online procurement and sales in one stop, a first in related industries.

Second, promoting online e-commerce transactions. Online customization - the customers faced by enterprises are diverse and cover all walks of life, which drives the particularity of enterprise products: providing different product packaging according to different customer needs. Customization has become common in the industry. It is precisely this customization that leaves many packaging enterprises' understanding of e-commerce at the level of online promotion. It is undeniable that promotion is the first and a very important step in e-commerce. In fact, online negotiation, online transactions, WeChat interaction and optimized promotion are all important parts of e-commerce. Based on these particularities, the e-commerce trading platform "Packaging E-City" emerged, creating a professional section for the "customization" of packaging enterprises. "Packaging E-City" is a difficult move to push enterprises from going online to getting electric, and is a truly meaningful online trading e-commerce platform for enterprises.

Third, the benefits it brings to enterprises are roughly as follows:

One, reducing intermediate links. Through the advantages of the network, producers and consumers can trade directly, saving costs and time for both buyers and sellers, and e-commerce can be used to grasp consumers' shopping needs in real time.

Two, reducing inventory. To cope with unpredictable market demand, packaging enterprises sometimes have to maintain a certain inventory of products, and because enterprises are not sure about the raw material market, they also often maintain a certain raw material inventory.

Three, increasing business opportunities. Traditional transactions are limited by time and space, while e-commerce operates online 24 hours a day without regional or time-and-space limits, and business can be extended to market ranges that traditional marketing and advertising promotion cannot reach.

Three, online promotion is the use of certain ways or methods to publicize and promote products, services and even people, to enhance corporate operations, and to directly drive the improvement of enterprise brand value through online branding - this has become a common consensus among enterprises. Using existing comprehensive platforms (such as Baidu) to achieve e-commerce can only serve as a promotion window, and the results are far from satisfactory. We are committed to creating one-stop solutions for you, including corporate website design, website production, website construction, website optimization, website promotion, mobile Internet, Weibo marketing and more, so that your enterprise can be more competitive and create greater value in the era of online marketing.

Professional online promotion + professional internal system applications (building a resource library) + a professional online trading platform, from brand promotion to the integration of internal and external resources and then to online transactions, enhancing enterprise brand awareness and sales share by spreading from a single point to the whole.

Since China Packaging Network was launched in 1999, it now has nearly 600,000 registered members and has successively provided online and offline interactive services to nearly 5,000 packaging enterprises. This structure of complementary advantages and three-dimensional vertical and horizontal integration has become a model for China's B2B industry and created a unique Internet business model for the industry. After 15 years of development, China Packaging Network is also transforming from an online media outlet into a comprehensive marketing service, opening up new fields. It no longer appears simply as a third-party platform, but is gradually penetrating the entire industry chain, providing enterprises with an industry-leading e-commerce online trading platform and service platform.

China's packaging industry chain is constantly extending, mainly around upstream and downstream supply chains, with packaging design, printing, machinery and materials forming a relatively complete industry system. The demand for talent is correspondingly huge, and the shortage of professional talent has become the biggest bottleneck for its development. The E-commerce Committee has now begun to carry out a series of reform measures: setting up branch organizations of the E-commerce Committee, cooperating widely, developing member enterprises, organizing academic exchange activities in the industry, and jointly establishing the "Zhejiang Provincial Packaging Industry E-commerce Training Center" with the Zhejiang Packaging Technology Association. This provides the primary resource for the transformation and upgrading of industry enterprises. It has also formulated annual and monthly e-commerce talent training plans, effectively promoting the sustained, coordinated and transformational development of the packaging industry. It will help enterprises take on the wings of e-commerce, making you stronger than ever!

The packaging industry is a sunrise industry, and the development of e-commerce in the packaging industry will surely take a turn for the better. I believe that with the E-commerce Committee of the China Packaging Federation leading our enterprises on the road of e-commerce transformation, and with a series of e-commerce transformation solutions, it will no longer be a dream for packaging enterprises to break free from their constraints and keep up with the times. It will be the future direction for the transformation and upgrading of traditional packaging enterprises.

With the continuous participation of packaging enterprises and packaging people, packaging and printing and e-commerce are no longer isolated industries, and e-commerce in China's packaging and printing industry will surely sweep the country with its unique charm.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-377359.html