一个反常识：今年618 新品更好卖

The core conclusion of this article is that in today's saturated market competition, launching new products has shifted from an optional strategic move for brands to a survival imperative. This year's 618 shopping festival has already seen a counterintuitive trend where new products are outperforming existing SKUs in sales. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Tmall data from this year's 618 shows that new products account for one-third of the top-selling single items. The number of product categories with RMB 10 million+ new product GMV has doubled from 2022, expanding beyond 2022's 3C and white spirits to seven new sectors including large and small home appliances, health, and designer toys.

2. Consumer trends have fundamentally shifted: the old market mantra of "good enough and cheap" is no longer mainstream. A growing number of consumers are now willing to pay a premium for innovative products that meet unmet needs, rather than basing purchasing decisions purely on price.

3. Demand for new products is growing fastest in soft consumer categories tied to lifestyle and personal expression, such as apparel, FMCG, and sports & outdoors. Consumers looking to try innovative new products can focus on new launches in these categories.

This article outlines the latest consumer trends and growth paths for brands, addressing core brand concerns around marketing, product strategy, and pricing. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Consumer trends have shifted. After two years of price competition, the industry as a whole is moving from a race to the bottom on pricing to a competition based on innovation. New growth no longer comes from stealing competitors' market share, but from creating entirely new demand, and launching new products is the core path for brands to break out of saturated market competition.

2. In terms of product R&D direction, demand for new products is growing fastest in soft consumer categories closely tied to lifestyle, including apparel, FMCG, and sports & outdoors. Even in mature, highly competitive categories like FMCG and apparel, unmet consumer demand still exists, and growth can be captured through differentiated new products.

3. On pricing and profit, differentiated new products help brands avoid the price wars that plague existing SKUs and secure pricing power. Brands can adopt a combined strategy: basic SKUs drive volume and traffic, while new products generate profits and acquire new customers. For example, 80% of buyers of Liushen's new mosquito repellent egg are first-time customers, delivering far better new customer acquisition results than the brand's basic products.

4. Brands can leverage Tmall's full-lifecycle new product operations, using the platform's data tools to validate demand in advance, reduce trial-and-error costs, and build long-term user assets through official flagship stores.

This article summarizes current market changes, opportunities and risks for all online and offline sellers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. The core logic of e-commerce big promotions has fundamentally changed. The old playbook of pouring money into traffic, sacrificing margins to compete on pricing is seeing steadily declining marginal returns. Continuing to compete on price makes long-term growth nearly impossible, and launching new products is the core opportunity to break out of the low-price cycle.

2. The shift in consumer demand is very clear: consumers no longer only prioritize low prices, and are more willing to pay for innovative products that deliver better experiences. Demand for new products is growing fastest in soft consumer categories, so sellers should prioritize布局 in these sectors.

3. In terms of practical operations, sellers should avoid a common pitfall: don't just rely on short-term traffic bursts to boost new products, as such products tend to have very short lifecycles. Instead, sellers should plan for full-lifecycle new product management, use platform data tools to validate product direction before launch, and focus on user retention and membership operations after launch to convert new customers into long-term repeat buyers.

4. Risk warning: In the era of saturated competition, brands that refuse to innovate and only compete on price will eventually be phased out by the market. Launching new products is no longer an option—it is a requirement.

This article offers insights on product direction, business opportunities and digital transformation for factory operators. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Market demand for product manufacturing and design has changed. In the past, brands competed on low prices, so factories competed primarily on supply chain efficiency and cost control. Now brands increasingly need differentiated new products, so factories can adjust their R&D and production direction to match brands' new product development needs and tap new business opportunities.

2. Traditional new product development relies on guesswork to choose designs and start mold production, which often leads to inventory backlogs from wrong direction choices. Now factories can work with brands to use e-commerce platforms' new product innovation tools to validate product concepts, design directions and consumer preferences before production, greatly reducing risk for manufacturers.

3. Competing on price only through supply chain efficiency has already hit a ceiling. Going forward, factories need to build their own innovative design capabilities, work with brands to tap unmet consumer demand, to break out of low-price competition, secure higher profit margins, and survive and grow in a saturated market.

This article summarizes the latest development trends in the retail industry and the core pain points of brand merchants, pointing to new business directions for service providers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. The current retail industry has shifted from competition for traffic and price to competition based on innovation. Nearly all brands now treat new product development as a core growth strategy, so new product services have become a large incremental business market for service providers and deserve strategic focus.

2. Brands currently face two core pain points in new product development: first, traditional new product development relies on guesswork, which often leads to misaligned direction and wasted resources; second, many brands only focus on short-term new product boosts, and ignore full-lifecycle operations, leaving new products to fade quickly without building long-term user assets.

3. Service providers can build new end-to-end solutions around the full new product lifecycle: in the early stage, offer user demand research and product direction validation services to help brands reduce trial-and-error costs; in the mid-stage, help brands with new product positioning and differentiated selling point refinement; in the later stage, help brands with user retention, membership operations and repeat purchase growth, to extend new product lifecycles and deliver long-term value.

This article draws on the strong new product sales performance in this year's 618 shopping festival to outline core merchant demand for platforms and summarize operational experience for mature platforms. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core merchant demand from platforms has shifted: in the past, merchants prioritized platform traffic subsidies and low-price promotion resources, but now merchants more urgently need platforms to provide new product development support and user retention tools to support long-term brand growth. Platforms need to adjust their operational strategies to match this new demand.

2. A proven mature operational model is to build a service system around the full lifecycle of new products: in the early stage, launch data tools such as new product innovation centers to help merchants validate product direction before production and reduce trial-and-error costs; in the mid-stage, strengthen the core position of flagship stores to help brands capture organic user search traffic; in the later stage, open up membership operation tools to help merchants build their own user assets.

3. Platforms can focus on operating high-purchasing-power user segments: these users are willing to pay a premium for innovative new products, which naturally aligns with merchants' new product strategies, and can increase platforms' attractiveness to merchants. At the same time, platforms should guide the market to shift from price competition to innovation competition, avoid the risk of low-price involution, and build a healthy long-term ecosystem.

This article summarizes the latest developments in China's consumer e-commerce industry, and proposes new characteristics and models for industrial development in the era of saturated competition, offering high reference value for industrial research. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. New industrial trends: Data from this year's 618 confirms that China's consumer industry has completed a phased shift. After years of low-price involution, the industry is moving from competition centered on supply chain efficiency and low pricing to competition centered on consumer insight and innovation. Launching new products has become an imperative for all market participants, and this is the core new characteristic of industrial development in the era of saturated competition.

2. The logic behind this shift is as follows: supply chain efficiency for Chinese manufacturing has nearly reached a ceiling, and the marginal returns of continued price competition are steadily declining. Meanwhile, large amounts of unmet consumer demand for better quality of life remain, especially in soft consumer sectors tied to lifestyle and personal expression, where demand growth is particularly strong.

3. New business models have already emerged on the industrial end: on the brand side, a product structure of "basic SKUs drive volume and traffic + differentiated new products generate profit and acquire new customers" has formed; on the platform side, a full-lifecycle new product service model has emerged, where upfront demand validation via data and downstream user retention replaces the traditional guesswork-based new product development model. All these new changes merit in-depth research.