On 24 November, the 2016 (Fourth) China Business Innovation Conference was held by the China General Chamber of Commerce and Zgswcn.com in Beijing. The year of 2016 is the 15th anniversary of China’s accession to WTO. To give due recognition to the exceptional companies and individuals that have made an outstanding contribution and led industrial reforms, the Conference selected recipients and presented the “Most Influential People in the 15 Years of China’s Accession to WTO” and other three awards. The nine business leaders jointly winning the “Most Influential People in the 15 years of China’s Accession to WTO” included Yuan Yafei, Chairman of Sanpower Group, Niu Gang, President of Board of Directors of Dashang Group, Cao Heping, Chairman of Changchun Ouya Group, Wang Tian, Chairman of Better Life Group, and Xing Ying, Chairman of China Quanjude Group.

The theme of the Conference was “new supply, new economy”. Focusing on the topic of development status and innovation of commercial circulation industry and upstream-downstream industries, the Conference gave a comprehensive interpretation of the new momentums of Chinese business’ constant proceeding. Leaders attending the conference included Zhang Zhigang, Deputy Director of the Economic Committee of the eleventh National Committee of the CPPCC and former Vice Minister of the Ministry of Commerce, He Keng, member of the Standing Committee of the eleventh National People’s Congress and Deputy Director of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee, Yi Hong, Deputy Director of the Department of Circulation Industries Development of the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, and Jiang Ming, Chairman of the China General Chamber of Commerce. Sanpower Group was also invited to attend the conference and Zhu Wei, President of Funtalk, a company in Sanpower Group, attended the conference and delivered a keynote speech on behalf of the Group.

Zhang Zhigang said that over many years, Chinese industries facilitating trade flows have realized overtaking others in the process of learning and catching up. However, at present, the commercial gap between urban and rural areas and the development gap between the east, middle and west of our country are prominent. Our geography is big. Productivity is not balanced and the level of consumption is uneven. It was noted that “Innovation and development are long-term, arduous tasks.”

Yuan Yafei won the “Most Influential People in the 15 Years of China’s Accession to WTO” award, which showed the industry’s recognition of his achievements over 23 years of entrepreneurship and innovation. Under the leadership of Yuan Yafei, Sanpower has kept innovating from its start in retailing electronics, crossing over into different industries and integrating resources. It has now become a large privately-held group characterized by information, modern services, and synergy between five sectors, which are “new finance, new consumption, new health, new technology and new property”.

Starting in 2014, Sanpower Group began to “go global” and develop multi-nationally. Sanpower Group’s enterprises and strategic partners have in turn acquired the quintessential British department store House of Fraser, the USA novelty chain brand Brookstone, the Israeli elderly care and service enterprises, Natali and A.S. Nursing, and the well-known British toy shop Hamleys. At present, both Brookstone and Hamleys stores have opened in China, injecting new vitality into brick-and-mortar retailing and achieving an outstanding performance.

In terms of the predicaments facing brick-and-mortar retail, Yuan Yafei believes that most of the issues are internal to the industry. Issues include the supply of products and services in brick-and-mortar retailing failing to keep up with the needs of the improved consumption environment; innovation of business models failing to keep up with product changes; and retailing growing rapidly and industry concentration being low. These are the causes of the “winter” in retail.

In order to solve these issues, Sanpower Group has realised a complete retail transformation with the concept “future defines the future”. All of the Sanpower’s M&A activities have been aimed at bringing in advanced global business models and management systems to provide consumers with fair prices, diverse products, unique scene-based experiences and more valuable integrated services.

At the end of this year, the first flagship store of House of Fraser in China will open in Xinjiekou, Nanjing. Then the beta version of Chinese commerce 4.0 will be revealed, providing consumers with an integrated value service chain, summed up as “house brands + buyer brands + scene-based sales + O2O + finance”.