E-commerce is a primary driver of China's retail sales. Companies in the sector have been meeting in Shanghai and Hangzhou to talk about how to maintain profitability in the longer term, especially since new offline retail ideas are catching on fast. Mi Jiayi talked to some of the companies in attendance to find out what they are doing to stay competitive.  

China's e-commerce businesses have entered a new stage of competitiveness after almost two decades of rapid development. The concept of new retail, which combines online and offline shopping, is now increasingly popular. Alibaba's offline store He Ma, for example, allows customers to shop in a supermarket, while paying for their purchases online, and then have their purchases delivered afterwards, saving the time and effort of carrying everything home. The combination of online and offline has been quite a success among customers, as Baozun, one of the e-commerce solution providers told us. The company says it has been helping brands with their online presentations for decade, and many are now hoping to get an upgrade for their offline businesses as well.

QIU WENBIN, CEO BAOZUN "There are two things we are doing for brands now. One is how we serve the clients, including a change in marketing strategy in the days of new retail. Another change we are seeing is with the supply chain. That will help consumers get products more easily. All these changes have one thing in common, that is, they need strong data to support them. These changes will help maintain speedy growth in the retail industry for the next 5 to 10 years."

MI JIAYI HANGZHOU In the heated competition for e-commerce dominance, many big players are eyeing one specific field - fresh groceries. In Hangzhou, a group of international grocers are talking about how to bring fresh food to customers even faster.

Fresh grocery e-commerce has a huge market potential in China, and is one of the most suitable categories for the application of the new retail business model. According to ASKCI Research Company, online transactions for fresh groceries reached 141.8 billion yuan in 2017, almost three times the amount of 2015. Still, that only accounted for 7 percent of China's total fresh grocery consumption last year. But while the market size is big, the stakes are also high. Unlike other kinds of goods, fresh groceries have a pretty short shelf life, and they are more difficult to transport. Traditionally, fresh groceries have been shipped like commodities, and the number of middle men between producer and consumer has caused a good deal of wastage.

STEVEN JIN, CO-CHAIRMAN WIN-CHAIN "We want to create a new supply chain that's powered by big data. So we control every part of the supply chain instead of having middlemen, and make sure the information is consistent. So in the future, it would work like this: consumers place their orders, and we pick the fruit or net the fish after their order is placed. That would save time and avoid wastage."

The fresh grocery market in China now has four strong competitors -- Alibaba's He Ma Store, Tencent and Yong Hui's Super Species, JD.com's 7Fresh and SuNing's SU Fresh. ASKCI estimates the market size will hit more than 460 billion yuan by 2020.