---
title: "2019: Major Shifts in the FMCG Industry! How Should Brands, Distributors, and B2B Break Through?"
description: "2018 was a uniquely challenging year for China's economy, with trade tensions, slowing growth, and capital winter impacting businesses. In the FMCG sector, B2B platforms entered a deep-water phase, with over 20 closures, while brands and distributors faced stagnant sales and rising costs. The 2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference, held during the Chengdu Spring Sugar Fair, aims to explore strategies for breaking through these challenges."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-01-31"
language: "en"
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markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/2019-major-shifts-in-the-fmcg-industry-how-should-brands-distributors-an-2c23f770.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/SX3s-7A6eZp3xujZPv9N4g"
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---

# 2019: Major Shifts in the FMCG Industry! How Should Brands, Distributors, and B2B Break Through?

> 2018 was a uniquely challenging year for China's economy, with trade tensions, slowing growth, and capital winter impacting businesses. In the FMCG sector, B2B platforms entered a deep-water phase, with over 20 closures, while brands and distributors faced stagnant sales and rising costs. The 2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference, held during the Chengdu Spring Sugar Fair, aims to explore strategies for breaking through these challenges.

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2018 was an extremely special year in the history of China's economic development. Issues such as the Sino-US trade war, economic downturn, capped online traffic growth, and an aging population have all exacerbated uncertainty in the external market environment.
At the same time, changes in the macro environment have led to a significant reduction in liquidity in China's capital markets. A large number of internet companies have faced financing difficulties due to the capital winter, leading to cash flow breaks, layoffs, closures, and even defaults.
Returning to the FMCG industry, **after rapid growth from 2013 to 2017, FMCG B2B officially entered a deep-water phase in 2018, with some poorly managed platforms continuing to close down last year.** According to incomplete statistics from New Distribution, more than 20 FMCG B2B platforms closed in 2018 alone. Additionally, surviving B2B platforms are constantly adjusting their business models, optimizing supply chain capabilities, and even beginning to experiment with related innovative businesses.
It's not just internet companies; traditional FMCG enterprises are also having a tough time. Brand manufacturers have become accustomed to stagnant sales, lack of product innovation, and rising channel costs, which have been troubling brand owners and distributors. Some manufacturers are actively trying new models and tactics, but **in the face of huge existing interests, change remains merely a slogan.**
Despite the harsh external economic environment and increasing operational pressure, it is undeniable that China remains one of the most innovative and consumption-potential countries in the world. With the spread of mobile internet and consumption upgrades, the way people connect and consume has subtly changed. **Almost all practitioners in 2018 had a basic consensus: digital innovation across the entire industry chain and network is an inevitable trend.** In this context, innovative retail scenarios and new business formats based on digital supply chains will emerge in large numbers in the coming years.
**Facing the complex market environment, how should companies break through the current difficulties of business operations and growth in 2019? And find specific ideas and methods for transformation?**
**To this end, New Distribution will hold the 2019 (5th) FMCG + Internet Conference during the Chengdu Spring Sugar Fair from March 16 to 18. This conference will focus on the theme of "Breaking Through" and engage in in-depth discussions with numerous brand owners, supply chain service providers, distributors, and retailers.**
New Distribution understands that given the enormous FMCG market, it would be biased to try to answer all questions across all segments and sub-fields with just one forum or conference. At the same time, FMCG practitioners in various sectors need to understand and pay attention to the specific changes occurring in their areas of responsibility and operation, and how to solve the difficulties they face. Based on this, New Distribution has split the 3-day conference into 9 high-density forums (morning/afternoon) for practitioners/operators in various FMCG fields to choose from.
> 1. Channel Digitalization Special Session (Main Forum)
>
> 2. FMCG B2B Regional Market Intensive Cultivation Special Session
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> 3. Brand Owner's Channel Digitalization Exploration Special Session
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> 4. IP + FMCG New Marketing Empowerment Special Session
>
> 5. Distributor Transformation Practical Case Study Special Session
>
> 6. Innovative Distribution Models · Social E-commerce Special Session
>
> 7. Innovative Distribution Models · Community Group Buying Special Session
>
> 8. FMCG City Distribution Logistics Industry Seminar Special Session
>
> 9. Brand Owner's New Marketing Case Study Special Session
**The specific conference agenda and core content are as follows:**
**I. Main Forum on the Morning of March 16**
Channel digital transformation has become an industry consensus, and B2B is the only lever to achieve digital transformation of FMCG channels. B2B began to sprout in 2013 and by the end of 2018, it had completed five years. Over these five years, some have fallen behind, some have withdrawn, and some are struggling. As mentioned above, FMCG B2B has entered a deep-water phase. How should it break through next? To this end, New Distribution will invite national B2B platform parties, investors, brand owners, and supply chain service providers to discuss the key "password" for B2B to emerge from the deep-water zone.
**II. Sub-forums on the Afternoon of March 16**
In addition to national B2B platforms, some regional B2B platforms are gradually rising and growing, and some even achieved regional profitability in 2018. How do these B2B platforms achieve digital intensive cultivation in their regions? New Distribution has invited leading platforms from various regions (South China, Northwest, East China, Central China, Southeast, Northeast) to discuss methodologies for digital intensive cultivation in regional FMCG B2B markets.
Besides B2B platforms, brand owners, as key players in channel digitalization, are indispensable. In this session, New Distribution will invite leading FMCG brands such as Master Kong, Uni-President, Tsingtao Beer, Budweiser, and Unilever to discuss how they, as brand owners, view industry transformation trends. Facing B2B platforms, how should they balance with traditional offline distribution systems? After all, offline channels still hold a huge existing market. How to choose, plan, or integrate are difficult questions for brand owners.
**III. Sub-forums on the Morning of March 17**
Frankly speaking, before 2018, social e-commerce had never entered the vision of brand owners. But after 2018, leading brand owners such as Yili, Mengniu, Dali, and Wahaha have entered social e-commerce one after another. After one year of operation, according to New Distribution, taking Mengniu as an example, social e-commerce channels alone achieved sales of 1 billion yuan. In addition, in January 2019, Nestlé, a global FMCG giant, announced its entry into social e-commerce, which forces people in the FMCG circle to study and discuss how companies should layout their social e-commerce sector.
Concurrently, another session is the city distribution logistics special session. Due to the low value, low gross margin, high weight, and high turnover characteristics of FMCG products, it is difficult for FMCG city distribution logistics to achieve economies of scale. Even with capital catalysts, national city distribution platforms seem to remain the preserve of traditional distributors, with obvious obstacles to national expansion. In addition, distributors transforming into unified warehousing and distribution platforms are not doing well either; distributors are unwilling to enter warehouses, and the warehousing and distribution service fees collected are difficult to achieve effective profitability. Facing these topics, we will discuss together: where is the "next stop" for city distribution logistics?
**IV. Sub-forums on the Afternoon of March 17**
Community group buying was the hottest trend after mid-2018, with nearly 3 billion yuan in financing entering community group buying projects within 5 months. But as the hottest trend, some are pessimistic, some are optimistic. Mr. Ren Xiaodong, a partner of New Distribution, once raised the question: Will community group buying become the third pole of China's retail industry? This topic has also sparked heated discussions in the industry. We will extend this theme, focusing on three core topics: model exploration of community e-commerce, the latest tactics of community e-commerce, and how brand owners should cooperate with community e-commerce.
The topic "What is Peppa?" before the Spring Festival this year became a huge hit, consuming countless people's emotions. As market practitioners in the industry, while being consumed, we also need to reflect on the logic behind it. Why did Peppa Pig become popular? In the future, how can we combine similar IPs like Peppa Pig with our own brands, leveraging the momentum of IP to achieve brand growth? This time, the IP + FMCG Empowerment Special Session organized by New Distribution will interpret the trend of IP + brand commercialization from a full industry chain perspective for the first time. We have also invited Mr. Liu Bing, Chairman of "Palace Museum Creative," to share on-site how brands can cooperate with the Palace Museum to achieve both brand and sales success.
**V. Sub-forums on March 18**
The New Marketing Open Class held a 2-day, 1-night intensive training in Zhengzhou in January in the form of closed training. From early enrollment (originally planned for 100 people but eventually 230) to later student feedback (excellent course, huge amount of information), it far exceeded our expectations. This made us realize that more and more traditional marketing practitioners need to understand and master the new tactics and routines of marketing in the internet era. Therefore, New Distribution has decided to open the New Marketing Open Class from closed training, condensing high-quality new marketing cases into a full day so that more people can understand new marketing.
Regarding the distributor transformation special session, New Distribution prefers to define it as a distributor transformation practical training camp. At that time, we will invite general managers or owners of trading companies in transformation to personally narrate their transformation journey, the pitfalls they encountered, and the hurdles they overcame. Of course, different types of distributors have different transformation methods, but they can be roughly divided into three categories: business model transformation, commercial model transformation, and organizational form transformation. For each type of transformation, there will be practical distributor sharing on-site.
**In summary, New Distribution hopes that through 3 days of 9 high-density, high-quality sharing and exchanges by expert teachers or witnesses, every brand owner and distributor can learn the latest business models, expert opinions, and practical methods, find new tools and methods to break through in 2019, and return to the track of rapid growth.**
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