---
title: "A Major Beer Distributor's Waterloo in Cross-Province Expansion"
description: "In June 2022, Xie Min, a top beer distributor, ended her 300-day attempt to expand into a new market, facing failure due to conflicts with the new management team and incompatible channel models. The article analyzes why her cross-region expansion failed and offers lessons for other distributors."
author: "陈思廷"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-08-12"
language: "en"
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# A Major Beer Distributor's Waterloo in Cross-Province Expansion

> In June 2022, Xie Min, a top beer distributor, ended her 300-day attempt to expand into a new market, facing failure due to conflicts with the new management team and incompatible channel models. The article analyzes why her cross-region expansion failed and offers lessons for other distributors.

********Click to read the original text for details********
On the morning of June 9, 2022, Xie Min breathed a sigh of relief as she walked out of the general manager's office of A Beer's provincial company in Jiangnan City (pseudonym).
"It's all over!" She strode out of the provincial company building. Xie Min waved her hand, as if to bid a firm farewell to the experiences of the past year or more.
But how easy was it to completely forget the 300-plus days of struggle in Jiangnan? Sitting in the car on her way home, Xie Min's thoughts involuntarily drifted back to 2021.
**01 Full of ambition, Xie Min was invited to cross-region expedition**
Xie Min was an outstanding distributor of A Beer in Jiangbei City (pseudonym), with consistently excellent performance and unwavering loyalty to the brand.
Xie Min often joked that in the prime of her life, she had two lovers: one was her husband, and the other was the A Beer brand she had been operating for over 20 years.
Xie Min's terminal network had been built over many years, covering more than 1,000 core catering terminals in Jiangbei City. Each catering terminal was meticulously managed by her own team, excelling in both customer relationships and terminal sales. A Beer's main competitor, B Brand, had attempted to poach Xie Min several times over the years, but she always refused.
In recent years, A Beer had strategically emphasized channel capability improvement, encouraging and introducing outstanding internal and external distributors with development intentions to operate across regions.
Jiangnan City was A Beer's base market, but in recent years, due to the channel capability lagging behind the company's development, the provincial marketing head had the idea of introducing outstanding external distributors. This head knew Xie Min well and was aware of her business capabilities, so he extended an invitation to her.
After A Beer's Jiangnan company sent a team to inspect Xie Min's team and market operations, they were very satisfied. After several in-depth communications, Xie Min finally decided to enter the Jiangnan market.
Xie Min had some expectations of the difficulties and challenges of cross-region operation, but on one hand, considering that there was no room for expansion in Jiangbei, and on the other hand, out of love and trust for the brand, she decided to take the gamble.
In June 2021, Xie Min prepared 10 million yuan in funds, rallied internally to form a dedicated team, and marched into the old city area of Jiangnan, the market with the most pressure, with great ambition and fanfare.
Xie Min recalled the moment the Jiangnan market launched; the future vision unfolded before her eyes, and the air seemed filled with an exhilarating atmosphere.
**02 Xie Min's 300 days: From hard work and reflection to disappointment**
To Xie Min's surprise, the Jiangnan branch had just opened when the first unexpected event occurred.
The five people from A Beer who had previously inspected Xie Min's Jiangbei company and highly approved of her—now the main team in the old city market of Jiangnan—were all transferred away from the current market. As soon as Xie Min's branch opened, she was greeted by an A Beer management team that knew nothing about her.
"An arrow shot cannot be recalled," but even though A Beer had changed the regional management team, Xie Min still believed that her abilities would earn the recognition and acceptance of the new management team.
Xie Min's Jiangnan branch team spent a month taking over the previous distributor's inventory and accounts, while simultaneously launching a series of actions to reclaim terminal markets.
The results of reclaiming terminals were quite good, but as marketers know, frontline problems are often deep-rooted and require persistent correct business actions.
However, the new management team was clearly not satisfied with the market progress, hoping to reclaim the market and scale up faster, but Xie Min believed it needed more time.
At the same time, the new management team's market strategy was completely different from Xie Min's team, leading to more, bigger, and more complex problems.
Xie Min's Jiangbei market operated with a direct-control terminal model, especially for catering terminals, where every store was controlled by her business team. But Jiangnan's channel model combined direct control with extensive distribution, and the two teams' philosophies were incompatible.
For example, in Jiangbei's catering terminals, which were directly controlled, when competitors attacked the catering market, Xie Min could raise the box price at the store and then increase bottle-opening rebates to boost opening rates; she could also change channel purchase rebates to box-recycling rebates. But in Jiangnan, there were about 200 wholesalers, making product flow difficult to control.
This meant that once Xie Min's team raised box prices at terminals, wholesalers' goods would immediately flow into those terminals. Additionally, if Xie Min's area implemented this action while other areas in Jiangnan did not synchronize, goods from other areas would flood into Xie Min's old city market.
Clearly, this conflict in operational models was irreconcilable. A Beer's new management team and Xie Min's team went from mutual expectations to friction and suspicion, and finally to an inability to cooperate.
In May, communication between Xie Min and the new management team deteriorated, and market pressure increased. Xie Min and her team gradually went from confidence to disappointment. In June, Xie Min used her most intense resistance: despite large market inventory, she resolutely refused the new management team's order to push inventory.
Xie Min's fiery personality led to the new management team's poor performance that month. She knew in her heart that this cross-province expedition would likely end in failure.
On June 9, after properly arranging her team's future, Xie Min had an in-depth report with the provincial head. After the report, with the provincial head's approval, Xie Min began the final market handover.
Recalling this, Xie Min sighed softly. Was it relief? Regret? She couldn't tell. But she knew that as the train wheels spun, she was getting closer to Jiangbei. Perhaps that was where she truly belonged.
**03 Why did Xie Min's expedition fail?**
Xie Min's cross-province expedition is an example of the "three crosses" path for major distributors that New Distribution once summarized: cross-region operation.
Many distributors, who primarily operate one or two brands, find that when the original market space shrinks, cross-region operation is a viable path, and there are many successful cases.
Today we only explore one question: Why did Xie Min, the best in Jiangbei, fail to replicate her success in Jiangnan and suffer a Waterloo?
We believe that distributors operating across regions must meet several basic conditions. Let's compare each with Xie Min.
**First, sufficient trust and support from the brand owner.**
In this regard, Xie Min had it. Both her 20-plus years of cooperation with A Brand and her excellent performance in Jiangbei proved this.
If the brand owner didn't trust and support Xie Min enough, the provincial marketing head wouldn't have extended the invitation.
**Second, not only business capability but also comprehensive capability must be excellent.**
For Xie Min, looking at it objectively, we think her business capability, especially in catering terminals, was excellent.
But she showed poor adaptability in unfamiliar market environments, and her coping methods were not rational, ultimately leading to failure.
It's important to note that the development stage and channel model in Jiangbei were completely different from those in Jiangnan. Xie Min's excellent business capability was formed in the Jiangbei environment and under the direct-control terminal model. Perhaps Jiangbei's model was the most advanced and the direction Jiangnan should develop, but it couldn't switch from Jiangnan's model to Jiangbei's overnight.
Therefore, every distributor boss on an expedition cannot hold the idea of using one model to conquer the world, unless you have absolute control over the product. **Different markets have different models, which may be advanced or backward, but reform is never achieved overnight. Choosing the most suitable model based on the current situation and then gradually changing is the right path.**
Moreover, coming from distant Jiangbei to Jiangnan, with A Beer's management team newly changed, Xie Min failed to build alliances quickly, which was a strategic mistake. When conflicts arose with the new management team, Xie Min might also face rejection from the original distributors, wholesalers, and some terminals.
Fighting alone without reinforcements, how could Xie Min's expedition not suffer a Waterloo?
Of course, in this case, Xie Min's problem was incomplete consideration and overly emotional decision-making; A Beer's new regional management team's problem was backward thinking, outdated methods, and a sole focus on sales targets.
As for Xie Min in the article, we believe returning to her Jiangbei base was the most correct choice. Relying on her network of over 1,000 core catering stores, she could fully leverage meticulous cultivation and digital marketing to elevate her business to the next level.
**04 Every rising major distributor has been scarred**
For every major distributor to rise, they must choose a direction to break through after reaching a certain scale. **This breakthrough action is often related to the word "cross."**
**The three crosses for major distributor development are cross-category, cross-region, and cross-channel.** The word "cross" is easy to say but fraught with danger in practice. Waterloos like Xie Min's are common among major distributors.
One major distributor humorously described the development path of major distributors as "all the way is water, with pits in the water, and nails in the pits." It can be said that every major distributor who ultimately rises has been battle-hardened and scarred.
Therefore, **it is almost impossible for distributors to avoid injury during development and rise; the key is to avoid fatal wounds and low-level wounds.**
In the past, our distributors accumulated and developed by "crossing the river by feeling the stones"; **today, we can no longer feel the stones; we must "cross the river by feeling the successful."**
From August 31 to September 2, 2022, the 7th China FMCG Channel Innovation Conference, hosted by New Distribution, after multiple delays, will finally be held in Chengdu! At this conference, we have specially set up a full-day distributor development forum for FMCG distributors. At this forum, multiple major distributors with scales of one billion yuan from across the country will share their experiences and lessons in their rise.
Every distributor aspiring to develop cannot miss this. (This is a real case; all brands, names, and places in the article are pseudonyms)
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