---
title: "An Imported Biscuit Brand Enters Social E-commerce, Selling 12 Million in One Day!"
description: "On April 12, imported biscuit brand McVitie's achieved over 10 million yuan in single-day sales on Yunji, setting a record for the platform's highest single-day sales for a snack brand. In 2017, McVitie's entered social e-commerce and created miracles without advertising or traditional marketing. The brand's success stems from its historical heritage, product strength, consumer awareness, and brand momentum, as well as its strategic focus on social e-commerce and a well-designed top-level structure."
author: "佘雪 / 袁来"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-08-17"
language: "en"
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# An Imported Biscuit Brand Enters Social E-commerce, Selling 12 Million in One Day!

> On April 12, imported biscuit brand McVitie's achieved over 10 million yuan in single-day sales on Yunji, setting a record for the platform's highest single-day sales for a snack brand. In 2017, McVitie's entered social e-commerce and created miracles without advertising or traditional marketing. The brand's success stems from its historical heritage, product strength, consumer awareness, and brand momentum, as well as its strategic focus on social e-commerce and a well-designed top-level structure.

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On April 12, the imported biscuit brand McVitie's achieved over 10 million yuan in single-day sales on Yunji, setting a record for the highest single-day sales for a snack brand in Yunji's history.
In 2017, McVitie's entered social e-commerce and, without advertising or traditional marketing, created many miracles on social e-commerce platforms.
Looking at the routes brands have taken to expand their markets in recent years, there are basically two: one is focusing on offline channels and competing for shelf space; the other is leveraging online communication efficiency and using marketing and word-of-mouth to build momentum. But McVitie's, a century-old British brand, took a different path, seizing the social e-commerce dividend and successfully further expanding its domestic market.
Recently, New Distribution had an in-depth exchange with Mr. Zhang Chitao, General Manager of Greater China for the British pladis Group, which owns the McVitie's brand. Zhang shared many exclusive insights on how imported snack brands can break into China and how to create hit products in social e-commerce.
**2016: McVitie's Steady Progress**
Compared to innovative snack brands that take three to four years to grow, McVitie's, a British snack brand with a century-long history, can be called an antique brand. However, if counting from its entry into the Chinese market, McVitie's, with only three years of experience, is in its infancy as a brand.
Many people may doubt that even if McVitie's is well-known in Europe and the US, it is just an unfamiliar snack brand to Chinese consumers. Moreover, 2016 was a time when domestic innovative snack brands were flourishing, so McVitie's not only arrived a bit late but also seemed to lack competitiveness.
Facing these doubts, Zhang Chitao stated that McVitie's is very strong. The confidence for McVitie's to enter the Chinese market is mainly reflected in four aspects: **historical heritage, product strength, consumer awareness, and brand momentum**.
McVitie's has a history of 127 years, has made cakes for royal weddings, and is a designated supplier to the British Royal Family. Moreover, McVitie's has consistently topped UK biscuit sales charts, sells in over 100 countries, and has annual sales exceeding $5.6 billion. These rich stories and sales myths constitute the historical heritage of the McVitie's brand.
Currently, China is in an era of consumption upgrade, where consumers need better and higher-quality goods. For leisure snacks, besides being tasty, the most important thing is health. Imported foods from Europe and America naturally have the concept of healthy ingredients. McVitie's, which promotes health, with whole wheat, health, and multiple flavors as selling points, aligns with Chinese consumers' pursuit of snack upgrades. This reflects McVitie's product strength.
Zhang Chitao said that McVitie's specifically selects suitable products from the group's over 3,000 products based on Chinese consumers' taste preferences, and prices them closer to UK domestic prices, with a lower markup rate than most European and American imported snacks. By combining high quality with affordable pricing, they target mid-to-high-end consumers, and with the influence of returned overseas students from the UK, they lay the foundation for consumer awareness.
Additionally, McVitie's entered the Hong Kong market early and has been a top-three snack brand there. Hong Kong people's snack preferences have influenced the population in the coastal areas of Guangdong. Its household name in South China has strengthened McVitie's brand momentum.
Although McVitie's advantages are prominent, due to the special nature of imported snack products, such as production capacity and supply chain constraints, operations are quite challenging. Therefore, in its early days in China, McVitie's chose a strategy of comprehensive offline expansion in key cities and key online breakthroughs.
First, it focused on first- and second-tier cities, achieving full coverage of key offline customer channels, while also focusing on key online channels. Zhang Chitao introduced that after McVitie's launched on JD.com, sales in the second year nearly doubled tenfold compared to the first year, and in the third year doubled again, winning multiple awards from JD.com.
On Tmall, McVitie's also ranks among the top imported internet-famous snack brands. According to Nielsen data, McVitie's digestive biscuits and Go Ahead yogurt biscuits rank in the top two imported biscuits in their respective online categories. This laid a solid foundation for its subsequent foray into social e-commerce.
**2017: All-in on Social E-commerce**
When Pinduoduo single-handedly "spelled" out the social e-commerce track, the shock to the market was not just the consumption potential of people outside the fifth ring and the commercial effects of the WeChat ecosystem. More importantly, it revealed the **huge business opportunities based on social relationship chains**. McVitie's went all-in on social e-commerce in 2017, precisely seizing this wave of traffic dividends.
Zhang Chitao said that to master the marketing approach of social e-commerce, McVitie's went through a long and painful process of adaptation, not only understanding platform rules, attributes, user pain points, and activity requirements, but also proposing suitable marketing plans to gain platform resource support.
When asked about experience in social e-commerce, Zhang Chitao said that speed is the biggest competitive advantage. By concentrating resources to create hit products, quickly positioning at the right time, and occupying advantageous platform resources, one can remain invincible. Evidence is that McVitie's set single-day records of 10 million and 3 million yuan for imported snack hits on Yunji and Dalinjia platforms, which have not been broken to this day.
Looking back from 2019, we might think McVitie's was visionary. But if we go back to 2017, whether social e-commerce would work was unknown. Why could McVitie's go all-in without hesitation? Zhang Chitao told New Distribution that the key was doing two things right: **first, understanding the trend of social e-commerce communication; second, insight into social e-commerce traffic.**
Zhang Chitao said that in the new communication environment, social e-commerce is a medium with its own private domain traffic. Hit products naturally have fission communication effects, and promotion costs are controllable. Head social e-commerce platforms can reach consumers more efficiently, enhancing the effect of hit product communication. Taking Yunji as an example, one exposure of McVitie's covers at least 5 million people. This effect comes from the all-in push of both the brand and the platform, as well as the fission communication of consumers based on social relationship chains. If buying the same volume of traffic externally, the risk is huge.
So McVitie's insight is that **the high input-output ratio of social e-commerce benefits from the high stickiness of user relationship chains. The logic behind it is that the traffic advantage of social e-commerce comes from private domain traffic plus efficient social fission.**
**Complete Top-Level Design to Support Brand Breakthrough Strategy**
According to survey data from the China Candy and Snacks Exhibition Organizing Committee, the annual growth rate of China's imported leisure food demand has been between 15% and 20% in recent years. It also predicts that by 2020, China's imported food will enter a golden decade of explosive growth, with market share reaching $480 billion.
In the future, how imported snacks can more efficiently expand the domestic market and how distributors can choose more profitable brands will be the focus of both parties. McVitie's entry into the Chinese market, starting with steady progress, experiencing the all-in on social e-commerce, and maintaining good cooperation with distributors, has taken the first step of a successful brand strategy.
Zhang Chitao said that most imported snack brands in China adopt a general distribution model or operate with small teams. McVitie's, however, has established a complete structure including brand marketing, trade marketing, online and offline sales, customer service, import, and logistics, providing comprehensive support to distributors and retail platforms.
At the same time, it designs a profitable price structure for distributors to ensure stable income. It has established three logistics centers to ensure distribution services for distributors. It has a system for quick response to distributor difficulties. It is this top-level layout design that ensures the smooth path of McVitie's brand breakthrough.
Half of 2019 has passed, and the heat of social e-commerce remains unabated. If we ask what brilliant results McVitie's will achieve on this track, we wait for the market's answer. But some things can be predicted, such as McVitie's leading position in social e-commerce.
Zhang Chitao made an analogy: if the sales operation of traditional retail customers is like an automatic transmission, then social e-commerce operation is more like a manual transmission. Drivers know that although automatic transmission is simpler to operate, manual transmission is suitable for instantly unleashing the car's maximum power.
McVitie's, which has been exploring the social e-commerce track for nearly two years, is an old driver who knows how to play with manual transmission. The experience accumulated through actual combat, closely uniting distributors, and quick response to build a moat for the brand are McVitie's core competitive advantages.


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