Source丨Zhoupu Data On October 16-17, Zhoupu Data's "Direction of Evolution" 2025 Polaris Club Autumn Forum was held in Nanjing. Max, founder and CEO of Zhoupu Data, delivered a keynote speech titled "Beneath the Surface, Above the Essence" at the main forum on the 17th. Facing market anxiety in an era of stock, Max started from industry essence and first principles to help distributors avoid the trap of "blind action against crisis" and find the direction of evolution. This article reviews the main content of the speech. The following is the full text of the speech: Distinguished guests, dear partners, good morning! I am Max, founder of Zhoupu Data. I am glad to have the opportunity to exchange ideas with you today. Over the past few years, the most heard voices have been about change and crisis. Experts have come out to give advice, telling us that if we don't embrace something, we will die. This obviously makes us all anxious. But if we blindly follow these remarks, using blind action to counter the crisis will only worsen it. Entering the stock era, facing intensified competition and increasingly complex market environments, we urgently need to see through the fog and return to the essence of industry and business, even to common sense. In highly fragmented upstream and downstream markets, Intermediaries are always needed First common sense: In any market with highly fragmented upstream and downstream, intermediaries are always needed. Without intermediaries, how can a brand sell products to tens of millions of terminal outlets? How can a terminal directly purchase from tens of thousands of brands? The existence of intermediaries greatly simplifies transactions. From a logistics perspective, goods travel thousands of kilometers in full truckloads, are placed in forward warehouses, and then frequently supplied to terminals from there. This is the logistics chain with the lowest number of handling times and the most economical. China has one billion people living in areas below fourth-tier cities, with huge urban-rural differences. Neither physical convenience store chains nor flash purchase can overturn tens of millions of terminal outlets with a few simple models. When density is insufficient, cooperating with distributors remains the cost-optimal solution. More than a decade ago, when internet giants were competing to disintermediate, some predicted that distributors would soon be replaced; however, we survived. We also survived the wave of supermarket chainization that lasted over a decade. Community group buying did not wipe us out; the hard discount wave in the past two years came fiercely, and we still stand firm. Today, facing instant retail, some say this time is really different, the wolf is really coming, but I can guarantee that we will not go extinct collectively like dinosaurs. A core underlying logic is: In the vast and fragmented Chinese market, no retail format can dominate the world. For example, in a city like Nanjing, even if a certain flash warehouse brand opens 100-200 stores, compared to tens of thousands of terminal outlets, it is still a drop in the bucket. Terminal outlets and channels will remain fragmented and diversified for a long time. This requires intermediaries. In the past, we were called wholesalers or distributors; in the future, we may be called channel providers, supply chain enterprises, or supply chain platforms. But the opportunity is still ours, and the business is still ours. So, please first let go of "identity anxiety." You were important in the past, and you will only become more important in the future. Evolution: Not one-time, but diverse paths Over the past decade, facing repeated industry upheavals, you have won round after round of elimination matches. I would like to ask everyone here to give yourselves a round of applause—we have not only survived but become stronger. Many of our business scales have grown 5 or 10 times compared to ten years ago, and management models have become refined from extensive. Individuals are evolving, and the industry is progressing; this is a certain fact. Some grow, while others exit the stage. Business competition is cruel. "Survival of the fittest, survival of the adapted" is the basic evolutionary law of nature and human business civilization. It is both cruel and fair. Environmental changes are continuous, and evolution is not one-time. No one can stop this process. If we do not maintain awe for the market, rest on past glory, and stop striving, then we will regress if we do not advance. Today, the times have given new propositions again, requiring a new selection of winners. For you who have experienced many battles and achieved great feats, this is a challenge and an opportunity to become stronger again. It is certain that some of us will reach a scale of 10 billion in the coming years. When we are sure this is an opportunity, there is no need for excessive anxiety; what we need to do is patiently find the path. Fortunately, the path is not unique—not a single-plank bridge for thousands of troops, but all roads lead to Rome. This may further reduce our anxiety. On the African savannah, antelopes evolved excellent running ability, while giraffes evolved necks taller than all other animals. Facing the harsh environment, they leveraged their strengths and avoided weaknesses, finding unique survival methods. Our enterprises are the same. Facing complex and changing environments, we must and will certainly leverage our strengths to find our own evolutionary path. From the titles of the excellent guests' sharing later, you can see that even among the strong, their models and characteristics are different. You may ask: Although each has strengths, do these excellent distributors today have anything in common? Although there is no shortcut to turning stone into gold, we try to find some common patterns from these successful people. Finding patterns requires starting from essence and common sense. Fortunately, we have found several, and I will share them here. Customer-centric: Whoever buys from you is your customer Any book on business management will tell us that enterprises should always be "customer-centric." However, who exactly is our customer? On this most basic question, some distributor friends still cannot figure it out today. In the past 20 years, it was an era when brand owners had the choice. The term "deep distribution" itself is from the brand owner's perspective, so it is easy to point "customer" to brand owners. We obtained benefits by serving brand owners well, including price differences and market expenses. Under the concept centered on brand agency rights, we focused on hot products, searched for products in dividend periods, and fell into interest games with manufacturers, sacrificing our own business efficiency. More seriously, once an enterprise adapts particularly well in an era, it easily becomes path-dependent and turns into a closed, inward-looking operation centered on itself. This business philosophy emphasizes control and excludes collaboration. China's market has long changed from a seller's market to a buyer's market. The discourse power of the entire industry has been redistributed. The customer in customer-centricity should no longer be the brand owner, but the terminal. Returning to common sense, whoever buys from me is my customer. Supermarkets, restaurants, steamed bun shops, unit canteens, gyms, billiard halls can all be my customers, while brand owners are my partners. We observe that today's excellent distributors have already changed their concepts early, continuously studying terminal needs, and adjusting business and organizational structures based on this. If meeting terminal customer needs and providing the best service to terminals is the first priority, the business philosophy and organizational form will become more outward-looking and collaborative. This collaboration includes closer coordination with terminals, paying attention to the rationality of store inventory rather than blindly pushing and forcing, and also paying attention to the matching of products with different terminals; This collaboration also includes open arms, cooperating with fellow distributors, pooling resources to provide the best service to stores; Of course, it also includes coordination with brands, investing appropriate marketing resources in the right stores, rather than simply obtaining fees. We observe that this outward-looking business philosophy of broad collaboration has been fully demonstrated in some excellent distributors. When these changes occur, we are actually no longer the agents of the past, but have become truly long-lived supply chain enterprises. Supply chain enterprises must be digitally driven So, what are the common characteristics of modern supply chain enterprises? Modern supply chain companies must be highly digitalized, or digitally driven. Just as all internet companies are digitalized, all supply chain companies must also be digitalized. In fact, digitalization promoted enterprise scale and efficiency much earlier than the internet. As early as the 1960s, EDI emerged between retail enterprises and supply chain enterprises. Enterprises improved collaboration efficiency through electronic data interchange. Essentially, digitalization brought about modern supply chain enterprises, so all supply chain enterprises should be fully digitally driven. Sysco For example, Sysco, the largest food distributor in the US and even globally. Founded in 1969,

  • It was one of the first companies in the world to introduce CRM;
  • It continuously invested in digital construction and automation equipment in warehousing, logistics, and distribution to achieve precise inventory management and efficient distribution planning;
  • It introduced online shopping platforms and intelligent product recommendations early, tracking orders in real time while accurately obtaining customer profiles to improve decision quality;
  • It spared no expense to help customers carry out technological store renovations, providing terminals with integrated payment methods, real-time inventory monitoring and management, intelligent automatic replenishment, intelligent product recommendations, etc.;
  • Based on a digital operation platform, it conducted more than 200 mergers and acquisitions (an average of 4 per year), with revenue exceeding $80 billion in 25 years. Clearly, without continuous digital investment, there would be no Sysco today. Sysco is both a model of supply chain companies and a model of full-chain business digitalization. ** Walmart/McLane** There is another supply chain company comparable to Sysco: McLane, founded in 1894, which transformed from a grocery store to a small wholesaler, and then became a Fortune 500 supply chain platform company. It was acquired by Walmart in 1990 and then by Buffett, becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary. McLane's history is also a history of technological evolution. And Walmart, which once acquired it, as everyone knows, has always been known for heavy investment in technology. Jobs once joked: If there were only two information companies left in the world, one would be Dell, and the other would be Walmart. As early as the 1970s, Walmart introduced computers and barcode systems to manage inventory (many companies still lack this capability 50 years later), increasing inventory turnover to more than twice the industry average, and reducing distribution costs as a percentage of sales to 3%, 40% lower than peers. As early as the 1980s, it spent $24 million to launch a private satellite, establishing the world's first retail satellite network for real-time inventory monitoring. In fiscal year 2023, Walmart spent $12 billion on digital infrastructure, covering core areas such as supply chain digitalization, e-commerce platform development, AI, IoT, and automated warehousing. Such investment not only exceeds the vast majority of retail enterprises, but also puts many so-called internet companies in our country to shame. Even a giant like Walmart is still a customer of McLane, and so is 7-11. This shows that large chain retail enterprises do not necessarily build all supply chains themselves. If other supply chain platforms have better cost and higher efficiency, why not cooperate? Such cooperation has a premise: both parties must be highly digitalized to achieve seamless, real-time linkage. Speaking of high digitalization, you have all chosen or are about to choose Zhoupu as a digital partner. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks! Your choice has surpassed most peers and has become an important part of your competitive advantage. So how to specifically understand the value of digitalization? For the value of internal management, everyone can say it at once: Digitalization solves the problems of observability, controllability, and optimization in internal management. It makes the positioning of management problems more precise, processes more standardized, and continuous improvement of management more systematic. The greatest significance of digitalization is far beyond internal management, but external connection and collaboration But from the cases of Walmart and McLane above, we can see that digitalization has significance for supply chain enterprises far beyond internal management; its greatest power lies in external connection and collaboration. Digitalization allows enterprises to smoothly access a larger collaboration network and conveniently use socialized productivity to optimize efficiency. Without digitalization, connection and collaboration between enterprises would be a pipe dream. And the competition of future enterprises will definitely be a contest of collaboration and integration capabilities, because the industry has long passed the stage of primitive accumulation of fighting alone. In fact, the collaborative forms representing the future have already begun to appear today. A few examples: For example, unified warehousing and distribution. More and more distributors are beginning to externalize their warehousing and distribution capabilities. Without digitalization, how can you quickly send orders to others for delivery? If goods are in someone else's warehouse, how can you accurately know your inventory? For example, B2b joint operation platforms. Many distributors are starting their own B2b platforms, attracting other distributors to join and franchise. Without digitalization, how can orders be efficiently split and accounts settled with each other? The above is collaboration among distributor peers. Another example is between distributors and downstream stores. In the context of diversified channel forms, they are also trying to connect systems, through VMI, that is, vendor-managed inventory, making our replenishment to stores highly intelligent. End-to-end digitalization Behind VMI is the digital connection of upstream and downstream, and it is the prototype of end-to-end digitalization. For example, connect payment and inventory with downstream terminals, and even provide cash registers for stores; just like Sysco mentioned earlier. Then proactively replenish stores, making stores worry-free and efficient. Relying on such autonomous and efficient service, we even have the opportunity to horizontally unite other suppliers to provide one-stop supply to stores. As we cooperate extensively with other suppliers, we can also open our systems to some suppliers, allowing them to view inventory independently and help us replenish; saving us the heavy procurement work. When we connect numerous downstream terminals on the left and numerous suppliers on the right, the power of end-to-end digitalization will be further amplified. ** Carrying industrial connection and collaboration is the mission of supply chain enterprises** Digitalization is the foundation for large-scale collaboration. It helps enterprises unite all forces that can be united to provide better services to terminal customers at lower costs. Whether it is a distributor or a supply chain service company, our duty and mission is to carry industrial connection and collaboration, connecting very fragmented upstream and downstream, and also connecting many collaborators horizontally. This means that where we are needed and valuable is exactly where digitalization exerts its power. ** Integration is inevitable for future growth** Over time, the circulation industry will inevitably move from fragmentation to intensification. Integration is inevitable when the industry reaches a certain stage. From the Sysco case above, it can also be seen that future supply chain enterprises with scales from 10 billion to 100 billion will definitely be achieved through rapid integration and mergers. Integration does not mean elimination or failure, but a higher form of division of labor and industrial efficiency improvement. At this time, without a digital foundation, you cannot even talk about integrating others, let alone have the qualification to be integrated by others. ** Without digitalization, intelligence has nothing to do with you** When we look further ahead, the intelligent era will eventually come. In the intelligent era, new propositions will still be raised, and new winners will be selected again. Although it is relatively long-term, one thing is certain: Digitalization is the only way to intelligence. If you are not digitalized today, then the future of intelligence will have nothing to do with you. Continuous learning & maintaining focus bring the Matthew effect, creating leading solutions Speaking of digitalization and intelligence, we have to mention Zhoupu's positioning: Since its inception, Zhoupu has been committed to providing the industry with the most leading digital and intelligent solutions. As a primary school student in the industry, how dare we have the courage to provide the most leading digital solutions? Because we stand on the shoulders of giants. The giants are not Sysco mentioned earlier, but you, all our customers. To date, we have served more than 40,000 of the most leading and evolutionary distributors, possessing the industry's richest "evolution sample library." We continuously observe and deconstruct the best practices behind evolution samples, extract your essence, and turn it into product iterations of more than 200 demands per month, year after year, and it has been exactly ten years now. Zhoupu may not be the group with the strongest learning ability, but it is definitely the most focused. Your excellent exploration and practice, coupled with Zhoupu's continuous focused learning, have jointly created the industry's most comprehensive and leading solutions today, attracting more and more distributors to choose us. And the more customers we have, the more samples for us to learn and extract, the better our solutions become, forming a virtuous cycle. This is the Matthew effect often mentioned. The Matthew effect applies not only to Zhoupu but also to you. When you have the highest digitalization level in your region, the most extensive and open collaboration, you can provide the best service to terminals, and you will become regional oligarchs, able to further integrate others in the future, becoming a local supply chain platform with overwhelming competitive advantage. Polaris Club: A platform of trust, sharing, and progress Your excellent exploration not only helps us create the best digital solutions but also provides rich material for today's forum. In the current increasingly complex market environment, we need intellectual collision more than ever. This is the original intention of launching "Polaris Club"—to build a platform of trust, sharing, and progress, where excellent experiences are seen, learned, and surpassed. The CEO session some partners participated in yesterday, the study tours often seen in the market, and the upcoming Polaris Academy are all components of our Polaris Club. Let me say a few more words about Polaris Academy. Polaris Academy does not train distributor bosses, but is the industry's first training institution focused on cultivating operational backbone for distributors and enhancing team execution capabilities. Everyone is welcome to actively enroll the backbone talents you intend to cultivate. Through Polaris Club and Polaris Academy, we strive to turn your verified survival wisdom from a few people's secrets into tools and methods that most people can learn, improving everyone's survival probability and making you stronger. The principle of responding to all changes with constancy The name Polaris Club borrows the meaning of the North Star. In the process of moving forward with twists and turns, whenever we are lost, the North Star is the constant guide that helps us calibrate our direction. Whether it is you or Zhoupu, we all hope to have some unchanging underlying principles in the long-term development of enterprises to help us respond to all changes with constancy. The customer-centric mentioned earlier is not only for you, but also Zhoupu's core business philosophy to cope with various changes. This philosophy helped Zhoupu through its own difficult times. Once, the outside world also conveyed enough anxiety to us, but through repeated exchanges with customers, we became more and more firm in the value of what we do; when we firmly adhere to customer-centricity, we will not be disturbed by external remarks, and can even continuously discover new needs and new opportunities. But even if we have made extreme insights into customer needs, do we have the ability to provide corresponding services? Often the heart is willing but the strength is insufficient. Why? It is probably not because of willingness, but because of efficiency constraints. For example, everyone is thinking about improving store coverage rate. In fact, improving store coverage rate is also beneficial to our own business. Is it that we don't want to improve? Obviously not. It is because the management and operation of people, goods, and stores have not yet achieved extreme efficiency. Efficiency constraints make many goals commercially unworthy of investment, causing you to voluntarily give up some business. When your efficiency improves, more customers will enter your vision and service scope; and as your coverage increases, your market dominance in the region strengthens, which will further improve your efficiency. Therefore, extreme efficiency is the second principle for responding to all changes with constancy. And extreme efficiency is the result of extreme division of labor and collaboration; Only by laying a solid digital foundation can you achieve scale efficiency, or efficient scale. Let data & intelligence empower every businessperson For Zhoupu, we also have a constant guide since its establishment, which is our original intention and our mission. Whether it is the past ten years or the next ten or twenty years, our mission has always been to let data and intelligence empower every businessperson. The first layer of this mission is faith in technology, believing that the intelligent era will definitely come; the deeper layer is believing in technology equality. Technology should not become an insurmountable gap on our way forward, but a ladder to higher success. It belongs to any enterprise willing to evolve in the industry. Today's forum is just a beginning; our pursuit of evolution will not stop. The Polaris Club forum will also be held regularly, becoming a platform for us to continue learning together. I look forward to meeting better versions of you every year with better versions of ourselves. Thank you all!