---
title: "Brand Owners' Development Bottleneck: More Management, Less Empowerment for Distributors"
description: "The three-year pandemic served as a thorough health check for all FMCG manufacturers, exposing issues that have become increasingly apparent after the lifting of restrictions. This article discusses the significance, methods, and approaches of brand owners empowering their distributors, moving beyond the outdated habit of 'more management, less empowerment' from the demographic dividend era."
author: "高级研究员 海游"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2023-02-24"
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# Brand Owners' Development Bottleneck: More Management, Less Empowerment for Distributors

> The three-year pandemic served as a thorough health check for all FMCG manufacturers, exposing issues that have become increasingly apparent after the lifting of restrictions. This article discusses the significance, methods, and approaches of brand owners empowering their distributors, moving beyond the outdated habit of 'more management, less empowerment' from the demographic dividend era.

The three-year pandemic served as a thorough health check for all FMCG manufacturers, and the problems it exposed have become increasingly apparent after the lifting of pandemic restrictions. Regarding brand owners leading distributors in mutual progress, the habit of **"more management, less empowerment"** formed during the demographic dividend era has persisted to this day. Today, let's discuss: What is the significance of brand owners empowering distributors? What empowerment is needed? How to empower?

**The Significance of Brand Owners Empowering Distributors**

For small and medium-sized brand owners, five years ago, when sales were declining and competition was weak, the most immediate solution was channel promotion policies. Common forms included channel gifts (e.g., buy 100 get 10, buy 100 get 5), purchase rebates (e.g., a 3% monthly rebate on sales growth over the same period last year), consumer promotions (e.g., increasing the intensity of "one more bottle" campaigns), and distributor stock-pressure incentives (e.g., warehouse subsidies, personnel subsidies). In short: sacrifice profits for sales, sacrifice brand for market share. There was nothing that money couldn't solve; if one attempt failed, try again. After the pandemic, many brand owners found this approach increasingly ineffective. Money was spent, but results fell far short of expectations, sometimes backfiring and leading to a vicious cycle. Where exactly is the problem? I have proposed a viewpoint to many brand owner executives: **When market problems arise, adopt the thinking of traditional Chinese medicine but the methods of Western medicine.** How to understand this? Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes a holistic view. For example, a drug for a certain disease might reduce kidney function, so you also need to protect the kidneys while treating the disease, ensuring the healthy development of all bodily units. Western medicine is more focused: treat the disease directly, with great intensity and quick results. Returning to the issue of spending money without results, for brand owners this is also a systemic problem. It could involve operations, products, channels, or distributor empowerment. All these issues need to be addressed, but today we'll focus on distributor empowerment. How to understand this from the perspective of distributor empowerment? There are several aspects:

1. **"Nanny-style" services clip the wings of distributor development**: I saw a picture on social media that was somewhat harsh but hit the mark. Let me share it. "Nanny-style" originated from the intensive distribution model. Brand owners believed their own operational capabilities were strong and could bear the costs of a large sales force. Rather than painstakingly helping distributors grow, they preferred to do it themselves, leaving distributors to handle simple, mechanical delivery tasks. Over time, distributors became comfortable—no need to run sales, after-sales was covered by the manufacturer, and they still made money. Thus began the path of "self-inflicted disarmament."

2. **Brand owners' tough management attitude draws a circle for distributors**: Over the past decade or more, almost all brand owner marketing teams were very assertive. With products in hand, everything was fine; the more first-tier the brand, the more severe. They advocated "managing" distributors, sharing management experience at meetings, frequently changing clients, and using a mix of threats and incentives to draw a circle for distributors, telling them they could only operate within that circle, follow the manufacturer's lead, and if they made mistakes, the manufacturer would cover them. If they didn't follow the manufacturer's instructions, they would be quickly eliminated. At that time, distributors also made money and found this comfort zone quite pleasant, gradually staying within the circle, which stifled market exploration and innovation.

3. **At the operational level, distributors have no opportunity to participate**: First, regarding products, most brand owners launch new products under "confidential operations." When distributors receive the notice, they are already forced to ship the new products. So at the product level, distributors have almost no say; it's a nationwide unified push. Second, regarding channels, brand owners' channel expenses are already fixed. For example, campus channel expenses can only be spent at campus outlets; otherwise, they cannot be reimbursed. Even if the distributor's region has no campuses, initially they might object, but when objections prove futile, they become resigned. Finally, at the consumer level, brand owners have already fixed consumer profiles. Distributors have limited descriptive ability, and no one guides them on whether the profiles match their own markets. In short, they do as they're told.

4. **Brand owners lack organizations for distributor empowerment, and subjective awareness is weak**: Many brand owners have established distributor empowerment organizations, but even then, it's just two or three people forming a training department (usually without an empowerment budget—"you can't make bricks without straw"). Training sessions depend on the marketing head's availability. There's no fixed schedule, no fixed trainers, and random, ad-hoc simple coaching yields little effect. Additionally, some "veteran" distributors who helped build the brand may resist corporate empowerment, making it difficult for brand owners to implement empowerment plans.

**Summary: Why can't money solve problems?** From the perspective of distributor empowerment, the previous nationwide unified approach has long been broken. Market differentiation is increasingly evident. Distributors need "individual cases," while the power of "unified cases" is diminishing. Brand owners cannot give equal attention to all, and distributors lack specific operational strategies, so everyone is left "gazing at the ocean and sighing."

**How Should the Empowerment System Be Established?**

First, it's important to emphasize: For brand owners, the effects of distributor empowerment are not immediate; they require gradual accumulation and long-term execution. We often say, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Only when your closest partners improve can they better match the brand owner's own development. Of course, don't think you can just "copy" what other brand owners have done; that won't work either. Each company has different genes, leading to different empowerment outcomes. I believe brand owner empowerment of distributors should start from three aspects: the direction of empowerment, the means of empowerment, and the phased results of empowerment.

**1. Direction of Empowerment:** Some people make empowerment too complex, detached from the actual situation of distributors, or the content isn't what distributors care most about and doesn't solve their urgent problems. I suggest starting with the following three points, which might be better.

**a. Financial empowerment**: This includes how to help distributors make more money, how to spend expenses better, and how to target investments more precisely. From a financial perspective, help distributors understand the essence of business operations. This is what distributors lack most currently.

**b. Sales empowerment**: This includes how to help distributors break through sales volumes, how to decode pricing, and how to execute promotional activities. Starting from how to sell more goods, understand the true meaning of sales. This is also the bottleneck for all distributors' growth and something they need to break through.

**c. Management empowerment**: This includes how to help distributors design more suitable performance management, how to design more efficient organizational structures, how to optimize process and delivery, and how to optimize warehouse management. These factors are eroding distributor profits. Distributors feel profits are shrinking but have no solutions; they need brand owners to provide guidance.

**2. Means of Empowerment:** Once the direction is set, corresponding means must be matched; otherwise, the direction cannot be implemented. Common means of distributor empowerment include the following types:

**a. Establish a training system**: Let excellent distributors and brand owner employees, as well as hired practical experts, provide systematic training to distributors. Pay attention to training content, format, and verification of training results.

**b. Establish a benchmarking market study tour mechanism**: Move the classroom to the market. Come from the market, go to the market. Discover and solve problems through market visits and research.

**c. Establish a digital system**: Connect the manufacturer-distributor digital channels, allowing distributors to operate in the sunlight. Most distributors lack digital capabilities and need brand owner guidance to discover operational directions from data.

**d. Establish a fusion and co-creation mechanism**: Brand owners and distributors should integrate with each other. Strategies on products, channels, and consumers should open interactive channels, allowing distributors to truly participate and grow through participation.

**3. Phased Results of Empowerment:** Distributor empowerment is not a formality. If there is input, there must be output. Therefore, periodic assessment of distributor capabilities is essential. How to assess is a challenge. My suggestion is for brand owners to establish a distributor capability assessment scoring system, scoring capabilities from multiple dimensions, and periodically evaluating the improvement results of distributor capabilities. What does the distributor capability assessment system include? Common dimensions include: the completeness of the distributor's channel structure, the density and quality of outlet coverage, the strength of outlet service capabilities (visit frequency and quality), the completeness of organizational structure and management systems, and the growth of sales and profits. Once the scoring system is established, regular "health checks" can be conducted for distributors. The results also serve as a check on the phased results of empowerment. Then, like exam review, start identifying and filling gaps.

**Final Thoughts:** In the current market, major enterprises are advancing branding, and the industry is growing rapidly, increasingly demonstrating competitive advantages. Distributors need empowerment from excellent enterprises to enhance their comprehensive competitiveness, and enterprises need excellent distributors to amplify brand influence. The ecological phenomenon of mutual benefit and symbiosis between manufacturers and distributors will become more common. It is absolutely unacceptable to continue with brand owners racing ahead while distributors lag far behind. Such brands are destined to struggle in development!

**About the Author:** Hai You is a contributing author and senior researcher at New Distribution, a practitioner of offline channel marketing, and a designer of enterprise channel coverage models. He has provided channel consulting for over ten first-tier brands, earning a good reputation.


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