---
title: "Coca-Cola 'Slims Down', Guozishule Launches Limited Flavors: Channel Customization Becomes New Growth Engine"
description: "In 2025, a 400ml Coca-Cola labeled 'snack channel customized' appeared in Liangpin Hemang stores, 100ml less and 0.5 yuan cheaper than the regular version. Meanwhile, young beverage brand Guozishule launched multiple channel-customized products across categories like sugar-free tea and electrolyte water, with limited flavors such as golden osmanthus white tea and Litsea lemon tea to enhance channel identity."
author: "擎苍"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2026-02-15"
categories: "Management & Methods"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/QvL7-ifnLdyH1xTazOazKQ"
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citation: "擎苍. “Coca-Cola 'Slims Down', Guozishule Launches Limited Flavors: Channel Customization Becomes New Growth Engine.” New Distribution, 2026-02-15. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/coca-cola-slims-down-guozishule-launches-limited-flavors-channel-customi-df1efe51/"
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# Coca-Cola 'Slims Down', Guozishule Launches Limited Flavors: Channel Customization Becomes New Growth Engine

> In 2025, a 400ml Coca-Cola labeled 'snack channel customized' appeared in Liangpin Hemang stores, 100ml less and 0.5 yuan cheaper than the regular version. Meanwhile, young beverage brand Guozishule launched multiple channel-customized products across categories like sugar-free tea and electrolyte water, with limited flavors such as golden osmanthus white tea and Litsea lemon tea to enhance channel identity.

**Source** | Pin Yin Hui Observation
In 2025, in Liangpin Hemang stores, a 400ml Coca-Cola labeled "snack channel customized" quietly appeared on shelves—100ml less than the regular version, priced at 2.3 yuan, 0.5 yuan cheaper than the regular version.
At the same time, young beverage brand Guozishule launched multiple channel-customized products in Liangpin Hemang and Zhao Yiming Snacks under Mingming Henmang, covering categories such as sugar-free tea, electrolyte water, fruit juice, and fruit tea, and strengthened channel identity with limited flavors like golden osmanthus white tea and Litsea lemon tea.
In fact, with the rapid rise of emerging channels such as snack bulk retail, membership warehouse, and instant retail, more and more "factory brands" have emerged in the past two years that specialize in channel customization or even co-create new products with channels, including Nongfu Spring, Panpan Beverages, Haojiayi, Rangcha, Lemon Republic, and other new and old brands, viewing "channel customization" as a new growth engine.
Behind this, the sales logic of the beverage industry is undergoing profound changes—the traditional "one product for the whole country" model is gradually failing, replaced by a "reverse customization" strategy oriented by channel demand. Brands no longer view channels merely as sales terminals but as important partners for understanding consumers and co-creating products. This shift brings new growth opportunities for beverage companies but also places higher demands on supply chain flexibility and channel management capabilities.
**From "Best-Seller Replacement" to "Innovation-Driven"**
Of course, the explosive growth of snack bulk retail channels and "Heshanpang" (referring to Hema, Sam's Club, and Pangdonglai) is the core driver behind the popularity of "channel customized" products.
Taking snack bulk retail channels as an example, according to Euromonitor International, China's snack bulk retail market size in 2024 was approximately 104 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28.6%, and is expected to exceed 150 billion yuan by 2027. Yanjinpu's channel transformation confirms this trend—its 2024 financial report shows that its direct-operated KA channel revenue share plummeted from 50% to 3.55%, while the revenue share of distribution and other new channels increased to 74.59%, with a significant contribution coming from snack bulk retail chains.
Secondly, a major feature of snack bulk retail channels is their extensive penetration into lower-tier markets. By customizing products for these channels, brands can better reach lower-tier consumer groups and fill market gaps.
Membership warehouse channels, with precise member data, have become "best-seller definers." For example, Sam's Club and Mandi Dessert's co-created "Durian甘露" (durian nectar) sold over 10 million bowls annually in the pre-packaged dessert category, boosting Mandi's new retail business GMV 20-fold in three years; Hema and Juneyao Health's co-created "J26 Billion Active Probiotic Plum Water" sold over 80,000 bottles within two weeks of launch, highlighting the closed-loop capability where channels propose topics based on consumption trends and brands respond quickly.
Instant retail platforms excel at precise penetration through user profiling. For instance, Rangcha's "Osmanthus Oolong Tea" co-branded with JD.com, backed by the platform's quality endorsement, achieved a praise rate exceeding 99%; Haoli!'s "Acai Berry Oat Bran Cup" launched on Dingdong Maicai became the best-selling product in the cereal category within one month. These cases show that reverse customization has evolved from a trial move to a systematic growth strategy for brands.
In one sentence: Where traffic flows, business thrives. This is the underlying logic behind the popularity of channel-customized products.
Looking back at the development of beverage "channel customization," it can be divided into two stages. The early stage was mostly "best-seller replacement," where channels sought low-cost, low-risk products; the current stage has entered the "innovation-driven" period, where channels pursue truly differentiated, functional exclusive products, and it has even become a "sharp weapon" for local beverage companies to compete with foreign brands for incremental market share.
This means that a successful channel-customized product places higher demands on a company's supply chain flexibility and R&D speed. European and American beverage brands, which have long relied on large-scale production lines, are facing increasingly severe adaptability challenges. These production lines were designed with standardized products at their core, relying on mass production to spread costs, giving them an advantage in the past era of economies of scale.
However, as consumer demand becomes more diverse and fragmented, this single-specification, high-volume production model gradually exposes its lack of flexibility. It is difficult to quickly switch product categories or respond promptly to niche demands emerging in regional markets, thus eroding traditional cost advantages.
In contrast, local emerging beverage brands, leveraging flexible OEM models, demonstrate stronger market adaptability. They can quickly adjust production strategies based on consumer feedback, test user preferences through small-batch trial production, and rapidly increase capacity for hot-selling items, forming a virtuous cycle of fast trial-and-error and small-step iteration.
For example, Panpan Beverages has established dual R&D centers in Shanghai and Jinjiang, creating a closed loop for small-scale and pilot tests, capable of delivering samples in as fast as half a day, with over 2,300 samples made in 2025. Haojiayi founder Li Lei has repeatedly emphasized user-oriented "reverse innovation," achieving "ceiling quality, floor price" through a self-built factory matrix. For instance, its 100% yogurt, with leading protein content, is priced at 4.9 yuan and quickly became the category leader after entering snack stores.
**Challenge: Beware of "Pseudo-Innovation"**
Despite the growth opportunities brought by channel customization, brands still face multiple challenges.
The first is channel conflict management. Generally, preventing channel conflicts caused by cross-regional selling (diversion) is an important reason for brands to launch customized products.
"For us, snack bulk retail stores have become a 'disaster zone' for diversion," a food and beverage distributor told Xiaoshidai. A spicy strip brand had a stable distributor in Hunan, with a supply price of about 5 yuan per pack (terminal suggested retail price 6 yuan), but a certain snack bulk retail chain obtained goods at 4.2 yuan per pack through distributors in other provinces and sold them at 4.5 yuan per pack in Hunan stores, causing price system chaos and directly impacting the survival space of local distributors.
"(Diversion) not only leads to inventory backlog for local distributors but also triggers dissatisfaction among traditional channel partners, even leading them to abandon cooperation. In the long run, it damages channel stability and brand reputation," the distributor added.
To address this issue, many companies, when expanding into snack bulk retail stores, often adopt a simple and crude exclusive-supply strategy—either launching smaller specifications with lower overall prices, or larger specifications with lower unit prices, creating product lines that are absolutely and relatively affordable, or even launching limited-edition products to reduce the circulation of common products.
Customized products, through differentiation in specifications and packaging, allow price systems across different channels to remain relatively independent, thereby stabilizing the overall price structure.
However, relying solely on channel-customized products to balance the interests of all parties is like walking a tightrope—for example, traditional channels do not have the "low-price" advantage compared to snack bulk retail channels. In other words, customized products that are "old wine in new bottles" can only reduce product-level conflicts but cannot eliminate traffic competition between channels.
On the other hand, there is widespread criticism on social platforms that some customized products "reduce quantity without reducing price," such as 400ml Coke priced the same as 500ml in supermarkets. This also means that customized products prioritize solving channel conflicts over absolute cost-effectiveness. If the benefits of customized products are not fully demonstrated, it will be difficult to fully align consumer experience with channel interests, becoming a new pain point for some channel-customized products.
Moreover, the threshold for channel customization is also rising. Panpan Beverages General Manager Cai Peng once said in an interview that channels not only value product strength when selecting partners but also pay attention to comprehensive capabilities such as team service, cost control, and supply chain stability. Panpan has co-created series like "Shennong Henmang" and "Sanfang Siji" with channels such as Yonghui and Sam's Club, and its health series sales are expected to approach 230 million yuan in 2025.
Market practices in 2025 clearly show that reverse customization has evolved from an innovative cooperation model into a mainstream growth methodology in the food and beverage industry. It reshapes the relationship between brands and channels: channels are no longer cold traffic entrances but partners that co-create value; brands are no longer one-way outputters but solution providers that require high market sensitivity and responsiveness.
As Cai Peng said: "The customization arena competes not only on individual products but also on the adaptability and creativity of the entire organization." In the future, as data granularity further refines and supply chain digital transformation deepens, this co-creation model driven by real-time consumer demand will inevitably give rise to more phenomenal products.
**[Moving Toward the C-End] The 11th China FMCG Conference**
**Time: March 16-18, 2026**
**Location: Chengdu, China**


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 擎苍
- Published: 2026-02-15
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/coca-cola-slims-down-guozishule-launches-limited-flavors-channel-customi-df1efe51/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/QvL7-ifnLdyH1xTazOazKQ

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