Click the image for details. Yesterday, the author visited Suishougou's national trading center in Luohe and had an in-depth discussion with its chairman, Mr. Zhao Jimin, about the current B2B models in China. Before the in-depth conversation with Mr. Zhao, the author had expressed in multiple articles a skeptical view of the matchmaking model for FMCG, citing reasons: 1) existing volume cannot be matched online; 2) too few links are compressed, and the margin is insufficient to support channel commissions; 3) there is a risk of order skimming; 4) it conflicts with offline business services. However, after Mr. Zhao spent an afternoon explaining Suishougou's model, the author truly realized that in the FMCG industry, the matchmaking model is also viable. Let me briefly explain Suishougou's model: 1. Suishougou observes the pain points of small shops: From the 1980s to the early 1990s, trade circulation was essentially wholesale business. That era was a seller's market with scarce goods, and shop owners sought products based on demand. From the late 1990s to now, trade circulation has become agency business. With oversupply, distributors hold products and seek demand. When a supermarket opens, distributors can fully stock it within three days. Whatever distributors deliver, shop owners accept, and this delivery method has made many shop owners lazy. What a small shop sells depends on what the local agent represents. Because small shops lack diverse procurement channels, and distributors deliver door-to-door along the street, ten shops on the same street often sell almost identical products, leading to intense competition. If you supply a shop at one yuan cheaper, the shop sells at one yuan cheaper, because consumers don't care where they buy. In a competitive environment, the markup rate for goods is generally at the minimum standard. We often see two supermarkets in a community selling goods at a loss. Therefore, small shops need not just cheap goods, but high-margin, exclusive products. 2. Suishougou's model: In response to the prominent issue of product homogenization and low markup rates among small shop owners, Suishougou leads shop owners who want to improve their business to team up and source quality products. Simply put, Suishougou unites hundreds of thousands of food production and processing enterprises nationwide to jointly build an integrated system for China's food industry: the Daily Food Expo, a food expo trading center covering all provinces and cities across the country. In the traditional distributor agency model, one distributor can at most represent three to five brands; if they represent more, they can't manage. If a distributor joins the Suishougou platform, they effectively represent tens of thousands of brands in the local market, without needing to advance funds or do door-to-door sales. Instead, shop owners come to purchase goods themselves, and after ordering, the manufacturer ships and the distributor delivers. In simple terms: after a distributor joins Suishougou, they organize local shop owners to go to various Suishougou Food Expo trading centers to purchase goods. This bypasses distributors and second-tier wholesalers, allowing retail shops to directly connect with brand owners through Suishougou's exhibition platform. This way, shops can purchase low-priced, personalized, and "exclusive" products. To use an analogy: a travel agency brings a busload of consumers with shopping needs to a shopping mall, with only one requirement: the mall's merchants must sell quality, affordable, personalized, diverse, and exclusive products. In this process, if some small shops lack funds to stock up, Suishougou cooperates with banks to provide credit lines of 20,000 to 100,000 yuan per shop. Shops can use the credit to purchase goods, repay after selling, and return unsold goods. If the credit cannot be repaid and the shop owner flees, a fourth-party risk institution (insurance company) assumes the risk, resolving the loan risk for financial institutions. 3. Summary of Suishougou's model characteristics: In the traditional supply chain model, any link that grows large will squeeze upstream and downstream. However, if channel players pressure manufacturers, product quality suffers; if brand owners pressure distributors, channels suffer. By analogy, no matter who becomes strong, it is essentially a zero-sum game. Self-operated B2B models claim to improve channel efficiency and reduce channel costs, but no matter how they improve, they still cannot escape this logical framework, failing to resolve channel conflicts and the issue of small shop category structure. Suishougou does not pursue reducing supply chain costs. Instead, it helps small shops sell exclusive products to improve their in-store product mix and increase gross margins. Through financial credit, risk guarantees, small-batch purchasing, wave-based delivery, and return policies for unsold goods, it addresses the concerns of small shops when trying new products. 4. How is it different from other B2B models?

  1. Unlike typical B2B or F2B models, it is a very typical B2F model. Suishougou builds a platform for direct connection between small shops and manufacturers. Through hundreds of thousands of small shops directly purchasing brand products, brand owners can directly reach small shops. The quality of products is judged by shop owners' years of experience, as they identify quality, competitive, and suitable products among thousands, allowing the market to reverse-eliminate and brand owners to adjust quickly.
  2. Small shops go to the "wholesale market" to purchase themselves; whether they sell well or not is their own responsibility. In contrast, B2B selling new products is like seeing but not touching or experiencing; it is pushed by the platform to shops, not chosen by the shops themselves. Shop owners can see, taste, and discuss products with peers, providing a strong experiential feel that enhances their desire to stock up.
  3. Suishougou does not cut off direct transactions between shop owners and manufacturers. The Suishougou platform has no products, only merchants; no transactions, only services.
  4. B2B is a single-party win: if the shop wins, the platform loses; if the platform wins, the brand owner loses. Suishougou is a win-win model: shops win, brand owners win, logistics providers win, and the platform wins. Essentially, Suishougou aggregates the consensus of all partners to do business.
  5. Suishougou truly compresses intermediate layers. Through the massive procurement needs of alliance supermarkets, it connects with manufacturer production, and manufacturers use flexible supply chains to meet shop owner demands. The founder of Suishougou, Mr. Zhao, comes from a distributor background and has also opened many supermarkets himself. He is a true industry veteran who deeply understands the pain points of distributors and small shops. Instead of starting from cost reduction, he took a different approach by increasing small shop revenue to create incremental value. This model neither impacts the sales of existing best-selling products of local distributors, nor disrupts pricing, offers subsidies, or burns cash. It genuinely connects brand owners and shop owners, helping shops find good products and helping brand owners recommend good products to shops. It innovatively uses finance and insurance to solve the funding problems of small shops and the concerns of financial institutions, achieving multi-party win-win. Of course, no matter how good the model, the author still has some concerns:
  6. Not all shop owners have time to "stock up," so shop activity could be an issue.
  7. New products often have low sell-through rates; even if placed in stores, they may not sell.
  8. Because returns are allowed, shop owners may not be cautious when stocking up.
  9. Although wave-based delivery reduces logistics costs, costs remain high, especially with reverse logistics, making logistics even more expensive.
  10. Since it adopts a franchise model, the operational capability of franchisees determines the local market's performance. If a franchisee is incompetent, the local market may fail, and once it becomes a half-cooked meal, restarting is difficult.
  11. Suishougou is a model innovation, not a fundamental technological change to the traditional supply chain structure, so the barrier is not strong enough, and competitors can easily imitate.
  12. The success of Suishougou ultimately depends on transaction scale, which poses strong challenges to expansion speed, operations, management, and supply chain organization capabilities. Overall, the above issues are not unsolvable, and from the author's perspective, because it is a matchmaking model, it is light enough to cover the national market in a short time. Second, Suishougou's model aligns with the future market demand for niche, personalized, and diversified FMCG products. Time is the only standard to test the market. Suishougou started operations in 2014 and has already signed franchise agreements with over 400 cities nationwide. The business model has only recently been perfected. I hope Suishougou can truly carve out a B2F model distinct from other platforms. Of course, this article is limited in length and cannot fully describe Suishougou. Interested friends can add Suishougou's QR code to learn more about its business model. If you have any views or questions, you are also welcome to leave a comment at the bottom to discuss. -END-