---
title: "Distributing Top Frozen Food Brands like Yili, Ba-Shi, and Sanquan, He Achieved 10x Growth in Nearly a Decade—How Did He Do It?"
description: "Amid the pandemic, while most industries struggled, ice cream became one of the few sectors to buck the trend. With mid-to-high-end products increasingly dominant, how should ice cream distributors adapt? New Distribution interviewed Wu Xiaoping, GM of Hangzhou Nongmi Food, who has deep experience in the ice cream and frozen food industry for over 20 years, distributing brands like Yili, Ba-Shi, and Zhong Xuegao."
author: "赵胜男"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-10-13"
language: "en"
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# Distributing Top Frozen Food Brands like Yili, Ba-Shi, and Sanquan, He Achieved 10x Growth in Nearly a Decade—How Did He Do It?

> Amid the pandemic, while most industries struggled, ice cream became one of the few sectors to buck the trend. With mid-to-high-end products increasingly dominant, how should ice cream distributors adapt? New Distribution interviewed Wu Xiaoping, GM of Hangzhou Nongmi Food, who has deep experience in the ice cream and frozen food industry for over 20 years, distributing brands like Yili, Ba-Shi, and Zhong Xuegao.

Amid the pandemic, while most industries struggled to survive, ice cream became one of the few sectors to buck the trend and grow.
In convenience store freezers, ice cream bars under 5 yuan are almost nowhere to be found, and the 0.5 or 1 yuan bars of memory are even harder to spot.
Facing the increasingly obvious trend toward mid-to-high-end products, how should ice cream distributors respond? And how should they adjust their strategies for the terminal market?
New Distribution interviewed Mr. Wu Xiaoping, General Manager of Hangzhou Nongmi Food. Since 2000, he has been deeply involved in the ice cream and frozen food industry for over 20 years, distributing numerous brands including Yili, Ba-Shi, Zhong Xuegao, and Sanquan. In Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou alone, his business scale has reached nearly 60 million yuan.
But looking back at his distribution journey, it hasn't been smooth sailing. How did he steer his ice cream and frozen food business, overcome difficulties, and successfully expand his scale?
Below, I'll share his success story, hoping to offer some inspiration and food for thought to fellow distributors.
**01**
**A New Lease on Life: Expanding Cold Storage → Digital Transformation**
Before 2000, Wu Xiaoping was a novice in the FMCG industry. It was through a fellow townsman's introduction that he joined a wholesale department, marking the beginning of his connection with the FMCG sector.
Reflecting on the period before 2000, Wu candidly admitted that although he dealt with FMCG products daily, he lacked even basic knowledge of the industry and didn't understand what FMCG meant.
At that trading company, Wu managed warehouses, made deliveries, and ran sales. Gradually, he evolved from a novice into an industry insider with market experience.
After accumulating some experience, Wu officially launched his own FMCG business.
Initially, the brand options in the Hangzhou market were limited, and there was no manufacturer support. Everything had to be fought for on his own. This was the company's early accumulation phase, arguably the toughest period of expansion. His cold storage grew from an initial 9 square meters to 30 square meters, laying a solid foundation for future rapid growth. In 2004, he officially began distributing Yili ice cream, and performance grew steadily.
Just as things were looking up, the company hit a bottleneck, with sales stuck at 6 million yuan, unable to break through no matter what.
At a loss, Wu didn't give up. Instead, he began to review the causes of the bottleneck:
**First, cold storage constraints.** By then, Nongmi Company, having developed in Hangzhou for years, couldn't find suitable warehouses, limiting its scale and operational efficiency.
**Second, management constraints.** Before 2012, Nongmi Company still used wholesale department management methods. Like most distributors at the time, the company operated on personal relationships, with the boss needing to keep track of all information and data. Not only was the boss's energy limited, but efficiency was also low. Even order taking was done manually, leading to high error rates and poor data statistics.
Once the problems were clear, it was time to tackle them one by one.
First, the cold storage issue. To solve it, in 2012, Wu made a risky decision—to relocate the company from the familiar urban area of Hangzhou to the Xiaoshan Development Zone, where he built a cold storage facility of over 200 square meters. Moving to an unfamiliar market environment was fraught with challenges; one misstep could mean losing even the existing business.
Fortunately, the gamble paid off. After the cold storage was built, sales volume immediately showed positive feedback.
By this year, Hangzhou Nongmi's self-built cold storage has reached 2,000 square meters, and performance has soared tenfold.
Second, the management issue. Wu chose to use digital information tools to standardize internal management.
In fact, as early as 2004, Hangzhou Nongmi had begun experimenting with informatization, but the results were less than satisfactory. It wasn't until 2012, when Nongmi Food upgraded its digital information tool system, that the effects became apparent.
Previously, sales staff on the road couldn't keep up with company developments, leading to information silos and poor communication. With the upgraded digital tools, salespeople could log in anytime, anywhere, and access real-time information. With clearer information, work efficiency greatly improved. Moreover, company data could be accurately compiled, laying a solid foundation for business expansion and driving growth.
By last year, the original digital tools could no longer support the growing data volume. The company began using tools like Zhoupu Data, Cloud Steward, Store Steward, Zhouyi, and Cloud Warehouse, updating and iterating the entire company's data, making accounts more information-based and digital.
Cold storage construction and digital transformation helped Hangzhou Nongmi break through the bottleneck, but soon new, bigger challenges emerged.
**02**
**From Product Strategy to Channel Strategy: Winning Step by Step**
After arriving in Xiaoshan, Wu realized that terminal channels are the lifeblood of distributors. To establish a foothold in the Xiaoshan market, he had to deeply cultivate channels and capture terminals. But in 2012, Hangzhou Nongmi was a newcomer to the Xiaoshan market; many terminal clients were wary of unfamiliar faces, and Nongmi wasn't the only distributor aiming to deepen channel penetration—Xiaoshan also had formidable local distributors.
To truly secure a place in the Xiaoshan market, conflict with local distributors was inevitable. And for an outsider to compete with local distributors, the difficulty was immense.
How did Wu quickly capture market share?
He adopted two strategies: **product strategy and channel strategy.**
Let's start with the product strategy.
**1. Emphasis on mid-to-high-end products.** To cater to the upgrading of domestic consumption, Hangzhou Nongmi Food distributes mostly mid-to-high-end ice cream products, primarily from first-tier brands like Yili, Sanquan, Zhong Xuegao, Bright, Nestlé, and Ba-Shi.
These products guarantee quality, meeting consumers' desire to "eat well and eat safely," and terminal stores also prefer such stable-quality products.
Additionally, Wu told New Distribution: Currently, the overall consumption volume of ice cream is declining, but sales revenue is growing, thanks to higher unit prices.
**2. Abundant SKUs.** Terminal stores typically need 200-300 SKUs to fill their freezers, but many distributors have limited manufacturer lines and insufficient SKU counts. Therefore, when choosing partners, terminal stores prioritize distributors with more SKUs, as they can offer one-stop delivery.
In this regard, Hangzhou Nongmi Food has an absolute advantage, with over 1,000 SKUs covering first-, second-, and third-tier brands, offering strong comprehensiveness.
**3. Adding frozen foods for dual development.** Ice cream products have obvious peak and off seasons; only summer is busy, and the market nearly stalls in winter. After moving to Xiaoshan, to alleviate this pain point, Nongmi Food expanded into frozen foods, adopting a dual-development model. This not only fully utilizes cold storage resources but also ensures market continuity and improves sales staff stability.
**4. Strict product selection standards.** Besides ensuring ample categories, the company's product selection criteria vary at different development stages. Mr. Wu told New Distribution: During the company's 0-to-1 phase, with few brands in hand, selection focused mainly on brand, prioritizing big names. When the company moved from 1-to-N, selection couldn't rely solely on brand; it became more about matching products to existing channels and product structures, preferring products that fit the same channels.
For example, Hangzhou Nongmi once tried the hotel channel, but since the product overlap with its existing traditional channels was only 10%, the company invested heavily in funds and warehouse space to add products, ultimately failing due to insufficient capital and products.
In Mr. Wu's view, in the future, it's enough to specialize and refine within one track.
Now, the channel strategy.
The first step in Hangzhou Nongmi's channel strategy was aggressive deployment of freezers.
In Xiaoshan terminals, customers generally follow a priority principle: whichever distributor places a freezer in a store first gets to supply that store's ice cream. Thus, terminal freezers have always been a battleground for frozen food distributors.
Hangzhou Nongmi Food went to great lengths to stand out in the fierce competition.
First, they negotiated with terminals using a "buyout" approach, placing freezers for free and, while ensuring terminal store profits, buying out the freezer products—whatever Nongmi delivers, the supermarket sells—thereby seizing resources.
Second, Hangzhou Nongmi maintains a stable pricing system, competing on service, and striving to give customers the best experience.
For instance, many wholesalers in the market require a minimum order of 300-500 boxes for delivery, but Hangzhou Nongmi delivers with a minimum of just 50 boxes. Over time, this earned customer recognition. Another example is high-frequency visits: they don't wait until freezer stock is sold out to visit; they regularly help with shelf restocking, ensuring visits every three days to maintain client relationships.
Beyond these, to avoid escalating conflicts with local distributors, Hangzhou Nongmi often develops customers at new residential communities, trying not to poach others' existing clients. Through freezer placement and quality service, newly developed customers tend to have high loyalty.
The second step was managing secondary wholesalers under the Yili agency.
By identifying wholesale departments and points in the Xiaoshan area through channels, they supplied Yili ice cream through the agency model, thereby resolving regional constraints and freeing up more energy to serve key accounts.
Currently, Hangzhou Nongmi primarily targets terminal stores of 500 to over 2,000 square meters, cooperating with local hypermarkets like Wumart, Yonghui, Hema, and Aeon. Smaller mom-and-pop stores are left to smaller sub-wholesalers.
Now, Hangzhou Nongmi operates within a 50-kilometer radius, covering over 1,000 terminal stores, with a relatively mature terminal channel network.
**03**
**Future Plans: Building Own Brands**
Looking back at Mr. Wu Xiaoping's business journey, it's admirable how he handled every challenge that came his way.
When discussing Hangzhou Nongmi's future, Mr. Wu indicated that they will try to develop own brands and alliance brands.
Why own brands?
In the past, the company relied on big brands to open terminal channels, but no matter the scale, the initiative remained with the brand owners. Now that the company's channels are relatively mature, creating own brands is a path to gaining more control.
They have already registered two frozen food brands, and sales are currently promising. In the future, the company will continue to focus on building its own brands.
Actually, own brands have always been a hot topic among distributors. More and more distributors are choosing to try it, believing that own-brand products offer price advantages and larger gross margins.
But building own brands is a high-level game; before executing, one must assess whether the timing is right.
1. Is the company's operating system—especially product management, operations, business systems, and supply chain—mature enough to support the survival of own brands?
2. Can the company's customer relationships and credibility support the circulation of own brands through channels?
**Final Thoughts:**
The uncertainty brought by the pandemic is unavoidable. Many small distributors have been eliminated before seeing the light of dawn. Those that survive must remain vigilant in times of peace.
Facing unstable times, Mr. Wu not only stays vigilant but also thinks about the future while breaking through sales volumes, developing own brands, and staying true to his original aspiration of "terminals are the lifeblood." It is precisely this unwavering commitment that has shown us a vibrant and successful Hangzhou Nongmi in its field. **_-END-_**


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