---
title: "Distributors Should Stop Focusing Solely on Channels—During Transition, Focus on 'Managing Customers'!"
description: "Over the past two years, many distributors have experienced two common states: confusion and anxiety, driven by the broader environment. To survive, they must adapt. As a crucial link in commerce, distributors need to redefine their role and future development in the new era of marketing and retail. Their core value lies in 'localization,' which will increasingly depend on their ability to connect with local consumers and manage local traffic pools, making them irreplaceable."
author: "苑继明"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-07-01"
language: "en"
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# Distributors Should Stop Focusing Solely on Channels—During Transition, Focus on 'Managing Customers'!

> Over the past two years, many distributors have experienced two common states: confusion and anxiety, driven by the broader environment. To survive, they must adapt. As a crucial link in commerce, distributors need to redefine their role and future development in the new era of marketing and retail. Their core value lies in 'localization,' which will increasingly depend on their ability to connect with local consumers and manage local traffic pools, making them irreplaceable.

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Over the past two years, most distributors have been in two common states: confusion and anxiety. This situation exists from upstream manufacturers to most distributors, caused by the overall environment.
But to survive, one cannot sit idly by. As a crucial link in commerce, what role should distributors play in the new environment where new marketing and new retail are emerging? And how should they plan their future development?
The core value of the distributor group is 'localization,' which is the fundamental reason why many brand owners cannot bypass intermediaries. **In the future, the 'localization' advantage of distributors will be reflected in their ability to connect with local consumers and operate local traffic pools, which will constitute the irreplaceable factors for future distributors.**
**Changes in Manufacturers, Retail, and Consumers:**
**Distributors Need to See the Essence**
Why are there negative emotions like anxiety and confusion now? Because from upstream manufacturers to C-end consumers, changes are happening to varying degrees. The orientation of upstream brand owners is changing, and the cost of the traditional distributor role is increasing, leading many companies to return to finding large distributors or higher-level distributors in the channel. This is a trend among upstream manufacturers.
Manufacturer changes will have the following impacts on distributors:
1. Increased industry concentration will be transmitted to the commercial sector, making survival of the fittest among distributors more brutal;
2. High-quality upstream brand resources are becoming increasingly scarce, making brand and product selection more difficult;
3. The level and intensity of competition in the front-line market have unprecedentedly increased, requiring higher comprehensive capabilities from merchants;
4. The success rate of new product launches and new market startups is decreasing.
Terminal merchants directly face customers and service targets. Terminals have also undergone a new round of changes in retail formats, which is also a reason for distributors' lack of security:
First, chain, specialization, and branding are growing, challenging traditional distribution and shelf-stocking thinking. Relying on communities, their bargaining power demands different service and market operation capabilities from distributors than before, and this has become a directional trend;
Second, 'new retail' has become a hot topic, with online forces laying out offline, B-end and C-end e-commerce active, and new concepts receiving much attention at terminals;
Third, traditional terminal business is diverging, competition for quality store resources is fierce, and market penetration is becoming increasingly difficult.
Additionally, the shift in bargaining power—whoever is closer to consumers has more say—means distributors' experience and capabilities need to be refreshed.
At the end of the chain, consumers are also changing. First, the consumption structure has changed: age distribution and main consumption groups are iterating. Originally, China's consumption structure was 'two ends large, middle small,' but now it is gradually becoming olive-shaped; second, consumption upgrading is accelerating consumption divergence, widening the gap during the upgrade, with both vertical and horizontal upgrades, making quality and taste prominent features.
**Strengthening Connection Capability:**
**The Breakthrough Point for Distributor Transformation**
At the beginning of the year, a popular view in the industry was: distributors may disappear, but intermediaries will always exist. So, where is the future for distributors?
If we talk about distribution, these two words can be replaced. In the entire marketing chain, its position will always exist, but its functions must keep pace with the times. From managing channels to warehousing and distribution, and then to future consumer connection, this is a direction that places higher demands on distributors. Business is about the future; how to find your position in this industry? From managing channels to managing customers is the general trend. So how should distributors manage customers?
Establish a 'C-end' awareness, with the concept that 'the closer to consumers, the greater the bargaining power.' In the future, as intermediaries, they must establish 'buyer thinking,' with business logic from bottom to top, from the end to the front: first study regional consumers, then organize business and upstream supply. This is the basic logic orientation of the 'C-end' in the buyer's era. From selling to buying, from inheritors of demand to providers of value, integrating supply and demand, strengthening distributors' ability to connect with consumers.
To strengthen connection capability, here are four possible directions for reference:
**First, build communities**
The fundamental is to move traffic onto platforms for efficient conversion later. Currently, there are two methods: one is self-built communities, conducting deep interactive connections with 'seed customers,' strengthening online and offline interaction, converting and cultivating 'loyal fans' for fission;
The second is layer penetration and community expansion, by grafting related communities to achieve value docking. The core logic is to find the most influential and valuable customers in the market, connect them through community means, interact after connection, and then achieve community-based operations through subsequent operations.
**Second, build communities (residential)**
Future marketing is where people are, marketing is there. People are circles; behind stores are communities and people. The new method for community promotion is 'store + community,' guiding and assisting offline terminals to carry out community group buying, relying on communities, finding agents to conduct community group buying, etc.
Although such stores have small spaces and limited capacity, their biggest advantage is being close to consumers, composed of regular customers, and their greatest value is the traffic behind them. Then expand traffic through communities to achieve C-end operations. Community group buying can be entered by suppliers into their business model. Community e-commerce based on communities, terminals, agents, and communities is direct, effective, and has high conversion rates!
**Third, create experiences**
Many companies have explored and tried this: immersive and full-sensory experiences, from consumers not knowing a brand to deep awareness, recognition, and purchase. Build deep awareness through immersive, full-sensory experiences.
Build brand front-end experience platforms, transform specialty stores into comprehensive 'sales + experience + service' models, and make terminals scenario-based and experience-oriented. Through full-process, full-domain immersive experiences, consumers understand products, feel culture, and achieve deep connections.
**Fourth, create content**
This is a challenge for most distributors. The future is the era of content. How should distributors create content? First, have content operation awareness, learn from upstream manufacturers and leading brands in the industry;
Second, manage your private domain traffic, such as a personal WeChat Moments with a limit of 5,000 friends, or register your own official account, build your business brand into a market mini-IP, continuously create new content, and you will accumulate a core customer base, forming private domain traffic.
In the future, as intermediaries, they must establish 'buyer thinking,' with business logic from bottom to top, from the end to the front: first study regional consumers, then organize business and upstream supply. This is the basic logic orientation of the C-end in the buyer's era.
Source: "Sugar, Tobacco, and Wine Weekly"


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