---
title: "Distributors Who Don't Understand Retail Are Out!"
description: "At the beginning of this year, I shared a viewpoint at various brand owners' annual distributor conferences that, based on our observations, there are three major themes in the retail market changes in 2025: first, the trend of supermarket remodeling is stronger; second, instant retail O2O is intensifying; third, discount retail is expanding. This article focuses on discount retail, explaining its underlying logic and how distributors should respond by actively researching and cooperating with advanced retail formats, such as the 'Save Money Supermarket' study tour organized by New Distribution."
author: "袁来"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-05-09"
categories: "Dealer Operations"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-who-don-t-understand-retail-are-out-19ea3b8b/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-who-don-t-understand-retail-are-out-19ea3b8b.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Fo1ZzJ8BSGs6O--A3FLbgQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%BB%8F%E9%94%80%E5%95%86%E4%B8%8D%E6%87%82%E9%9B%B6%E5%94%AE%E7%AD%89%E4%BA%8E%E5%87%BA%E5%B1%80-19ea3b8b.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-who-don-t-understand-retail-are-out-19ea3b8b/"
citation: "袁来. “Distributors Who Don't Understand Retail Are Out!.” New Distribution, 2025-05-09. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-who-don-t-understand-retail-are-out-19ea3b8b/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Distributors Who Don't Understand Retail Are Out!

> At the beginning of this year, I shared a viewpoint at various brand owners' annual distributor conferences that, based on our observations, there are three major themes in the retail market changes in 2025: first, the trend of supermarket remodeling is stronger; second, instant retail O2O is intensifying; third, discount retail is expanding. This article focuses on discount retail, explaining its underlying logic and how distributors should respond by actively researching and cooperating with advanced retail formats, such as the 'Save Money Supermarket' study tour organized by New Distribution.

At the beginning of this year, I shared a viewpoint at various brand owners' annual distributor conferences that, based on our observations, there are three major themes in the retail market changes in 2025:
First, the trend of supermarket remodeling is stronger.
Take Yonghui Superstores as an example: with 775 stores, 61 have been remodeled as of March. It is expected that by the end of June 2025, 124 stores will be remodeled, with progress less than 20%. At the same time, the depth of remodeling is just beginning.
Regional supermarket chains have also started exploring remodeling, optimizing and adjusting in different aspects such as net-price purchasing, in-store layout, product assortment, and customer service.
Second, instant retail O2O is intensifying.
I believe that recently, JD.com's food delivery and Taobao Flash Purchase have successively entered the market, and the subsidy war has already begun.
At the same time, with the profitability of some front-warehouse formats represented by Pupu Supermarket, and the increase in the number of Meituan Flash Purchase warehouses, instant retail will see further explosive growth in 2025.
Third, discount retail is expanding.
From 2023 to 2024, snack discount stores successfully built a distribution chain for food and beverages, shortening the hierarchical chain.
In 2025, full-category discount supermarkets will fully explode, exploring the construction of an independent distribution chain for all categories such as grain, oil, rice, noodles, eggs, milk, refrigerated goods, daily chemicals, and general merchandise.
Today we focus on discount retail.
On December 21, 2024, Wanchen Group first publicly released "Laiyoupin Save Money Supermarket." Zhao Yiming followed closely, and at the beginning of this year, also officially announced the launch of "Zhao Yiming Save Money Supermarket."
At this point, we can see that almost all leading snack brands have successively entered the discount wholesale supermarket (save money supermarket) arena.
Whether called a save money supermarket or a discount wholesale supermarket, it simply means allowing consumers to enjoy high-quality and cost-effective products, making shopping cheaper and helping consumers save money.
How exactly to achieve cost savings and high quality-price ratio?**
The underlying logic is easy to understand:
First, scale procurement reduces costs;
Second, dynamic sales forecasting improves turnover;
Third, upstream and downstream integration enhances bargaining power.
In simple terms, buying 100 cartons of milk versus 1,000 cartons will definitely result in different policies from upstream manufacturers. Coupled with digital capabilities for accurate sales forecasting, losses can be minimized. Of course, if you can buy more, there is room and possibility for customized development.
This retail path of "rigid demand, high frequency, and extreme cost-effectiveness" will have a significant impact and bring changes to existing mainstream community retail formats.
As distributors in various regions, with downstream retail stores affected, how should we respond to this change?
In the past six months, I have visited many excellent distributors and found a common point: they actively embrace retail changes.
Whether it's snack stores, wholesale supermarkets, or save money supermarkets, they don't resist but actively research, seek cooperation opportunities, and some even open their own stores directly.
What does active research mean? What is the purpose of research?
Our insight into distributors' business is: in the past, distributors played the role of "promoters" for brand owners, but in the future, they must become "buyers" for retailers, and retailers will be distributors' first customers.
We believe that the dominance of the commodity circulation order will gradually shift from a single brand owner to retailers. Of course, it's definitely not 100%. There will be slight differences across different categories and different retail formats.
But in summary, the urgent task for distributors now is to study retail, especially advanced retail formats, and understand their business logic. At the same time, if possible, consider establishing cooperative relationships with them.
To this end, we have specially prepared a study tour of save money supermarkets. On May 16-17, the tour will visit Laiyoupin/Haoxianglai Save Money Supermarket under Wanchen Group.
In addition to visiting stores on site, their merchandise, operations, and marketing managers will also have face-to-face exchanges with distributor bosses, sharing the underlying business logic of each module.
I believe this learning exchange will definitely bring inspiration and thinking to your business operations.
A couple of days ago, I released a brief announcement about this study tour within the Tower Alliance. Many distributor friends asked me whether this event is worth attending, what they can do there, what cooperation opportunities exist, and what the relationship is between Laiyoupin and Haoxianglai.
Based on the exchanges, I have organized the following:
1. Wanchen Group's four snack chain brands, Haoxianglai, Laiyoupin, Luxiaochuan, and Yadiyadi, are merged and named "Haoxianglai." Laiyoupin retains its brand name in Anhui, its home base, while other cities uniformly use Haoxianglai.
2. Why look at save money supermarkets? Today's supermarkets and community circulation stores have been more or less affected by snack stores and discount stores in the past year or two.
Many people's perception of this impact is only that first-tier products are low-priced to attract traffic, and other products have low costs due to scale procurement.
But in fact, scale procurement reducing costs is just the surface. The key lies in product assortment design and effective product combination of "wide categories, narrow items."
In the future, all distributors must transform from agents to operators. The core capability of operators is not the ability to promote products, but the ability to select and combine products in their category, and design category structures based on retail store types.
3. Visiting Laiyoupin (Haoxianglai) Save Money Supermarket to learn about product composition, pricing, display, and presentation is the core starting point of this study tour.
In the future, all distributor bosses can be ignorant of warehousing, finance, or management, but they must understand retail.
4. Regarding cooperation opportunities with Laiyoupin (Haoxianglai), there are two possible forms:
First, the possibility of joining and opening stores based on the city or region; second, operational cooperation opportunities in related categories, such as joint customized development of some products. This requires discussion and exchange.
This study tour is the first time the Laiyoupin (Haoxianglai) Save Money Supermarket team has opened its doors for external study and exchange. Regional head distributors, don't miss this rare opportunity for learning and exchange.
In addition, there are limited spots for the study tour. Interested friends, please scan the QR code to add WeChat and register as soon as possible!


---

## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 袁来
- Published: 2025-05-09
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/distributors-who-don-t-understand-retail-are-out-19ea3b8b/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Fo1ZzJ8BSGs6O--A3FLbgQ

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671