Recently, while visiting the market, I heard a snack food distributor talking about plans to open several stores. "I've already scouted the locations, right next to communities with thousands of residents. The surrounding competitors are mostly small shops that pose no threat. I plan to offer a wide range of products to cover their strengths." Now he is hesitant not about basic issues like rent or renovation, but about what type of store is more likely to succeed. A local chain convenience store or a snack store are his initial two directions. But when asked how he defines "success" for his stores—whether as a model store or simply a profitable business—and what the subsequent development strategy is, his answers remain vague. This is precisely a problem many distributors haven't thought through before opening stores. Blindly entering the game not only means significant trial-and-error costs, but even if the first store succeeds, it's hard to form a replicable method. In the end, they just "add another business" without "building a capability." So, what planning and preparation should distributors do before opening stores? After communicating with several industry experts, this article will break down this question, hoping to provide some reference and inspiration for distributor friends.

First, Define the Target Audience: Precisely Lock In Demand, Avoid Blind Layout

"Many distributors tend to follow trends when laying out stores, but no matter what type of store or how many, the first thing to position is the customer base." A distributor with years of experience in physical retail said bluntly that ignoring the audience and directly deciding whether to open a convenience store, discount snack store, or community supermarket is like focusing on the trivial instead of the essential. From audience to location, and then to store positioning, it's a coherent business logic. Regarding how to position the audience, I learned that the first step is to make a preliminary division online. In addition to using various heat maps to observe the types and proportions of regional populations, you can also use AI tools skilled in data analysis to further verify. Search keywords can refer to: population structure, number of households, per capita income, median age, convenience store density, and the number of certain types of people or stores in a province/city/district/county. Taking the Chongqing market as an example, its permanent population exceeds 31.9 million, urbanization rate reaches 72%, median age exceeds 43 years, people over 60 account for 25%, average household size is only 2.45 people, and the proportion of single people is higher than the national average. Such a population structure determines that the local market simultaneously has: stable consumption needs from aging communities, immediate convenience needs from single young people, and high cost-performance needs from small families. If this data characteristic is ignored, blindly opening stores and expanding product lines may lead to the awkward situation of having foot traffic but no purchases due to product-demand mismatch. "The step of audience positioning is to clarify who my core customers are and what their core needs are. Only by thoroughly understanding their consumption habits, price sensitivity, and demand scenarios can we lay the groundwork for subsequent layout," the distributor summarized. "Of course, online data analysis must also be combined with offline field observation and statistics. This is the second step we need to do before opening a store: site selection."

Then Look at Location: Match Population Density, Carry Demand Traffic

Location is the physical carrier of audience demand. Before discussing site selection methods, let's review a classic case—Meiyijia, which has been crowned "China's Convenience Store King" for three consecutive years. Its rise is essentially the result of "location selection fitting audience positioning." In 1997, as foreign hypermarkets accelerated their layout in Dongguan, to avoid direct confrontation with retail giants, founder Ye Zhijian decided to transform the still-profitable "Meijia Supermarket" into a convenience store brand, "Meiyijia." Before this, China's first foreign convenience store, 7-Eleven, had already opened its first store in South China in Shenzhen, targeting white-collar workers and high-end communities. Ye Zhijian didn't take that path. He observed that Dongguan was already a "world factory" with dense manufacturing, a highly concentrated migrant population, a high proportion of single young people and small families, frequent immediate consumption of alcohol, tobacco, beverages, and snacks, and particularly active nighttime consumption scenarios. "Places where big supermarkets don't want to go are our opportunities." Meiyijia precisely captured this population and consumption characteristic, laying out stores around factories and urban villages, thoroughly understanding "high-density population + high-frequency demand," and gradually running a mature store model. Later, with urbanization and factory relocation, Meiyijia expanded stores to urban-rural fringes, scenic areas, and other regions, following a "rural encirclement of cities" path, always adhering to "location follows the population." Analyzing Meiyijia's site selection logic, it's clear that the step of site selection is not about verifying "whether foot traffic is large," but rather these three indicators:

  1. Whether the target population is concentrated: What is the population structure of this area? Which types are the main customer groups you truly serve? What is their proportion?
  2. Whether the demand scenario is stable enough: Are the most frequent purchases immediate replenishment or planned stockpiling?
  3. Whether there is a gap in competitive supply: It doesn't matter how many stores are around; the key is what they satisfy and what they don't. "At the operational level, site selection can use a 'clumsy but effective' verification method, turning gut feeling into evidence-based judgment," shared a founder of a chain convenience store brand. For example, when comparing several potential stores, take the location as the center, first map out the types of residential communities, schools/hospitals/office buildings, transportation nodes, and main competitive formats within a 500-meter radius; then observe continuously for about 3 days, recording the population structure (approximate proportions of age, occupation, etc.), peak foot traffic hours, and the popular categories and price ranges of surrounding stores. "Online heat maps and POI data can serve as auxiliary verification, but they cannot replace offline observation. Online can tell you who the customers are, but it won't tell you whether they will buy and how they buy."

Finally, Position the Store: Find Your Concrete and Differentiated Value

In the past, during visits, I found that many distributors fall into a trap when opening stores: they treat the store as their product showroom, expanding displays of the brands they carry, while ignoring the real needs of the surrounding population. Truly effective product positioning starts with precise matching based on the audience. Different audiences correspond to different product and service combinations. For example:

  1. If the core customer group is the aging community population, needs focus more on high cost-performance, high-frequency essential items, small packaging, easy access, and convenient services;

  2. If the core customer group is single young people aged 20-35 and office workers, needs focus more on immediate replenishment, small portions, emotional compensation, and nighttime consumption;

  3. If the core customer group is small families aged 30-45 (2-3 people, with children), needs revolve around high cost-performance, family stockpiling, and child-friendliness. "On the basis of matching audience needs, store positioning also needs to achieve differentiation," added an industry expert. This requires distributors to comprehensively analyze surrounding similar stores and competitors, sort out their strengths, weaknesses, price ranges, and business district fit, and find their own differentiated entry point. "For example, if opening a community convenience store, don't target the family stockpiling needs that large supermarkets serve; if opening a discount snack store, create differentiated competition with other leading snack stores. Fill the gaps in their product structure, add local brands or specialty bestsellers that consumers recognize, and use clearer positioning to win repeat purchases from the same audience."

Final Thoughts

Over the past two years, opening stores has been a popular direction for many distributors looking to transform. But instead of agonizing over whether to seize the trend, I think this is more like a choice question about capability and value: Are you opening this store to add another business, or to refine a replicable terminal-building capability? Can you, through opening stores, better understand today's retail and consumer needs, and use that to feed back into your trading business? Therefore, this article is not to encourage all distributors to open stores, but to provide some actionable references to assess whether you are ready to open stores and what aspects you can improve. Of course, in addition to the paths and methods mentioned in the article, at the "CFC 11th China FMCG Conference & 6th China FMCG Distribution and Retail Conference" held in Chengdu on March 16-18, 2026, we have invited hundreds of outstanding distributors, manufacturer executives, and retailers nationwide to jointly discuss channel changes and business opportunities for distributors in the new environment. There will also be excellent distributors sharing practical cases of transitioning to retail! Conference highlights:

  1. Release of Industry Forward-Looking Report On-site release of the "Next-Generation Intermediary White Paper—China FMCG Distribution Insights 2026," providing a roadmap for "redefining intermediaries": who is improving matching efficiency, and who is becoming growth infrastructure.
  2. Tripartite Dialogue: Brand × Distributor × Retailer Focusing on the "three-power structure" of price power, supply power, and user power, pushing manufacturer-distributor relations from "upstream-downstream game" to "demand loop community," forming executable collaborative strategies.
  3. Benchmark Case Practical Analysis In-depth analysis of leading "intermediary" transformation paths, interpreting organizational structure, product strategy, cost tactics, and growth paths, ready to learn and apply.
  4. Direct Connection to Regional Supermarket Resources 100+ regional chain supermarkets, 1600+ stores, covering 14 provinces and autonomous regions, with precise matching. Interested friends, don't miss it! Come with questions, leave with solutions. See you at the conference in Chengdu in March. Let's make the business principles practical and thorough!