---
title: "Embracing the Supply Chain Revolution: Only with the Strength of a Champion Can You Afford Not to Compete"
description: "In recent years, everyone has faced immense pressure and anxiety, driven not by hard work or growth but by a sense of losing control. To escape this, businesses must find certainty again, and the supply chain revolution offers a path forward for both brands and distributors to build the capabilities needed to seize opportunities and thrive."
author: "陈思廷"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2024-02-01"
language: "en"
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# Embracing the Supply Chain Revolution: Only with the Strength of a Champion Can You Afford Not to Compete

> In recent years, everyone has faced immense pressure and anxiety, driven not by hard work or growth but by a sense of losing control. To escape this, businesses must find certainty again, and the supply chain revolution offers a path forward for both brands and distributors to build the capabilities needed to seize opportunities and thrive.

In recent years, everyone has faced the greatest pressure and anxiety. This pressure and anxiety are unrelated to the hardship of work or whether there is growth. Many manufacturers and distributors that saw growth in 2023 have not felt any less anxious. **All the pressure and anxiety stem from one cause—a sense of losing control.** Experienced, confident, and once invincible marketing experts suddenly lose their feel for the market. Who wouldn't be afraid? Who wouldn't be anxious? It's like a well-regarded chef suddenly losing their sense of taste, or a fighter suddenly losing absolute control over their body. Losing control is a terrifying feeling.

**To escape the sense of losing control, you must find certainty.** The sense of losing control in economic competition shares many similarities with that in war. Not everyone feels it, and the intensity varies. In war, soldiers face the life and death of themselves and their comrades, while commanders bear the fate of tens of thousands and the final outcome. The higher the position, the heavier the responsibility, the more sensitive to losing control, and the greater the pressure and anxiety. **A salesperson losing control is not so terrible; it affects at most a regional performance. But a CEO losing control can be disastrous for the company.** How to escape this sense of losing control? Why weren't we so anxious or felt such a strong sense of losing control in the past? The past forty years of the market were a period of triumphant globalization, where overall growth was always certain. As long as managers led their teams to do professional work, they would achieve good results. **With certainty, there is no sense of losing control.** With certainty, running a business is like solving a physics problem. The elements and formulas are certain, and the results will likely meet expectations. But what if, as in "The Three-Body Problem," the laws of physics suddenly fail? All formulas become questionable—what do you do? Like the fog of war, today's market has entered a foggy forest. Clausewitz noted in "On War" that war is always shrouded in fog; only the commander's courage, wisdom, and judgment can lead the troops through. **Today's business leaders must lead their companies out of the uncertain "fog" and rediscover certainty to escape losing control and anxiety.** Rediscovering certainty is an extremely important strategic issue. Every successful or great company has had its leaders find their own certainty and formulate successful strategies at some critical moment in the past. Today, once you find and confirm new certainty, all anxiety and pressure will dissipate. After all, those who still stand tall today have all been battle-hardened.

**Why the Supply Chain Force?**
**The Supply Chain Revolution**
**What Can It Bring to Manufacturers and Distributors?**
**The path of supply chain revolution is the path to becoming a "champion."** For different brands and distributors in the FMCG industry, what does the supply chain revolution mean, and what can it bring? Supply chain is a broad topic. From the perspective of different entities in the industry, such as brands, distributors, and retailers, "supply chain" has different and specific meanings. To understand it on the same level, this article defines supply chain as the elements closely related to the "procurement, production, marketing, and fulfillment" of a certain type of FMCG product, affecting its "cost, efficiency, and experience."

**1) The impact of the supply chain revolution on brands is strategic and holistic.** We see a fact: more and more FMCG products are taking on characteristics of fashion products. Many products are becoming like "internet celebrities," rising and dying quickly. **In the era of emotional consumption, once consumers' "love" disappears, they leave more decisively than anyone.** When hot, they are truly hot, with cups hard to come by; when cold, they are truly cold. Maotai and Luckin's sauce-flavored coffee was hot for less than a month before cooling off. Should you seize this dividend? Of course! Do you have the ability? **Design and creativity are not your limits; whether your supply chain can hold up is your limit.** Can you produce in small batches, at low cost, and quickly to test sales? If it goes viral, can you produce 1 million units overnight? How fast can your raw material suppliers respond—days or hours? How long does it take to make a procurement plan? Is your production schedule rigid or flexible? Can your logistics partners handle a tenfold surge in volume in a day? How many hours does it take for your product to reach consumers? **In uncertain times, many traffic and sales opportunities are uncertain, but once missed, they are gone. To win competition, you must be fully and certainly prepared to wait for that uncertain opportunity to appear.** **This sufficient and certain preparation refers to your supply chain force.** With this force, you can capture far more consumer demand than competitors and fulfill it efficiently and profitably. In the home appliance industry, more flexible and intelligent supply chains have enabled every consumer to have a functionally "customized" air conditioner within 12 days. Clearly, the FMCG supply chain still has a long way to go. According to New Distribution, a major food and beverage giant made a key organizational change in 2023—the CEO also became the president of the supply chain business group, integrating all back-end divisions except marketing and administration into it. By consolidating R&D, procurement, production, logistics, and digitalization into the supply chain group, breaking down internal silos and gradually opening up externally, they aim to build a strong supply chain capability. The company believes this capability is the core force supporting hundreds of billions in revenue growth over the next few years. **This top-priority project is massive, and there isn't much time for gradual change.** That's why it's called a "supply chain revolution" rather than a "transformation." From a war perspective, this is what an outstanding commander should decide at a critical moment.

**2) The impact of the supply chain revolution on distributors is specific and practical.** For FMCG distributors, the supply chain concept is less grand and more concrete. It mainly includes product procurement and omnichannel fulfillment. Traditional distributors operate on an agency system, where brands authorize distributors in designated areas to represent their brands and products, meet sales targets, and follow manufacturer rules, earning product margins and task rewards. The agency system faces many problems today, which are real and specific. For example, sales targets keep rising, making rewards illusory; big single products have razor-thin margins, barely covering logistics costs, while new products with higher margins don't sell in volume. The goal of supply chain reform for distributors is: **How to build a product system that is close to the market, scientifically structured, with reasonable margins, and minimal damage, based on your capabilities and market position?** The second impact is more direct and acute: the supply chain determines how many sales channels a distributor can cover. This coverage isn't about sales; many emerging channel orders are there, and with a sales team, getting them isn't hard. The difficulty lies in having the ability to fulfill these orders profitably. Traditional distributor logistics is designed for distribution and terminal delivery, not for new channels and new retail. But new channel orders often share a common feature: demanding delivery requirements and difficult fulfillment. Either delivery is poor, or it's unprofitable—this is the general situation for distributors serving new retail channels. Why? Because logistics supply chain capabilities are insufficient. If the logistics foundation is good, distributors should upgrade their logistics supply chain, digitize warehousing and distribution services, and gain the ability to efficiently connect with new retail channels and serve them at low cost. If the logistics foundation is poor, or if they want to focus on commerce, they should find a reliable supply chain partner. With a professional partner, distributors can also gain omnichannel, high-efficiency, low-cost service capabilities. Therefore, whether self-built or cooperative, distributors must embrace the "supply chain revolution" to have the possibility of continued business and profit growth in the next era. We recommend that both brands and distributors proactively embrace the "supply chain revolution." As the saying goes, **when you have the strength and capability of a champion, you have the capital to choose between competing and not competing, and you can choose more calmly.** If you can face challenges and involution like a brave and wise commander seeking victory, then you must not miss the following conference that can help you survive and thrive in the era of involution.

**From March 14-16, 2024, the 9th China FMCG Innovation Conference, co-hosted by New Distribution and Anywise, along with the 2nd China FMCG Hard Discount Conference and the 2nd China FMCG Distributor Conference, will be grandly held in Chengdu!** **The 2nd China FMCG Distributor Conference will be hosted by New Distribution and co-hosted by Zhoupu Data.**

**This conference will revolve around the theme "Supply Chain Revolution." Over three days, there will be one main forum, one China FMCG Hard Discount Conference, one China FMCG Distributor Conference, over ten sub-forums and closed-door exchange sessions, and the first-ever [Ultimate Supply Chain] Brand Factory Direct Sourcing Fair. We will gather with thousands of FMCG brands, distributors, retail innovators, and industry service providers from across the country in Chengdu for continuous brainstorming, jointly exploring the challenges and opportunities, changes, and solutions in the era of supply chain revolution.** In this era of supply chain revolution, a new business era will be born. We hope every participant will still have a place in this wave, and we believe this will be a worthwhile conference!

In this era of supply chain revolution, a new business era will be born. We hope every participant will still have a place in this wave, and we believe this will be a worthwhile conference! For conference business cooperation, please contact:
**🔺Scan code for ticket inquiries🔺**


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