“Business is tough now; upstream manufacturers increase targets year by year, but downstream customers can't move goods. I don't know how long this consumption situation will last!” Last week, the author followed several FMCG salespeople on field visits to dozens of terminal stores, and on the way, salesperson Sister Liu lamented this. In the dealer team, salespeople are not only the vanguard of sales but also direct observers of market dynamics; their feelings directly reflect market conditions. This article will take the perspective of dealer salespeople, go deep into the frontline, analyze the internal and external factors causing their anxiety, and reveal the true state of the market. A Day in the Life of a Frontline Salesperson Composed of Countless “Small Interruptions” At 8 a.m., after the morning meeting, salesperson Sister Liu began preparing the materials needed for visits. At 9 a.m., I started visiting the market with her. Upon arriving at a store, Sister Liu greeted the owner, and the first thing she did was check the display, organize products, and set up promotional materials. She handled inventory based on product sell-through. Since the company uses a visit-order system, once she found a shortage, she immediately placed an order on the mobile system to ensure the delivery person could replenish and shelve products the next day. Next was promoting new products. Sister Liu told us that she usually selects new products suitable for the store based on location and customer profile, and recommends appropriate display positions to the owner based on product characteristics. For example, in community supermarkets, Sister Liu focuses on recommending the company's new products to small store owners. A single cheese stick from a leading brand, unlike the bagged version, is placed at the checkout counter to attract parents and children; it's not expensive and has brand endorsement, so they often buy one on impulse. Although this work seems simple and repetitive, in addition to these standardized in-store actions, there are many unplanned events. For instance: When encountering near-expiry products, Sister Liu first negotiates with the store owner to take promotional measures, such as buy-one-get-one-free, and uses the promotional tape she carries to bundle two near-expiry items together and place them in a prominent promotional area. If the store has a promotional group-buying group, she also mobilizes the owner to help promote, using the community's power to speed up clearing stock. As for products that truly need to be returned or exchanged, she packs them on the spot so the delivery person can pick them up the next day. Besides product scheduling, unexpected situations at the store are also common. For example, a store adjusted its overall layout but didn't inform the salesperson to reorganize the display; products were piled randomly, and different production dates were mixed. Helplessly, Sister Liu had to redo the entire shelf and check each product's expiration date. When leaving, she looked at her watch and said, “Visiting this store took 2 hours; in this situation, visiting 15 stores a day is the limit.” However, just after handling this store, the phone rang again. A newly opened store owner reported that the delivery person left after dropping off goods without shelving them, and the product prices weren't communicated. Sister Liu had to apologize and urgently coordinate to resolve it... These customer complaints caused by poor coordination undoubtedly harm terminal customer relationships. In Sister Liu's words, basically every day is a non-stop whirlwind. Although the company arranges sufficient lunch breaks, in reality, to complete visit tasks, apart from lunch time, they are either busy in stores or on the way to the next store. But now the market environment is not optimistic, and the assigned areas generally have low purchasing power. Working diligently for a month, effort and rewards are hard to match. The Shelf War: A Battlefield Without Smoke During the visit, Sister Liu mentioned that now she not only has to do her own job well but also constantly compete with competitors. During this visit, I witnessed several such intense competition examples. Sister Liu entered a store and, as usual, found the shelf where her products were placed, but the shelf for which she had already paid display fees was occupied by competing products, while her own products were either squeezed into a corner or stacked high on top, where consumers wouldn't notice them. When asking the small store owner, the answer was always the same: “It wasn't me; it must have been the salesperson from brand X who came and arranged it.” Facing competitors occupying the shelf, Sister Liu, though angry, had to stay calm and professional, rearranging the product layout to ensure her products were properly displayed. The competing products that had occupied the shelf couldn't be piled randomly; they had to be moved to another location and reorganized. As for the reason, Sister Liu said: “If the conflict escalates, it's hard to resolve. We need to be ethical, and for the sake of shopping experience, we also need to keep the shelf clean and orderly, maintaining the store's overall display effect.” After all this, not only did her mood suffer, but it also consumed a lot of time and energy. Sister Liu told me, “Such 'invisible wars' happen often, especially in the current low-consumption market environment. Competition is no longer just about a single terminal customer but has further refined to the battle for limited shelf space.” Shrinking Orders: The Survival Dilemma and Challenges of Stores In the area Sister Liu is responsible for, the intensity of competition among retail stores is evident. I observed that on a single street, there are four community supermarkets, one convenience store, and around the corner, a new flash warehouse. Direct competitors are within a hundred meters, and all are struggling to survive. “Now customers are tightening their wallets; they can't cut back on daily necessities, so they reduce spending on snacks and drinks. Store order sales have nearly halved compared to a few years ago.” Sister Liu knows well that consumers' wallets directly affect the survival of small businesses. “Many small stores can't make ends meet, can't pay rent, and closures are everywhere.” This also intensifies Sister Liu's anxiety as a frontline market person. However, the order crisis at terminal stores doesn't entirely stem from external factors; it's a mix of internal and external factors. On one hand, the economic downturn has changed consumer behavior, making them more frugal on non-essential items; on the other hand, poor internal store management, such as messy price tags, unclean environments, and unreasonable traffic flow designs, also weakens the store's competitiveness. Over time, store sales decline, and cost control becomes more important. But dealers are in the agency business and need to maintain brand pricing. Since store owners can't get low prices, they start exploring more low-cost procurement channels. For example, through e-commerce channels, a product that costs 5.5 yuan from a dealer might be only 5.1 yuan online. Sister Liu told me, “In the past, online orders had no after-sales service, so our competitiveness was relatively higher. But now e-commerce also has after-sales, and sometimes they don't even require returns; just destroy the product, which further impacts the traditional distribution system.” “A couple of days ago, the owner of a store I frequent mentioned that e-commerce was running promotions with lots of coupons, so he planned to replenish stock online first. Just like that, my order flew away.” Even when they need to replenish, stores repeatedly emphasize only shelving, not stocking up. Even bestsellers like potato chips are ordered in small quantities, like 3 or 5 packs. I asked Sister Liu and learned that not only are products in circulation stores cut open, but some products in supermarket systems and modern retail outlets are also required by managers to be cut open and replenished less. “That's not all. To survive, some store owners have to shrink their storefronts. Previously connected shops are now walled off to save rent. Some stores just pull down the rolling shutter, run away with debts, and don't reply to WeChat messages. Payment collection is nowhere in sight.” Market Downturn: Previous Strategies Have Failed The current offline consumer market can be aptly described as “sluggish.” During the field visits, I observed that very few customers entered circulation stores, and most only headed for the fresh produce section. Products on shelves didn't sell for a long time, even accumulating dust. “This year feels especially hard; in over a decade of running this store, I've never seen this,” a small store owner sighed. “Before, no matter what goods, they'd sell a bit soon after being shelved. Now, except for a few classic bestsellers, other products show no obvious change even after half a month on the shelf.” Sister Liu nodded in agreement, “In the past, Children's Day was a small sales peak, but this year's market is strange. Children's Day has passed, and the goods are still the same. I hoped to use the holiday promotion to clear some near-expiry products, but that didn't work either. In the end, I had to choose to transfer or return goods.” “Some stores even have to take back bulk goods counters; the invested costs are like stones sinking into the sea.” In deep conversation with Sister Liu, she mentioned that now most stores have increasing demands for transferring and returning goods. Taking herself as an example, last month the return rate for a certain product was as high as 9%. One reason is the overall decline in purchasing power, weakening customers' willingness to buy, which slows down store sell-through; another is that manufacturers ship later. By the time products arrive at the dealer's warehouse, a significant portion of the shelf life has already been consumed. The time window for dealers and terminal stores to sell is greatly compressed. Sister Liu said, “As long as the product's shelf life is more than half, we accept it into the warehouse.” Market downturn is both a challenge and an opportunity for industry reshuffling. We often hear the saying, “The only constant in the world is change.” The market is always changing; what we can do is adapt and evolve. Here, we also look forward to all practitioners moving from anxiety to determination, from passive response to active breakthrough, and welcoming the next spring of the consumer market. From August 19-21, 2025, the “2025 7th China FMCG Conference” with the theme “New Demand, New Supply,” along with the 5th China FMCG Retail Innovation Conference and the 5th China FMCG Dealer Conference, will be grandly held in Shanghai.
Three main forums and five parallel forums on hot topics: Over 100 industry experts will share their practical experiences, discuss the latest market trends, and help you lock in the next wave of growth opportunities.
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Insight into industry changes: Quickly grasp future industry trends, understand how to respond to emerging demands and market adjustments, and obtain executable strategic frameworks.
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