---
title: "From Stabilizing to Breaking Through: How Lee Kum Kee Turns 'Profit Protection' into a Strategic Edge?"
description: "At the commercial crossroads of 2025, competition in the existing market is intensifying, and the exploration of incremental space is uncertain, prompting even seasoned distributors to tighten their defenses. As channel sales shift from 'enclosing land' to 'intensive cultivation,' the era of relying on 'stockpiling goods' and 'activity bombardment' to drive growth is becoming history. According to the '2023-2024 China FMCG Distributor Operating Conditions Survey Report' released by New Distribution in August last year, 48.7% of surveyed distributors saw revenue decline, and 63.2% saw profit decline."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2025-06-13"
categories: "Dealer Operations, Industry Trends, Management & Methods"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/z5tnM-fZU-NuDg_p6nQCpA"
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citation: "New Distribution. “From Stabilizing to Breaking Through: How Lee Kum Kee Turns 'Profit Protection' into a Strategic Edge?.” New Distribution, 2025-06-13. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/from-stabilizing-to-breaking-through-how-lee-kum-kee-turns-profit-protec-e3f517ec/"
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---

# From Stabilizing to Breaking Through: How Lee Kum Kee Turns 'Profit Protection' into a Strategic Edge?

> At the commercial crossroads of 2025, competition in the existing market is intensifying, and the exploration of incremental space is uncertain, prompting even seasoned distributors to tighten their defenses. As channel sales shift from 'enclosing land' to 'intensive cultivation,' the era of relying on 'stockpiling goods' and 'activity bombardment' to drive growth is becoming history. According to the '2023-2024 China FMCG Distributor Operating Conditions Survey Report' released by New Distribution in August last year, 48.7% of surveyed distributors saw revenue decline, and 63.2% saw profit decline.

Standing at the commercial crossroads of 2025, competition in the existing market is intensifying, and the exploration of incremental space is uncertain, prompting even seasoned distributors to tighten their defenses. As channel sales shift from 'enclosing land' to 'intensive cultivation,' the era of relying on 'stockpiling goods' and 'activity bombardment' to drive growth is gradually becoming history under industry evolution.
According to the '2023-2024 China FMCG Distributor Operating Conditions Survey Report' released by New Distribution in August last year, among surveyed distributors, 48.7% saw revenue decline, and 63.2% saw profit decline. More challenging, old problems such as price involution, high inventory, and sluggish sales are now facing an 'imbalanced input-output ratio' in the current market environment, leaving distributors in a dilemma.
Behind this lies the industry's real bottleneck: upstream growth anxiety, downstream execution collapse, and 'bottlenecks' in the middle. To break through, it is necessary to solve the 'stabilization' and 'sales activation' problems in the existing market, as well as to explore 'incremental' markets.
At the 2025 Lee Kum Kee (China) Channel Partner Conference held recently by New Distribution, we saw that under the theme 'Accelerate Transformation, Win Together with Lee,' Lee Kum Kee shared insights on how to activate the existing market and expand incremental markets. During the conference, we had an in-depth exchange with Cheng Feiyu, Vice President of Lee Kum Kee China and Head of Distribution Operations Center. Facing the common difficulties distributors are experiencing, Lee Kum Kee offered a different solution for distribution channels in 2025: from stabilizing the channel base, to deepening distribution and winning terminal vitality, to exploring new territories and gaining incremental growth. In the industry winter where distributor partners collectively face 'revenue decline and profit shrinkage,' Lee Kum Kee returns to the essence of business, ensuring that all partners in the value chain are profitable.
Lee Kum Kee (China) Channel Partner Conference - Highlights Video
**Win-Win with Channel Partners, Make Business Lasting**
**Starting a Symbiotic New Chapter from Channel Profit Protection**
Cheng Feiyu said, 'Thinking for the benefit of others is Lee Kum Kee's core value. Every Lee Kum Kee employee aims to serve distributors well, considering everything from the distributor's perspective.' In Lee Kum Kee's philosophy, the relationship with distributors is not merely cooperative but is committed to building a 'community of shared destiny,' adhering to the principle of equal collaboration, and jointly breaking through market waves. Lee Kum Kee believes that only in this way can long-term business development be achieved.
In 2025, the first core strategy that Lee Kum Kee's Distribution Operations Center conveyed to all distributors is to 'resonate at the same frequency' with partners, jointly creating a fair and stable market environment. This strategy is not only the starting point for activating the existing market but also the underlying logic for building a solid manufacturer-distributor symbiosis system.
In the fiercely competitive condiment market, protecting channel profit space is always the core proposition of channel management.
A stable and reasonable system is the lifeline for enterprise survival and development. However, current chaos such as cross-regional channel diversion is severely eroding market 'health.' It not only compresses the profit space of enterprises and distributors but also disrupts market order and seriously weakens the brand.
'In the past two or three years, it has been the most difficult period for distributors in the consumer goods industry. Many brands and distributors worked hard all year but reaped nothing; this is not a healthy ecosystem,' Cheng Feiyu frankly told New Distribution. 'Ten years ago, channel management was relatively simple, but the rise of e-commerce platforms broke through the system and disrupted traditional order. Coupled with the shift from expanding incremental markets to 'competing' in the existing market, distributors face unprecedented survival pressure. If Lee Kum Kee wants to break through in the market, it must confront this issue directly. Solving the chaos of channel price involution is not only about the future but also about current survival. In the past two years, we have not done well enough in improving distributor profit margins. Now we must join hands with distributor partners to rebuild a fair market system.'
Lee Kum Kee (China) Channel Partner Conference - Cheng Feiyu's Thematic Sharing
According to New Distribution, Lee Kum Kee has elevated channel profit protection to a 'long-term strategy' level, advancing it with a zero-tolerance attitude. Specifically, it builds a moat from three aspects:
**Improve Systems**: Formulate strict market management systems, clarify responsibilities at each link, and ensure management has rules to follow.
**Increase Investment**: Increase investment in market management, enhancing management capabilities and levels by adding manpower, introducing third-party monitoring, and using bottle-box correlation codes.
**Strengthen Execution**: Strengthen the enforcement of systems to ensure measures are implemented and achieve tangible results.
It is worth noting that New Distribution observed that shortly after the channel partner conference, Lee Kum Kee began a series of concrete and powerful actions.
In the game between market order and channel profit, Lee Kum Kee drives three major operating centers to jointly build a defense line for market order. Through full-channel, cross-regional collaborative governance, and in-depth implementation of innovative mechanisms, it is forging a path of steady development.
Lee Kum Kee's Distribution Operations Center, Professional Catering Operations Center, and New Retail Operations Center break traditional operational barriers and initiate an integrated online-offline management model. The three centers work closely together, strengthen market supervision, promptly discover and handle chaos and channel diversion, and jointly maintain market order.
It is reported that Lee Kum Kee, leveraging global market forces, proactively cooperated with the Chinese mainland market to address channel diversion issues for certain product series. Even at the cost of tens of millions in business, it successfully resolved the global version product diversion problem, ensuring reasonable profit space for channel partners.
Since 2024, Lee Kum Kee has begun promoting the 'responsibility field mechanism' for distributors to build a bottom line. In 2025, Lee Kum Kee further strengthened the responsibility field system and, based on this, launched the 'Clean Network Action,' with close manufacturer-distributor collaboration and enhanced market supervision. It unites authorized and unauthorized stores to build a joint supervision force using a 'people's war ocean method,' promptly discovering and handling channel price involution chaos and channel diversion, and jointly maintaining market order.
Lee Kum Kee Core Distributor Offline Communication Sessions
One of the group photos
'Lee Kum Kee is determined to promote a fair market. To this end, we have established a legal and compliance team to resolutely handle violations,' Cheng Feiyu emphasized. 'Distributors need to be prepared for long-term operations. The ideal future state is to differentiate by channel, category, and region, allowing distributors to achieve optimal profit returns through product portfolios. While stabilizing existing products, we will continue to launch new products to create more sales growth points for distributors.'
Since May, Lee Kum Kee has held offline communication sessions with core distributors across major regions under the theme 'Join Hands in Distribution, Build Channels Together.' At these sessions, regional leaders and distributors communicated candidly in a 'family-style' manner, calling for unity between manufacturers and distributors to jointly safeguard market order.
Lee Kum Kee Core Distributor Offline Communication Sessions
One of the scenes
From the responsibility field mechanism to full-chain service support, Lee Kum Kee is fulfilling its commitment to 'win-win with distributors' through all-dimensional actions. New Distribution observes that these measures not only provide a model for protecting channel profits in the condiment industry but also have the potential to reshape manufacturer-distributor relationships, opening a new path of symbiosis and co-prosperity in the era of existing market competition.
**Breaking Through from Three Dimensions: 'Deep, Broad, Active'**
**Igniting New Momentum for Manufacturer-Distributor Collaboration**
On the basis of stabilizing the market, and adhering to the spirit of 'perpetual entrepreneurship,' Lee Kum Kee launched a comprehensive distribution channel renewal strategy in 2025. This is a three-dimensional strategy to deepen, broaden, and activate the channel, striving to maximize 'distribution power.'
Regarding 'deep' operations, Lee Kum Kee uses data-driven 'engines' to create a 'single-store, single-strategy' product matrix system. Distributors share single-store sales data with Lee Kum Kee, and the brand's professional data analysis team tailors exclusive product portfolio solutions for each store. By using basic categories to attract traffic and new categories to increase revenue, an efficient and synergistic product matrix is built. This model of data sharing and strategy co-creation not only significantly improves single-store output efficiency but also transforms Lee Kum Kee's distributor partners from simple 'product movers' to 'regional market operators' with refined category management capabilities.
Lee Kum Kee (China) Channel Partner Conference Outdoor Display Area
To significantly enhance the 'activity' of the terminal market, Lee Kum Kee is fully empowering sales activation, launching several special actions for different types of stores. By proactively operating customer systems, it precisely activates shopping demands of county consumers. It provides resource support to strengthen display appeal and increase store activity. Scenario-based marketing activities are also a key investment direction for Lee Kum Kee's sales activation. Lee Kum Kee has always stationed brand food consultants at terminals and conducted tasting events to show consumers how to use Lee Kum Kee products to create high-level dishes. According to reports, Lee Kum Kee's previous multi-point tests showed that after implementing tasting marketing, some stores saw significant results, with sales activation efficiency multiplying.
To jointly expand market 'breadth' with distributors, Lee Kum Kee will focus on the county economy. Given the consumption hierarchy and differentiated dietary preferences in county markets, it will launch product portfolio stocking strategies that integrate regional cultural characteristics and seasonal recipes. While precisely meeting consumer cooking needs, it activates the sales linkage effect of related products, maximizing the commercial value potential of 'breadth' expansion. Expanding into county markets is also a key practice for Lee Kum Kee to deepen the 'community of shared destiny' with manufacturers.
For channel partners willing to jointly explore county markets, Lee Kum Kee implements an all-round resource tilt strategy, launching special actions—not only providing special funds but also through professional empowerment training systems and full-process collaboration support mechanisms, helping channel partners build operational capabilities for county terminal markets, unlocking new market spaces and capturing new growth opportunities.
Conclusion
We can clearly perceive the deep intent behind Lee Kum Kee's strategic upgrade: this is not just a tactical adjustment but a reshaping of the channel system, organizational capabilities, and market understanding. For Lee Kum Kee, 'distribution' is no longer the traditional linear path of delivering goods to customers but a multi-dimensional network connecting brands, channels, and end consumers. It requires not only the push of the sales team but also the deep nesting of execution systems, service mechanisms, and market understanding.
In New Distribution's view, based on the value of 'thinking for the benefit of others,' distributors are no longer just 'customers' to Lee Kum Kee but 'symbiotic partners' in brand growth with a shared destiny. This is the core idea Lee Kum Kee is advancing, a breakthrough in redefining distribution, and a long-term choice extending into the depths of the organization.
This is also why Cheng Feiyu proposed 'Join Hands in Distribution, Win at the Terminal,' but it is not just about distribution; it is responding to three underlying questions that run through the entire industry:
> How to rebuild trust between brands and channels?
>
> How to systematically deliver products to terminals stably?
>
> And how to lead a group of distributors to regain growth confidence in an era that 'seems to have no incremental growth'?
Lee Kum Kee provides a definitive answer with its century-old culture and values: in an era when the trust foundation of brand-channel relationships is frequently impacted and the industry is mired in existing market anxiety, Lee Kum Kee adheres to the value of 'thinking for the benefit of others,' taking the needs of distributors and end consumers as the decision-making origin, and building communication bridges. It always upholds the quality concept of '100-1=0' to build a trust cornerstone. High-quality products not only bring consumers an excellent eating experience but also bring distributors stable business growth.
A distributor attending the conference told New Distribution: 'Having cooperated with Lee Kum Kee for over 20 years, what I value most is not only Lee Kum Kee's good products but also its understanding and support for channels. By deeply understanding the market, it provides us with systematic terminal project knowledge and resource support, effectively helping our growth and development.'
In 2025, when everyone is talking about 'existing market competition,' Lee Kum Kee is doing this—leading partners to truly activate the market. It transforms distributors from 'movers' into 'ecosystem co-builders,' and the channel link from 'one-way delivery' to 'two-way resonance.' After all, in an era of slowing growth, making products on shelves sell themselves, 'from stabilizing to breaking through,' and truly enabling channel partners to profit, is the harder-core business wisdom. In this era, perhaps this is the capability more worthy of being seen.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: New Distribution
- Published: 2025-06-13
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/from-stabilizing-to-breaking-through-how-lee-kum-kee-turns-profit-protec-e3f517ec/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/z5tnM-fZU-NuDg_p6nQCpA

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