In March this year, Yonghui Superstores fired the first shot in 'removing middlemen.' Yonghui's director Ye Guofu unveiled a reform plan at a supplier conference: complete adjustments at over 200 stores, eliminate middlemen to implement 'bare-price direct sourcing,' cancel various fees for suppliers, and shift the retailer-supplier relationship from confrontation to symbiosis. Removing middlemen, direct sourcing at bare prices, and focusing on core suppliers all send a resounding message to the industry: the new retail era of 'value reshaping' has arrived. The retailer-supplier relationship is being restructured, and brands and distributors must re-examine their strategic positioning, roles, core functions, and value to better adapt to market changes and enhance supply chain competitiveness. Value Reshaping Finding Increment in a Stock Market From May 8-10, 2025, the 25th China Retail Industry Expo (CHINASHOP) will kick off at the Shenzhen International Convention and Exhibition Center (Bao'an Hall). This expo, themed 'Value Reshaping,' directly addresses the industry's core pain points: how retail can overcome traffic involution and reconstruct people, goods, and scenes. As is well known, the China Retail Industry Expo (CHINASHOP), founded in 1999, is the largest professional retail exhibition in Asia and ranks among the top three globally. CHINASHOP 2025 will continue the framework of six zones and nine thematic sub-exhibitions, showcasing the latest global facilities, cutting-edge technologies, innovative solutions, and trendy products, providing a comprehensive and efficient one-stop platform for global retail professional buyers to connect with suppliers. The expo will cover an exhibition area of 100,000 square meters, spanning five halls (4-8) at the Shenzhen International Convention and Exhibition Center. The content ranges from equipment to technology to products, always adhering to the principle that 'everything here is about retail,' building the most comprehensive exchange and connection platform for both retailers and suppliers. New Distribution has learned that this exhibition and its concurrent conferences will bring together retail giants such as Walmart, Hema, Meiyijia, Tianhong, and China Resources Vanguard, as well as leading consumer brands like Yili and Weilong. Exhibits cover the entire industry chain, including fresh food, smart logistics, digital systems, and retail catering, providing distributors with complete solutions from products to equipment, technology to supply chain, to improve operational efficiency. Smart Payment and Cashier Systems: Support multiple payment methods to enhance store service efficiency; collect and analyze customer consumption habits to optimize promotional strategies. Logistics and Supply Chain Technology: Enable real-time inventory monitoring, automatic replenishment, and intelligent sorting to reduce out-of-stock rates and slow-moving inventory risks. Electronic Shelf Labels and Shelf Management: Dynamically adjust prices and promotional information, reduce manual labeling costs, monitor product display status in real time, and improve replenishment efficiency. Additionally, exhibits such as commercial cold chain equipment, SaaS management systems, packaging materials and design optimization provide distributors with digital tools for cost optimization; commercial lighting and display design enhance customer experience through scene lighting; security and cold chain monitoring provide compliance assurance for distributors in risk management. These comprehensively showcase the latest trends and innovative achievements in the retail industry over the past year. As a bellwether for the retail industry, CHINASHOP brings together professional buyers from around the world to explore new retail trends and channel opportunities. At a time when product power is increasingly important, the product hall of this expo has been significantly upgraded! It launches the [Consumer Goods Channel Selection Fair], which breaks information asymmetry through 'precise matching + trend release + practical empowerment,' allowing product companies to face retail buyers directly, achieve real and efficient connections, and open new opportunities for retailer-supplier cooperation. [Exhibition Visitor Pre-registration QR Code] Media-exclusive free tickets (limited to before the exhibition) Precise Retailer-Supplier Matching A Trend 'Bellwether' Event [2025 China Retail Famous and Excellent Products Exhibition and Consumer Goods Channel Selection Fair] Breaking the 'Blind Selection' Drawback for Distributors Why create a consumer goods channel selection fair? In recent years, distributors have clearly felt that channels are undergoing disruptive changes: consumption structure is showing a 'K-shaped divergence,' with high-end upgrades and extreme cost-effectiveness coexisting; retail formats are continuously iterating, new channels are emerging, and channels are becoming both 'fragmented' and 'verticalized'; the integration of online and offline is also accelerating... These disruptive changes send a clear signal: the sales management systems of upstream brands and the distributor system will face a transformation, inevitably leading to a continuous contraction in distributors' business. Significant regional demand differences lead to information fog due to personalization; fragmented procurement needs; low survival rates for new products lead to large amounts of slow-moving inventory, falling into a trial-and-error black hole; new categories such as healthy foods and cross-border products lack connection channels, causing trend disconnection... These risk signals force distributors to consider: which products can stably bring cash flow and become reliable 'cash cow products'? Which new products have explosive potential and are expected to become market 'star products'? From May 8-9, the [2025 China Retail Famous and Excellent Products Exhibition and Consumer Goods Channel Selection Fair] will debut with 'precision × efficiency × foresight' to build a new ecosystem for channel selection. As an innovative section of this expo, it combines product exhibitions with selection fairs for the first time, using scenario-based displays and precise matching to help brands and retailers efficiently match needs and improve product circulation efficiency. Precise Matching of Selection Needs: For the first time, dedicated supermarket and convenience store sessions will be held for the consumer goods channel selection fair. The supermarket sector will bring together leading enterprises such as China Resources Vanguard, Tianhong Digital, JD Super, Lotus, Liqun Group, and Wushang Group; the convenience store sector will attract well-known chain brands like Meiyijia, Tianfu, Jinhu, Zhongye Aimin, and Xinjiayi to participate in presentations, where procurement decision-makers will disclose annual selection strategies on site. Additionally, there will be three selection matching sessions, each with dozens of retail enterprises' procurement teams on site, achieving a one-stop closed loop from 'demand release to negotiation matching' to quickly reach intentions. Thematic Exhibition Zones for Categorized Selection: As an important sub-exhibition of the China Retail Industry Expo, this product exhibition provides distributors and brands with an excellent space to display products. Breaking the traditional model of displaying by category, it uses thematic zones to recreate consumer shopping scenarios. Five major thematic zones—member new products, local specialty products, excellent foreign trade products, healthy eating, and private brands & big single products—bring category management and product selection back to consumer needs. Furthermore, in collaboration with Ant Business Alliance, the '2025 Retail Category Trend Product Zone' will be created, with 40+ enterprise procurement teams conducting on-site negotiations, organizing a hundred-person retailer-supplier matching session, and opening a procurement director meeting to predict trends, share cases, create bestsellers, and collectively showcase joint private brand product achievements. Excellent Foreign Trade Products Entering the Domestic Market: This product exhibition will also join forces with the China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs and Native Produce to create the 'Excellent Foreign Trade Products China Tour Zone,' focusing on high-quality export products and rural revitalization specialty products, building an efficient bridge for retailer-supplier matching. This allows 'China's good products' to move from overseas markets into domestic supermarkets, convenience stores, and e-commerce platforms, achieving smooth dual circulation of domestic and foreign trade, while also supporting rural revitalization and industrial upgrading. [Consumer Goods Channel Marketing Innovation Summit] Solving the 'Traffic Trap' and 'Channel Defocusing' Traditional channel marketing models are facing challenges such as rising traffic costs, declining user stickiness, and difficulty in breaking through overseas expansion. Brands and channel partners need to break inertial thinking and reposition their collaborative value. Against this backdrop, the [CCFA New Consumption Forum—Consumer Goods Channel Marketing Innovation Summit], based on channel marketing, takes 'making consumption happen better' as its core proposition, focusing on new demographics, new scenarios, and new connections, building a practical platform for in-depth dialogue between retailers and suppliers and precise resource matching. The summit will delve into key areas such as 'product innovation,' 'omnichannel integration and exploration,' 'brand value,' 'overseas expansion power,' 'marketing and conversion,' 'affordable quality,' and 'retailer-supplier collaboration,' engaging in in-depth dialogue with heavyweight guests from the retail and consumer sectors and over a thousand representatives from retailer and supplier enterprises, discussing future retail consumption trends and exploring new ideas and methods for retailer-supplier cooperation. To date, the summit has attracted nearly a hundred leading consumer goods companies from around the world. Senior executives from these companies, including Ma Fei, Vice President of Yili Group; Li Hai, General Manager of Yuexiu Fengxing Dairy; Shu Yong, General Manager of Weilong's Emerging Channel Development Department; Xiao Zheng, Managing Partner and General Manager of Shanghai Hua & Hua Marketing Consulting Co., Ltd.; and Zhou Xu, General Manager of Zhenshimei Supply Chain Management Company, will be present to share breakthrough paths under omnichannel transformation from brand, marketing, and supply chain perspectives. At the same time, two parallel forums will be held: the [Health Consumption Forum] and the [New Consumer Brands and Catering Channel Co-creation Forum], bringing participants a feast of industry-academia-research collaborative innovation and presenting new insights into channels and brands. Scroll up and down to see more Holding the [First All-Retail AI Spark Conference] Breaking the Ceiling of 'Manual Empiricism' Facing new-era tools, from May 8-9, the expo will host the first [All-Retail AI Spark Conference], the first retail industry conference focused on AI technology applications. The conference adopts a '1+N' model with a main forum and sub-forums, empowering multiple retail scenarios and leveraging the expo's numerous technology exhibitors to explore AI implementation trends across all retail scenarios. The main forum brings together heavyweight guests from retail and technology. Tao Ran, Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft Greater China, will interpret 'A New Era of Retail in the AI Age'; Li Jingyao from China Resources Vanguard will share practical data experience; executives from Meiyijia and Haidilao will break down AI implementation paths in scenarios such as smart stores and catering operations. Technology giants like Huawei, NVIDIA, and Kingsoft Office will discuss cutting-edge trends such as generative AI and digital office, covering innovation across the entire retail chain. Sub-forums will cover seven AI application scenarios: AI operations applications across the retail industry, AI sales forecasting and supply chain optimization, AI overseas expansion strategy, AI consumer insights and marketing channel placement, generative AI content creation, AI smart operations for chain stores, and AI new product development and smart production. Through case sharing, technical discussions, and ecosystem collaboration, they will present a feast of wisdom on the deep integration of AI and retail. [China Supermarket Conference] Actively Embracing the Circulation Revolution From May 8-9, the China Supermarket Conference, with core topics of 'supermarket adjustments, product channel transformation, and discount retail transformation,' will bring together over 300 supermarket enterprises and supply chain exhibitors nationwide, focusing on the pain points of supermarket format transformation, exploring directions such as promoting adjustment experience, supply chain restructuring, and discount store model innovation, and driving the industry from extensive expansion to refined operations. Conference guests focus on core decision-makers and researchers in the supermarket and retail sectors. Industry expert Professor Chen Liping from Capital University of Economics and Business will analyze industry trends from a consumer big data perspective; national supermarket giant China Resources Vanguard's Deputy General Manager Tao Zhiqin, regional leader Biyoute's Chairman Meng Fanzhong, Fresh Legend's Chairman Wang Wei, Hubei Yasi's Chairman Du Xiaoyi, emerging retail brand fudi's Chairman Wang Xingshui, Tianhong Digital executive Zhu Yanxia, and Hema's CTO Cao Jiayin will all attend the conference. Additionally, there will be a dialogue between Aotele and traditional supermarket representatives; regional enterprise cases from Green City Commerce and Huiyou Business will provide replicable models for lower-tier markets and county economies. Scan the QR code to view the schedule & register for the conference. In addition, during the three-day conference, multiple exciting events will be held concurrently.
- [CHINASHOP Golden Wing Competition] Showcasing the industry's technological strength and new business paradigms, with 7 tracks in 4 directions—consumer scenarios, business models, supply chain, and marketing—this competition promotes innovation through competition, activating new momentum for retail innovation and development. The on-site finals and award ceremony will ignite CHINASHOP.
- [Retail X-lab & Dark Horse Zone] Showcasing cutting-edge, leading, and forward-looking concepts and technologies in the retail industry, and gathering industry unicorns, specialized and innovative enterprises, and innovative brands to witness 'the birth of the next dark horse.'
- [Future Retail New Scenario Hi-shop] With AI as the theme, it will envision the concrete changes AI will bring to future retail. Additionally, over 20 workshops and themed salons will be held concurrently, including forums on high-quality development of commercial refrigeration equipment, the complete chain revolution of cooked food, innovative food driving national health and wellness upgrades, retail category trend forums with Ant Business Alliance's procurement directors' meeting, Ant Business Alliance equipment technology bidding, industry trend interpretation, and new profit growth points. Looking at the three-day conference content, the 'exhibition + conference + visit' three-dimensional model precisely targets industry pain points, providing digital and differentiated solutions for traditional retail transformation, opening market cooperation paths for emerging brands, and offering distributors triple value—supply chain resource library + trend bellwether + technology toolbox—during their transformation from 'middlemen' to 'value integrators,' helping them address challenges such as cost pressure and channel divergence, and achieve the transition from 'traditional distribution' to 'value service providers.' Undoubtedly, the 25th China Retail Industry Expo is a bellwether event driving the industry from 'traffic involution' to 'value reconstruction'! Go out, cultivate the present, and strengthen your fundamentals! This China Retail Industry Expo is worth your visit! [Exhibition Visitor Pre-registration QR Code] Media-exclusive free tickets (limited to before the exhibition)