---
title: "Hebei Village Dianle Partners with FMCG Distributors to Compete with Alibaba and JD in Rural Market"
description: "On the afternoon of April 17, Alibaba Group CEO Zhang Yong announced a 4.5 billion RMB investment in rural e-commerce platform Huitongda, drawing attention to the rural market. While online giants like Alibaba and JD have long eyed this untapped market, they face challenges such as outdated consumption habits, poor digital access, and high logistics costs. Meanwhile, smaller platforms like Village Dianle, founded in Bazhou, Hebei, are taking a different approach by partnering with traditional distributors and using information tools to upgrade rural mom-and-pop stores."
author: "袁来"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-04-28"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/GdVm3HqBcMYgcU3zc-L1vg"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%B2%B3%E5%8C%97%E6%9D%91%E7%82%B9%E4%B9%90%E8%81%94%E5%90%88%E5%BF%AB%E6%B6%88%E5%93%81%E7%BB%8F%E9%94%80%E5%95%86-%E4%B8%8E%E9%98%BF%E9%87%8C-%E4%BA%AC%E4%B8%9C%E6%8A%A2%E9%A3%9F%E5%86%9C%E6%9D%91%E5%B8%82%E5%9C%BA-e4f1026e.md"
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# Hebei Village Dianle Partners with FMCG Distributors to Compete with Alibaba and JD in Rural Market

> On the afternoon of April 17, Alibaba Group CEO Zhang Yong announced a 4.5 billion RMB investment in rural e-commerce platform Huitongda, drawing attention to the rural market. While online giants like Alibaba and JD have long eyed this untapped market, they face challenges such as outdated consumption habits, poor digital access, and high logistics costs. Meanwhile, smaller platforms like Village Dianle, founded in Bazhou, Hebei, are taking a different approach by partnering with traditional distributors and using information tools to upgrade rural mom-and-pop stores.

On the afternoon of April 17, Alibaba Group CEO Zhang Yong announced a 4.5 billion RMB investment in rural e-commerce platform Huitongda, drawing attention to the rural market. While online giants like Alibaba and JD have long eyed this untapped market, they face challenges such as outdated consumption habits, poor digital access, and high logistics costs. Meanwhile, smaller platforms like Village Dianle, founded in Bazhou, Hebei, are taking a different approach by partnering with traditional distributors and using information tools to upgrade rural mom-and-pop stores.

Founded in Bazhou, Hebei, Village Dianle E-commerce Co., Ltd. began its rural market layout in August 2016. Starting with fresh produce as an entry point, it partnered with traditional distributors to build a supermarket supply chain system. Currently, Village Dianle operates 30 chain supermarkets, including 17 directly operated and 13 franchised stores, with a total membership of 10,000. Recently, New Distribution interviewed Wang Lixin, founder of Village Dianle, to explore how the platform is tapping into the rural market.

**01**
**Serial Entrepreneur, Three Pivots**
When asked why he chose the rural market, Wang Lixin told New Distribution that it was closely related to his decades of entrepreneurial experience. Wang entered society at age 14, starting as a porter at a food trading company. After years of hard work, he began his first venture in chilled meat at 14, which was an immediate success.

During the internet boom, leveraging his chilled meat business resources, he supplied ingredients to supermarkets and restaurant owners through a PC-based online platform. However, after two years of burning cash, Wang realized that simply being a logistics distributor had no real value. With funds nearly depleted, he sought transformation. He turned his attention to rural areas, offering online purchasing services for small shops, but various issues led to the failure of this online venture within six months. Nevertheless, this experience revealed the opportunity for consumption upgrades in rural markets. He decided to stay in rural areas, open supermarkets, and combine them with the internet to create rural internet supermarkets.

Wang's journey from offline to online and back to offline was a process of exploration, but not without meaning. In the view of New Distribution, it was an accumulation of experience and resources, laying a solid foundation for his rural entrepreneurship.

**02**
**How Does Village Dianle Tap the Rural Market?**
Wang Lixin told New Distribution that Village Dianle currently has four business segments: community chain supermarkets, Boguniao rural logistics, Nongdiantong agricultural cooperatives, and rural e-commerce training. These segments work in synergy, helping Village Dianle "mine gold" in the rural market.

Through agricultural cooperatives and self-operated high-frequency fresh categories like meat and poultry as an entry point, Village Dianle integrates FMCG categories from county-level distributors. Leveraging the centralized warehousing and distribution of Boguniao logistics, it meets the one-stop procurement needs of rural community supermarkets.

Using some chain self-operated supermarkets as benchmarks, Village Dianle attracts nearby rural supermarkets or rural entrepreneurs to join through demonstration effects, helping complete its rural network coverage. Through e-commerce training, it guides franchise store owners to establish offline membership marketing systems.

**1. Building Self-operated Fresh Categories Based on Agricultural Cooperatives**
Village Dianle cooperates with four agricultural cooperatives, establishing a 3,000-mu fresh produce base. Wang Lixin believes that compared to FMCG categories, fresh produce's high loss rate, high standards, and difficult fulfillment can actually help Village Dianle build its core competitive barrier. Currently, fresh produce accounts for 50% of supermarket revenue. High-frequency fresh produce plus high-frequency FMCG is the foundation for Village Dianle's business model to work. Starting with self-operated fresh produce, it then partners with FMCG distributors to form a platform.

**2. Direct-operated Supermarkets as Benchmarks, Open Franchising to Cover Village-level Outlets**
Village Dianle has 17 directly operated supermarkets, which serve as "model rooms" in real estate terms—these are the "model stores" for rural supermarkets. Wang Lixin said the purpose of direct-operated stores is not for their own sake. Bazhou has 7 towns and 383 villages. It's unrealistic to have direct-operated stores in all 300+ villages. By establishing model stores, others can replicate them. Village Dianle provides standardized experience and services, ensuring franchisees can make money from day one. It is reported that Village Dianle supermarkets generate daily revenue ranging from 2,500 to 8,000 RMB, with a break-even point around 1,800 RMB. Currently, all Village Dianle supermarkets are profitable.

In the FMCG B2B field, the most discussed term is "empowerment"—empowering small stores. Borrowing Wang Lixin's view, before empowering, you must first understand the small store. How to understand? If you have no prior store operation experience, try opening a few yourself. Only after fully understanding the pain points of both upstream and downstream can you truly talk about empowerment.

**3. Boguniao Logistics: Turning Cost Center into Profit Center**
Wang Lixin admitted that Boguniao Logistics is currently in a loss-making state, serving only about 200 outlets. In the future, it will further use supermarkets as bases to set up "village-level forward warehouses" to cover surrounding rural terminals. Because Village Dianle does not touch goods but acts as an integrator, and has lower logistics distribution costs, distributors are willing to entrust their goods to Boguniao Logistics.

The establishment of "village-level forward warehouses" keeps both warehouse and distribution costs very low. High-frequency fresh produce plus FMCG, besides serving Village Dianle supermarkets, can also radiate to other mom-and-pop stores, restaurants, and various other outlets. By leveraging FMCG warehousing, it can reach various outlets to the greatest extent.

In the early stage, it balances the distribution costs of fresh produce; in the later stage, through high-density outlets and high-frequency distribution, it earns service commissions, transforming the cost center into a profit center.

**4. Training Franchise Owners, Building Offline Membership System**
After improving infrastructure and upstream supply chain, Village Dianle extends to downstream consumers, fully considering their needs, providing diverse livelihood services, and building an offline membership system.

Rural areas differ from urban areas in that population mobility is very limited. Currently, rural areas are dominated by middle-aged and elderly people. To better take root in rural areas, Village Dianle provides them with diverse services, such as parcel collection; agricultural product collection and sales; equipping supermarkets with free intelligent health check facilities—blood pressure and blood glucose monitors; and developing them into supermarket members, with member-day promotions, point redemption, etc. These make Village Dianle supermarkets not just supermarkets but also service centers and social centers for surrounding villages. Wang Lixin told New Distribution that through these services, they deeply connect with consumers, and after six months of operation, supermarkets can establish long-term trust relationships with consumers.

Wang Lixin smiled and said, if JD and Alibaba are the "sky net," then Village Dianle is laying the "ground net" in Bazhou. Currently, Village Dianle supermarkets have nearly 10,000 members, and in the future, more rural consumers will become members. This is also why Village Dianle established the e-commerce training segment—to train store owners, teaching them how to use information tools to serve consumers and do membership marketing.

**Summary**
While most B2B platforms enter the market with high-frequency categories like beverages, alcohol, and snacks, Village Dianle has found a differentiated industry path. In the view of New Distribution, Village Dianle is actually building a pipeline. Starting with fresh produce as an entry point, it integrates upstream goods through centralized warehousing and distribution, meeting the one-stop ordering needs of small stores, optimizing the existing market of supermarkets, and improving its own order fulfillment efficiency, thereby reducing costs and increasing efficiency for the product distribution channel. In addition, by establishing a rural membership system, Village Dianle can attract more consumers to shop in stores, bringing incremental growth to terminals. "It's not just about selling goods to small stores, but more about helping small stores sell products," thereby increasing the stickiness of franchise stores.

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