---
title: "How Will the Next Generation of Distributors Achieve Growth?"
description: "“This year is the worst year of the past decade, but it may be the best year of the next decade.” In recent years, consumption structure has changed, demographic dividends have disappeared, and the consumer market has entered an era of shrinking volume. In the past, distributors could achieve business growth by representing major brands, but that path is no longer viable. The cake is no longer growing, yet more people are competing for it. Facing long-term supply chain transformation, how should FMCG distributors understand and respond? On March 15, 2024, Zhoupu Data and New Distribution co-hosted the “Next Generation Distributors” closed-door seminar in Chengdu."
author: "周震"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2024-03-28"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-will-the-next-generation-of-distributors-achieve-growth-fb32d95f/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-will-the-next-generation-of-distributors-achieve-growth-fb32d95f.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/sOeWIV9YwWN176HPeHxVYQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%B8%8B%E4%B8%80%E4%BB%A3%E7%BB%8F%E9%94%80%E5%95%86-%E9%9D%A0%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88%E8%B0%8B%E5%A2%9E%E9%95%BF-fb32d95f.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/how-will-the-next-generation-of-distributors-achieve-growth-fb32d95f/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# How Will the Next Generation of Distributors Achieve Growth?

> “This year is the worst year of the past decade, but it may be the best year of the next decade.” In recent years, consumption structure has changed, demographic dividends have disappeared, and the consumer market has entered an era of shrinking volume. In the past, distributors could achieve business growth by representing major brands, but that path is no longer viable. The cake is no longer growing, yet more people are competing for it. Facing long-term supply chain transformation, how should FMCG distributors understand and respond? On March 15, 2024, Zhoupu Data and New Distribution co-hosted the “Next Generation Distributors” closed-door seminar in Chengdu.

“This year is the worst year of the past decade, but it may be the best year of the next decade.”
In recent years, consumption structure has changed, demographic dividends have disappeared, and the consumer market has entered an era of shrinking volume. In the past, distributors could achieve business growth by representing major brands, but that path is no longer viable.
The cake is no longer growing, yet more people are competing for it. Facing long-term supply chain transformation, how should FMCG distributors understand and respond?
On March 15, 2024, Zhoupu Data and New Distribution co-hosted the “Next Generation Distributors” closed-door seminar in Chengdu.
**Zhoupu Data Vice President Zhou Zhen’s keynote speech—"Zhoupu Products, Empowering the Next Generation of Distributors"** —from the perspective of data empowerment, showed distributors the space for efficiency improvement in each link of the “chain,” resonating strongly with the audience.
[New Distribution] reports on its essence for readers.
**************Improve Efficiency in Every Link**
**Achieve Synchronized Advancement of Organization and Business**
NielsenIQ reports indicate that the high-speed development phase of the FMCG industry has ended, and the market has gradually shifted from an incremental market to a stock market. Brand competition has intensified, and FMCG manufacturers have increasingly higher requirements for distributor capability and efficiency. **Facing various challenges, distributors are urgently seeking new growth points.**
In recent years, the topic of digital transformation for distributors has been hot. As a “veteran” who has been deeply involved in the FMCG industry for ten years, we have seen the power of software systems and data empowerment, and the space for efficiency improvement in each link of the chain.
We pragmatically and firmly believe that every link in the trading business can be optimized by **more than 10%**; and only through such comprehensive optimization can we achieve synchronized advancement of organization and business.
Therefore, **a complete integrated software system can help distributors achieve efficiency growth in every link.**
Since its inception, Zhoupu Data has focused on the FMCG industry, continuously delving into FMCG scenarios, and around the different pain points and needs of **six major departments: operations management team, clerical and finance team, field sales team, online operations team, warehouse and distribution team, and core management team** in daily operation and management, it has provided a combination of solutions.
**Operations Management Team: Richer Operations Management Models**
For the operations management teams of different distributors, Zhoupu Data starts from actual scenarios and provides multiple operating models, rich market management tools, and flexible organizational management methods through **YunGuanJia**. It will continue to do deeper scenario adaptation around FMCG products.
**Clerical and Finance Team: Higher Work Efficiency and Clearer Business Restoration**
To help distributor teams, especially clerical and finance teams, improve work efficiency and clearly restore tasks within the system, over 8 years, the Zhoupu team has drawn on strengths, delved into FMCG scenarios, listened to user voices, and provided clerical and finance teams with handy operating tools and an ultimate operating experience. This further helps distributor bosses to carry out deeper innovation in organization and business.
**Field Sales Team: More Standardized Sales Operations**
For distributors, “people” are the core production factor of the business; to help field sales teams conduct sales operations better and more standardized, Zhoupu Data continues to deeply empower salesperson efficiency.
**SFA** provides one-stop operations and standardized operations for salespeople in terms of process, and in terms of data empowerment, it has achieved intelligent order recommendation, new product repurchase recommendation, high-value store recommendation, etc.
**Online Operations Team: Richer Traffic Marketing Tools**
In the Internet era, selling only through offline channels is like walking on one leg; only by integrating online and offline can distributors truly achieve effective growth. To provide distributors with richer traffic marketing tools, **DianGuanJia** insists on innovation and assists B-end traffic operations. It provides distributors with online-offline integration, traffic guidance, and other services.
It is expected that DianGuanJia will usher in a new round of iteration and upgrade in April, helping distributors enrich their marketing arsenal from aspects such as traffic marketing, customer order marketing, and atmosphere marketing, helping distributors increase offline orders while penetrating various store sales.
**Warehouse and Distribution Team: Higher Work Efficiency**
If distributors want to control costs, they must improve personnel efficiency, and the warehouse and distribution team, as the largest logistics department, has the greatest impact on cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Can the vehicle loading rate increase from 80% to 90%? Can vehicles deliver twice a day instead of once? Can delivery go from 20 stores a day to 25...
To this end, **WMS & TMS solutions** provide distributors with standardized warehouse and distribution operations, warehouse and distribution strategies and algorithms, and combine software, hardware, and people to deeply improve warehouse and distribution efficiency.
**Core Management Team: Insight into the Internal, and Clarity on the External**
What is the distributor’s inventory level? In the same region, what stage is the existing business scale at?
To help distributors better understand the internal and see the external, **Zhoupu Yishang (ZhouYi)** provides internal analysis and exploration support with rich indicators, detailed reports, convenient search, anomaly monitoring, and custom reports; and helps distributors with external comparison and opportunity discovery through peer comparison analysis, high-value new stores, and hot new products.
Zhoupu Data digitally empowers the six core departments through a complete product chain, helping distributors improve the efficiency of each link.
**************Grasp Three Stable Directions**
**Digital Empowerment for Enterprise Transformation and Upgrading**
What kind of distributor can be called a “next-generation distributor”?
In the past six months, we have visited many distributors, brand owners, and peers, and have basically identified three relatively stable directions, and Zhoupu Data will also provide corresponding solutions to help distributors better achieve transformation.
**1. Group Operation**
The strong get stronger. Currently, many excellent distributors have actually walked ahead of the team, starting group development and attempting independent operation of subsidiaries. Subsidiaries independently manage products, prices, marketing, accounts, and tax reporting; even some small second-tier wholesalers, as independent legal entities, are included in the group’s jurisdiction. In this case, the group headquarters needs to undertake approval for procurement, payment, marketing, and other projects, as well as the distribution of specific tasks, procurement-sales coordination, and sales promotion coordination, while also needing group-wide data analysis. Many companies attempting group operation actually need a solution that takes into account both marketing and second-tier wholesale management collaboration.
**2. Category Operators**
In the stock market competition, distributor business is a zero-sum game, where efficiency kills inefficiency. With further intensification of competition, a large number of distributors will be gradually eliminated. **The surviving local giants, to further improve efficiency, will transform into category operators & local B2B platform operators.** On one hand, they integrate the supply chain and provide one-stop service to terminals. On the basis of self-operated supply chains, they introduce complementary category brands, and by building a B2B procurement platform, they provide one-stop supply to small stores to reduce costs. On the other hand, they open up traffic order collection capabilities **and commercialize services for small and medium distributors**. These traffic sources include existing mid-to-long-tail terminals and more incremental terminals covered after integrating the supply chain.
**3. Regional City Distribution Operators**
Generally, the cost of single-distributor dispersed warehousing and distribution is >6%. But if we can reduce warehousing and distribution costs through regional unified strategy, unified warehousing and distribution, and one-inventory fulfillment, sharing the logistics system and independently accounting for costs, we can achieve a win-win situation. These three models are highly correlated. First, whether for the vitality of the enterprise organization or for strong bargaining power with upstream, **group operation is definitely an inevitable trend**. **On this basis, it is better to do an online B2B platform. On one hand, turn operational capabilities into digital assets; on the other hand, transform from a regional major distributor into a regional brand operator, driving more industrial space.** **Finally, through unified warehousing and distribution, further reduce comprehensive warehousing and distribution costs and improve operational efficiency.** In this process, Zhoupu Data will continue to use data empowerment, through continuous product iteration and refinement, to help distributors smoothly seize the opportunities brought by the times, enjoy the dividends of digital evolution, grow into benchmarks of efficient supply chain service providers in their regions, and become “next-generation distributors.”
_PS: Friends interested in the on-site speech content can follow the recent push of the [New Distribution] WeChat official account. We will organize and publish all guests’ speeches for readers._ __
_Click **Read Original** to see more of the 9th China FMCG Innovation Conference & the 2nd China FMCG Hard Discount Conference & the 2nd China FMCG Distributor Conference..._


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671