---
title: "In the FMCG Industry, \"Making Fewer Mistakes\" Is Growth"
description: "Despite a sluggish market, manufacturers still aim for annual growth, leading managers to resort to desperate measures. The key lies in seizing opportunities in channels, products, and distributors, focusing resources, and capitalizing on competitors' mistakes."
author: "金名"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2025-05-23"
categories: "Management & Methods"
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---

# In the FMCG Industry, "Making Fewer Mistakes" Is Growth

> Despite a sluggish market, manufacturers still aim for annual growth, leading managers to resort to desperate measures. The key lies in seizing opportunities in channels, products, and distributors, focusing resources, and capitalizing on competitors' mistakes.

Although the market is not doing well, the manufacturer's goal is still to grow every year. To achieve growth, managers at all levels in both large and small companies are racking their brains, even resorting to desperate measures.

"A major manufacturer launched more than a dozen new products in one year, hoping to bring new growth points. After blindly distributing them to terminals, they didn't sell well. Terminals returned goods one after another, distributors were unwilling to restock, salespeople lost confidence, and the new products gradually died out."

"A brand wanted to quickly increase volume in a low-share market, requiring salespeople to find big customers to reverse the competitive landscape. Even the leader shared his successful case of developing big customers, but the reality was that big customers didn't want to play with you."

At a company's performance review meeting, the leader believed that poor performance was due to insufficient effort by salespeople: "I think if you want performance to take off, we should get rid of all of you and hire new salespeople."

When the market is good, any plan can have some effect; it's just a matter of good or better results. When the market is bad, the same plan will have greatly diminished results. Even a well-researched and carefully crafted plan may receive a lukewarm response or even end in chaos.

**"Our goals are clear, the paths to achieve them are explicit, and the method guidelines are specific. Why can't we still achieve growth?"**

**Grasp Key Links**
**Find Potential Opportunities in Channels, Products, and Distributors**
The first element of growth is to follow the general trend. If the trend is not there, past experiences and methods may become obstacles to development.

**Channel Side: Seize growth opportunities in emerging channels, while paying attention to the development trends of various channels and grasping valuable channels.**

The development of emerging channels brings new incremental opportunities.

In recent years, the snack system has developed rapidly. The most representative one, Snack Busy, opened its first store in Changsha in 2017 and now has over 8,000 stores nationwide. Similarly, chain convenience store Meiyijia has exceeded 30,000 stores nationwide and is still expanding.

FMCG company Yanjinpu Food has leveraged the rapid development of the snack track in the past two years, achieving a compound annual growth rate of over 20%.

Last month, I visited several traditional customers who achieved growth. Their growth was not through inventory pressure but because customers proactively cooperated with emerging channels such as local Wine Boy, Snack Busy, and Meituan Flash Warehouse, bringing new increments.

Smaller growth formats can also be noted, such as night market food stalls, which are developing well despite the frequent closure of restaurants.

This year, at a beer brand customer communication meeting, a beer customer surprisingly shared this phenomenon: "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed that beer sales at night market stalls were better than the big restaurant stores we paid for."

**Consumer Side: Insight into changes in consumer demand, cater to consumption trends, and go with the flow.**

In previous years, the consulting industry always mentioned that Feihe's development benefited from its positioning as "more suitable for Chinese baby constitution." In fact, conforming to the consumption upgrade trend is the core.

In 2015, they launched Star Feifan (more expensive than the main imported milk powder, positioned as mid-to-high-end; Chinese parents are willing to give the best to their babies and can afford it), conforming to the consumption upgrade trend, and then invested all resources into this product.

The concept of "more suitable for Chinese baby constitution" is the icing on the cake. Spending money on trends is effective; it's just a matter of good or better results. In fact, comparing with Yili milk powder makes it clear: Yili's Jinlingguan (also positioned as mid-to-high-end) has also grown significantly (in 2024, Yili's milk powder sales surpassed Feihe, becoming the national sales leader).

**Distributor Side: Pay attention to competitors' dynamics and convert their resources for your own use.**

In a competitor's strong market, converting their distributors is a shortcut to rapidly increase sales. During the cooperation between competitor distributors and manufacturers, conflicts always arise. The more intense the conflict, the smoother the conversion of competitor distributors.

For example, in 2024, Manufacturer A, in pursuit of profit growth, continuously cut various expenses, making the conflict between distributors and the manufacturer very sharp. Its competitor Manufacturer B's regional manager saw this opportunity, personally visited the competitor's distributors, and successfully developed multiple major customers from the competitor, achieving high growth in the region's performance.

However, it should be noted that competitors will definitely try to ease conflicts with their distributors, so the window for development is not long. You need to constantly monitor competitors' dynamics and act quickly at the right time.

**When the market is difficult, challenges and opportunities always coexist, and opportunities always favor those who are attentive.**

**Focus Resources, Make Daily Progress**
**Accumulate Small Wins into Big Wins**
**In a poor macro environment, the best strategy is to focus resources, be more resilient than competitors, and nibble away at their share.**

Gradually seize terminal resources and squeeze competitors' living space. When accumulation reaches a certain level, competitors will not be able to hold on. Especially for small manufacturers, after they exit the market, you can then take over their original share, but this is a process, and no one can say how long it will take.

In 2012, I was doing Yili business in Shanghai. At that time, the Shanghai market was dominated by competitors. Yili's share was only one-fifth of the competitor's. Almost every store owner would say the same thing: "We Shanghainese drink XX; your milk won't sell."

In such a weak position, Yili relied on the execution of all employees, store by store, to grab displays, visit more frequently, serve terminals better, and do activities more seriously, gradually nibbling away at competitors' share. Now in Shanghai, Yili's share is on par with competitors, and no one says "We Shanghainese only drink XX" anymore.

From an overall strategy perspective, Yili's business revolves around terminals throughout the year, seizing quality display resources and squeezing competitors' living space.

All campaigns and resource investments are premised on replacing terminal quality displays. During key marketing nodes like holidays, they use temporary promoters, in-store promotions, and hot sales, all requiring terminals to give more and better display positions, treating resource investment as bargaining chips with terminals. On regular days, during terminal visits, salespeople proactively grab more display area by working hard to build displays and organize shelves.

Day after day, looking back now, the small manufacturers in the market more than 10 years ago have all exited competition.

"A little more display at the terminal means a little more sales opportunity." This is how they squeezed out competitors' share bit by bit. This process is painful and requires persistence from all employees. Few companies can maintain such high standards and strict requirements for business over such a long period.

**Rather than attacking on all fronts, it's better to focus on one point. Less is more.**

With limited resources, attacking on all fronts disperses resources, making it impossible to form an absolute competitive advantage in a single product. Focusing on one core product makes it easier to stand out in competition, and even the success of this product can drive the development of other products.

Another example: Why has Yanjing Beer grown so fast in the past two years, while B brand's lowland market has never taken off, with customers changing one after another?

The core reason is that Yanjing truly focuses, concentrating most resources on Yanjing U8, and this product also drives the development of other tier products.

B brand, on the other hand, does not truly focus. It forces too many products on distributors. The most extreme case is a terminal with more than 10 products, but resource investment is lukewarm. Most products sell poorly at the terminal. Distributors have to recall and handle near-expiry products. The already low profits cannot withstand such turmoil. Even if distributors change, the market shows no improvement.

**Main Competitor Makes Major Mistakes**
**Giving Up Market Share**
Any manufacturer will make decision errors when making market decisions. When your competitor makes such mistakes, it is the best opportunity to grab market share.

Here are a few cases:

Case 1: In 2021, a major manufacturer, in pursuit of quality development, required the development of high-end products and began assessing the high-end structure ratio of the business team. A regional manager, to cope with the assessment, forced distributors to stock high-end products and even proactively cut low-end products, preventing distributors from ordering them. Now, the brand's share in that market is only half of what it was in 2021 and is still shrinking.

Case 2: In 2019, a leading agricultural materials manufacturer in the Guangdong market believed that the original low-price products were not profitable. Since they weren't profitable, they shouldn't waste manpower and resources. They proactively cut low-price products and stopped production, fantasizing that high-profit products would seamlessly take over the volume of low-price products. They were slapped by reality, and competitors took over the low-price market share. More ironically, at the year-end summary meeting, the competitor passionately declared: "Under the correct leadership of the company, we rose against the trend, increasing market share by X percentage points."

Case 3: Thailand Red Bull and China Red Bull have been in litigation for several years, releasing some market share, almost all of which was taken over by Dongpeng. Otherwise, even if Dongpeng Special Drink did excellent exchange activities, it could only nibble at the share of functional drinks and could not have grown so fast in recent years. Moreover, if not for the lawsuit, the leading brand Red Bull would have taken measures to block it.

In a stock market, the overall market share has not changed much. What matters is who can stabilize the market. When competitors give up market share, who takes it over, or who takes over more, depends on the execution of the manufacturer's business.

**If competitors do not make mistakes, weak brands find it difficult to shake their market position, even with a group of excellent salespeople.**

**How to judge whether competitors are making mistakes?** You can dig out opportunity points from the **complaints** of their distributors, terminals, consumers, and even their salespeople, then take targeted actions to quickly seize the market.

**Final Thoughts**
**Effort alone cannot bring growth; smarter effort brings value.**

When the industry develops rapidly, effort can bring good results. When industry development stagnates, even if you work harder and have more experience, it may not bring the results you want.

In shrinking competition, insight into market opportunities, focus resources on more valuable points, seize the initiative; at the same time, persist in long-term valuable things; then wait quietly for flowers to bloom, and butterflies will come naturally.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 金名
- Published: 2025-05-23
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/in-the-fmcg-industry-making-fewer-mistakes-is-growth-a9e584d8/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/IXXsgrAvocHH7JMQPiSglA

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