Over the decades of reform and opening up, China's economic takeoff is not only the result of rapid manufacturing development but also the innovation of the distribution system under China's unique national conditions. The distribution system not only enabled the rocket-speed growth of Mengniu and the rapid rise of Wahaha but also allowed Chinese people to enjoy quality goods from across the country and the world. However, with economic restructuring and the rapid development of the internet, the traditional distribution model faces enormous challenges.
Old 'Roles' No Longer Fit the New 'Plot'
Just as every character's emergence is driven by the needs of the plot, over the past decades, in the plot of commodity circulation, distributors played the role of a bridge connecting manufacturers, stores, and consumers. Distributors fully leveraged their regional advantages, providing services such as advance payment, channel development, warehousing, and delivery for manufacturers, while also being familiar with local customer relationships, providing strong support for rapid brand growth.
In this plot, distributors, as the sole link between enterprises and users, relied on intercepting information, creating regional monopolies, and manufacturing regional information asymmetry to obtain commercial premiums and make fortunes quietly. Enterprises had mixed feelings toward them: they loved that distributors helped them quickly distribute products and grow, but hated that the value delivered to users was eroded layer by layer by the distribution system.
However, the 'plot' is not static. The rapid development of the internet has made information more transparent, and the era of interest rate differences brought by information asymmetry is declining. Business owners want to connect directly with users faster, and users also want more valuable needs to be met, and the internet has greatly enhanced this connection capability. Whether B2C, C2C, or O2O, transactions are based on the timely flow of information. The diversification of channels has made the commercial dividend that distributors obtained by creating information asymmetry a thing of the past. Facing the impact of the internet and the fear of transformation in the circulation industry, distributors have tried B2B one after another. But is B2B really a lifeline for distributors to achieve a second spring?
Old Thinking Only Brings Old Results
From 2010 to the present, the B2B industry has gone from budding, growing, to exploding. E-commerce platforms have fully leveraged the advantages of e-commerce but ignored the role of distributors in the value chain, relying on subsidies to drive orders, while distributors sat on the fence, watching from both sides. The industry was booming, but the results were dismal! Old thinking only brings old results. As Zhang Ruimin said, 'The drawback of e-commerce is that there is only price interaction, not value interaction.' Compared to the traditional distributor system, B2B plays a visible role in the transaction end but ignores the greater energy of value reshaping in the transaction process, ultimately reducing B2B to an online 'second-tier wholesaler.'
Redefining the Role of Distributors with the Internet
The transformation of the distributor's role is an inevitable requirement of the upgrading of production, circulation, and consumption models, and the core of the entire circulation chain upgrade lies in the revolution of information technology. In the past, manufacturers produced based on experience, and distributors sold based on customer relationships. Now, whoever does not understand users is the first to be eliminated. Have you met the needs of your users? The essence of the internet is connection. A good connection must create value between the connected ends, and the key to evaluating the authenticity of the created value is whether the connection improves the efficiency and effectiveness between the ends.
From Transaction-Based Sales to Service-Based Sales
In the past, enterprises connected with users through distributors, and distributors obtained commercial benefits through layer-by-layer distribution and price increases, playing the core role of 'sellers.'
In the future, connections aimed at 'buying and selling' will increasingly not be a reason to 'stay together.' Circulation participants with a sales mindset will be gradually eliminated, while those with a service mindset, transforming from 'sitting merchants' to 'traveling merchants,' creating 'value connections' between ends, will become the only reason for existence.
What do enterprises want? They want sell-through data and user data to guide production and operations, but they do not want to be attached and held hostage by platform e-commerce. Manufacturers want more precise marketing, but they do not want marketing expenses to be divided layer by layer by intermediate links.
What do terminal stores want? They want best-selling, high-quality, low-priced goods and more manufacturer support, but more importantly, they want professional personnel to provide more professional business guidance to the store.
Drive multi-end connection with data to create core value. Internet transformation has become an irreversible fact of the times, but if the internet is only used as a platform for selling goods, the final comparison is still price. The essence of the internet is to reduce intermediate links, improve efficiency and effectiveness, and drive supply-side structural reform with data. Whoever masters data controls the future! Distributors are replaceable, but regional data is unique. Only by fully leveraging existing advantages, using internet infrastructure, and with data as the core, providing upstream production management basis and downstream store operation guidance, fully playing the role of two-way connection, and creating value for upstream and downstream, can distributors remain invincible.
From intercepting information to creating asymmetry, to connecting and serving upstream and downstream with data as the core, distributors must learn their long-board advantages, rely on the 'long board' in a certain field to create information symmetry, let more people know their leading advantage in a certain field, serve more customers through open and shared professional 'long board' service capabilities, create greater value with professional 'long boards,' and share value with customers.
Build Your Own Platform or Use Existing Platforms?
On this issue, many fearful distributors have already made choices and given results, which can only be described as 'The road is long and winding, I will search up and down.' Building a self-owned platform requires huge investment, fighting separately, and is difficult to scale. Borrowing a platform only results in sales, without obtaining key data, and still being a second-tier wholesaler. The core of these two choices is that they have not figured out what core competitiveness they need to strengthen in the future. The essence of transformation is to connect upstream and downstream with data as the core. Using the internet to obtain core data is key. Enterprises need data to guide production, stores need data to optimize operations, and users need us to provide more humanized products and services.
Yuncaihuo Empowers Distributors
With more than ten years of experience in Mengniu, Modern Farming, and Jinluo manufacturers, and more than four years of retail channel construction experience, I deeply understand what services distributors need to provide for upstream and downstream. For this reason, based on the internet + convenience store platform, we developed the Beiquan Yuncaihuo ordering platform, hoping to open up the data loop between users, terminal stores, circulation and distribution, and brand owners through the Yuncaihuo platform, empowering distributors.
We know well that without scale, there is no future, and without ecology, there is no future. What Yuncaihuo wants to do is not to revolutionize or subvert anyone, but to fully leverage the concept of sharing, open it free to distributors and stores, let more distributors and stores participate, thereby forming the momentum of the internet. Beiquan hopes that Yuncaihuo can become infrastructure like water, electricity, roads, and gas in the commercial field, helping distributors build a platform to connect more stores, share data, drive the improvement of distributor operation efficiency with data, and let distributors focus more on serving upstream and downstream. Help stores build a platform to connect advantageous distributors, provide stores with high-quality and convenient ordering services, and let stores focus more on store operation and management.
A healthy ecosystem is not big fish eating small fish, small fish eating shrimp, but driving structural optimization of all parties with data, allowing all participants to achieve sustainable development in a healthy ecosystem.
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