---
title: "Lai Yifen: Attack and Defense in the New Economic Cycle"
description: "From March 14 to 16, the 9th China FMCG Innovation Conference with the theme 'Supply Chain Revolution' was held in Chengdu. During the conference, over a hundred speakers and more than two thousand manufacturer representatives and FMCG professionals from across the country explored how distributors and brand owners can seek growth in the current environment. Among them, Mr. Zhao Hanli, Vice President of Lai Yifen, delivered a significant sharing session titled 'Lai Yifen: Attack and Defense in the New Economic Cycle', which sparked lively discussions among the attendees. New Distribution specially reports on the highlights for our readers."
author: "赵汉利"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2024-04-11"
language: "en"
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# Lai Yifen: Attack and Defense in the New Economic Cycle

> From March 14 to 16, the 9th China FMCG Innovation Conference with the theme 'Supply Chain Revolution' was held in Chengdu. During the conference, over a hundred speakers and more than two thousand manufacturer representatives and FMCG professionals from across the country explored how distributors and brand owners can seek growth in the current environment. Among them, Mr. Zhao Hanli, Vice President of Lai Yifen, delivered a significant sharing session titled 'Lai Yifen: Attack and Defense in the New Economic Cycle', which sparked lively discussions among the attendees. New Distribution specially reports on the highlights for our readers.

From March 14 to 16, the 9th China FMCG Innovation Conference with the theme 'Supply Chain Revolution' was held in Chengdu. During the conference, over a hundred speakers and more than two thousand manufacturer representatives and FMCG professionals from across the country explored how distributors and brand owners can seek growth in the current environment.
Among them, **Mr. Zhao Hanli, Vice President of Lai Yifen, delivered a significant sharing session titled 'Lai Yifen: Attack and Defense in the New Economic Cycle', which sparked lively discussions among the attendees.**
New Distribution specially reports on the highlights for our readers.
**Key Points:**
1. Only active attack is the best defense.
2. Product uniqueness is one of the pain points many retailers will face in the future. If the products on the shelves lack uniqueness, and you have what others have, there is no competitive advantage.
3. The snack industry has bubbles; the market size has already exceeded one trillion yuan, and the future is promising; however, there are risks in the market, so entering requires caution. The connotation of the snack market has changed, and the initial definition of leisure snacks has become blurred.
4. Different scenarios and different categories, what product solutions to provide to consumers, is a question all peers need to consider.
**Active attack is the best defense strategy!**
As a company that started in Shanghai, Lai Yifen has been greatly benefited by Shanghai's economic engine to some extent. When Lai Yifen expanded to the national market, it encountered certain difficulties.
Especially in the snack industry, in 2022, there was a nationwide craze for opening snack stores, and this time the competition was completely different from before.
Lai Yifen also discussed internally how to respond to this battle and realized that **only active attack is the best defense strategy.**
Therefore, Lai Yifen has now proposed an attack strategy and is deploying nationwide.
Some brands are well-known internally, but once they go out, many people don't know them. For example, Lai Yifen's snack brand may be quite famous in the industry, but for a beer brand, the situation is different.
**To expand nationwide, products need to be differentiated.**
Although Lai Yifen strictly controls product quality, it still needs to improve product uniqueness. This is also one of the pain points many retailers will face in the future.
To achieve differentiation, Lai Yifen has made many efforts. **On one hand, it focuses on resource integration** by cooperating with upstream enterprises, engaging in multiple projects, and achieving certain results. **On the other hand, it is committed to technological innovation.** In the entire retail industry, Lai Yifen has built multiple information systems covering supply chain, warehousing and logistics, delivery, retail stores, membership systems, precision marketing, human resources, and financial management. In addition, Lai Yifen also has its own products and services in community supply and public welfare agriculture, with a large internal and external ecosystem of members, providing daily necessities to nearly 25 million consumers in the Shanghai market to meet their high-frequency rigid needs. In terms of innovation, Lai Yifen has also deployed nearly 500 stores in the coffee sector; in the alcohol sector, it has laid out sauce-flavored liquor and whiskey. Sauce-flavored liquor can provide a healthy and pleasant enjoyment, while whiskey is favored and welcomed by young people in the Shanghai market. At the same time, Lai Yifen has created a lifestyle platform, hoping to provide consumers with all-day dining scenarios, including breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and late-night snacks, to provide more convenience for consumers' lives.
**How to actively attack?**
Recently, the international situation is not optimistic, with conflicts raging for months, but even so, we still need to move forward bravely.
Domestically, the snack industry is changing extremely rapidly. Lai Yifen also discusses this issue internally, knowing that not changing means being eliminated.
In the face of change, what actions has Lai Yifen taken?
Lai Yifen considers from three aspects:
**First, gain insight into consumers, find where target consumers are, what solutions to provide them, and how to implement precisely.** This is the primary task. Consumers' aspiration for a better life is eternal. Lai Yifen discovers consumer needs by participating in exhibitions, combined with scenario factors, to determine the direction consumers are interested in.
**Second, Lai Yifen divides categories according to different consumer needs and customizes different products for different groups.** Different scenarios, different needs, different categories, providing consumers with different product solutions, which is also a question all peers need to consider. For better development, Lai Yifen also chose to cooperate with international consulting companies to match relevant data for each product in different scenarios, thus providing a clear path for precise product development. **Third, after gaining insight into needs and finding categories, precise marketing is also needed.** Lai Yifen chose to cooperate with Tencent to establish private domain digital marketing. Lai Yifen hopes to provide one-to-one solutions for thousands of people and hopes consumers' lives are better. What else does Lai Yifen do? First is **space upgrade**, with targeted upgrades for spaces in different scenarios. At the same time, Lai Yifen is also **grading products for the future**, such as coffee, beverages, beer, etc. Secondly, Lai Yifen is **creating virtual humans, hoping to reduce risks through virtual human endorsements**. In addition, Lai Yifen is also **using artificial intelligence (AI) for various tasks**, including making animations, writing copy, and video editing.


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