When seeing this title, many new consumer brand founders might be puzzled or even dismissive. "I'm already at hundreds of millions in scale, a well-known new consumer brand with a complete organizational structure. I can hire any talent I want. Why would the boss need to get hands-on? I can focus on product R&D, demand insight, brand positioning, and business strategy." That's possible. If you're positioning the brand as a small, niche player, it's fine. But if you aim to become a leading brand in a category with market leadership, offline is an unavoidable battlefield, especially in food, beverages, condiments, and similar fields. Since it's unavoidable, it's a key business topic founders should focus on.
Of course, the call for "the boss must personally lead" stems from seeing many new consumer brands face difficulties when entering offline markets. The offline sales teams, from top sales to frontline staff, have changed repeatedly.
What exactly is the problem?
When discussing the issues of new consumer brands going offline, practitioners can list hundreds of problems, from product, channel, region, promotion, pricing, to organization. Each brand is unique, but if we summarize and dig deeper, the core issue is the founder's cognitive limitations regarding offline.
Offline is important, requires money and investment, but knowing isn't necessarily doing. Or more specifically: they know and are doing it, but they can't wait—they can't afford to wait. Whether due to capital demands or the inertia of online "brand-effect" thinking, when new consumer brands face stagnant offline sales, it's hard to maintain composure and patience. Why "wait"? Unlike online's instant feedback, offline markets have severe lag. Often, upfront investments in offline markets won't show significant changes for a long time. The early accumulation and sedimentation, whether it's stores' perception of the brand or consumers' perception, takes time. Without a certain scale of consumers forming stable brand self-purchase and continuous repurchase, investment in the market cannot stop.
Here's a case: When a daily chemical brand that was top 3 in online market share went offline, how long did it take to truly establish a foothold in a regional market? The answer is at least 2 years. If we simply divide the operational timeline: Year 1: Build market foundation—key target stores have distribution and display, periodic promotional campaigns, and some medium-sized stores have partial distribution. Year 2: Activate the market—lighthouse stores maintain continuous display, secure top 3 shelf positions, increase facing counts, invest heavily in key sales months, and deploy in-store promoters during promotions. Optimize display positions in general medium-sized stores. With this approach, only after the third year can you visibly see sales volume increase and some consumer self-purchase, not to mention competitive pressure in certain markets. That's the patience required to capture the offline market. Of course, a key premise is that the product is good.
Frankly, for many innovative consumer brands, the purchase logic online and offline differs. Online, you likely only need to consider the consumer: what packaging design attracts, what content copy attracts, and what beautiful scenario you describe to attract. But offline, on a static physical shelf, attracting consumers requires more than just good looks, beautiful packaging, and strong selling points. Zhao Bo, founder of New Distribution, proposed that offline, a brand must consider: product & scenario & people, all three combined, indispensable.
Let's emphasize scenario. When mentioning scenario, many might imagine office breaks, family gatherings, or solo enjoyment. In fact, scenario isn't just a description of the consumption environment and personal state. Two examples: In Henan, there's a brand—Miduoqi—making steamed bread slices and rice crackers. At first glance, this category is quite niche; annual sales of 5-6 hundred million would seem good. But Miduoqi's annual sales are nearly 3 billion, with its main purchase scenario being gift boxes for visiting friends and relatives.
Another brand: Special Forces Fresh Coconut Juice. How to break into offline with such a category? Many innovative consumer brand practitioners might benchmark against Ye Shu (Coconut Palm), focusing on CVS convenience stores and hypermarket channels as a regular beverage to compete. But in fact, Special Forces' real market rise and explosion came through the foodservice channel. Initially, in the Jiangsu region, through cooperation with local Yanghe distributors, it entered the foodservice channel as a meal companion beverage, and then became popular. In the dining scenario, Special Forces Fresh Coconut Juice offered consumers a better upgrade option over cola and orange juice.
Combining these cases, often the scenarios we imagine in our minds are not the same as those that actually generate direct sales. If you look at Miduoqi steamed bread slices and Special Forces coconut juice purely from a product-user matching perspective, it's hard to link gift boxes and meal companion beverages. Let's talk about another familiar category: instant noodles. This category is very familiar, and the consumption scenario is clear. Around 2015, during a project survey in southern Jiangxi, I found that half of instant noodle sales came from banquets in towns and villages, with ten boxes of Master Kong instant noodles per table, one per person... These cases emphasize that as innovative consumer brands, after painstakingly developing quality, healthier, aesthetically pleasing, and meaningful products, don't just imagine the scenarios in your head; truly go offline.
What typical, large-scale scenarios exist offline, and how should our products match them? Do our market strategies need adjustment? Instead of just having imaginative young people in the office envision "beautiful" consumption scenarios.
How should we approach the offline market?
First, abandon the superiority of being an online TOP1 brand, position yourself as a higher-quality, better-looking offline "second or third-tier" brand, and humbly learn. Although our brand positioning and strategic vision are full of aspirations and ideals.
But within a big vision, start with small things. In specific market layout strategies, don't be greedy for big and complete. At the New Consumer Salon organized by New Distribution before the Chinese New Year, Shi Yonggang, Deputy General Manager of Tsingtao Beer's Innovation Business Unit, mentioned four key strategic guidelines for innovative consumer brands entering offline: 1. View the market by province, but execute by county/city; 2. Enter from the flanks of large markets to ensure capacity and avoid head-on competition with giants; 3. Sustain the war with war, form a playbook, build a profit model, establish an organizational system, then replicate to surrounding markets; 4. Don't start with Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen; start with second and third-tier cities to pilot and explore, accumulating small wins into big wins. Many innovative consumer brands think that dominating online charts all year gives them national brand awareness, so when going offline, they immediately target national KA stores like RT-Mart, Yonghui, Walmart, and CVS chains like FamilyMart, 7-Eleven, and Lawson.
Although it's simple and direct, with money to burn, entering tens of thousands of stores at once, but the actual sell-through is something practitioners know well.
Online year-round chart-topping isn't truly due to the brand, but rather to big livestreamers and impulsive purchases. To conquer offline, you really need to fight for it store by store, district by district, street by street, facing by facing.
If your product's main channel is supermarkets, why not start with second or third-largest cities in each province, like Suzhou, Hengyang, Xiangyang, Ganzhou, Wuhu, where capacity is moderate and the economy is good, as a testing ground to train and sustain the war. These second and third-tier cities have strong local chain stores, with 20 to 60 outlets, where entry fees, barcodes, and display costs are low, communication and management are convenient, and these local chains have a natural affinity for trendy brands.
In national chains like RT-Mart, Yonghui, and Walmart, they've seen it all and offer no special terms, but local chains are eager to introduce high-appearance new brands. For an innovative consumer brand to truly go offline, it's not just about entering a few national KAs or CVS stores. Don't overestimate your brand power, and don't underestimate the difficulty of offline operations. Lower your stance, be humble, and start store by store!
Yuan Lai | Editor-in-Chief of New Distribution, focusing on FMCG distributor new distribution/innovative consumer brand cases. For communication, add WeChat. Please indicate your company, position, and name when adding.
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