Recently, New Distribution organized an in-depth study tour for distributors. During the on-site inspection, we noticed an interesting phenomenon: a distributor quickly filmed and posted a lip-sync video while touring a warehouse, and it gained considerable traffic.
Although it is common for distributors to make short videos today, very few can efficiently produce videos on their own and integrate them with offline business.
Out of curiosity, the author visited this distributor in Putian—Huang Jie, General Manager of Putian Quanshan Trading.
Huang Jie, who focuses on local snack, alcohol, and beverage distribution, started using short videos and livestreams to drive offline traffic five years ago. Today, her company represents over 100 brands including Oreo, Haoliyou, Lay's, and Wuqiong, and 20% of its nearly 100 million yuan business scale comes from online traffic conversion. During this year's 618 promotional livestream, she achieved a single-session sales volume of over 1.3 million yuan.
How did one person build a traffic matrix of 60,000 followers and 10 accounts across platforms, gradually becoming a well-known local snack distributor?
Making Short Videos Is to Be the Company's Online Salesperson
While many still view short videos as a way to become an internet celebrity or generate hype, Huang Jie, who has been in the snack distribution business for 18 years, says she approaches it from a customer acquisition perspective: making short videos is to be the company's "online salesperson."
This clear role definition stems from her anxiety about the company's human efficiency.
"In 2019, when we introduced a digital management system, I met many excellent peers. One distributor who did livestreaming could achieve sales of over 100,000 yuan in a two-hour session. At that time, my salespeople could only do about 150,000 yuan in a month."
This comparison made Huang Jie realize the importance of using online tools. Starting with livestreaming and gradually extending to short videos to drive traffic to livestreams, plant seeds for customers, and acquire new customers became a turning point for "For Your Convenience Store Supply Chain."
But what should the short videos be about? With the identity of an online salesperson, she quickly defined the theme as "product promotion."
"Focus on promoting products, letting customers see what products and discounts I have, and what services I can provide, creating strong product seeding," Huang Jie shared. "Like many distributor bosses, I started as a grassroots salesperson. Although I don't know how to make short videos, selling is my specialty. By positioning myself as an online salesperson, I talk online just as I sold offline."
From being out in the sun and rain for delivery, to now spending just a few hours a day to widely spread the company's product, warehousing, and distribution capabilities, Huang Jie says this transformation has not only brought her many partners from upstream and downstream but also freed her from manual labor, giving her more time to think: how to combine online short videos and livestreams with offline regional and channel positioning?
"I started in traditional channels like supermarkets and small shops, but I don't want to be limited to that. Using short videos to connect with local all-channel customers and doing business a thousand meters deep is the current important goal of the supply chain," Huang Jie shared. "This year, I discovered a great opportunity—Douyin Laike."
It is understood that Douyin Laike is a newly launched branch business of the Douyin platform, targeting local merchants with precise same-city traffic. Therefore, Huang Jie hired an editing assistant and built 8 matrix accounts within two months, increasing the daily number of video posts.
Through extensive precise dissemination, Huang Jie's cooperation touchpoints have now expanded to billiard halls, internet cafes, chess and card rooms, car dealerships, and other places that need snack and beverage supplies. This model not only brings efficiency improvements but also makes every business opportunity in the local market possible to explore.
How to Make Short Videos More Effective and Sustainable? Huang Jie: Set Goals, Set Tasks, Set Tools
New Distribution observed that although many distributors have tried short videos, very few persist. The reason is the lack of positive feedback—they neither see the direct effect of short videos on business nor find a method for continuous output. In fact, to make short videos more effective and sustainable in empowering business, three things need to be clarified on the operational side: set goals, set tasks, and set tools.
- Set Goals: Focus on Monetization, Not Traffic
Some distributors easily use traffic volume as the benchmark in the early stages of short videos, but through communication, the author found that often, high traffic does not mean high sales.
"I closed 4 deals this morning, which came from a video with 699 views posted yesterday. A previous video with 30,000 views only brought 1 deal," Huang Jie said. Rather than chasing traffic, bosses should focus on the video's monetization ability.
What kind of short videos are conducive to monetization? Huang Jie shared that planting seeds and pushing for orders is the simplest and most direct way. For example, what activities and discounts are available today? What pain points can be solved for customers? Presenting them in a seeding format is more likely to attract customers with relevant needs.
"For distributors, if a video cannot monetize, no matter how high the traffic or how professional the packaging, it is ineffective."
- Set Tasks: Find a Framework and Method for Efficient Shooting
"I set two tasks for myself: I must do livestreaming and shoot short videos every day."
To balance daily management, Huang Jie schedules livestreaming within two hours every morning. For short videos, she relies on a self-created framework for efficient output: Who am I? Where am I? What do I have? Who are my customers? Why should they choose me?
Based on this framework, she collects material from life and work scenes. Huang Jie says that when she has no ideas, she forces herself to start introducing immediately based on the framework, and over time, she develops the ability to shoot anytime. This "boss shoots personally" model preserves authenticity and maximizes output efficiency.
- Set Tools: Combine All Tools That Improve Efficiency—Short Videos, Livestreams, Mini Programs...
Now, searching keywords like Putian snack wholesale, Putian beverage wholesale, or Putian convenience store supply on popular platforms such as Douyin, WeChat Channels, and Xiaohongshu, you can see Huang Jie's accounts and videos ranking high. This exposure is not accidental but thanks to her multi-platform + multi-account matrix strategy.
In platform selection, she posts wherever users are. In account division, each of the dozen accounts has its own positioning, used for building personal image, seeding, customer acquisition, and conversion, forming a comprehensive promotional matrix.
These actions seem complex but have a simple logic—use different platforms and account positioning to deliver information to the people most likely to make a purchase. The value of tools is not whether they are professional, but whether they can run a bit faster than offline promotion efficiency.
Who Should Make the Short Videos and How? Huang Jie: Boss Leads, Employees Assist
In the early stages of short video, many distributor bosses face a question: should they train internal employees or hire an external professional team? Huang Jie's approach is: do not find an external team; the boss personally leads the planning and shooting, with employees assisting in some shooting, editing, and coordination.
For example, when she conceives a video based on the framework, she immediately takes out her phone to shoot material. When she needs to appear on camera, she hands the phone to an employee or even a passerby to shoot. After shooting, she sends the material to the editing assistant, who completes simple editing and posts it. Subsequent private message inquiries are also handled by the assistant.
Why not outsource short video production to an external team or let employees handle it entirely? Based on the exchange with Huang Jie, the author summarizes three main reasons:
First, cost issues.
The short video agency operation and operator market is mixed. Many teams only provide template-based solutions. To find a reliable partner, distributors often pay significant trial-and-error costs. On the other hand, projects like short videos and livestreaming require continuous investment and involve many links and people, which is a real cost pressure for some distributors.
Second, creation itself is not complicated.
For distributors, the essence of short videos is to use video to clearly explain products, discounts, and services, so customers are willing to order after watching. This "sales pitch" can be done by the boss or employees. In terms of production, no professional skills are needed; authentic capability presentation is often more important than video packaging. Only basic shooting and editing skills are required.
Third, the boss's personal involvement has irreplaceable value.
Behind a video, there is often the narrator's judgment of the business and the shooter's first-person perspective. For example: why do this activity? What new products were discovered on a recent business trip? Only the boss knows these best—shooting more timely, explaining more clearly, and also easier to win customer trust.
Of course, this model is lighter and more efficient, but it also places higher demands on the boss's expression and execution. Short videos are essentially a new business tool. Who uses this tool and how? Distributors need to make choices based on their own situations. After all, once the model works, short videos bring not only exposure and traffic but also long-term capability building in customer communication, team collaboration, and resource allocation.
Final Thoughts
"Future business will not be traditional offline competition, but competition with online. How to make customers return to physical stores? I think it is to create a complete online + offline experience."
Regarding future plans, Huang Jie says that when more and more C-end customers are attracted online, what really needs to be done is not to blindly imitate the trend of livestreaming or short videos, but to find ways to make traditional stores regain traffic attraction and service capabilities.
To this end, she plans to start with the matrix operation of Douyin Laike, with headquarters leading warehouse livestreams, providing nanny-style empowerment to stores, forming a "cloud chain."
The significance of "cloud chain" is, on one hand, through headquarters aggregating traffic and closing deals (such as coupons), stores are responsible for fulfillment, achieving a closed loop of "online seeding, offline transaction"; on the other hand, by providing value-added services like store layout design, category sorting, and data collection to small shops, enhancing their professionalism.
Doing local business thoroughly and deepening services, from first entering short videos five years ago to gradually developing "cloud chain," Huang Jie is step by step realizing "blooming online, taking root offline." On this path, the competition is not about who can become popular for a while, but who can actively embrace trends and make the business last longer and go further.