On March 25, Pinduoduo announced a major decision during its earnings call: to establish 'New Pinmu' and officially enter brand self-operation. According to reports, 'New Pinmu' has registered a dedicated company in Shanghai with an initial cash injection of 15 billion yuan, planning a cumulative investment of 100 billion yuan over the next three years. The project will integrate Pinduoduo and Temu's supply chain resources, build a self-operated brand model, focus on the global market, systematically self-operate and incubate brands tailored to different markets and categories, promoting high-standard output of Chinese manufacturing and leaping to the high end of the value chain. While the e-commerce industry is flocking to AI large models and spending heavily on new traffic scenarios, Pinduoduo chooses to continue focusing on China's supply chain, even extending further into the brand end. This seemingly 'counterintuitive' path may reflect a more long-term judgment. Pinduoduo, No Longer Just Selling Products, Begins to Define Production Itself The birth of 'New Pinmu' is not a sudden strategic shift, but the realization of capabilities Pinduoduo has been building for years. According to the financial report released the same day, Pinduoduo's full-year revenue in 2025 was 431.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 10%; net profit (non-GAAP) was 107.3 billion yuan, a slight year-on-year decrease of 12%. Revenue maintained steady growth, but net profit declined year-on-year. This contrast in data directly reflects the platform's proactive decision to cede profits to the supply chain and increase long-term investment. Group Co-Chairman and Co-CEO Zhao Jiazhen once mentioned that 2025 was the year of Pinduoduo's largest investment in high-quality development. From the 'billion-yuan merchant support' to various industrial belt support programs, the platform has long shifted from a pure trading channel to a participant deeply bound to the real economy. Over the past year, Pinduoduo's supply chain layout has covered both agricultural production areas and manufacturing industrial belts: in the agricultural sector, the platform has delved into multiple specialty production areas, using standardization and branding to increase the added value of agricultural products; in manufacturing, dozens of industrial belts such as Yiwu cosmetics, Shenzhen digital products, Shaodong bags, and Pinghu down jackets have escaped the predicament of low-end OEM and homogeneous competition with the platform's support. Take Shaodong, Hunan, for example: the area produces over 70% of the nation's student backpacks, but the long-standing OEM model once left it facing the dilemma of 'homogeneous competition.' With Pinduoduo's support, local merchants used the platform's data analysis for precise product development, giving rise to multiple hit brands, breaking the deadlock of homogeneity, and helping Shaodong complete its industrial transformation from an 'OEM hinterland' to a 'brand highland.' Such cases reflect Pinduoduo's logic of empowering industrial belts: not simply providing traffic or subsidies, but using digital capabilities to help merchants shift from 'selling whatever is produced' to 'producing what the market needs.' For Pinduoduo, the concession of short-term profits has earned the trust of industrial belts and the maturity of the supply chain system. The launch of 'New Pinmu' further upgrades this inclusive empowerment into targeted, asset-heavy self-operated brand building, marking the platform's complete shift from scale-driven to value-driven. 'New Pinmu' in Three Steps: How Pinduoduo Rebuilds the Supply Chain Unlike previous traffic support and fee reductions for merchants, the core of 'New Pinmu' is Pinduoduo's direct involvement, with a dedicated company as the main entity, systematically building self-operated brands and leading industrial belts to the global market. The core implementation actions focus on three directions: First, use 100 billion yuan in funds to cover high-quality industrial belts and scale up the incubation of self-operated brands. The three-year, 100-billion-yuan investment will be precisely directed at industrial belts with manufacturing advantages in China. Pinduoduo will no longer just be a platform providing traffic, but will directly participate in product definition and brand building, launching customized products for domestic and international markets, and building a diversified matrix of self-operated brands. This step transforms Pinduoduo from a 'selling platform' into a 'brand owner,' directly entering the core link of brand premium. Second, digital teams will go deep into industrial belts to promote manufacturing standard upgrades. The platform will form dedicated teams to root themselves in industrial belts, using massive consumption data to guide production in reverse, empowering factories across the entire chain from product R&D, production processes, to quality control standards, promoting flexible production and standardization upgrades in industrial belts. Compared to traditional e-commerce that only does online sales, Pinduoduo's deep involvement in the production end addresses the pain point of industrial belts 'not understanding the market and producing blindly,' enhancing the core competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing. Third, build a full-chain overseas expansion solution to lower the threshold for industrial belts to go global. Leveraging Temu's cross-border operational experience covering over 90 countries and regions worldwide, 'New Pinmu' will provide industrial belts with one-stop overseas services including warehousing and logistics, compliance review, intellectual property, and overseas marketing. Brand going global is no longer just about selling products; overseas compliance, market adaptation, and operational capabilities are all shortcomings for small and medium factories. Pinduoduo's full-chain support is equivalent to paving a 'fast track' for industrial belt brands to go global. Pinduoduo executives frankly stated that over the past three years, Temu's rapid growth was a key leap brought by the dividend of China's supply chain industry, and it also brought new opportunities for the upgrade and reconstruction of the domestic supply chain. 'New Pinmu' is precisely to seize this opportunity, enabling China's supply chain to meet international standards, build brand awareness, and thus establish core competitiveness in overseas markets. From Capacity Going Global to Capability Going Global 'New Pinmu' Aims to Rewrite the Value Proposition of Chinese Manufacturing For a long time, China's industrial belts have possessed world-class manufacturing capabilities, yet most are trapped at the bottom of the 'smiling curve': doing OEM, labeling, and competing on price, mastering production but lacking brand discourse power, earning only meager processing fees. The core value of 'New Pinmu' is precisely to promote the shift of Chinese manufacturing from 'capacity going global' to 'industrial capability going global,' tearing off the label of low-price OEM. With a decade of domestic consumer insights and Temu's three years of global market experience, Pinduoduo can accurately grasp consumer demands in different regions, allowing industrial belt factories to abandon blind production and achieve on-demand R&D and customized manufacturing. At the same time, the platform's financial, operational, and compliance support greatly reduces the trial-and-error cost for factories to build their own brands and explore overseas markets, enabling factories focused on production to also possess the brand power to go global. The market also views this model as an online version of the quality-price ratio brand path: using massive data to select categories, achieving extreme cost-effectiveness in scaled products, removing redundant intermediate links, and building proprietary brands. Pinduoduo's difference lies in that it not only does self-operated brands but also drives the entire industrial belt to improve manufacturing standards, digital capabilities, and brand operation capabilities through this model, achieving a value leap for the entire industry. From the transformation of a single factory, to the upgrade of industrial belts, to the brand breakthrough in the global market, the layout of 'New Pinmu' is essentially using e-commerce platform resources to fill the most lacking brand and channel shortcomings in Chinese manufacturing. Final Thoughts While the industry is still chasing new traffic entrances, Pinduoduo has chosen a 'heavier' path: going deep into the supply chain, binding with industrial belts, and even building brands itself. In the short term, this is a high-investment, low-profit business; but in the long term, it is competing for a more fundamental position—who decides what is worth producing. China's industrial belts today never lack production capacity; what they lack is the means to turn good products into good brands and push them globally. The emergence of 'New Pinmu' is precisely to become the core link connecting manufacturing and the global market. Of course, building self-operated brands and global expansion still face multiple challenges such as overseas compliance, market competition, and brand recognition. Whether the 100 billion yuan investment can yield expected returns remains to be seen over time. But it is undeniable that Pinduoduo's move has already stepped out of the internal competition of the e-commerce industry, pulling the battlefield to a new dimension of empowering the real economy and helping Chinese brands go global. For countless industrial belts struggling with OEM and low-price involution, 'New Pinmu' may be an opportunity to escape the value depression; and for the e-commerce industry, a new era of competition centered on supply chain and brands has begun.