---
title: "Post-Pandemic: Rising Inventory, Slowing Shipments, Urgent Need to Clear Stock!"
description: "The sudden outbreak has halted society and disrupted the traditional peak season for FMCG, putting distributors under immense survival pressure. While new channels and niche categories emerge, distributors face the immediate challenge of clearing increased inventory amid slowed shipments. This article outlines four key steps to tackle inventory clearance effectively."
author: "Tyler Wei"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-04-08"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/post-pandemic-rising-inventory-slowing-shipments-urgent-need-to-clear-st-8b3b57d0/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/post-pandemic-rising-inventory-slowing-shipments-urgent-need-to-clear-st-8b3b57d0.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/t1GMr_xnaUhLgAZe1RtmIg"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E5%90%8E%E7%96%AB%E6%83%85%E4%B8%8B-%E5%BA%93%E5%AD%98%E5%A2%9E%E5%8A%A0-%E5%87%BA%E8%B4%A7%E6%94%BE%E7%BC%93-%E6%B8%85%E5%BA%93%E8%BF%AB%E5%9C%A8%E7%9C%89%E7%9D%AB-8b3b57d0.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/post-pandemic-rising-inventory-slowing-shipments-urgent-need-to-clear-st-8b3b57d0/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Post-Pandemic: Rising Inventory, Slowing Shipments, Urgent Need to Clear Stock!

> The sudden outbreak has halted society and disrupted the traditional peak season for FMCG, putting distributors under immense survival pressure. While new channels and niche categories emerge, distributors face the immediate challenge of clearing increased inventory amid slowed shipments. This article outlines four key steps to tackle inventory clearance effectively.

The sudden outbreak has brought the entire society to a standstill, disrupting the traditional peak-season order for FMCG. Hypermarkets, once bustling, have fallen silent, placing enormous survival pressure on distributors in the mid-to-lower supply chain. Under the nationwide fight against the epidemic, new channels have surged, and niche categories led by disinfection products have seen consumption upgrades. All this seems to reveal a spark of hope after the disaster.

For distributors and every city manager, the current market seems full of opportunities but also hidden traps. In the post-pandemic era, solving immediate problems is more practical than looking to the future. With rising inventory and slowing shipments, clearing stock is urgent! The following four key actions may help you:

**-01-
Action 1: Unify Thinking and Align the Frontline**
Clearing inventory is a tough battle that allows no slack. Before the battle, align minds first!

We see that although the epidemic still affects the market, social consumption—especially daily chemical demand—has not decreased. It's just that the intermediate links in the supply chain have been disrupted. Quickly clearing these bottlenecks means enormous demand potential.

As a frontline manager leading the troops, first build personal confidence! Efficient business analysis and communication can help you regain your footing faster. Timely reviews, extracting lessons, and quickly replicating successes are great ways to improve decision-making effectiveness.

**While preparing yourself, restarting the team is even more critical:**
Remote communication inefficient? Try "cloud morning meetings" with real-time audio/video to keep management tight.
Distributors slow to resume work? Use this opportunity to provide cloud-based learning paths to help teams quickly spot business opportunities.
Channels disrupted? Encourage small-team operations to maximize the potential of frontline sales staff.

**Finally, proactively help distributors rebuild confidence!** Affected by varying resumption policies and concerns about future channel uncertainty, distributors urgently need manufacturers' humanistic care and professional guidance.

Clarify the direction: Business involves risk; in times of crisis, you must cut losses, stick together, and give to gain.

Discuss the inventory clearance strategy openly: how to readjust order rhythms, lower profit expectations, emergency plans for warehouse funds, and enhanced market expense plans—all need to be clearly communicated with distributors. This not only demonstrates your professionalism but also builds trust during difficult times.

**-02-
Action 2: Pre-Battle Assessment and Full Preparation**
An objective understanding of distributors' post-epidemic operations is essential for efficient inventory clearance. How? One word: Assess!

**1. Assess Inventory:**
Beyond total value, have a clearer structural understanding, including but not limited to:
> **Warehouse inventory:** Share of promotional and hot-selling SKUs; share of near-expiry, seasonal, and anti-epidemic SKUs. **Store inventory:** Share of featured SKUs, near-expiry SKUs, and high-inventory stores. **In-transit inventory:** Logistics disruptions have left many shipments stranded; in-transit goods that may arrive anytime are also a key part of your clearance plan!

With a multi-dimensional structural assessment, inventory value becomes tangible, not just a daunting cold number.

**2. Assess Resources:**
Clearing inventory requires ammunition. This mainly includes:
> **Materials:** Various promotional supplies. **People:** Availability of sales staff and promoters; operational status of distributor service teams; whether incentive mechanisms are in place.

Resource adequacy directly affects clearance progress. If there are shortages, immediately seek feasible solutions from distributors and manufacturers!

**3. Assess Channels:**
Covered channels: business capital operations, and whether there are new opportunities with home-delivery platforms.
New growth points from the epidemic: self-operated home delivery, community group buying, live-stream selling, and government/enterprise group purchases.

**4. Assess Risks:**
Undeniably, distributors face widespread capital operation risks during the epidemic, including cash flow, store receivables, and closure risks. While acknowledging the impact, ensure healthy income and expenditure under safe operations, and stay informed.

Once these four points are clear, you'll have a clear picture.

**-03-
Action 3: Select Battlefields and Strike Precisely**
The epidemic has accelerated shifts in consumer behavior and reshaped traditional channels, rapidly cultivating online shopping habits. As shopping methods change, distributors are thrust into the spotlight:

**On one hand, traditional channels they know well and rely on heavily face resistance; on the other, new retail is growing wildly across regions, with big opportunities but unclear platform performance and weak control. Under dual internal and external pressure, choosing the right battlefield is crucial.**

Existing channels are for survival; incremental channels are for tomorrow!

**1. In Existing Channels:**
**Quality large stores:** These remain our moat. As the panic phase passes and foot traffic recovers, prioritize key promotional periods and ensure hero products are prominently displayed.

**Controllable small stores:** Especially in townships. In third- and fourth-tier cities, after the Lunar New Year, the mismatch between returning population and supply surplus creates gaps; many stores are already empty. A box truck visit can yield unexpected gains.

**Neighborhood convenience stores:** They offer unique advantages during the epidemic—shortest shopping time and minimal human contact. When supermarket trips become impractical, CVS becomes the go-to for supplies. If it's available at the doorstep, consumers won't travel to heavily guarded hypermarkets. More exposure increases purchase probability.

Among existing channels, I've marked two in red**. First, grocery stores: low output per store, slow reorders, and high delivery costs make them unsuitable for most single-category distributors. With B2B platforms gaining ground, distributors' competitiveness in grocery stores has declined yearly. Matching your service capabilities to more promising new channels is the efficient choice.

**The other red-marked channel is wholesale markets, which are population hubs; delayed reopening is inevitable, and resumption varies by region—no need to elaborate here.**

We should recognize that, overall, distributors' existing channels will inevitably decline short-term. City managers must react quickly by opening new channels to alleviate short-term clearance pressure. In the long run, this has deeper significance for improving channel structure, building new coverage models, and optimizing profits.

**2. In Incremental Channels:**
**O2O platforms** have sprung up like mushrooms, an undeniable fact. Even by end-2019, some small platforms burning cash were struggling, but suddenly they found a lifeline with surging traffic. Distributors should actively embrace home-delivery channels, provided receivables risk is controlled.

**Community group buying** has also exploded overnight. This segment, once dominated by a few players via mini-programs, is now fragmenting into multiple forms and touchpoints.

These phenomena make the start of 2020 a pivotal point for distributor channel transformation. Only by actively embracing change can you secure the next decade!

**-04-
Action 4: Refine Execution and Ensure Precise Implementation**
After selecting key channels, standard execution is crucial. Here we focus on representative channels.

**1. Quality Large Stores:**
While most hypermarkets haven't resumed normal visits, remote management is the most effective way to stay close to the frontline. Ensure promoter safety, contactless procurement, and online training for new business.

Even where promoters can't be deployed, basic actions in large stores should be maintained:
**Hero product execution:** More shelf space is good, but with limited space, maximize exposure of bestsellers for the highest traffic efficiency!

**Price implementation:** Inconsistent pricing across distributor channels is a headache for many manufacturers. During special times, lower profit expectations and pass on the best prices to consumers to grab share—this is a key task for city managers.

**Multi-point cross-category displays:** Epidemic-era store traffic is polarized: panic buying in fresh food, poor sales in daily chemicals. Multi-point and cross-category displays enable one-stop shopping, reduce contact, increase basket size, and improve shopping efficiency.

Beyond traditional execution, new-era stores need diversified promotion.
**Online resources are the hottest battleground:** Optimize activity mechanics, secure platform placements, and improve search rankings to reach consumers faster in the cloud.

**Group buying opportunities:** Clear mechanics, prominent displays, and appropriate in-store staff incentives can accelerate new demand from existing group buyers.

Cross-selling anti-epidemic items: If you have anti-epidemic stock, display it early to turn it into a sales driver. Bundle sales and flash sales can accelerate inventory turnover.

**2. O2O Channels:**
As mentioned, this epidemic marks a turning point for home delivery. History rhymes: SARS in 2003 gave birth to Alibaba; 17 years later, COVID-19 has matured home delivery. It seems a blue ocean, but when distributors enter, they find fierce competition—reminiscent of the scramble to enter hypermarkets a decade ago. Undeniably, home delivery will remain a golden opportunity for brands for some time.

From the shopper's perspective, as the epidemic wanes, demand shifts from panic stockpiling of staples to rational replenishment with a wider variety of categories.

From the platform's perspective, major home-delivery platforms bear the mission of ensuring daily necessities. With a shortage of delivery riders early on, all resources went to fresh food. After the panic subsides and supply stabilizes, consumer demand diversifies, creating more opportunities for various categories.

From the distributor's perspective, as the epidemic enters its later phase and staff return, follow-up on home-delivery platforms will become more professional. The best entry window is now. With the back-to-work and back-to-school rush driving essential restocking, those who move fast gain more opportunities.

For execution details, each platform has different rules; the goal is to boost traffic and capture consumers. Tactics like resource exchanges for maximum exposure, homepage recommendations, super brand days, upsell recommendations, and higher category rankings are all means to grab traffic—no need to elaborate here.

**3. Community Group Buying:**
As another rapidly growing channel, community group buying shares similarities with O2O but has distinct differences. Pre-orders and group leaders make this channel more flexible and easy to promote. Additionally, integrating live-streaming into community purchases adds diversity to sales spikes.

Beyond national platforms like Xingsheng Youxuan, small chains have sprouted in the past two months. This seemingly unregulated growth has maximally solved delivery problems for many residential communities. Formats include friend-circle group buys, community group buys, and mini-program chains. Some distributors have even formed their own groups, recruiting partners to run community businesses.

The key to success lies in effective operation of batch-recruited group leaders and extreme focus on hero products. Of course, cooperation models need detailed discussion, such as fee settlement, commission rates, and delivery details. To keep costs low, many next-day delivery groups skip warehouse storage, using pre-orders to match supply with demand, greatly reducing inventory pressure.

After the chain is set up, the next step is operations. Eye-catching graphic promotions can maximize traffic, and live-stream selling has become the new favorite of major community platforms.

That concludes our analysis of the four key actions. But every distributor and every city has its own special complexities during the epidemic. For distributors, 2020 is destined to be an extraordinary year, a critical juncture in the industry's upward spiral. Some players will be eliminated, but those who push through will reap rewards. This will also drive overall operational efficiency improvements across the industry, including distributors.

Returning to your own turf, every city manager must understand: During these tough times, distributors need breathing room; simply pushing inventory won't solve problems. Actively seek support, relieve sales pressure through multiple channels, help distributors lighten their load, and balance short-term survival with long-term channel building—these are urgent considerations for every manager now!

**"Past the sinking boat, a thousand sails pass; beyond the withered tree, ten thousand saplings spring."**

**In 2020, let's grow toward the sun and embrace the new decade!**

Source: City Manager Practical Business School (ID: gh_914103814cda) Author: Tyler Wei


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671