The warm sun in early March is a bit dazzling, The window seat on the high-speed rail is best for opening your laptop and getting some work done. The intermittent signal makes it impossible to hold a conference call, So Lao Wang quietly reviews the just-passed Chinese New Year.

In 2022, two months have passed in the blink of an eye. The Chinese New Year performance was neither good nor bad, just enough to meet expectations. Just as he was about to take a breather, the more challenging March arrived.

The endless pandemic continues to fluctuate. Foot traffic in offline supermarkets and hypermarkets is like a knife cutting flesh—the wounds are small, but the bleeding never stops. After two years of the pandemic, offline retail is truly getting harder and harder... On the other end, since the start of the year, new retail seems to be struggling as well. Community group buying, with sharply reduced subsidies, has quieted down significantly. Live-streaming e-commerce has cooled considerably. B2B platforms, under immense profit pressure, are hesitating about where to focus. Home delivery platforms have also slowed their growth compared to previous years... Don't panic! It's not that bad! The pandemic is like a touchstone: many internet-famous new retail channels lack the ability to sustain themselves and cannot achieve long-term success, while many traditional core channels, benefiting from sustainable profit models, are returning to the center stage.

After the normalization of the pandemic, each city market has adapted and adjusted. The channel structure and evolution will gradually shift from uncertainty to certainty. Every city manager should be more positive and less negative, objectively analyzing and understanding the business composition and channel status of their city. Don't rush around chasing trends!

Choose the channels that must be won now, sow the seeds for channels that must be won in the future, and focus on building internal strength. Business will naturally achieve organic growth.

China is vast, with many provinces, two to three hundred prefecture-level cities, and thousands of counties and towns.

In each individual city market, every city manager's operational experience is completely different, and the capabilities required are also vastly different—

Tier 1 and super-tier cities: Due to the large young population, many white-collar workers, and a broad target audience, new retail channels in the FMCG industry often start in first-tier cities. Therefore, city managers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other first-tier cities have the responsibility to quickly connect with new retail platforms. Traditional channels in these cities suffer the earliest and most direct impact, so the more first-tier the market, the more elite personnel and resources are needed.

Tier 2 and 3 cities: Compared to first-tier cities, the channel evolution in tier 2 and 3 cities is relatively slower. For example, many business formats in first-tier cities (membership stores, internet fresh food chains, group buying e-commerce platforms, etc.) have not penetrated quickly. These cities are more about extended formats of traditional core channels (such as B2B improving distribution efficiency in small stores and community group buying leveraging neighborhood social connections). So the mainstream business in these cities is still traditional retail and distribution channels. Local sales teams only need to learn from the experience of first-tier cities and study ahead of the curve to gain a first-mover advantage over competitors in channel layout.

Tier 4 and 5 cities: Lower-tier markets are still dominated by large hypermarkets and deep-distribution small stores. Even O2O home delivery platforms, which are fully covered in higher-tier markets, have little coverage in these lower-tier markets because there are no fast-paced white-collar workers with near-field retail needs. The consumption habits of leisurely small-town youth have not changed much. The only successful penetration in these sinking markets is low-price community group buying. Even the B2B that was popular a few years ago finds it hard to truly sink here because platforms cannot balance ROI. Correspondingly, retailers in these markets are generally conservative and cautious, and they will fight against new retail to save even small O2O platform fees...

For now, city managers and local distributors in such markets are relatively "lucky" because their sales work and operational experience haven't changed much from previous years. They just need to polish their traditional weapons and win local retail competition.

However, regardless of the market tier, every city manager today needs to reflect diligently, be unbreakable, and embrace change!

Reflect diligently! In this era of fragmented information, we cannot be fragmented ourselves. Through thinking and review, choose which channels truly need high focus. Some channels can even be strategically abandoned for now. Knowing what channels not to do is often more important than doing all channels.

Be unbreakable! The most valuable trait of frontline execution teams is resilience—the ability to withstand blows. Especially when developing new retail and new channels, frontline commanders often encounter many new setbacks and frustrations. You must endure loneliness and impatience, and make continuous, repetitive, and subtle daily business improvements.

Embrace change! Talking without action is meaningless. You must refine methods and execution systems in actual combat. For emerging channels, you don't have to go all in, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Balance trial costs, use controlled resources and energy to experiment and change. Proactive layout and positioning are actions every city manager needs to take.

The warm sun in March is actually the same as previous years, The window seat on the high-speed rail is best for staring out at the passing scenery. One tunnel after another, different views. One stop after another, different crowds. But the train always brings Lao Wang to his destination on time.

Return to core channels, return to the fundamentals. There must be many important things that have never changed!

Only by truly understanding the channel management of grassroots city managers can one truly understand China's FMCG sales. Channel management in practice is distilled from real-world experience. All channel management actions are reverse-engineered solutions to frontline market problems!

To enhance the channel control and immediate combat capability of frontline teams, "FMCG Regional/City Manager Omni-Channel Management" is worth reading!

Of course, reading is not to find answers—a book costing a few dozen yuan cannot give you answers—but to teach you how to think!