---
title: "Relying on B2B Instead of Traditional Channels: Can Kotex's 'Curve Overtaking' Succeed?"
description: "B2B development offers brand owners opportunities to overtake competitors on curves. Kotex achieved over 10 million in sales in one day and directly reached nearly tens of thousands of stores, a feat unimaginable for brands relying on traditional channels. During the 612 brand event, Kotex sold over a million products within half an hour, breaking platform records. More importantly, Kotex achieved a breakthrough from zero to one in traditional retail small stores. This case provides valuable references for other brand owners and distributors."
author: "刘少德"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-06-15"
language: "en"
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# Relying on B2B Instead of Traditional Channels: Can Kotex's 'Curve Overtaking' Succeed?

> B2B development offers brand owners opportunities to overtake competitors on curves. Kotex achieved over 10 million in sales in one day and directly reached nearly tens of thousands of stores, a feat unimaginable for brands relying on traditional channels. During the 612 brand event, Kotex sold over a million products within half an hour, breaking platform records. More importantly, Kotex achieved a breakthrough from zero to one in traditional retail small stores. This case provides valuable references for other brand owners and distributors.

What opportunities does B2B development bring to brand owners for overtaking on curves?
Achieving over 10 million in sales in one day and directly reaching nearly tens of thousands of stores is unimaginable for any brand relying on traditional channels, but Kotex did it. In the just-concluded 612 brand event, Kotex, through a series of online activities, achieved over a million in product sales within less than half an hour of the event's start, and the number of participating stores broke the platform's record. For Kotex, what's more important is that its products achieved a breakthrough from zero to one in traditional retail small stores. So, what can other brand owners and distributors learn from Kotex's case?
1
**The Blank Small Store Market**
First, let me introduce Kotex. Kotex, a brand under Kimberly-Clark, was officially established in the United States in 1920. It is the world's first sanitary napkin brand and maintains the number one market share in multiple countries and regions. In 1994, Kotex officially entered China. Although it entered the Chinese market early, Kotex did not seize the first-mover advantage.
Unlike other FMCG brands with deep distribution systems, Kotex has focused its offline channel investment on KA supermarkets and hypermarkets since entering China, causing it to miss the dividend period for developing traditional offline retail channels and fall behind brands like Sofy and Space 7, losing the top position in the Chinese market.
"Through the channel deepening strategy of 'rural areas surrounding cities,' competitors have already become very strong," Kotex's channel marketing head Sheng Xiaomin told New Distribution. "Now, if we want to develop offline channels this way, it involves many aspects such as recruitment, team building, and distributor management, which is not only difficult but also time-consuming."
Additionally, multi-level product distribution and high channel costs are important reasons hindering Kotex's development of traditional offline channels. Guo Wei, Kimberly-Clark's national KA head, told New Distribution, "Traditional small stores are numerous but scattered, keeping distribution costs high. Traditional product circulation goes from regional general agents to second-tier and third-tier distributors, and finally to terminals. Each level retains a 10%-15% profit margin. Adding salesperson salaries, supply chain, and other market expenses, it's hard for brand owners to cover channel costs with product gross margins."
The relatively single product line and highly vertical channels further restrict Kotex's penetration into offline small retail stores. Compared to other industry players like P&G and Hengan, which have relatively complete product lines and broad audiences, allowing product profits to cover channel costs, Kotex has different audience groups from internal brands like Huggies and significant differences in channel strategies. This means establishing a complete offline distribution system would require higher channel costs.
2
**The Value of Small Stores**
In recent years, the gradual youthification of mainstream consumers has driven the rise of emerging channels like content e-commerce and micro-businesses, leading to a year-on-year decline in foot traffic in traditional supermarkets. In this context, the development of small retail formats like convenience stores has begun to attract brand owners' attention.
As Kotex's main offline channel, KA hypermarkets contribute a significant portion of Kotex's sales. Sheng Xiaomin told New Distribution, "KA is still our main channel for market development and brand display, but with market development, the role of traditional retail small stores is gradually emerging, especially in response to channel activities; small stores are very sensitive to promotions."
The emergence of B2B undoubtedly provides brand owners with more options. In Sheng Xiaomin's view, "B2B platforms, especially Alibaba Retail Link, clearly position themselves as platforms connecting upstream brand owners and downstream stores. The data systems they provide are actually to better compete for traditional brand promotion budgets, giving brand owners more say and initiative in online resource allocation, thus complementing traditional KA channels. Moreover, the service fees charged by B2B platforms are relatively low compared to deep distribution costs, and there are even subsidies in many processes."
In this case, brand owners are more willing to invest in online marketing activities because online resources are strongly correlated with sales; the more resources invested, the more sales growth.
Future development potential is also a key reason Kotex chose to cooperate with B2B platforms. Traditional KA is constrained by factors like site selection and property, so store opening speed is generally not fast. However, online B2B platforms can quickly cover traditional offline small stores through massive investment, creating a synergistic effect with traditional KA.
3
**Opportunities for Brand Owners**
In traditional offline retail, the strong get stronger, and the Matthew effect is obvious. Especially for first-tier brands, after nearly one or two decades of channel deepening, scale advantages are significant, posing severe challenges to new brands. The rise of B2B undoubtedly provides a possibility for industry reshuffling.
"Actually, we started paying attention to B2B a long time ago," Sheng Xiaomin told New Distribution. "When JD New Channel was first established, we began to understand this business model, but initially, we treated it with a 'try it out' attitude. However, since last year, when these B2B platforms had basically completed their market layout and had a certain base of outlets, we gradually increased our investment."
Currently, Kotex has covered tens of thousands of retail small stores through cooperation with Alibaba Retail Link, and conservatively estimates sales of nearly 100 million yuan for the full year of 2018. But for Kotex, the value of B2B is not limited to this.
**1. New Channels Help Brand Owners Overtake on Curves**
In traditional distribution, products go through multiple levels before reaching consumers, with complex processes, high costs, and long time. New brands and products can use B2B platforms' existing outlet layouts to quickly achieve channel sinking without spending huge time, manpower, and materials on building traditional channels.
Moreover, first- and second-tier traditional brands, due to years of channel deepening, have huge offline market stocks. When facing emerging online channels, they often hesitate, worrying about impacting existing market channel structures. New brands don't have such concerns, so their decision-making efficiency in cooperating with B2B platforms is much higher. For brand owners, this is undoubtedly an opportunity to overtake on curves.
**2. Positioning to Seize First-Mover Advantage**
Channel digitalization is an inevitable trend. When B2C e-commerce first appeared, many brand owners not only dismissed it but also regarded it as an industry disruptor. However, after years of market cultivation, B2C e-commerce has become a channel that brand owners cannot ignore, and it has given birth to many Taobao brands like Three Squirrels and Handu Yishe. The same is true for B2B. For brand owners, only by integrating into channel changes early can they avoid losing their voice once the scale advantages of emerging channels are established.
**3. Efficient and Transparent Channels**
"B2B is more transparent and efficient than traditional distribution systems," Sheng Xiaomin told New Distribution. In traditional distribution, brand owners can only control regional distributors but know nothing about the sales of second- and third-tier distributors. Although distributors have significant control in regional markets, brand owners have no say in deeper channels. B2B's emergence makes this traditional distribution structure less 'mysterious.'
"Moreover, distributors are relatively conservative, leading to a single business process in the traditional distribution chain. But by cooperating with B2B platforms, we can first achieve transparent sales data, allowing brand owners to track the flow of each product, even without worrying about cross-regional selling. Through B2B platforms, we can replicate our C-end promotion and operation experience, using live streaming and online interactions to increase store activity, making marketing activities more flexible and efficient, which traditional channels cannot achieve."
Final Thoughts
The emergence of new channels will inevitably drive the development of new products and brands. In the process of channel changes, only products and brands that grasp the trends of the times can seize the dividends brought by new channels. Especially for small and medium-sized brand owners, channel changes bring an opportunity for reshuffling the existing market landscape. Whether they can seize this era's opportunity may directly affect their ranking in the next round of market competition.
For distributors, although many brands have large offline existing markets and emerging channels cannot completely change the original distribution structure in the short term, efficiency improvement is an eternal demand in channel evolution, as evidenced by the shift from wholesale markets to channel deepening. In this process, distributors must correctly face their strengths and weaknesses, reasonably handle market opportunities and challenges, and avoid being eliminated in the wave of channel changes.
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