On November 25, 2025, the '2025 Instant Retail Supply Summit and First Instant Retail Warehouse-Store Product Matchmaking Conference' was held in Hangzhou. Ren Wenqing, CEO of New Distribution, delivered a keynote speech titled 'Viewing Supply-Demand Matching from Instant Retail: How Brands Grow in an Era of Surplus?'
Core viewpoints:
Warehouse-as-a-store becomes the new terminal
The logic of instant retail development is supply-demand matching
Matching is the first growth law in the era of surplus
This article is a core summary of the speech.
Instant retail moves from traffic wars to supply wars
Today, brands pay attention to instant retail, and what they care about is: Should we do this rapidly growing channel, and how?
In my view, this is a sub-topic.
It actually belongs to a more essential topic, or meta-topic—In the era of surplus, how should brands grow?
My sharing today will start from the sub-topic of instant retail, explain my understanding of this meta-topic, and finally return to the sub-topic. In 20 minutes, I hope to make this issue clear.
In the first half of the year, what attracted the most attention in instant retail? Platforms spent tens of billions to subsidize consumers.
In the second half, information about traffic competition decreased, replaced by what? Information about supply.
- On October 31, 'Taobao Convenience Store' brand was launched, integrating quality merchants through brand authorization and outputting operational standards. The first batch opened 34 slots, with a special fund of 2 billion yuan invested in the next year, aiming to cover more than 200 cities nationwide.
- Almost at the same time, Meituan announced accelerating the expansion of 'Brand Flagship Flash Warehouses', inviting tens of thousands of brand partners to directly enter and open official flagship stores. Focused on online operations, covering long-tail products such as general merchandise, FMCG, and emergency items.
Of course, Meituan's investment in supply started long ago. As of September 2025, the number of Meituan Flash Warehouses exceeded 50,000, with plans to expand to 100,000 by 2027.
So, how to interpret these two pieces of information?
Instant retail has moved from 'traffic wars' to 'supply wars'. In other words, the industry competition has shifted from a '100-meter sprint on the traffic side' to a 'marathon on the supply side'.
When giants enter the supply war, what does it mean?
Instant retail will bid farewell to the period of barbaric growth and enter a stage of competing in internal strength and ecological collaboration. This is a deeper, more comprehensive 'marathon', an inevitable process for instant retail to transition from adolescence to maturity, ultimately reshaping the landscape and future of the entire retail industry.
Some people think that we should not overestimate instant retail; it is just one form of retail, and the overall market is too small. Actually, I don't think so; we should not lack imagination for the future.
To focus on the future, just grasp the two most core variables: technology and population.
The decline in fulfillment costs brought by drones, robots, etc., and the formation of consumption habits, especially among young people, are enough for us not to ignore the development of instant retail.
So, what does this mean for brands? Next, I want to share my thoughts with you through three arguments.
Warehouse-as-a-store becomes the new terminal
First, warehouse-as-a-store becomes the new terminal.
What does new terminal mean?
Just like KA (Key Accounts) more than 20 years ago and e-commerce more than 10 years ago, it is a strategic channel for brands and a core sales position that must be seized.
This is a simple, direct, and unambiguous assertion.
But note the word 'new' here.
'New' means—different. The so-called difference comes from comparison.
Let's compare three typical types of terminals: offline retail, traditional e-commerce, and instant retail's front warehouses.
Here we compare from three dimensions: coverage, product logic, and supply chain path.
From the perspective of upstream brands, facing these three different types of terminals, the focus of competition is different:
In physical retail, the focus is—distribution and display
In traditional e-commerce, the focus is—traffic and conversion
In instant retail, the focus is—scenario and fulfillment
What do scenario and fulfillment mean?
Scenario = Who buys what, when/where/for what task?
This corresponds to your product's packaging specifications, price, marketing content, keywords, etc. That is, it's not enough to just sell products from any channel; you need to design products according to the scenario.
Fulfillment = Put the right goods in the right warehouse and deliver them to the right people!
The latter half of this entire chain is completed by the platform, but the first half must be sorted out by the brand itself.
The prerequisite for doing these two points well is that the brand must achieve controllable supply. This is the theme of our conference, and subsequent guests will elaborate on it from multiple dimensions, so I won't explain too much here.
Here I want everyone to think about a question: Why? Why is instant retail so different?
The logic of instant retail development is supply-demand matching
This leads to my second argument: The logic of instant retail development is supply-demand matching.
For ease of understanding, I have drawn a supply-demand paradigm diagram based on the two dimensions of demand and supply.
We divide demand into two categories:
- General: driven by mass communication / long-term stable / single structure
- Situational: fragmented / immediate / emotional / layered demand
Correspondingly, supply is also divided into two categories:
- Standardized: production-centered / standardized batch manufacturing
- Flexible: based on data feedback / small batch / high frequency
What can we discover?
Traditional retail is actually the intersection of standardized supply and general demand. But situational demand is rising, and traditional retail cannot satisfy this part.
Recently, internet platforms have increased their investment in the retail side, not only instant retail but also offline physical stores, such as Chaobox NB, Meituan Happy Monkey, JD Discount Supermarket, and Meituan's Xiaoxiang offline store is about to open, etc.
I collectively call them: new paradigms of platform retail.
They actually use rich data capabilities and strong supply chain control, using 'flexible supply' to precisely match 'situational demand', thereby opening up a brand-new market space.
Platforms are entering not because offline is attractive, but because the traditional retail system is increasingly unable to meet new consumer demands, and this 'blank space' has become too large to hide.
Demand is changing, and supply must match demand to sustain growth. Explaining this diagram not only provides a cognitive framework for positioning instant retail but also leads to a more fundamental logic.
Matching is the first growth law in the era of surplus
This is my third argument: Matching is the first growth law in the era of surplus.
What does it mean?
From the perspective of industry development, we must have an accurate description of the era we are in.
In the past, people talked about increment, and now they are used to talking about stock, but I find that the term 'stock era' has big problems.
Where is the problem?
In the increment era, everyone was 'competing', comparing who runs faster.
The term 'stock' is still a continuation of the old logic, but the thinking has changed to 'scrambling'—comparing who grabs more.
Their core logic is 'competition', where companies compare efficiency, cost, and speed! They desperately expand scale, compress costs, and roll prices!
We must clearly recognize that we are not in a stock era, but in an era of surplus.
The 'surplus' perspective is a structural imbalance after the over-expansion of the supply system: It's not that there is no demand, but that demand is submerged in redundant supply and information noise. What we need to think about is not 'how to grab more', but 'how to match accurately'.
In the past 40 years, we have roughly experienced a process of supply falling short of demand, and then supply and demand both flourishing. Today, we have officially entered the stage of supply exceeding demand.
But oversupply is the appearance; the essence is: Some supply is not needed, and some needs are not met.
Only when supply matches demand can consumption occur. In the era of surplus, always remember 'people before products, demand determines supply'.
This is the Consumption 4M model I mentioned earlier. If you understand this model, you will know: rolling functions and prices results in homogenization, which is not a way out.
Next, we need to roll matching, first the matching of target groups, then the matching of upstream and downstream.
This is the growth logic of the surplus era, and it also applies to the instant retail we are discussing today.
Sell goods into warehouses + choose the right service provider + build a dedicated team
We just said that warehouse-as-a-store becomes the new terminal. How to do this new terminal?
Following the matching just mentioned, corresponding to the target group is the product strategy.
- Scenario SKUs: scenario-oriented (light/small specification/high repurchase/order combination/algorithm-friendly), not production-centered (conducive to factory production).
Corresponding to upstream and downstream collaboration is the fulfillment system.
- Controllable supply: through self-built or authorized fulfillment systems, have dominance and execution power over the channel's supply sources, pricing, new product launches, and strategy implementation.
At this stage, the first thing we need to solve is—controllable supply. It is the prerequisite for achieving results in this channel.
Regarding controllable supply, I summarize a few points here:
First, sell goods into warehouses: shift focus from 'how many stores are listed' to 'how many warehouses are sold into'.
Unlike traditional e-commerce, flash warehouses have limited shelves. Slots are limited; if you have it, he doesn't; if he has it, you don't. The current focus is to sell goods into warehouses first; this is the top priority.
Second, choose the right service provider: choose a 'brand service provider' rather than a 'product tray supplier'.
But selling into warehouses must be in a way you can control; otherwise, you cannot implement the overall strategy. The core is to choose a brand service provider, not a product tray supplier.
A brand service provider is essentially the brand's 'dealer' in the instant retail channel—understanding both algorithms and supply. They must not only solve the problem of selling into warehouses but also the problem of selling out of warehouses.
Third, build a dedicated team: plan overall strategy from the perspective of 'front warehouse/flash warehouse'.
To grasp changes on the market side, ultimately it must be reflected in organizational adjustments.
In the past, there were O2O teams within e-commerce or KA. O2O is different from front warehouses. As just mentioned, the focus shifts from 'how many stores are listed' to 'how many warehouses are sold into', and the implementation is a dedicated independent team planning overall strategy from the perspective of 'front warehouse/flash warehouse'.
Finally, I will end today's sharing with one sentence: In the era of surplus, supply-demand matching is the first growth law—make the right products for the right people, collaborate with the right channels, and deliver them in the right way.