---
title: "The Era of Manufacturers Relying on Blockbuster Products Is Over!"
description: "As I've been researching private labels and talking with retailers, brands, and factories, I've felt increasingly that the era of relying on a single blockbuster product and a one-size-fits-all assortment is over. Retailers are now asking not just about fees and margins, but whether a product truly fits their customers and stores, signaling the arrival of a 'one channel, one product' era."
author: "袁来"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-05-13"
categories: "Retail Formats"
language: "en"
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---

# The Era of Manufacturers Relying on Blockbuster Products Is Over!

> As I've been researching private labels and talking with retailers, brands, and factories, I've felt increasingly that the era of relying on a single blockbuster product and a one-size-fits-all assortment is over. Retailers are now asking not just about fees and margins, but whether a product truly fits their customers and stores, signaling the arrival of a 'one channel, one product' era.

As we meet in writing, I am Yuan Lai.
Recently, I've been looking into private labels and also communicating with some retailers, brand owners, and factories.
After our discussions, I have an increasingly strong feeling: the era of relying on a single blockbuster product and a one-size-fits-all assortment is over.
In the past, the core logic for brand owners in channel management was: rely on one blockbuster product and distribute it to as many terminals as possible. Supermarkets, convenience stores, mom-and-pop shops, e-commerce, and instant retail all sold basically the same product line, just with different specifications, pricing systems, and promotional policies.
But now, offline retail is undergoing changes. And these changes are directly related to brand owners' channel strategies.
As 'adjustment and reform' gradually enters retailers' daily operations, retailers are placing more importance on product structure: wide categories with narrow product lines, and streamlined SKU selection.
Retail buyers are no longer just asking: How much fee, rebate, or display support will you give me? They are starting to ask another question: Why is this product suitable for my customers? Why is it suitable for my store? Why can it make me different from the supermarket next door?
When retailers ask this question, brand owners' channel logic has to change.
We also had an in-depth discussion internally, and we summarized it in one sentence: The era of 'one channel, one product' is coming.
In the future, when facing Sam's Club, Hema, Yonghui, instant retail O2O, discount savings supermarkets, regional supermarkets, etc., manufacturers may not be able to just bring one set of products to negotiate cooperation.
I want to use this article to explain the logic behind this clearly, hoping to bring some inspiration to brand owner friends.
**Retailers Have Changed:**
**Not Just Shelves, but 'Their Own Products'**
In the past many years, the operating logic of chain retail supermarkets and convenience stores has been more centered around shelves.
Manufacturers had to pay for entry fees, display fees, end-cap fees, and promotional slots. Retailers' core revenue came partly from product margins and partly from various channel fees.
At that time, retailers had almost no understanding of the products themselves. Whoever paid higher fees or had a bigger brand got better shelf positions.
But in the past two years, retailers have faced increasing pressure. Foot traffic in supermarkets and hypermarkets has declined, e-commerce and instant retail continue to divert customers, and discount savings supermarkets are impacting pricing systems.
Retailers are slowly realizing that just renting out shelves is no longer a good business.
So, retailers have to return to a more basic question: What exactly attracts customers to the store?
At this point, product power is being brought back to the forefront.
Look at the changes in Walmart's community stores, which are very typical. In Shenzhen's community stores, 500 square meters, with 2,000 carefully selected SKUs, organized around 'five meals a day'—breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and late-night snack.
More noteworthy is that Walmart has already regarded 'Wo Jixian' (Walmart's private label) as the core of community store differentiation. Walmart's Senior Vice President Zhu Jun mentioned in a public interview that the assessment of the Wo Jixian private label has shifted from proportion, gross margin, and SKU count to customer experience indicators such as repurchase rate, social media net promoter score, and brand net promoter score.
Hema follows a similar logic.
Hema's private label is not just about being cheap or a substitute. It seeks out innovative small categories from mature trends, such as HPP juices, turmeric lemon drinks, local-flavor craft beers, and bakery hits. Many of Hema's products are not low-priced, but they are definitely differentiated, have buzz, and attract users willing to try new things.
Of course, it's not just nationally known retailers; there are also regional ones like Xianfeng Life, Tao Xiaopang, and Quanfuyuan.
Looking at these cases together, a trend becomes increasingly clear: **Retailers are no longer satisfied with selling ready-made goods from brand owners.** They want a portion of products that are only suitable for their own channels, their own customers, and their own pricing systems.
**The Real Threat to Brand Owners:**
**Not Private Labels, but the Failure of Generic Products**
At this point, many brand owners may feel pressure: Will retailers all make their own brands in the future, and will brand owners be completely squeezed off the shelves?
Certainly not.
Although many retailers in Europe and America have a high proportion of private labels, such as Aldi, Trader Joe's, Costco, and Sam's Club, the Chinese market is different.
China's supply chain is too mature, and there are too many brand owners. This determines that the development of private labels in China may not necessarily follow the path of 'retailers fully building their own brands.' It is more likely that a Chinese-style path will emerge where private labels, channel-exclusive products, brand co-branding, and joint customization coexist.
I think the real thing brand owners should be wary of right now is not private labels, but the failure of generic products.
In the past, brand owners had a standard set of actions: unified national specifications, unified packaging, unified selling points, distributed through distributors to different channels. This method worked very well during the channel dividend period, because terminal store growth, shelf expansion, and consumer choices were not as fragmented.
But now, the differences among consumers in different retail channels are becoming more obvious.
Take milk as an example: In warehouse membership stores, the target users are middle-class families, who want large packages, high quality, and bulk purchases for the household. In community small stores, they may want small specifications, high frequency, and breakfast scenarios. In instant retail, they may need emergency, scenario-based combinations, and immediate delivery; in discount stores, the price needs to be attractive enough.
Another example is condiments. Different regional supermarkets need to combine local tastes and price ranges, while Hema targets more young small families, considering health and light cooking, and can accept innovative and differentiated flavors.
This is the realistic issue brand owners face today.
Not all channels are willing to continue selling the same generic product, especially those that have undergone adjustment and reform and started to emphasize product power. They will increasingly demand: Can you make a different product for me?
This 'different' does not necessarily mean disruptive innovation. Sometimes it's just different specifications, different packaging, different price ranges, or different flavors. But as long as this 'different' helps retailers establish differentiation, it has value.
**From One Product for All Channels to One Channel, One Product**
After reading the above logic, I think you can understand why we propose the concept of 'one channel, one product.'
Of course, this does not mean brand owners should blindly create a set of products for each channel, nor turn themselves into OEM factories. Instead, they should truly think about: Which channels are worth doing? Which categories are suitable? To what depth? How should the brand be exposed? How should the pricing system be isolated?
To more clearly understand the current retail channel landscape, I have classified it by 'industry influence and product differentiation degree' (Category A is industry trendsetter, Category B is industry leader, Category C is industry participant), for your reference.
Through the classification and grading of retail formats, we can objectively and comprehensively view the diverse development of retail formats. Of course, although the grading is based on influence, different retail chains have different demands for co-branding, co-creation, exclusive supply, and private labels across different categories. The above table is for reference only.
To achieve 'one channel, one product,' I believe brand owners also need an additional capability: channel product development capability.
In the past, brand owners' channel management was more about entry, display, payment collection, and distributor management. But in the future, there will be an additional task: defining products together with retailers. This requires brand owners to understand the retailer's store model, their consumer base, and price ranges.
I previously discussed this topic with several brand owners' channel heads, and the feedback was quite consistent: The difficulty is not 'willingness to do it,' but that internal organizational capabilities cannot keep up. A category manager who used to manage national KA accounts and push a unified strategy won't work. But now, making different plans for different channels means the workload has multiplied several times, yet the team structure and assessment system remain old.
This is the organizational issue brand owners need to solve next. It's not simply about adding people, but about enabling the channel team to have the capability to 'define products for specific retailers.' If brand owners still use a standard national KA PPT to talk, saying how many new products this year, how much advertising resources, how much terminal fees, it may not be enough.
You must answer more specific questions: What role does this product play in the overall category? Why is it suitable for the store? Does it bring foot traffic, margin, repurchase, or differentiation? If it's an exclusive supply, how do you prevent cross-channel selling? If it succeeds, can it be developed into a series later?
**Final Thoughts**
In the past, brand owners viewed retailers more as channels, shelves, and sales outlets. But in the future, at least for some excellent retailers, brand owners need to change their perspective.
Retailers are becoming product definers.
They have data, store feedback, repurchase data, social media reviews, and increasingly strong supply chain integration capabilities. They may not understand brands better than brand owners, but they may understand better 'what customers in this store want to buy.'
This is not a question of who replaces whom. Arguing about it is not very meaningful. What brand owners really need to think about is: When retailers start to emphasize product power, develop private labels, and demand differentiated supply, can I still become an important partner to them?
Brand owners must understand that the era of relying on blockbuster products and a one-size-fits-all assortment is over. In the future, brand owners may need to work with channels to recreate products.
Therefore, focusing on cooperation models such as private labels, channel-exclusive supply, brand co-branding, and joint customization, we will hold a China Private Label Industry Chain Conference in Hangzhou on June 4-5, 2026.
200+ retailer buyers will come with real procurement needs, brand owners will come with channel customization and co-branding exclusive supply cooperation demands, and factories will come with R&D and production capacity. Covering all categories including snacks, beverages, grains, oils, frozen and refrigerated, personal care, and cleaning, the upstream, midstream, and downstream of the industry chain will sit together in the same venue for the first time.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 袁来
- Published: 2026-05-13
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-era-of-manufacturers-relying-on-blockbuster-products-is-over-d2fa6b20/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8VJVklUF0BJa3wIbLPuk6w

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