---
title: "The Heroine Zhang Jie: A Beer Distributor's Ten-Year Campaign Across the South"
description: "Zhang Jie, a former champion race car driver, unexpectedly entered the beer distribution business and spent a decade fighting six major battles across Guizhou and Guangxi for Snow Beer, growing her company Anxin to 160 employees and 20,000 tons in annual sales. Her story highlights the challenges and strategies of distributors in China's FMCG market, including her notable victory in Bozhou where she turned a formidable competitor into a partner."
author: "陈思廷"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2021-11-02"
language: "en"
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---

# The Heroine Zhang Jie: A Beer Distributor's Ten-Year Campaign Across the South

> Zhang Jie, a former champion race car driver, unexpectedly entered the beer distribution business and spent a decade fighting six major battles across Guizhou and Guangxi for Snow Beer, growing her company Anxin to 160 employees and 20,000 tons in annual sales. Her story highlights the challenges and strategies of distributors in China's FMCG market, including her notable victory in Bozhou where she turned a formidable competitor into a partner.

**Preface**
_I often ask myself, what is our mission?_
_Because the name "New Distribution" destined that from birth, it would be closely tied to the fate of China's distributor community._
_China's commercial civilization has a history of over 5,000 years, but in today's business world, the status and fate of distributors are facing enormous challenges._
_Distributors are a great group. They bear immense pressure and risk, work the hardest, shoulder dual responsibilities for family and team, and provide a large number of job opportunities._
_They give so much, yet often receive so little, and in the future, it may become even less._
_Why? Because they sit at the bottom of the smile curve, because they are too slow to respond to external changes, because they lack excellent people to walk with, because they are too traditional, because they are not professional or strong enough._
_From "Made in China" to "Chinese Brands," Chinese brands have become the most unignorable force in the world market in just 30 years._
_Will Chinese distributors ever have their day as market protagonists?_
_Will Chinese distributors ever become strong enough to control their own destiny?_
_They certainly will! This is also the shared destiny of New Distribution and Chinese distributors!_
_For this reason, three years ago, New Distribution established the core column "New Distribution 100 People." From that day on, we have traveled across the country to discover, seek out, and unearth China's most outstanding distributors._
_We trace their entrepreneurial footsteps, write their stirring life stories, and record their valuable market experience, hoping their stories can inspire and motivate more and more distributors to embark on the path to strength._
_Over three years, despite our limited resources, we have been fortunate to record the stories of 73 outstanding distributors, and many distributor friends have greatly benefited._
_Today, we bring you the story of the 74th outstanding distributor._
_This article is long, but trust me, it will be worth it._
**An Unexpected Turn: A Race Car Girl Starts Selling Beer**
**Selling beer was completely outside Zhang Jie's life plan.**
Before 2010, Zhang Jie was an excellent female race car driver and the brand ambassador for Guizhou Moutai Beer. She had won six national championships and had competed alongside Jimmy Lin and Han Han on the track multiple times.
Zhang Jie, with her heroic bearing, seemed like the protagonist of the movie "Pegasus," where speed and passion were the themes of her planned life.
During a race in 2010, Zhang Jie's car had an accident. The out-of-control car rolled dozens of meters and ended up upside down, and Zhang Jie suffered a severe head injury.
After this injury, Zhang Jie's life took a turn, unexpectedly leading her into a field she had never imagined.
This turn was so significant that it was as if her previously straight and clear life path suddenly made a sharp bend. The life she entered on this new path showed her and let her experience unprecedented and wondrous scenery.
Her family strongly opposed her returning to the track after recovery. To end her hopes, they sawed her beloved car in half. Forced to give up, Zhang Jie ended her cherished racing career.
After saying goodbye to racing, what could she do? In her own words, it was completely "by some mysterious force" that she started selling beer.
Zhang Jie was the ambassador for Moutai Beer at the time, and the brewery still owed her part of her endorsement fee. After talking with the brewery leaders, she ended up investing another 3 million yuan in cash and turned to selling Meijiuhe Beer, produced under license by the Moutai Beer brewery.
"I had only ever drunk beer before; how could I sell it? At first, I made a fool of myself every day," Zhang Jie said, laughing so hard she could barely contain herself when recalling her early days in the industry.
"The first time I delivered beer to a retail outlet, I knew nothing. I drove my Mercedes and delivered just 5 cases!" Recalling her first big blunder, Zhang Jie remembered it vividly. "The shop owner was stunned and said, 'Sister, you drive a Mercedes to deliver beer? Can you even make back the gas money?'"
After that, the young and somewhat reckless Zhang Jie made many more blunders, but she stumbled her way into the beer industry.
Zhang Jie had been selling Moutai Beer for less than a year when something unexpected happened again.
In 2011, China Resources Snow Breweries acquired Moutai Beer. From then on, Zhang Jie's fate as a beer distributor began to intersect with Snow Beer.
Even Zhang Jie herself never expected that stumbling into the beer industry would lead her to persist for over a decade, growing bigger and bigger, and even fighting campaigns across the south to conquer seven markets in ten years.
Zhang Jie feels that **selling beer is increasingly like racing: both are pursuits of speed and passion, and both are competitive sports where only the victor stands at the top.**
**First Battle in Zunyi: This Woman Is Extraordinary**
Zhang Jie started reading Jin Yong's novels at age 11, freely roaming the martial arts world he built, which shaped her values and unique personality.
People familiar with Zhang Jie say she never fears the vicious, likes to stand up for justice, and has a chivalrous spirit. After joining the Snow system, her chivalry soon showed in the Battle of Zunyi for Snow Beer.
Li Pu, now the General Manager of Snow's Guizhou region, was responsible for the Guiyang market in 2011. At that time, the Guiyang beer market was like the Three Kingdoms in chaos, with Snow, Yanjing, Tsingtao, and even Budweiser and Carlsberg all fighting. Snow Beer still had many core outlets it hadn't won over.
After inspecting distributors, Li Pu called Zhang Jie and wrote down the names of ten outlets on a piece of paper. "Zhang Jie, if you can conquer these ten stores, besides Zunyi, I'll also give you a territory in Guiyang. If you can't, you can't do the Guiyang territory."
Zhang Jie looked and thought, "Wow, these ten stores are Guiyang's TOP 10 outlets, the tough bones that Snow hadn't cracked in three or four years." She thought, "Is President Pu trying to force me to back off? I won't retreat!"
"President Pu, can I add one condition? If I conquer these ten stores, you treat me to a meal!"
"It's a deal!" Seeing Zhang Jie's confidence, Li Pu readily agreed and fist-bumped with her.
Having raced cars, Zhang Jie was not timid. "Once you accept the military order, you have to charge into the fray. Charging in requires courage, but you must be prepared."
Zhang Jie first secured full support from her family. "To get family support, you need their trust. Tell them how important this is to you and how determined you are."
Zhang Jie places great importance on family support for her career. "As distributors, we sometimes have to fight hard battles, work very hard, and neglect our families. If the family doesn't understand, internal friction can drain the company."
Then, Zhang Jie mobilized all her connections and information sources to understand these ten target stores thoroughly. **Who the boss is, what experiences they have, what style they have, how many decision-makers there are, whose opinion matters most, what needs the outlets value most, and how the competitor's cooperation is, etc.**
After understanding this, Zhang Jie developed a step-by-step market plan to conquer these ten outlets based on their different difficulties and characteristics.
During the assault phase, Zhang Jie fully displayed the tenacity of a racing athlete who fears neither hardship nor failure. "I'm just a woman, so I can be thick-skinned. Even if I get cold-shouldered a few times, so what? A big brand like Snow is what customers should choose; it has a future."
At the same time, Zhang Jie repeatedly reinforced the deep-rooted brand advantage of Moutai in Zunyi and the central SOE characteristics of China Resources Snow.
"Moutai's status in Guizhou and Zunyi is unshakable, and Snow Beer is a central SOE. With such strategic cooperation with the Moutai brand, as long as the distributor does their job well, it's almost impossible for outlets to refuse."
In a very short time, Zhang Jie conquered the ten TOP outlets Li Pu had designated. However, Li Pu was soon promoted to General Manager of Snow's Guangxi marketing due to his excellent performance.
Zhang Jie still remembers the meal Li Pu owes her to this day and is looking for an opportunity to make him honor his promise.
After successfully taking Zunyi, Zhang Jie began her unstoppable Snow campaign career.
2020 marked the tenth anniversary of Zhang Jie and her Anxin Company. At the tenth-anniversary celebration, she and her team summarized the six hard battles fought over ten years in chronological order: **Securing Zunyi, Battling Guiyang, Taking Kaili, Moving Beihai, Fighting Dejiang, and Conquering Bozhou.**
(Zunyi City)
(Guiyang City)
**Over ten years, Anxin Company has 7 regional markets in Guizhou and Guangxi, a team of 160 people, and annual sales exceeding 20,000 tons, with 30% being high-end beer.**
Those familiar with Snow Beer's sales model know that Snow uses a flat distribution system, almost achieving seamless coverage.
Every market where Zhang Jie and her Anxin Company got distribution opportunities was a tough-bone market. These were markets where local distributors had fought for years without improvement, even to the point of despair, before Snow Beer "deployed troops from elsewhere" to rebuild channels.
This shows how difficult Zhang Jie's six hard battles over ten years were. It is precisely for this reason that Zhang Jie and her Anxin Company deserve deeper observation, study, and reference.
Due to space limitations, we cannot detail all six battles, but we will introduce the distinctive "Conquering Bozhou" battle.
**Conquering Bozhou: Turning an Opponent into an Ally**
Bozhou, now a district under Zunyi City, has a population of about 800,000. Bozhou has a long history; in ancient times it was part of the Yelang Kingdom, and in the Zhenguan era of the Tang Dynasty, Bozhou Prefecture was established.
For Snow Beer, Bozhou is also a special market. Initially, Bozhou was a liberated market for Snow, but due to channel turmoil and other reasons, Carlsberg came to dominate the Bozhou market.
(Bozhou)
During this period, Snow Beer adjusted the Bozhou market channel twice, but with little effect. Finally, Snow's share in Bozhou's urban area dropped to only about 15%.
As everyone knows, it's easy to fall from a leading market to a low-lying market, but it's extremely difficult to turn a low-lying market back into a leading one.
Dropping from 80% share to 15% share usually involves major events, such as serious strategic mistakes or manufacturer-dealer conflicts. Once this happens, the brand's reputation and trust are severely damaged, and the market becomes half-cooked.
There are very few cases of successfully redoing a half-cooked market.
For Zhang Jie, who was already the Snow Beer distributor for Zunyi's urban area, Bozhou was too close to Zunyi. Both emotionally and from a Zunyi market perspective, she didn't want the Bozhou market to continue declining.
So, she volunteered and approached Snow Beer leaders, writing on a whiteboard several key points why only Zhang Jie could take the Bozhou market, and made a bold statement: "I will definitely bring this Bozhou market back from a low-lying area to a base area and turn it into a liberated zone!"
But when she actually took over the Bozhou market, she found it wasn't as simple as she thought.
**First, although Bozhou is under Zunyi's jurisdiction and only 40 kilometers from the city, its consumption habits are unique. In the Bozhou market, Carlsberg's Tuborg brand had already occupied the mainstream terminal positions.**
**Second, Guizhou is in the southwest, where the people are simple but also quite fierce. For outsiders to come to Bozhou to do business, local distributors and outlets instinctively reject them. In actual terminal competition, physical conflicts even occurred at that time.**
**Third, Qi Jindong, the Tuborg distributor in the Bozhou market, was also a distributor with strong market operation capabilities, with boldness, determination, and execution, having operated in Bozhou for many years. It was he who took over Carlsberg's Tuborg beer, accelerating Snow Beer's decline in the Bozhou market.**
After entering the Bozhou market for a while, Zhang Jie formulated an assault plan for the Bozhou market.
Zhang Jie believed that although Snow Beer had fallen from a leading market to a low-lying market in Bozhou, the main reasons were both channel turmoil and strong opponent attacks. The opponent's continuous efforts had made terminal owners and consumers forget the Snow brand, even resist it.
In other words, whether the Bozhou market could be recaptured depended on winning the terminal battle. Winning the terminal battle depended on defeating Qi Jindong at the terminals.
Zhang Jie knew that the first priority in the Bozhou battle was to suppress the opponent's arrogance, break through their terminal blockade, and seize enough influential and high-ground terminals.
Once this was achieved, the opponent would respect the team and its spirit. The recapture of the Bozhou market would then be within reach. To win the Bozhou battle, Zhang Jie made preparations in two aspects.
**First, she prepared sufficient funds and resource reserves.** Market competition is like war, and war requires ammunition and resources. Zhang Jie knew well that China Resources Snow, as a central SOE, had strict fund management and approval processes. Therefore, to win the competition, the distributor had to take the initiative and not wait for the brand's support to arrive before fighting.
**Second, she transferred a mature market team with assault experience from the Zunyi market.** Zhang Jie believed that besides methods and strategies, market competition was about the team's spirit and will.
Snow Beer has a very systematic and effective channel strategy and tactics. In this context, a team with successful experience is a guarantee of victory in market tactics, difficulty prediction, and combat will.
But in the actual competition in the Bozhou market, the complexity and difficulty far exceeded Zhang Jie's expectations.
Qi Jindong was also a fierce general in the Bozhou market, determined to drive Snow Beer out of Bozhou again. To this end, he fought for almost every store at the terminals and even created small frictions, causing Zhang Jie's business team to be reported by competitor teams and called to the police station for questioning. This caused great pressure and distress to Zhang Jie's business team at that time.
Zhang Jie, deeply influenced by Jin Yong's culture since childhood, once again displayed her never-back-down toughness. In the terminal battles, she fought store by store with the opponent; in terminal service, she led her team to do better than the opponent. When team members were called for questioning, she waited nearby, waiting as long as the questioning lasted.
Zhang Jie and her team, for three consecutive months, attacked the Bozhou market non-stop from 10 a.m. to 6 a.m. the next day. 3 a.m. was when the night market street owners closed their stalls, and 3 to 6 a.m. was when they gathered together—the best time for relationship building and winning over terminals.
During this period, they reshaped the brand and team image in front of customers, planting Snow's "Lightning" Brave the World beer like seeds into the hearts of Bozhou people. The people of Bozhou said: "If Snow doesn't drift, I don't drift; if Lightning doesn't flash, I don't flash."
Zhang Jie's strong market will became her team's will. With this fighting spirit, she finally won the victory.
Qi Jindong eventually mortgaged his property to raise funds to compete with Zhang Jie, but in the end, he still didn't receive market support from the brand.
Zhang Jie said, "That was a tragic victory. Qi Jindong is a truly respectable opponent."
Disappointed, Qi Jindong gave up the market distribution rights for that brand. On the day he handed over the market, heavy snow fell in Bozhou. Afterward, Qi Jindong drank every day and was devastated, but Zhang Jie had the intention to recruit this respected opponent.
Zhang Jie respected his ability, boldness, and market will. She didn't want Qi Jindong to remain in decline. She approached Qi Jindong twice but was turned away both times.
But Zhang Jie didn't give up. Through connections, she first got to know Qi Jindong's most trusted in-law (the owner of a roast chicken shop), patronized his business several times, drank with him many times, and gained his trust. Finally, his in-law told Qi Jindong that Zhang Jie was someone worth trusting and following.
Eventually, Qi Jindong joined Zhang Jie's Anxin Company as a partner and became one of the seven market operators of Anxin Company.
As for the Bozhou market Zhang Jie recaptured, Snow Beer took less than a year to go from a 15% low-lying market back to a dominant base market.
**Q&A with Zhang Jie: Major Issues Distributors Should Think Through**
**Q: As a distributor, how do you view the matter of talent?**
**Zhang Jie:** Talent is the primary condition for a distributor to win battles. Because distribution is a business that's easy to enter, hard to do well, and even harder to make strong.
When brand, product, and financial strength are similar, talent becomes the key factor in market victory. In the same market, if your people are capable and others' aren't, you can win.
Because Anxin Company has seven markets to manage, we have independent teams and regions in each place, almost one-to-one corresponding with Snow Beer's system.
With talent, a distributor's business can be replicated and expanded across regions. Over 95% of distributors can't replicate success, either because they lack talent or can't retain it.
(Zhang Jie and her son, "Snow Second Generation" Tan Panlong)
**Q: Anxin Company has 7 offices. What is the management structure?**
**Zhang Jie:** When the company had few people, this issue didn't exist. Now that we have many regions, each region has a "1+2 model" in management.
**The so-called "1+2" means one chief commander and two right-hand men, forming a management iron triangle.** No one is omnipotent, so this iron triangle must be complementary, and they must know and trust each other well, preferably having fought side by side.
I spend a lot of effort on finding talent. Often, excellent talent is weeded out by the market, not cultivated. How well you want to do in a city depends on having the top talent in that city's industry.
In Anxin's team, there are competitor distributors like Qi Jindong, as well as many marketing supervisors and managers from first-line competitors.
**Q: What are your red lines in employing people?**
**Zhang Jie:** What I value most is character. Character is invisible and intangible, but it's the key to getting things done.
How to judge character? My method is to perceive with the heart, look at the person's face, and of course, also observe words and deeds, as the face reflects the mind.
I value the sense of connection from the eyes. If a person has light in their eyes and love in their heart, they must be trustworthy.
My red lines for employing people are three: gambling, drug use, and unfilial behavior. The first two are sources of evil, and unfilial behavior is a sign of lovelessness. Those who don't love their parents can't love the company or colleagues. I don't need such people.
Beyond that, I don't demand perfection. When employing, just use people's strengths. There are no perfect people waiting for you in this world.
(Zhang Jie participating in China Resources Snow Key Account Platform Launch Event)
**Q: What do you think a distributor's company should be like? What is Anxin Company like?**
**Zhang Jie:** A distributor's company should be a combination of love and systems. This is absolutely not a joke.
Most highly educated young people won't go to work for distributors. Comparatively, distributor teams, especially grassroots teams, don't have high starting points. So what do they need most?
They need benefits and honor. For example, after Anxin Company developed, it lent over 6 million yuan interest-free to employees to buy homes or become partners.
Housing prices are rising, and their salaries certainly can't keep up. This company measure allows them to buy homes and settle down early. Once the home is settled, the team's heart is settled. Becoming a partner gives a sense of belonging and responsibility.
Distributor employees generally have a weak sense of belonging. If you can make your employees feel more belonging, you'll definitely beat others in the market.
Modern enterprises talk more about systems, but for distributors, that's just process. More importantly, whether your company can move people's hearts and align them with your goals.
**Q: How do you view the relationship between distributors and brand owners?**
**Zhang Jie:** In today's actual market, the power to decide the relationship between manufacturers and distributors lies with the manufacturer, not the distributor. The brand's culture and sales model determine the relationship.
Personally, I entered the beer industry as an outsider, stumbled into Snow Beer, and have only done Snow Beer until today. Being a distributor is stressful and risky, but why am I so enthusiastic?
I think first, I'm a passionate person willing to challenge difficult things. Second, Snow Beer's culture has influenced me and my team greatly, making us love and defend it from the bottom of our hearts.
Culture is something that sounds vague but feels real. I can feel this power in many Snow people I've met.
This culture of Snow Beer and my feelings for it are special, perhaps lifelong.
**Are you "watching" me?**


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