---
title: "The \"Products\" That Brands Can't Do Well, Hema and Walmart Are Competing to Do"
description: "In the spring of 2026, Hema and Walmart both went \"green\" simultaneously. Hema launched its \"Matcha Season\" in March, introducing over a dozen matcha bakery products and even setting up a dedicated matcha section. In April, Walmart's private brand, \"Wolmart Fresh,\" quickly followed suit with more than 40 matcha items, covering everything from bakery and beverages to snacks and sauces. Both leading retailers are betting on the same flavor. What common judgment lies behind this? Both are selling matcha, but their strategies are completely different."
author: "张雨薇"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-05-29"
categories: "Brand Marketing, Retail Formats"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wRjuYdEI5zGj6_yzGrWL7A"
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citation: "张雨薇. “The \"Products\" That Brands Can't Do Well, Hema and Walmart Are Competing to Do.” New Distribution, 2026-05-29. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-products-that-brands-can-t-do-well-hema-and-walmart-are-competing-to-6d0a1b55/"
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---

# The "Products" That Brands Can't Do Well, Hema and Walmart Are Competing to Do

> In the spring of 2026, Hema and Walmart both went "green" simultaneously. Hema launched its "Matcha Season" in March, introducing over a dozen matcha bakery products and even setting up a dedicated matcha section. In April, Walmart's private brand, "Wolmart Fresh," quickly followed suit with more than 40 matcha items, covering everything from bakery and beverages to snacks and sauces. Both leading retailers are betting on the same flavor. What common judgment lies behind this? Both are selling matcha, but their strategies are completely different.

In the spring of 2026, Hema and Walmart both went "green."
Hema launched its "Matcha Season" in March, introducing over a dozen new matcha bakery products at once, even setting up a dedicated matcha section. In April, Walmart's private brand, "Wolmart Fresh," quickly followed suit, launching more than 40 matcha products, from bakery, beverages, and snacks to sauces, covering almost all categories in the supermarket that could incorporate matcha.
Both leading retailers are betting on the same flavor. What common judgment lies behind this?
Both are selling matcha, but Hema and Walmart's approaches are completely different.
To understand their moves, we first need to clarify one thing: matcha is not a new flavor, but it is a very difficult one to master.
In recent years, tea beverage brands have frequently launched matcha products, and consumers have already been educated. However, the result of this education is subtle—it hasn't created a unified matcha consumer group but has instead stratified consumers completely.
On one side are heavy enthusiasts who have been "spoiled" and seek the bitter-then-sweet experience of high-concentration matcha. On the other side are the broader mass consumers who appreciate matcha's fragrance but find the bitterness a barrier when the concentration is high.
This has led to a dilemma in matcha product development: making it too strong risks losing the mass market, making it too light makes core users feel it's fake, and choosing the greatest common denominator of taste easily falls into mediocrity.
Facing this problem, Hema and Walmart (Wolmart Fresh) have completely different solutions.
Hema: Using hit products to break through awareness, turning "Guizhou Matcha" into a brand
Hema's approach is to bet on bakery hits.
It launched its matcha season in March, introducing over a dozen new products at once, including Matcha Piano Brownie, Matcha Tulip Ice Cup, Seven-Layer Chocolate Napoleon, Matcha Cream Roll, and Matcha Lava Tart, forming a complete matcha bakery product matrix. Through dedicated display sections, it creates a clear consumption perception—spring has arrived, so come to Hema for matcha.
At the product level, it divides products into three flavor gradients: "Light Matcha," "Strong Matcha," and "Bitter Matcha." Instead of educating consumers on what is correct, it acknowledges that everyone has different tastes and lets consumers choose for themselves.
The star product, "Matcha Piano Brownie," is the ultimate expression of this logic—a box containing five layers of flavor: yuzu, light matcha, strong matcha, bitter matcha, and roasted tea, arranged in progression.
This essentially solves the hardest problem in retail—how to use one SKU to cover as many people as possible while reducing the cost of trial and error for new products.
But Hema's heavier move is actually at the supply chain backend.
It is reported that to produce these matcha products, Hema used over 40 partner factories for cross-testing, with each product undergoing at least five rounds of improvement. The raw materials were upgraded from the industry-common 800 mesh to 1000 mesh ultra-fine grinding. To maintain color and flavor, the entire series uses black light-proof packaging instead of relying on color protectants.
More importantly, in 2025, Hema and Guizhou Tea Group jointly established the first "Matcha Hema Village" in Tongren, Guizhou, extending procurement directly to the planting end. Tongren is no longer just a procurement location but a brand symbol printed directly on the packaging.
What Hema wants consumers to see is not just the result but the entire process of selection it has done for them.
Walmart (Wolmart Fresh): Using 40 SKUs for a full-scenario "category breakthrough"
Walmart's logic is completely different.
"Wolmart Fresh Matcha Season" launched over 40 SKUs at once, covering multiple categories including bakery, beverages, snacks, ice cream, and sauces: Matcha Cream Puff, Extra-Strong Matcha, Jasmine Matcha Corn Crisps, Thousand-Mesh Matcha Red Bean Spread, Matcha Granule Pistachio Paste...
It's not selling a single matcha product but competing for consumers' right to define the "matcha" category.
It conveys a different consumption logic: not to buy a matcha product but to be surrounded by matcha at Walmart this spring, buying everything in one stop.
Facing the stratification of consumer acceptance, Walmart (Wolmart Fresh) also does not unify the taste.
Entry-level users can start with easier-to-accept combinations like jasmine matcha or matcha cheese; heavy enthusiasts have the extra-strong series made from Fanjingshan production area thousand-mesh matcha to cater to them.
At the same time, it simplifies the ingredient list: no preservatives, using monk fruit sugar instead of white sugar, and compressing ingredients to no more than four types.
Additionally, Walmart has launched a paper tabloid called "Simple Report," telling origin stories around the matcha theme, turning shelves into content and content into purchase reasons.
Hema builds process trust, while Walmart builds result trust. One lets consumers see the supply chain, the other lets consumers buy everything in one stop.
Why matcha specifically?
Both companies almost simultaneously chose matcha to launch large-scale private brand products, backed by a clear set of judgments.
First, demand is ready-made. Consumers are familiar with matcha flavor, and through the intensive promotion by major tea and bakery brands in recent years, a group of consumers with stable preferences has been cultivated.
This means retailers entering this track don't need to educate the market from scratch. Consumers have awareness and demand; what they lack is trustworthy product selection.
On the brand side, matcha is a true no-man's land in the Chinese market.
When it comes to matcha, many people think of Japan, with brands like ITOKYUEMON, Nakamura Tokichi, and Ippodo Tea having strong brand equity in their home country. But none of them have penetrated the Chinese retail market.
The reason is that these brands focus on high-end gifting and tourism consumption. Chinese consumers buy matcha more for matcha cream, matcha bakery, matcha ice cream, and matcha snacks—a daily, scenario-based consumption.
In this market, everyone is selling matcha, but no one has truly established a national brand mindshare.
For private brands, this is almost the ideal battlefield.
Finally, there is a mature supply chain.
If this were ten years ago, this would be hard to achieve.
At that time, the domestic matcha supply chain was not stable enough, production area capacity was limited, and process maturity was insufficient, making it difficult for retailers to turn matcha into a replicable, scalable product system.
But now, local matcha production areas, represented by Guizhou, have matured rapidly, with continuous output increases. Leading suppliers can now handle thousand-ton orders at once and meet more complex product development needs.
A few years earlier, the supply chain couldn't handle it; a few years later, the window may not be there.
Demand is mature, brand space is blank, and the supply chain is in place.
These three conditions combined have turned matcha from a long-standing flavor label into a business worth actively competing for by retailers.
What Hema and Walmart see is clearly not just a season of matcha popularity but a consumer mindshare that has long been unoccupied.
The core of private brands is not "private" but "brand."
For a long time in the past, retailers doing private brands relied on the simplest channel logic: with shelves, you can private label; cheaper than big brands, and people will buy.
At that stage, private brands were more like low-price substitutes, with competitiveness coming from price differences. Consumers chose them often just because they were cheaper.
But today, this logic is increasingly hard to sustain.
Prices are becoming more transparent, and consumers can compare prices across channels at any time. Whoever is cheaper, consumers can turn away immediately.
The core of private brands is not "private" but "brand."
The most important function of a brand is to complete the selection for consumers, bearing the cognitive and trial costs for them.
Consumers trust Nestlé, P&G, and Oreo because these brands take on the responsibility of "judging what is a good product for you." Consumers don't need to research ingredients; recognizing the brand is enough.
Today, leading retailers like Hema, Walmart, and Pangdonglai are systematically taking on this work—defining products, explaining products, and being responsible for products.
Consumers may not systematically study the mesh differences of matcha, nor do they necessarily understand the production area differences between Tongren and Jingshan, but they will form a very simple judgment: since it's from Hema, it's probably not bad.
This is not trust in a single product but trust in the retail enterprise itself.
Hema is not selling a matcha cake but "I've chosen for you"; Walmart is not selling a bottle of matcha sauce but "Wolmart Fresh has already judged for you."
This matcha season is the most typical example.
Hema and Walmart didn't just pick a few mature products from the market to private label and put on shelves. They first judged what consumers need, then organized the supply chain in reverse to complete production.
Whether to make a heavier matcha with stronger sweetness or add cream and yuzu to reduce bitterness; whether to emphasize the origin traceability of Tongren, Guizhou or the 1000-mesh ultra-fine grinding process standard; whether to make a hit single product or establish a complete matcha consumption scenario.
These decisions used to belong to brand owners.
Now, more and more retailers are doing this themselves.
They are no longer just selling products but redefining what products are worth selling.
This is why Hema and Walmart are both striving to tell the industry chain story.
Because today's consumers not only pay for results but also trace the story behind the product—origin, process, raw materials, testing process—things that used to be hidden in the background are now becoming the front stage of brand narrative.
Stories that brand owners didn't tell well, retailers are starting to tell themselves; trust that brand owners didn't establish, retailers are starting to build themselves.
This is not retailers overstepping but brand owners giving up their core functions.
This change is also rewriting the fate of many suppliers and quality factories.
In the past, most factories were just executors. Brands set standards and placed orders, factories were responsible for production and delivery, and who the consumers were or what the market needed had little to do with factories.
But now, as more and more excellent retail enterprises start doing private brands, those quality OEM factories with real R&D capabilities, product realization capabilities, quality assurance capabilities, and product service capabilities behind those brands are beginning to be seen.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 张雨薇
- Published: 2026-05-29
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-products-that-brands-can-t-do-well-hema-and-walmart-are-competing-to-6d0a1b55/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/wRjuYdEI5zGj6_yzGrWL7A

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