---
title: "Traditional Retailer-Supplier Relationships Are Failing; Supply Chains Must Learn to Sell 'Solutions'"
description: "This article is adapted from a keynote speech by Wang Xiaomian, CEO of Shaanxi Fubixing Liquor, at the CFC2026 11th FMCG Conference's forum on 'Retailer-Supplier Relationship Transformation under Supermarket Adjustments.' Fubixing, a production-oriented supply chain company focused on the new alcoholic beverage segment, has been exploring a shift from single-product supply to category operations. The article argues that traditional retailer-supplier relationships are failing and proposes a shift to category solution operations, illustrated with practical examples."
author: "王小面"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-04-03"
categories: "Supply Chain & B2B"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8HkDL0C1xY1c5n6oqIe0pg"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E4%BC%A0%E7%BB%9F%E9%9B%B6%E4%BE%9B%E5%85%B3%E7%B3%BB%E6%AD%A3%E5%9C%A8%E5%A4%B1%E6%95%88-%E4%BE%9B%E5%BA%94%E9%93%BE%E5%BF%85%E9%A1%BB%E5%AD%A6%E4%BC%9A%E5%8D%96-%E8%A7%A3%E5%86%B3%E6%96%B9%E6%A1%88-fa7b5815.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/traditional-retailer-supplier-relationships-are-failing-supply-chains-mu-fa7b5815/"
citation: "王小面. “Traditional Retailer-Supplier Relationships Are Failing; Supply Chains Must Learn to Sell 'Solutions'.” New Distribution, 2026-04-03. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/traditional-retailer-supplier-relationships-are-failing-supply-chains-mu-fa7b5815/"
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---

# Traditional Retailer-Supplier Relationships Are Failing; Supply Chains Must Learn to Sell 'Solutions'

> This article is adapted from a keynote speech by Wang Xiaomian, CEO of Shaanxi Fubixing Liquor, at the CFC2026 11th FMCG Conference's forum on 'Retailer-Supplier Relationship Transformation under Supermarket Adjustments.' Fubixing, a production-oriented supply chain company focused on the new alcoholic beverage segment, has been exploring a shift from single-product supply to category operations. The article argues that traditional retailer-supplier relationships are failing and proposes a shift to category solution operations, illustrated with practical examples.

Editor's note: This article is adapted from the keynote speech by Wang Xiaomian, CEO of Shaanxi Fubixing Liquor, at the CFC2026 11th FMCG Conference's forum on 'Retailer-Supplier Relationship Transformation under Supermarket Adjustments.' Fubixing is a production-oriented supply chain company focused on the new alcoholic beverage segment, and has been exploring a path from single-product supply to category operations.

## **Why Traditional Retailer-Supplier Relationships Are Failing**

Before discussing solutions, I want to clarify the problem.

Fubixing is a production-oriented supply chain company. We serve channels and position ourselves as service providers, not brand operators.

Our core judgment is: **Factories that own production resources and factors need to cooperate more deeply with channels that own traffic sovereignty.** This is the true reshaping of retailer-supplier relationships.

But the reality is that traditional retailer-supplier relationships are failing on a large scale.

**On the channel side**, there is the dual pressure of product selection anxiety and sell-through pressure. Every day, buyers face 100 products that are largely similar, and no one can clearly articulate the differentiation. They don't know if the selection is right, whether it will sell through after listing, how to operate the entire category, or how to set KPIs—no one provides answers to these questions.

**On the factory side**, production capacity is largely idle, and profit margins are generally low. Brand premium is increasingly difficult, and bargaining power continues to be compressed. Many factories have been reduced to pure OEM roles, and they have to accept 90-day or 100-day payment terms, or they won't get orders.

The ultimate result of this game is a value gap—consumers can't buy truly good products, channels can only sell single products, and factories can only take orders. Everyone is using old maps to find new continents, and of course, they can't find them.

**You can't do new retail with old relationships.** We need new relationships and new capabilities.

## **From Single-Product Supplier**

## **to Category Solution Operator**

Where the problem is, there is the answer.

The logic of traditional suppliers is: produce to order, deliver as required, and the relationship ends upon delivery. There is no category thinking, no understanding of consumer demand combinations, and no awareness of demand differences. What they give channels is always single products, one-off transactions, with neither review nor co-construction.

**What we want to do is the category operator model.**

What does this mean? Taking the new alcoholic beverage category that Fubixing focuses on as an example, we want to jointly plan and operate with channels—provide category plans, provide scenario-based product combination plans, and make continuous dynamic adjustments based on sell-through data and consumer feedback, achieving data sharing with channels.

Our underlying logic can be summarized in three levels:

**Product level**: We provide planograms and output category structure; **Operation level**: We achieve data sharing and support flexible supply; **Scenario level**: We turn scenario needs into products and ultimately output shelf plans.

**The shelf is not a warehouse; it's a display window for scenario solutions.**

Taking the alcoholic beverage category as an example, consumption scenarios are very clear—gatherings, meals, and solo drinking. Each scenario requires different products: large sizes for gatherings, small sizes for solo drinking. What products are needed in different scenarios must be determined through continuous communication and co-construction with channels.

More importantly, learn to speak in a language consumers understand. You don't need to tell consumers what German wheat beer or ale is—just give them a reason to buy: richer taste, beats watery beer. That's the language consumers need to see at the shelf.

**Category structure also needs clear logic.**

Through in-depth communication with channels over the past two years, we believe a healthy category shelf structure is roughly as follows: traffic-driving products account for 20%, and should be iterated annually with market trends, not static; profit products are the core of the shelf, helping channels improve overall profit levels; basic products contribute about 60% of sales, providing a stable sales base; the remaining 10% to 20% is shelf openness, used to attract new consumers and explore new demands.

Why emphasize shelf openness? Look at Hema, Aldi, and Sam's Club—they have achieved 'goods find people' through innovative products and open shelves, firmly attracting high-quality consumers with high average order value, purchasing power, and willingness to spread the word, while many traditional channels are still stuck in 'people find goods.'

## **Practical Implementation of Category Adjustments**

Ideas need to be implemented with specific actions.

Last year, we did a complete category adjustment for a regional supermarket chain. The entire process can be summarized in three steps: **SKU reduction, co-construction, and flexible supply.**

**Step 1: SKU reduction, establishing category structure.**

We broke down every product on the shelf, analyzed it from three dimensions: sales data, local brand effect, and profit contribution, and finally divided by scenario, reducing 200 SKUs to 80, and output a complete planogram.

Many buyers ask: Are the 120 eliminated SKUs bad?

Not necessarily bad, but without category operation thinking, when you put everything on the shelf, nothing sells well. After reduction, traffic-driving, profit, and basic products each play their roles, and the shelf's scenario feel and purchase efficiency greatly improve.

Here's a key point: traffic-driving products should change every year.

The year before last, we used German wheat beer as a traffic driver because craft beer was just emerging, and German wheat was the best educational tool. But if we still use German wheat this year, we're not keeping up with market trends. Traffic-driving products should be re-selected annually based on your judgment of the category stage and your understanding of target consumers' education level.

**Step 2: Co-construction, connecting data and operations.**

After SKU reduction, the more important thing is to establish a data-sharing mechanism with channels. Only by truly connecting data can we achieve flexible supply—adjusting inventory based on real-time sell-through data to avoid overstock or stockouts.

In this process, we also did supporting content operations on the C-end.

Taking the 'Winter Story' product we created for a regional supermarket as an example, we did Xiaohongshu placements, influencer store visits, and fan sharing based on the product. The complete operation path is: in-store tasting → influencer store visit → product display → fan sharing.

The goal of these actions is not to build a brand, but to drive traffic—attract consumers to offline stores, and let the channel's shelves establish a fun, advanced perception in consumers' minds.

In the end, store visit rate increased by 200%, and a large number of traffic-related keywords were built around our channel clients.

**Step 3: Flexible supply, quickly responding to demand changes.**

This step relies on Fubixing's core capabilities on the supply chain side.

From the beginning of our factory construction, we firmly set a direction: not to follow the old path of large-scale standardized production, but to build a production-oriented supply chain with flexible and quick response.

Currently, we have distributed factories in Baoji, Ya'an (Sichuan), and Quzhou (Zhejiang), covering Northwest, Southwest, and East China, enabling **a minimum order quantity of 5 tons and a 25-day delivery cycle**, with flexible order replenishment and helping channels achieve low inventory management.

We have also established a C2M reverse customization process—based on consumer behavior data and sales data collected by channels, we extract scenario needs, complete product development, then do small-batch trial production for verification, and quickly reorder.

Last year, we cooperated with channels like Xiaoxiang Supermarket and Dingdong Maicai, launching over 300 SKUs throughout the year, all based on this flexible and quick-response mechanism.

## **The Best Retailer-Supplier Relationship**

## **Is Creating Value for Consumers Together**

In the end, the essence of the retailer-supplier relationship is just one sentence: **Only by creating value for consumers together can we share that value.**

For channels, this means shifting from 'selecting suppliers' to 'selecting partners,' and building category operation capabilities with factories with an open mind; for factories, this means shifting from 'making products' to 'making solutions,' truly aiming for the channel's category growth and profit growth, rather than just pushing products onto shelves and calling it done.

Fubixing has always adhered to the philosophy: We are not a supply chain company that sells goods; we want to be a solution provider for the new alcoholic beverage category. The channel's category growth, sales growth, and profit growth are our true goals.

In the future, we will continue to deepen the layout of distributed factories, leverage technology and data, continuously provide more precise category solutions to channels, and build a true retailer-supplier value community.

The best retailer-supplier relationship is when consumers don't even feel the existence of 'retailer' and 'supplier'—they just get what they want and see the right products in the right scenarios.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 王小面
- Published: 2026-04-03
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/traditional-retailer-supplier-relationships-are-failing-supply-chains-mu-fa7b5815/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8HkDL0C1xY1c5n6oqIe0pg

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Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671