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Four seasons cycle, spring, summer, autumn, winter, and we work from sunrise to sunset in this rhythm. This seemingly normal pace of life has been disrupted by waves of the pandemic this year, making almost all FMCG companies and distributors "children of winter."

FMCG products have entered a "slow-selling" market.

However, "the brave win on narrow paths," and excellent companies have all experienced winter, becoming stronger through its trials. Ren Zhengfei said that a company that falls three times and gets back up is a great company.

Winter indeed leaves only a narrow opportunity, passable only by the strong. Not everyone can see this opportunity, nor does everyone have the courage to try. Like in the stock market, most people chase rises and sell on falls, but only Buffett says, "Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful." The movement of the Tao is reversal, so he became the stock god.

Similarly, amid the recurring pandemic, "miracles of spring" still occur.

Distributors Who Seized the Opportunity

New Distribution held a series of live streams in May titled "Growth Amid the Epidemic," with seven episodes, and in June launched the "Seize the Opportunity, Stabilize the Market" series, with three episodes so far. In these ten live streams, each episode invited outstanding distributors who achieved counter-trend sales growth and strong enterprise growth despite the uncertain pandemic environment this year.

01

Distributor Case 1:

Gao Jingjing, General Manager of Beijing Guoyingjian Trading Co., Ltd., faced the most intense phase of Beijing's pandemic in May, with her company located in Chaoyang District, the epicenter. The night before the lockdown was announced, Gao Jingjing worked overnight to ship orders, avoiding inventory backlog. Earlier, she had established multiple warehouses in Beijing, distributed across Chaoyang, Dongcheng, etc., to prevent business paralysis if one warehouse was locked down. Most importantly, she immediately applied for the government's whitelist, becoming a guaranteed supplier and obtaining passes, allowing goods to flow.

Gao Jingjing said in the live stream: "Danger is opportunity, and opportunity is danger. The key to success is having the ability to face problems."

02

Distributor Case 2:

Chen Xin, CEO of Maichun E-commerce, achieved a 200% year-on-year growth in community group buying, a tough segment, despite its downturn. Where did the growth come from?

The recurring pandemic changed consumer habits and shifted consumption scenarios. Chen Xin insightfully identified the consumption motives in this scenario, rebuilt the consumption scenario, matched corresponding consumption needs, and the sales logic naturally held. In Chen Xin's words, "It's not that the platform is failing; most likely, we didn't do well ourselves."

While others were stuck in cutthroat "price wars," Chen Xin jumped out first, using operational methods to increase per-slot output, such as product bundling and quality products at good prices, to improve conversion rates. He made structural adjustments to loss-making areas, gradually giving the platform sustainable confidence.

03

Distributor Case 3:

Yan Shun, General Manager of Shandong Zibo Haochunte, faced two months of pandemic in Shandong with shrinking consumer willingness and market stagnation. Despite high daily costs like labor and rent, rising oil prices, and falling revenue, after losing 400,000 yuan, he did not give up and initiated a "self-rescue mode."

Although consumption scenarios narrowed, consumer needs became more explicit, especially in home consumption scenarios. Yan Shun quickly changed his product logic, delivering products to consumers' homes, from low to high price points, finding suitable sales channels in different product matrices, and building long-term partnerships.

Yan Shun mentioned in the live stream: "The future of distributors is to do it themselves, build their own channels, do their own terminals, and directly serve consumers."

04

Distributor Case 4:

Li Bin, founder of Keke Select Community Retail, added 15 community group buying convenience stores in six months amid the recurring pandemic. This counter-trend growth came from Li Bin's awareness of a change in consumption patterns: the pandemic profoundly changed users' consumption habits and information acquisition habits. So, he integrated community group buying with community retail.

In his view, community group buying is a process of optimizing community retail.

Li Bin made three optimizations: product structure, supply chain, and consumption radius.

The optimized community group buying convenience store model finds a balance between physical stores and online shopping, extracting the advantages of both and merging them, achieving a more integrated existence between community group buying and community stores, and a major breakthrough in "people, goods, and scenes."

Where Does Business Growth Come From?

These four vivid cases are real stories from this year's pandemic. As the pandemic has shifted from an accidental black swan to a gray rhino, and now to normalization, their actions and achievements give us a strong warning: although winter is cold, there are still survival rules—natural selection, survival of the fittest.

After broadcasting ten live streams, we found a commonality in these counter-trend growth cases: persist in doing difficult but correct things, seize the "opportunity" in crisis, stabilize the market, and achieve counter-trend growth.

From July 12-14, 2022, New Distribution will restart the "2022 (7th) China FMCG Channel Innovation Conference" in Chengdu with the theme "Seize the Opportunity, Stabilize the Market."

This conference will bring together over a thousand marketing experts, brand executives, digital service companies, and distributor owners in Chengdu to discuss and exchange new ideas, new models, new opportunities, and new tactics on how to seize the "opportunity" and stabilize the "market."

New Ideas mean establishing the cognition and consensus that "abnormality is the new normal." The recurring pandemic is the biggest abnormality now, but after it disappears, there will be other abnormalities.

New Organizations mean forming an effective response and training mechanism for "abnormality" based on the consensus that "abnormality is the new normal," thereby building agile operational organizations.

New Opportunities are the "opportunities." "Abnormality" implies change, which brings crises but also contains "opportunities."

New Tactics are the tactics and methods to seize the "opportunity" and turn it into tangible sales results. Compared to traditional marketing methods, "new tactics" are flexible, targeted, and output-oriented.

Every great company is a child of winter; this is the answer we must deliver in this era.

Come to Chengdu, let us discuss together how today's enterprises should think and act to "seize the opportunity and stabilize the market"!

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