In the 21st century, the internet dominates. The impact of the internet economy, especially e-commerce, on offline channels, particularly distributors, has been profound, from the surface to the core. Distributors, once dominant in the era of mass distribution, have become a vulnerable group overnight. Every move by the internet, even a glance, seems capable of instantly destroying the barriers they built over a decade or even decades, just like a droplet in Liu Cixin's 'Three-Body Problem' that can crush any high-tech developed by Earth's civilization. Just as humanity needed to find a way out when the Trisolarans planned to migrate to Earth, distributors, when battered by various B2B and sharing economy models, will also seek their own way out. In recent years, the marketing world has discussed who will launch a dimensionality reduction attack on distributors or who will cross-industry replace them. But don't forget, there are 1.746 million legal entities with wholesale qualifications. Such a massive group, when their original ecosystem is disrupted, will inevitably choose to find a way out, even to 'snatch' others' rice bowls. As a group that rose from grassroots and prospered in rural areas, when facing operational crises or even survival crises, the energy unleashed by their tenacious vitality and extraordinary fighting spirit should not be underestimated. Survival is a competition; every industry or profession must play to its strengths and avoid weaknesses to laugh last in this elimination game. Whose rice bowl can distributors snatch? Based on changes and industry trends observed within the distributor system, we have made some assumptions and predictions to share with all distributor friends.

  1. Snatching the rice bowl of unmanned retail formats Some may ask: it's clearly unmanned retail stores that are snatching distributors' business, so why say distributors will snatch theirs in the future? First, manned and unmanned stores will inevitably compete in the future; this is open competition. Second, besides open competition, there is also covert struggle. The initial driving force behind unmanned stores will be third-party forces rising from enterprises and distributors, such as Binbin Box and EasyGo. These third parties, by expanding aggressively, will inevitably squeeze distributors' living space. However, just as no manufacturer can set up exclusive stores entirely through direct operation, channel brand owners cannot independently bear all the risks of store operation. The best way to share operational risks is to recruit social capital for franchising, and distributors are the most qualified for this. At this point, distributors become investors or franchisees of unmanned stores. Furthermore, as unmanned store technology matures, distributors who have accumulated substantial capital will not be content with the role of supporting franchisees. Distributors who already control a province's or a city's channels are fully capable of creating regional unmanned retail store brands through technology outsourcing, becoming truly dominant portal distributors. At this time, the 'XX Trading Company' established by distributors will no longer be just a name or symbol, but a channel brand that truly reaches consumers' minds. So, from this perspective, although unmanned retail formats are snatching distributors' rice bowls, it is precisely the rise of unmanned retail that accelerates the rise of channel brands. And the rise of channel brands is the best opportunity for merchants to win a round in the manufacturer-merchant game. This is the best era for distributors to build their own brands.
  2. Snatching the rice bowl of property and real estate With the deepening of the internet, the proportion of online sales for standardized, homogeneous products will increase. In the future, most stores with sales functions will not be built in the best locations, with the most money, or as the most beautiful stores (except experience stores), but will focus on distribution functions. This greatly increases the demand for distributors' warehousing capabilities. Can some distributors who are now forced to transform seize the opportunity to secure warehouse locations in remote or even remote areas before land prices heat up? In other words, set up warehouses in the cheapest locations to maximize output per square meter. In the future, distributors will no longer recruit salespeople or business personnel, but a large number of people with warehouse management experience. These people will be assigned positions based on brand or category, earning commissions through efficient warehouse management. Only through the scheduling of warehouse operators can manufacturers' product distribution and delivery in regional markets minimize warehouse occupancy and backlog. In the future, distributors will no longer simply earn price differences, but will obtain product turnover benefits in warehouses through professional services. Of course, the transformation of distributors into warehouse operators also benefits from the rise of channel brands. The more mature the product and the smaller the differentiation, the more mature the channel brand and the weaker the product brand.
  3. Snatching the rice bowl of third-party service providers Around the distributor industry, many supporting industries have emerged, such as channel development, maintenance, and store event planning. These functions were originally inherent to distributors, but due to the early wild and rapid growth of the distributor industry, many distributors did not solidly master these basic skills. This round of internet impact will force distributors to return to their roots. The value-added services that the distributor industry has always emphasized are actually the foundation for distributors to survive. It is a huge transformation from simple reselling to being indispensable. Today, some distributors' channel development capabilities, event planning capabilities, and rapid response service capabilities have degraded to the point where they need third-party service companies to teach them hand-by-hand and mouth-by-mouth. Distributors who heavily rely on third parties will be largely eliminated in this wave. Distributors who replace or even squeeze out third-party service companies will experience a new round of growth. In the corporate structure of distributors, either more detailed service functional departments will appear, which will conduct independent accounting through internal settlement; or various third-party services in the form of team contracting will gradually emerge, which will not only undertake the brands operated by distributors themselves but also similar businesses of similar products. This is a higher level of distributor development and one of the signs of channel rise. Of course, some may ask how those who once worked for third-party service companies will flow in the future? My view is that they will be recruited by forward-looking distributor companies and become the first wave of leaders in the organizational refinement of trading companies.
  4. Becoming competitors of logistics and express delivery In 2008, when predicting future channels, I believed that one of distributors' future competitors would be express delivery and logistics. The vehicle sales model we saw in the past is just the prototype of competition with express delivery and logistics, and using tricycles or public buses for delivery is only the lowest level of competition. In this battle for initiative, the competition for the last mile is the key to this fight. In the future, what can express delivery and logistics only earn? Either the branch delivery fee for individual standardized products or the trunk freight for large batches of products. But for delivery services that need to be integrated with supporting services, only distributors can undertake them, because it is obvious that a courier wearing 'XX Express' clothes cannot bring consumers the same good feeling and experience as a delivery person wearing 'XX Exclusive' work clothes. At the same time, forward-looking regional distributors will incorporate their fleets into the unified warehousing and distribution system of warehouse operators, becoming a part of shared tools. Although the implementation of unified warehousing and distribution is not yet satisfactory, with the accumulation of big data and the maturity of intelligent algorithms, the advantages of unified warehousing and distribution will definitely be maximized. Therefore, to take the initiative in the future, distributors must seize the key position of the last mile in express delivery and logistics to ensure they are not eliminated in this reshuffle. After all, the rise of channel brands must penetrate the nerve endings that contact consumers to deeply bury the word 'brand' in consumers' minds. -END-