---
title: "Why Do Few Traditional Offline Distributors Succeed in E-commerce?"
description: "Many distributor partners often tell me that e-commerce is difficult and challenging. Many have already achieved great success in traditional offline channels, with annual sales exceeding 300 million, 500 million, or even 1 billion yuan, proving their strength and capability. Yet, despite their continuous learning, experimentation, and operation, they still struggle to break through sales bottlenecks, operational sticking points, and profit black holes. Why? There are many differences between online and offline, which traditional offline distributors need to consider and self-reflect on before venturing into e-commerce."
author: "许翔 Ryan Xu"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2022-10-12"
language: "en"
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---

# Why Do Few Traditional Offline Distributors Succeed in E-commerce?

> Many distributor partners often tell me that e-commerce is difficult and challenging. Many have already achieved great success in traditional offline channels, with annual sales exceeding 300 million, 500 million, or even 1 billion yuan, proving their strength and capability. Yet, despite their continuous learning, experimentation, and operation, they still struggle to break through sales bottlenecks, operational sticking points, and profit black holes. Why? There are many differences between online and offline, which traditional offline distributors need to consider and self-reflect on before venturing into e-commerce.

Many distributor partners often tell me that e-commerce is difficult and challenging!
Many of them have already achieved great success in traditional offline channels, with annual sales exceeding 300 million, 500 million, or even 1 billion yuan, proving their strength and capability. At the same time, they have been diligently learning, experimenting, and operating, but they always fail to break through sales bottlenecks, operational sticking points, and profit black holes.
Why? In fact, there are many differences between online and offline, which require traditional offline distributors to think carefully and self-reflect before venturing into e-commerce—
**Difference 1: Offline, you are a supplier; online, you are a retailer.**
**Difference 2: Offline, your business strategy remains unchanged for years; online, your business strategy changes multiple times a year.**
**Difference 3: Offline, distributor bosses control everything; online, distributor bosses have limited control.**
**Difference 4: Offline, your business actions are invisible; online, your business actions are transparent.**
**Difference 5: Offline, it's store first, then product; online, it's product first, then store.**
**Difference 6: Offline, the competitive environment is relatively stable; online, the competitive environment is constantly changing.**

**01**
#### **Difference 1:**
#### **Offline, you are a supplier**
#### **Online, you are a retailer**
You directly assume the role not of a B2B offline supply distributor, but of a B2C online retail store. Offline, as a supplier, you only need to work with the manufacturer's team to sell in and assist sales; the actual selling action is carried out by your downstream retailers. As retailers, their biggest KPI is traffic operation. Offline foot traffic has been declining, and as a supplier distributor, you often feel helpless, but the impact on you is indirect.
However, when you open an online store, you play the role of a retailer. You are responsible not only for product selection but also for traffic operation. The mere operation and maintenance of traffic has already stopped many distributor bosses with deep offline thinking in their tracks.

**02**
#### **Difference 2:**
#### **Offline, your business strategy remains unchanged for years**
#### **Online, your business strategy changes multiple times a year**
No matter how competitive offline becomes, it is still much better than the highly competitive online operating environment. Offline, the selling logic and operational links of the downstream channels you cover have remained largely unchanged for years, but online platform rules are constantly changing and never stop being disruptive.
Offline distributor bosses can use one set of tactics for years, but venturing online requires mental preparation to deal with the platform's constant changes! After all, offline stores' geographical locations, covered populations, and customer operations are fixed, while online is the opposite—virtual stores sell nationwide, traffic fluctuates, and platform operating rules always require constant response and adjustment. E-commerce platforms change too fast, and business moves faster; you cannot use a fixed approach to do business, so think twice before opening a store.

**03**
#### **Difference 3:**
#### **Offline, distributor bosses control everything**
#### **Online, distributor bosses have limited control**
Having operated offline distribution businesses for many years, most distributor bosses have a thorough understanding of front-end store operations and back-end supply chains. Even if they don't closely monitor the business daily, they can still control ordering, warehousing, distribution, shipping, service, and payment collection.
But online, as a retail store owner, you face a more complex business. Many bosses, unfamiliar with operations, often delegate to professional managers or third-party operators, resulting in alienation from core e-commerce technologies and being controlled by operators, gradually losing control of the business. Even if you are professional and have strong control over the back-end chain, operational capability is the prerequisite for success in online business.

**04**
#### **Difference 4:**
#### **Offline, your business actions are invisible**
#### **Online, your business actions are transparent**
Over the years, the offline distributors I've dealt with in the southern region generally operate at a slower pace. Bosses of large and small distributors always have tea tables in their offices, sipping tea and discussing business calmly. They don't need to worry about what same-brand distributors in Shanghai or Shenyang are doing; they just need to focus on their own territory.
But e-commerce is completely different. Every e-commerce operator can analyze their own and competitors' store actions through backend merchant system data—what main images competitors uploaded today, what prices they set, what keywords they used, how many orders they supplemented with affiliate marketing... Online, your business actions are transparent. Compared to offline, your operational actions are not of much concern to others, and even if they were, they couldn't view your data and actions across geography and time. So e-commerce distributors often lack a sense of security, while offline distributors actually have more happiness.
Image source: pexels

**05**
#### **Difference 5:**
#### **Offline, it's store first, then product**
#### **Online, it's product first, then store**
Offline distributors, whether maintaining old stores or developing new ones, always secure the store first and then the product. But online, it's the opposite: if your store doesn't have a hit product, your store won't have traffic. This difference requires our distributor bosses to upgrade their mindset!
Offline distributor bosses focus more on relationships and customer connections, making it their top priority to successfully sell their distributed goods into retail stores, leaving the rest to the team and manufacturer sales representatives. Online is different: as a boss, you need to personally select good products and make them bestsellers! Without a good hit product, the moment you open a store is the countdown to closing it. Even if you open many online stores, without a hit product that can stand out, it's all in vain...

**06**
#### **Difference 6:**
#### **Offline, the competitive environment is relatively stable**
#### **Online, the competitive environment is constantly changing**
Offline competition is local; online competition is national! Usually, people complain about price chaos, but no matter how chaotic it seems, you're only competing with customers within a limited local or provincial scope (don't argue with me that many prices are national; if your market is constantly impacted nationally, then your scale and profits wouldn't be a concern). Compared to e-commerce, it's a drop in the bucket!
E-commerce is real-time, dynamic, and national price comparison. Your price competitors are not only Suzhou within a hundred miles, but also Beijing a thousand miles away, and even Urumqi ten thousand miles away! Compared to the impact cycle and wavelength of offline price competition, online competition is more direct and rapid. Are you mentally prepared for this? Indeed, many e-commerce distributors feel much more anxiety than offline distributors.

After reading the six differences I've listed, I believe the enthusiasm of many traditional distributors to venture online has been largely extinguished, but there's no need to worry. **Proactive learning, trial and error, summarization, and hands-on involvement are the beginnings of gradual breakthroughs!**
Today, even late is early; tomorrow, even early is late! If you truly want to move from offline to online, starting to try now is the best choice!
Of course, our offline distributors don't need to be overly troubled or even self-deprecating. In fact, e-commerce distributors who do well online also face countless difficulties when moving offline. In a different scenario, online distributors are also at a loss; they have more complaints and grievances about offline business than you do.
**Doing well in your advantageous offline business while gradually expanding into emerging online areas may be the correct way for traditional offline distributors to "get connected."**
_If you want to understand omni-channel operations, as a distributor, you can also learn from this book "FMCG Regional/City Manager Omni-Channel Management." This book is not only written for manufacturer sales managers; distributor bosses should also learn it, otherwise you won't even keep up with offline business, let alone talk about doing e-commerce._
_**-END-**_


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