Introduction: Let's meet in Shanghai to step into digitalization and move towards an intelligent future.

Why should China's FMCG industry pursue digitalization? Without truly understanding the essence of this question, we will make mistakes in the direction, goals, organization, and methods of our digitalization efforts. We may find the cycle of digitalization too long to maintain patience, and find it hard to endure the difficulties and setbacks along the way.

The Essential Changes Brought by Digitalization

Digitalization has changed the way humans communicate. With language, humans achieved true communication; with writing, we gained true culture, heritage, and recorded history. Human communication has evolved from face-to-face interaction to courier messages, telegraph and telephone, email and chat, and now to the digital age, increasingly transcending spatial distance and the constraints of 24-hour time. Humans are producers and the most important element in all economic activities and market competition. Digitalization has completely transformed communication and people; when people change, everything changes.

Digitalization has changed the methods and logic of market competition. Masters of market competition often have unique and profound insights into warfare. War is the highest form of human competition. Every major upheaval in human society is often recorded in historically significant wars. Revolutionary advancements in weaponry often signify changes in the methods and logic of warfare. Weapons may not directly determine the outcome of a war, but they often directly decide the victory or defeat of a battle. The course of a war is determined by strategy and tactics, but the effective deployment of strategy and tactics is often directly constrained and influenced by weaponry. The advent of metal changed the outcomes of close combat in the Cold Weapon Era; bows, crossbows, and catapults greatly extended the physical distance of attack; steam-powered ships and warships enabled cross-ocean expeditions between nations; fighter jets and satellites extended warfare from the ground and sea to the air and even space.

Before 2012, market competition in China's FMCG sector was largely segmented: online with JD and Tmall, and offline with traditional distributors. After 2012, with the arrival of the digital age, all-weather, all-channel, all-scenario integrated marketing competition began. A FMCG brand with a billion-scale revenue today faces ten times the complexity in sales channels, marketing and fulfillment, and market competition intensity compared to a decade ago. Traditional barriers in production and distribution are gradually disappearing in the face of digitalization. A company without digitalization cannot imagine how it will adapt to the increasingly complex competition of the present and future. This is why we must continue on the path of digitalization.

The Brightness and Twists of China's FMCG Digitalization

From the very beginning, China's FMCG digitalization has been a no-man's land. There was no theoretical guidance, only imagination of the future; no roads, only exploration from the starting point; no successful cases, only getting up, dusting off, and continuing after failures. Over the past decade, countless FMCG enterprises have bravely explored, continuously practiced, and grown in the face of "light in the distance, but no road underfoot."

The intelligent and resilient Chinese FMCG professionals have tirelessly explored for ten years, and today we finally have cases to learn from and reference.

Feihe Dairy used digitalization to connect and upgrade the entire industry chain from dairy farming to raw milk, production, distribution, and terminals. For the first time in the infant formula sector, it proposed and implemented the "Fresh Strategy," allowing Chinese babies to drink fresh milk powder produced within 28 days. China Red Bull used a dual-code system on cans to effectively activate over a million terminals, including nearly 20% of high-quality sales terminals not covered by its marketing team. Guizhou Snow Beer combined QR codes with mini-programs to achieve an industry-record consumer scan rate of 80%, selling tens of thousands of tickets for the 2022 Guiyang International Music Beer Festival. Ande Zhilian successfully achieved "BC Integration" in FMCG supply chain services, using "one pallet of goods" to integrate brand DC warehouses with distributor city warehouses. This enables integrated online and offline inventory, and integrated all-channel BC order fulfillment, providing FMCG brands with short-chain, low-cost, high-efficiency, and visualized integrated supply chain services.

The courage, experience, achievements, and even lessons and costs of the pioneers are the source of our confidence to continue on the path of digitalization.

On the Road to Intelligent Digitalization, We Need to Keep Pace

Looking ahead to the next decade, China's FMCG will move from "digitalization" to a new world of "intelligent digitalization." What we can imagine is intelligence, integration, ecology, vertical and horizontal connectivity, and internal and external linkage; but what lies ahead is still "only direction, no road." That's okay; the pioneers have already packed their bags and set off again, embarking on the expedition of FMCG intelligent digitalization. And China's FMCG is collectively following in the footsteps of the pioneers, entering the digital era in droves. With the experience and lessons learned, the pace of China's FMCG digitalization is gradually accelerating and becoming more stable. As China's FMCG continues on its path, we need more exchanges, more collisions of ideas, a serious review and summary of the past decade's experiences and cases, and bold imagination and thinking about the future.

On March 14-15, 2023, the "2023 China FMCG Intelligent Digitalization Innovation Summit" will be grandly held in Shanghai, co-hosted by the professional FMCG media platform "New Distribution" and the digitalization pioneer Yonyou Group. Why is this a conference that enterprise managers, digitalization operators, and digital industry service providers must pay attention to and attend?

Highlight 1: 500 FMCG enterprise managers, digital industry service providers, and internet companies will gather to jointly review the past decade of China's FMCG digitalization journey and look ahead to the direction and path of intelligent digitalization in the next decade.

Highlight 2: The FMCG industry will initiate the establishment of the "China FMCG Industry Intelligent Digitalization Development Alliance," bringing together outstanding digitalization operators and service providers from the industry to jointly promote and accelerate the digitalization process of China's FMCG.

Highlight 3: The conference will select and award two honors: the "China FMCG Digitalization Decade Best Practice Award" and the "China FMCG Digitalization Decade Influential Person Award," serving as the most significant summary and showcase of the achievements of China's FMCG digitalization over the past decade.

All friends who are committed to promoting the digital transformation and upgrading of China's FMCG, let's meet in Shanghai to step into digitalization and move towards an intelligent future. Let's stand together on the peak of China's FMCG digitalization decade and look towards another higher and more beautiful peak in the distance.

About the Author: Chen Siting, CEO of New Distribution, senior FMCG media professional, and consultant. Former editor-in-chief of "Sales & Marketing" magazine, marketing consultant for Tanmuzhu, and founder of the internet supply chain project "Wanchaobang." He has in-depth research and practice in FMCG brand planning and communication, distributor model transformation and upgrading, and supply chain innovation and reform, with a professional perspective and a foot-on-the-ground approach to studying the Chinese market.

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