---
title: "Woji Fresh Makes Walmart Red Hot Again!"
description: "Today, walking into a Walmart supermarket, you'll see Woji Fresh everywhere. This private brand of Walmart has made the retailer popular again over the past year. According to industry insiders, Woji Fresh's SKU count accounts for only 1/8 of Walmart's total hypermarket SKUs, yet it contributes over 40% of sales. From January to February 2025, Walmart's hypermarket food category saw year-on-year growth across all categories—a rarity in today's hypermarket landscape. As the retail industry faces difficulties, many retailers treat private brands as a lifeline. But in the hypermarket format, few have achieved what Woji Fresh has. Why?"
author: "任文青"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2026-04-26"
categories: "Retail Formats"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/OsVQTqlZGbeXpTkPKvx9NQ"
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attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/woji-fresh-makes-walmart-red-hot-again-8f56fa72/"
citation: "任文青. “Woji Fresh Makes Walmart Red Hot Again!.” New Distribution, 2026-04-26. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/woji-fresh-makes-walmart-red-hot-again-8f56fa72/"
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---

# Woji Fresh Makes Walmart Red Hot Again!

> Today, walking into a Walmart supermarket, you'll see Woji Fresh everywhere. This private brand of Walmart has made the retailer popular again over the past year. According to industry insiders, Woji Fresh's SKU count accounts for only 1/8 of Walmart's total hypermarket SKUs, yet it contributes over 40% of sales. From January to February 2025, Walmart's hypermarket food category saw year-on-year growth across all categories—a rarity in today's hypermarket landscape. As the retail industry faces difficulties, many retailers treat private brands as a lifeline. But in the hypermarket format, few have achieved what Woji Fresh has. Why?

Today, walking into a Walmart supermarket, you'll see Woji Fresh everywhere.
This private brand of Walmart has made the retailer popular again over the past year.
According to industry insiders, Woji Fresh's SKU count accounts for only 1/8 of Walmart's total hypermarket SKUs, yet it contributes over 40% of sales. From January to February 2025, Walmart's hypermarket food category saw year-on-year growth across all categories—a rarity in today's hypermarket landscape.
As the retail industry faces difficulties, many retailers treat private brands as a lifeline.
But in the hypermarket format, few have achieved what Woji Fresh has.
Why?
To find out, I delved into the development history of Woji Fresh.
I discovered that Woji Fresh's current success is due to its unique conditions. Most retailers do not possess these conditions—it's not a matter of effort, but of different cards in hand.
But this doesn't mean it has no reference value for the industry. The detours, pitfalls, and eventual solutions Walmart encountered are precisely the most authentic sample for Chinese retail to do private brands.
By dissecting it, you can see yourself.
#### How Did Woji Fresh Come About?
Woji Fresh was not originally a food brand.
Just three years ago, it was merely a brand label in Walmart's fresh food section, printed on transparent plastic packaging bags for vegetables and fruits. No one regarded it as a food private brand.
Today, it has roughly gone through three stages.
The first stage: the budding period (2022-2023).
The turning point for Woji Fresh came from a water buffalo milk product. Walmart found a factory in Guangxi and made a small green bottle of water buffalo milk with a highly distinctive taste. After its launch, it achieved monthly sales of 30 million yuan.
Walmart had tried private brands before, but they hadn't taken off—the thinking at the time was still stuck on low quality and low price.
The success of the small green bottle sent an important signal to Walmart: the private brand path can work.
The second stage: the expansion period (from mid-2024).
The key action in this stage was building a product pool.
Walmart's approach: in each category, screen out the top-selling hit products by monthly sales and establish a product pool. Then find factories to directly benchmark these hits and copy them.
Why do this? To reduce trial-and-error costs. Developing a completely new product has a high failure rate; benchmarking against market-validated hits has a higher success rate and is faster.
During this stage, major brands generally refused to cooperate—doing OEM for Walmart would harm their own main brands. Small and medium factories seized this window and got the first batch of orders.
This approach is actually common among most retailers. Yonghui is doing it, Hema is doing it, and regional chains are doing it too.
At this stage, Walmart was no different from its peers.
The real gap began to widen in the third stage.
The third stage: full rollout (from mid-2025).
With the accumulation of the first two stages, Walmart began to push Woji Fresh across the entire food category.
At this point, an interesting change occurred: major brands that had previously refused began to proactively approach Walmart. The reason is practical—Woji Fresh had achieved scale, and core display resources were increasingly tilted toward private brands. Continuing to refuse would mean handing over shelf space to small and medium factories.
Major brands bowed their heads, but the competitive logic changed.
In the second stage, Walmart looked for factories "willing to do it"—major brands refused, and small and medium factories stepped in. In the third stage, major brands entered, and the supply chain began to compete internally. For the same product, large and small factories compete on the same stage, comparing cost, quality, and innovation.
What does this change mean for Woji Fresh?
The circle of partners is upgrading. From the early "willing to take orders" small and medium factories to the industry giants now actively aligning, the quality ceiling of the supply chain has been raised to a higher level.
#### Why Did Woji Fresh Succeed?
Walmart succeeded with Woji Fresh for three reasons. The first two are easy to see, but the third is the most critical.
The first reason: there is a sibling to copy from.
A rumor circulates in the market: at the end of 2023, Walmart had Sam's Club's core team for product selection, operations, and supply chain directly take over the hypermarket transformation, creating a "Sam's Club without membership fees."
But at least from the information I have so far, this is not accurate.
Walmart and Sam's Club are two independent organizational systems in China. Sam's core team did not directly intervene in Woji Fresh's development, nor did they take over the daily operations of the hypermarket.
But after all, they are under the same system.
Sam's Club's private brand has already run a complete methodology in the Chinese market—what categories are suitable for private brands, how to create hit products, how to manage the supply chain, and how to set quality control standards. These experiences can be referenced by Walmart's hypermarket without starting from scratch.
This is a condition that most local Chinese retailers do not have. Yonghui, Bubugao, and RT-Mart all have to find their own way in private brands. Only Walmart has a sibling with successful experience sitting next to it.
The second reason: good financial reports provide the confidence for change.
This is the most easily overlooked prerequisite.
According to financial data, Walmart China's net sales in the recent fiscal year were approximately 147.3 billion yuan, with Sam's Club as the main growth engine, and the overall financial performance was good.
Walmart China CEO Zhu Xiaojing has been in office since 2020, making her the first Chinese and first female CEO of Walmart China. During her tenure, Walmart China has maintained double-digit growth for multiple consecutive fiscal quarters.
What does this mean? She has a long enough cycle to do something that causes short-term pain.
Doing private brands definitely comes at a cost in the short term. You have to take back core display resources from brands, bear the losses from failed new product development, and accept friction in some supplier relationships. These are all short-term pains.
If the financial report looks bad, the board's pressure comes down immediately, and the CEO's position is unstable—how can change be discussed?
Many Chinese retailers are stuck at this hurdle. It's not that they don't want to do it, but they don't have the room to maneuver.
The third reason: the organizational structure is right, which is the most critical.
This is a point that most articles discussing private brands do not touch.
Most retailers doing private brands set up two departments: category procurement and private brand procurement. The two departments are parallel and assessed separately.
It sounds reasonable, but the problem lies here.
Category procurement focuses on sales, gross margin, and fee income, while private brand procurement leans more toward product development and private brand sales. These two logics naturally tend to conflict.
Category procurement sees private brands advancing, and the calculation in their mind is clear: every private brand SKU you add takes away a spot for a third-party brand. With fewer spots, the fee income from suppliers decreases. More importantly, private brands are slow work—the development cycle is long, and after launch, they need nurturing, which is far less quick than signing a new brand contract.
The result: category procurement instinctively resists, paying lip service. If it doesn't move forward, it's a mechanism problem.
Many retailers' private brands fail to advance, and the root cause is here. It's not an execution problem; the structure is inherently opposed.
What is Walmart's solution?
Merge the two positions into one. The same buyer is responsible for both the category and the private brand. KPIs are unified, direction is unified, and there is no room for internal conflict.
Walmart's procurement focus has shifted from negotiating contracts and collecting fees to researching products and co-developing with suppliers.
Buyers have transformed from purchasers to product managers.
This single organizational move is the most fundamental gap between Woji Fresh and other retailers' private brands.
#### Implications for Other Retailers
Looking at the three success conditions of Woji Fresh, none is easy to replicate.
  * Having homework to copy—cannot be replicated. There is no second retailer in China with a proven private brand sample sitting next to it.
  * Good financial reports and confidence for change—cannot be replicated in the short term. Many regional retailers are currently in a position of surviving first, then talking about change.
  * Organizational structure merger—seems like a decision, but it also requires financial backing. Category procurement giving up fee income requires money to fill the gap. It also requires methodological support—a buyer who only knows how to negotiate contracts and collect fees doesn't know where to start in product development. Walmart has Sam's sample to reference; others do not.
The three conditions are interlocking and indispensable.
This is the real reason Woji Fresh is hard to replicate—not because any one condition is particularly strong, but because all three conditions happen to be present at the same time.
So, analyzing Woji Fresh is not about "learning how Walmart does it," but rather—
Before doing private brands, first think clearly about what cards you hold.
Is there financial room to bear the pain of transformation? Is there organizational willingness and ability to make way for private brands? Is there a methodology to reference, rather than selecting products by feel and finding factories by relationships?
If you can answer these three questions clearly, then talk about private brands.
If you can't answer clearly and follow the trend, you'll likely end up with three outcomes: products that don't sell, products that sell but without profit, or a single product that succeeds but the organization can't push for full implementation. After all the fuss, you return to square one.
Blindly following the trend to do private brands is a pitfall many retailers are currently stepping into.
## **Final Thoughts**
Woji Fresh is worth studying.
But the value of studying it is not to find a replicable template, but to see clearly: what conditions need to be present simultaneously for a private brand to go from zero to success.
Compare with yourself: which ones do you have, which ones don't you have?
Thinking this through is more important than rushing to act on a trend.
Of course, thinking clearly about your cards is the first step.
But where does the methodology come from? How do you find the right factory? How do you adjust the organization? These questions cannot be answered by studying just one Woji Fresh.
On June 4-5, 2026, in Hangzhou | We will hold a China Private Brand Industry Chain Conference—with decision-makers from Dingdong Maicai, Metro, FamilyMart, Tmall Supermarket, and other leading retail companies, who will personally share their strategic choices, pitfalls, and validated methodologies in private brands. Moreover, the conference will feature a dedicated supply-demand matchmaking session, where retailers bring procurement needs and manufacturers bring R&D and production capabilities, completing the first step from "handshake and acquaintance" to "cooperation intention" on site.
If you are also interested in private brands, and if you have supply-demand matching needs, you are welcome to register for the conference.
**First China Private Brand Industry Chain Conference**
Time: June 4-5, 2026
Location: Hangzhou, Zhejiang
This is an industry flagship conference spanning the upstream, midstream, and downstream of the private brand industry chain—regional supermarkets, community stores, instant retail, discount stores, leading brand manufacturers, OEM factories, supply chain service providers, with 1,500+ industry elites gathering in one place. Let the upstream hear the real needs of the terminal, and let the downstream see the real capabilities of the supply chain.


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## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 任文青
- Published: 2026-04-26
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/woji-fresh-makes-walmart-red-hot-again-8f56fa72/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/OsVQTqlZGbeXpTkPKvx9NQ

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