A few days ago, I was talking with a distributor friend who told me he had quit traditional e-commerce platforms. He had entered e-commerce to add a sales channel, but reality was harsh: sales never took off, return rates were high, and after three to four months of losses, he had to exit.
Traditional e-commerce platforms are seeing plateauing traffic, intense competition among merchants, and traditional distributors often lack the operational experience, leading to losses if they enter blindly.
So, is there still an opportunity for distributors to do business online?
A distributor friend told me that the food and beverage category is seeing good growth on some emerging e-commerce platforms. For example, on Dewu, the number of active merchants in the food category grew 450% year-on-year, and the number of merchants with GMV exceeding one million grew 400%. Many food and beverage distributors have achieved significant growth on Dewu.
Why can Dewu help food and beverage distributors achieve high growth despite intense online competition? What advantages does the Dewu platform have?
Semi-managed model, low operational barriers:
Zero e-commerce experience, two people can achieve triple-digit growth
I've talked with many distributors about online e-commerce. Many have tried it. These peers, originally focused on offline channels, would open stores on e-commerce platforms, assemble professional operations teams, but most ended up failing—no sales, no profit.
Why is it hard for distributors to succeed on traditional e-commerce platforms?
First, at the fundamental level, online logic is completely different from offline business. From traffic acquisition, to consumer guidance, to purchase promotion, and finally to conversion and repurchase, all require professional operations talent, especially deep insight into platform rules.
Second, traditional e-commerce has relatively high barriers, with deposits often in the hundreds of thousands, creating significant financial pressure. For distributors, it's not that they can't do traditional e-commerce well, but that the barriers are too high: no professional team, no data insight capability, and not understanding periodic rule changes, making it difficult to succeed.
Why can distributors quickly get started and generate sales on Dewu, even achieving sales upon entry?
Dewu has recognized the difficulties merchants face on traditional e-commerce and offers a "semi-managed model" for distributors without online operations experience.
The core of the semi-managed model is to free merchants to focus on what they do best: providing product supply chain and handling shipping and fulfillment. From product selection, operations, manpower, to customer service, Dewu handles the operations. Distributors only need to list products, set prices, and ship orders.
A daily chemical distributor told me that he only used two people to manage over 500 SKUs on Dewu and achieved over one million in sales within six months.
Dewu's "semi-managed model" is essentially a concierge service, allowing merchants even with zero e-commerce experience to get started quickly.
"Because unlike traditional e-commerce platforms, you don't need to delve into complex operations like store weight, traffic investment, search settings, etc. You just need to capture natural traffic and handle order shipping. It's relatively simple."
Moreover, new merchants get dedicated 1-on-1 platform operations support, with detailed guidance on platform rules and processes, and any questions are promptly answered.
Fast growth, strong explosive power, and high profit margins:
90% young users, 90% free traffic
A very real problem for distributors doing traditional e-commerce is: customer acquisition costs are extremely high; without paid traffic, it's hard to get sales. But the dilemma with paid traffic is that the food and beverage industry already has low gross margins, and if you keep investing in traffic, you won't make money.
Moreover, since e-commerce festivals began, a significant portion of users engage in stockpiling shopping, concentrating purchases during major promotional periods. This leads to intense competition during promotions, rising traffic costs, and even with investment, sales may not increase.
But on Dewu, the food and beverage category continues to grow rapidly. Coca-Cola entered Dewu and became the top beverage category in 3 months, with daily orders exceeding 10,000; Yili entered Dewu and topped the food industry in 5 months, with brand transactions reaching 4.59 million, etc.
Why can food and beverages still experience explosive growth on Dewu?
First, the platform has traffic, and users have demand.
Young people are the main consumer group for food and beverages, so there is naturally corresponding consumer demand. Moreover, young consumers place great importance on emotional value. Dewu's content community itself continuously provides emotional value. When content, scenarios, and products are combined, sales are a natural result.
So, merchants on Dewu only need to be willing to understand consumer needs and provide corresponding product supply based on consumption scenarios, and sales can quickly explode.
Second, product-centric, with 90% of Dewu's traffic being natural traffic.
Traditional e-commerce platforms rely more on paid traffic; whoever pays more gets traffic preference, more exposure, and clicks.
Dewu is driven by products and content, with focused traffic that is easy to obtain.
First, product-driven: high-quality traffic is shared among hot-selling products and products that meet user needs. As long as merchants have good products at reasonable prices, they can enjoy 90% free, high-quality traffic.
Second, content-driven: using the content community to seed products and gain traffic accelerates the conversion from traffic to sales. In Dewu's community content ecosystem, merchants can also act as users, posting product usage experiences through images, text, and videos, creating authentic and attractive seeding content.
Third, "gift-giving" mindset guidance: using gift box bundling to broaden price bands, giving merchants both sales and profits.
Most food and beverage merchants rely on small profits and high volume, but festivals provide natural opportunities for new business growth—gift boxes. Compared to single items, gift boxes can bring both sales and higher profits.
In the past, young people's gift budgets were mostly spent on categories like "accessories, bags, beauty." Dewu, through "gift-giving" mindset guidance, has turned "snacks and drinks" into a "companion" choice.
For example, during Qixi Festival, about 100 "snack gift packs and gift boxes" themed for Valentine's Day were listed in advance, combined with community content layout, using "snack gift box unboxing" content to guide consumers to add to cart and favorite in advance, bringing huge increments to food merchants.
At the same time, gift box bundling helps merchants expand categories and broaden price bands through product combinations, achieving both sales and profits, and increasing profit margins.
Average return rate for food and beverages is 0.02%
Giving merchants peace of mind
A condiment distributor told me that he previously tried an e-commerce platform, gained sales through low prices, but just as things improved, return rates rose.
At its worst, return rates exceeded 30%, and many consumers even requested refunds without returning goods, and the platform didn't help merchants. In the end, he not only didn't make money but lost money, so he had to close the store.
The return rate problem on traditional e-commerce platforms is actually an advantage for Dewu. It is understood that Dewu's average return rate is less than 10%, and for the food and beverage industry, it's even lower, with an average return rate of only 0.02%.
For food and beverage distributors, once products are sold, they don't need to worry about after-sales issues.
Why can such a low return rate be achieved?
First, this is strongly related to Dewu's user characteristics.
94% of Dewu's consumers are young people under 35, and the vast majority are Gen Z between 19 and 25, mostly students and white-collar workers. They have strong purchasing power and are the main consumer group for snacks and drinks, which account for a high proportion of young people's daily spending. Additionally, young people have habits of stockpiling and periodic purchases, and their consumption scenarios are diverse, not impulsive.
Second, the low return rate is also related to Dewu's product supply.
Starting with trendy shoes and apparel, Dewu has established a reputation for authentic products in consumers' minds, and consumers have strong trust in products on the platform. Moreover, to meet young people's new, trendy, cool, and flashy consumption demands, Dewu works with merchants to focus on creating supply for categories like "interest and self-pleasure," "festival gifts," and "fresh and novel," creating significant differentiation from other platforms.
For example, "interest and self-pleasure" IP collaboration sets: Glico x Sanrio collaboration gift pack, Glico product family, went from zero to over 1,000 orders during Qixi; "festival gifts": during Valentine's Day, the food industry saw strong performance from "Dove, Disney, and Glico," with 100 Valentine's-themed "snack gift packs and gift boxes" listed, helping merchants achieve nearly 5x explosive growth. And "fresh and novel": Sprite Jay Chou cans, Costa x National Gallery coffee, Coca-Cola Olympic limited edition, peach-flavored Coca-Cola, etc.
These products have strong gift attributes, and consumer return rates are very low. Dewu not only has traffic dividends, but also combines consumption habits with platform product supply to form a unique merchant-friendly business ecosystem. This is Dewu's uniqueness.
Final Thoughts
"Is there still an opportunity for distributors to go online?"
One distributor's answer was memorable: It's not about whether there's an opportunity, but that changes in the market are forcing distributors to try more.
In the past, offline business was incremental, and distributors who focused on offline reaped the benefits. But now it's a stock market. Once the market structure stabilizes, where will distributors' growth come from? They need to look at incremental online platforms. They should choose platforms that allow them to leverage their strengths and succeed. For example, platforms like Dewu that are very friendly to distributors:
- Semi-managed model, one-on-one guidance, distributors don't need e-commerce experience
- 90% young users, 90% free traffic, sales without paid traffic
- Consumer trust, high average order value, low return rates