Editor's Note: Today, the speed and intensity of change are unprecedented. New products, brands, channels, theories, and models emerge endlessly, overwhelming distributors. What will be fleeting? What are the real trends? What should distributors persist in or change? What should they embrace or be cautious about? What is the right strategy for them? Answers are opinions; results are facts. Thus, there is no truly correct answer to these questions. However, Ye Zhongfu, founder of Taizhou Zhongxin Food, provides a more valuable example through his choices, actions, and results: Embracing change does not mean rushing or attacking in all directions. By focusing on existing advantages, continuously strengthening, stacking, and consolidating them, one can still achieve 10-fold growth in five years.

28 Years of Youth Forging a Regional Beer King Over the past 28 years, beer has remained the core business of his company. Ye Zhongfu stated, "As long as consumers still need the joy that beer brings, and as long as the best beer brands and products still need me to sell them, we will continue to operate the beer category." In 1996, Ye Zhongfu, with some beverage sales experience, first entered the beer industry and quickly realized that the beer market's potential far exceeded that of the beverage industry. After becoming an agent for a regional beer brand, he abandoned wholesale and proactively adopted a "distribution" approach, delivering beer directly to end customers, rapidly expanding sales, improving customer satisfaction, and ensuring market supply and demand stability. "At that time, most people in the market were passive merchants; we proactively distributed products, posted ads, and developed new markets. Although it was tiring, the results were excellent," Ye Zhongfu recalled. Leveraging the "traveling merchant" model, his performance grew rapidly, and he gradually built his own sales team and distribution network. In 1998, he became an agent for a well-known beer brand. As business steadily developed, in 2004, the brand reorganized its regional market and authorized Ye Zhongfu as the general agent for the Taizhou area. This regional expansion became a significant milestone for Ye Zhongfu and his Zhongxin Food business. Over the next decade or so, Zhongxin Food grew larger, with peak beer sales exceeding 10 million cases, making it the undisputed beer king in Taizhou.

Adhering to a Differentiation Strategy Flowers Will Bloom Eventually It is worth noting that Ye Zhongfu has always regarded differentiation as a key business strategy. He not only leads peers in sales methods but also has unique insights in product selection and operation. "The territory for bottled products has long been divided, leaving little space; only cans have opportunities. Looking at developed countries, the proportion of canned beer is high, and the southeastern coastal cities will inevitably follow this trend. So in 1998, I saw cans as the biggest opportunity. Once you see the opportunity, the rest is persistence, because flowers will bloom eventually," Ye Zhongfu said. Later, this canned beer became a major single product in the market, and Zhongxin Food became the largest distributor for this brand's product.

In 2010, another strategic brand opportunity emerged: Heineken. As a top global beer brand, Heineken enjoys worldwide reputation and entered the Chinese mainland market as early as 1992 through imports. However, due to its high-end positioning and high promotion costs, Heineken faced long-term low sales in China. When the opportunity to become the Taizhou agent for Heineken arose in 2010, Ye Zhongfu made the decision to cooperate without hesitation. He was well aware of the difficulty: for a long time, due to low sales and high promotion costs, distributors of Heineken almost all failed to make money or even incurred losses. Ye Zhongfu's quick decision was driven by "brand layout logic" rather than "business logic":

First, Heineken is an undisputed top global brand, with a very high status in most markets. Competition in the beer market will ultimately be brand competition. Since the opportunity with Heineken arose, the layout must be completed. As always, flowers will bloom eventually; it's just a matter of when.

Second, since it's a good brand, the earlier the layout, the better; the earlier, the greater the opportunity. Only in the early market of a brand can there be opportunities as large as a regional market. Once the brand gains momentum, where would such a big opportunity exist? Getting a district or county would be good enough.

Third, thanks to over a decade of successful market operations, Zhongxin Food had completed its initial capital accumulation, and its main business was stable, fully capable of supporting Heineken's losses for a period. Although Ye Zhongfu had thought it through and prepared for the long term, he did not expect the ensuing difficult "ten-year war of resistance." From 2010 to 2019, Zhongxin Food's Heineken sales hovered around only 200,000 cases annually, with annual losses of about 2 million yuan. Despite not achieving profitability, Zhongxin Food remained committed to the Heineken brand, continuously investing resources and energy, laying a solid market foundation for Heineken's development over ten years. In 2018, China Resources Beer formally signed a strategic cooperation with Heineken for the Chinese market, and integration officially began in 2019. Only then did the fate of Zhongxin Food's Heineken project begin to truly reverse.

Heineken Blooms Manufacturer and Distributor Jointly Create a 10-Fold Growth Miracle in 5 Years Starting from 2020, Heineken China, under the leadership of China Resources Beer, entered a phase of sustained ultra-high-speed growth. The growth in the Taizhou market was particularly impressive: From an initial 250,000 cases in 2019, it is expected to reach approximately 2.8 million cases in 2024. In five years, Heineken's sales in Taizhou grew over 10-fold, and Zhongxin Food's combined Heineken and Snow volume exceeded 5 million cases!

Beer is a highly mature and fiercely competitive market. Why did Taizhou achieve a 10-fold growth miracle in five years? Ye Zhongfu summarized four reasons: China Resources Beer, product strength, channel strength, and company talent.

First, China Resources Beer's correct strategy and strong organizational capabilities. In Ye Zhongfu's view, the biggest advantage of China Resources as an organization is its standardized management and emphasis on rules; its leaders are broad-minded and pragmatic. Under China Resources' leadership, Heineken shows great trust in distributors and provides substantial strategic support, allowing distributors to charge forward without worries. In the Taizhou market, Ye Zhongfu feels that "the regional sales organization of China Resources Beer responds extremely quickly, working with distributors to quickly capture numerous high-ground terminals. The channel integration of Heineken and Snow brands is also excellent; many customers operate both Heineken and Snow simultaneously, achieving effective resource utilization and strong market control." "China Resources Beer is different from other brands; it truly treats distributors as back-to-back partners. Facing increased competition intensity in beer over the past two years, it has proposed building a 'manufacturer-distributor community of shared destiny' this year, which is rare in the FMCG industry," Ye Zhongfu believes. "China Resources Beer has brought real change to Heineken."

Second, Heineken Silver is the strongest driver of growth. Heineken Original is a global single product, renowned among beer enthusiasts worldwide, and has been the only flavor Heineken has operated in China. However, this product has a heavier taste and a relatively narrower audience, making it difficult to achieve significant sales breakthroughs with this single flavor. On May 1, 2020, Heineken launched "Heineken Silver" in China, a product with a crisper and smoother taste targeting young people, which quickly won the favor of young beer consumers. Ye Zhongfu believes, "In beer, winning the youth wins the world. The launch of Silver is the product foundation for the rapid development of the Heineken brand in the Taizhou market. Over 90% of our growth comes from this younger, more fashionable Heineken Silver." The success of Heineken Silver is not limited to the Chinese market. According to New Distribution, after its success in China, Heineken Silver was launched in Europe and other regions, receiving great acclaim and becoming a phenomenal product in the global premium beer market.

Third, Zhongxin Food's solid channel foundation and strong market control. A good brand and good channels complement and achieve each other. Through 28 years of market operations, Zhongxin Food has become synonymous with professional beer operation in Taizhou. "Many distributors have consistently made money following Zhongxin, so they trust our strategy and judgment, and believe they can continue to profit with us," Ye Zhongfu believes. "A regional distributor must cherish their reputation; your goodwill is your most important asset. If channels and terminals trust you, you are an operator; if not, you are nothing." In the Taizhou area, there are approximately 70,000 FMCG terminals of various sizes, with about 20,000 suitable for selling Heineken. Zhongxin Food has deep cooperation with 19,000 of them. To motivate distributors, Zhongxin Food has formulated detailed incentive policies, including distribution incentives and business incentives. The core of this cooperation model is "benefit sharing"; the success of distributors means stronger market control for the company. It is this highly flexible and detail-oriented channel management strategy that gives Zhongxin Food an irreplaceable competitive advantage in the regional market. In this process, the company adopted a strategy of "tiered management + resource allocation." For core urban areas, direct control of terminals is the core strategy, with experienced sales staff responsible for terminal customers to ensure timely and quality service; in township areas, the company supports distributors' sales teams to achieve broad terminal coverage. This model balances both breadth and service depth.

Fourth, willingness to share profits is the top priority in talent strategy. Zhongxin Food places great emphasis on talent recruitment and development, and the high salaries of the Zhongxin team are well-known in the Taizhou industry. "Paying lip service to valuing talent is useless; at the very least, you must show sincerity in sharing results. This is the foundation of talent development," Ye Zhongfu believes. If you are unwilling to let the team earn more, then valuing talent is just a pretense. How to distribute money is a technical matter, but being willing to share profits is a matter of the boss's mindset. Ye Zhongfu has a goal: to keep the average income of Zhongxin's business team at a leading level in the industry, improve employees' quality of life and dignity, and maintain the team's lasting combat effectiveness.

In Conclusion After years of deep cultivation, Zhongxin Food has become the undisputed beer king in the Taizhou area, with Heineken holding the major share. Looking to the future, Ye Zhongfu aims to be "more focused, more professional, and more efficient," setting aside less relevant products, persisting in focusing and enhancing the beer business, and continuously building the company into a vision of an excellent beer operator in the Taizhou region. He firmly believes that even in this era of dazzling change and innovation, focus still has irreplaceable value, persistence in focus can still generate strong penetrating power, and it can still lead Zhongxin Food to sustained success.