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Articles by 张振宇
Browse 28 New Distribution articles by 张振宇.
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FMCG Industry: Big Hit Products Increasingly Hard to Create
Since the beginning of the year, distributors report that despite visiting trade shows and markets, few promising new products have emerged, while private label products from retail systems are taking away business. The market seems to have lost its innovative edge, making it increasingly difficult to create blockbuster products. This is a natural stage of market development, where the threshold and requirements for creating big hits are much higher, demanding comprehensive capabilities ten times greater than before.
张振宇Brand Owners Create Hit Products, Retailers Create Private Labels: Private Labels Are Rewriting Shelf Rules
The aggressive rise of private labels in recent years is an unstoppable industry trend. For brand owners aiming for growth, understanding the logic behind retailers' private label development is an unavoidable topic. Retailers with scale advantages are almost all venturing into private label development. Product brands deliver good products through keen consumer insight and innovation, while private labels deliver good products through cost-effectiveness, based on observed data performance of product brands. Anyone who has built a brand knows that creating a hit product is extremely difficult and involves a great deal of luck...
张振宇Don't Be Led Astray by Anxiety: The Underlying Logic of FMCG Business Hasn't Changed
In recent years, AI has sparked widespread technological anxiety, especially among FMCG business owners who fear their traditional industry is on the verge of disruption. However, AI will not change the FMCG business itself—only the way information is processed—and the core competitiveness of providing better, more cost-effective products remains unchanged. The real challenge lies in incomplete digitalization and fragmented data, which hinder AI implementation, but AI can still significantly enhance work efficiency and alleviate talent shortages through human-machine collaboration.
张振宇Private Label: No Retreat for Brand Owners
In recent years, Sam's Club's Member's Mark and Pangdonglai's DL have popularized private labels, prompting almost all retailers with regional or larger scale advantages, whether KA, CVS, or snack channels, to push forward their own private labels. This has created a direct conflict: private labels and branded products compete for limited shelf space. Balancing the proportion between private labels and branded products is a complex issue for both retailers and brand owners. For brand owners, OEM private label production neither enhances brand value nor earns brand premiums, but retailers inevitably tilt resources toward private labels. This is an unavoidable trend, forcing brand owners to make painful choices.
张振宇The Dealer's Business Must Change
Recent visits to wholesale markets across multiple regions have reinforced the perception that the distribution business is becoming structurally harder. Traditional channels are declining, while new retail formats are squeezing dealers' margins and bypassing them, forcing a transformation.
张振宇The Underestimated County-Level Market Is Starting to Boom!
“Our business was exceptionally booming this Spring Festival, open even during the day on New Year's Eve, and we couldn't keep up with stocking the shelves...” Returning to the county town for the New Year, the author not only noticed many new snack stores but also received similar responses when visiting several. Rather than returning young people driving snack store business, it's more accurate to say that snack stores are well-suited to the soil of lower-tier markets. Of course, it's not just snack stores—Mixue Ice City, Luckin Coffee, KFC, and even Starbucks are blossoming across county-level markets, showing that brand supply is rapidly converging between lower-tier and first- and second-tier cities, reflecting the vigorous consumption power of county markets and the new reality of Chinese consumption: the democratization of mass consumption.
张振宇Brands Finding It Hard to Succeed in Instant Retail
Meituan's recent acquisition of Dingdong for $717 million signals that instant retail, as an efficient new retail format, is highly valuable. However, adapting to this efficiency shift is challenging for brands, from understanding to execution.
张振宇Top Brands Still Have Their Ace in the Hole!
In 2025, the diversified boom of new retail channels proved that retail efficiency gains significantly undermine brand value, while the rise of private labels further demonstrated brand value depreciation. Retail and brands are in a seesaw battle. This momentum is set to continue into 2026, making the new year even more challenging for FMCG brands. How should brands correctly assess their asset value in a harsh competitive environment? The answer lies in mature Western FMCG markets, where the market itself provides clear guidance.
张振宇The More Intense Retail Competition, the Scarcer Brands Become
A snack discount store clerk noted that even selling bulk sandwich cookies at 15.8-19.8 yuan per jin couldn't match the sales of Oreo at 24.8 yuan per jin. This feedback prompts a rethinking of the brand-channel relationship: while retail efficiency drives price competition, it doesn't kill brands but rather redefines brand value pricing, making brands scarcer. The market no longer needs overpriced brands but those offering genuine functional and emotional value.
张振宇Instant Retail Explodes: Brand Owners, Don't Fall Behind!
In 2025, instant retail has reached unprecedented attention in the FMCG market, with many brands strategically and systematically focusing on this channel. The real reason behind this surge is that the instant retail business model has reached its 'singularity'—explosive expansion after maturing to a turning point—driven by both demand-side alignment and supply-side efficiency improvements.
张振宇Private Labels Are Phasing Out a Group of Retailers
In 2025, private labels are booming, with nearly all national and regional retail chains trying them out for fear of falling behind. However, a comment by teacher Liu Chunxiong highlights a key to success: whether the retailer's brand power can endorse its private label. The key to success lies in the retailer's brand trust and its ability to leverage advantages like direct consumer data and supply chain control.
张振宇Private Brands Are Hot, But Don't Ruin Them
As China's retail efficiency revolution advances, private brands are being pursued by retailers. By 2025, almost all sizable retail companies, whether KA, CVS, discount formats, or instant retail, are trying or promoting private brands. However, without a clear distinction between PB (Private Brand) and PL (Private Label) products and their core meanings, it's hard to say that entering private brands is the right choice.
张振宇The Impact of Instant Retail Has Been Seriously Overestimated!
After the Spring Festival, JD.com entered the local life sector, followed by Meituan and Alibaba, sparking a subsidy war in instant retail. However, despite its rapid growth, instant retail's penetration rate is less than 2% of China's total retail market, and its impact is limited due to delivery costs and time constraints.
张振宇The Distribution Business Must Change
Recently, we have intensively visited multiple wholesale markets, reinforcing our earlier perception: the distribution business is becoming increasingly difficult, and this difficulty is structural. Traditional channels are declining, while new retail channels are expanding, squeezing distributors' profit margins. This trend indicates that distributors relying on inertia are being phased out, and they must adapt to the changing retail landscape to survive.
张振宇Brand Owners, Stop Forcing Inventory on Distributors!
The FMCG market's dismal Q2 2024 performance has left many brand owners, especially those unprepared, in a growth dilemma: products aren't moving at the terminal, and sales teams are struggling to meet KPIs, leading to the counterproductive practice of pushing inventory onto distributors. This article analyzes the root causes—a fundamental shift in supply-demand dynamics—and offers both strategic and practical advice for brand owners to navigate the shrinking market, emphasizing product innovation, channel adaptation, and avoiding extreme inventory pressure.
张振宇Big KAs Fall, LKAs Stand Firm
The rise of new retail in China, whether warehouse clubs, hard discount, or instant retail, is diverting business from traditional retail and forcing supermarkets to reform. However, a fact often overlooked is that Pangdonglai, the most cited model for supermarket reform, is an LKA that opened in 1997. Moreover, Pangdonglai is not unique; many LKAs like Hebei Xinyu Lou, Northeast Beiyoute, and Xiamen Yuanchu have remained resilient by leveraging regional advantages.
张振宇Annual Sales of $54 Billion, Covering Over 100,000 Outlets: The Business Logic of McLane as a 'Middleman'
China's current retail transformation, whether it's membership warehouses, discount retail, or instant retail, as well as the forced adjustments in supermarkets and convenience stores, is all about improving supply chain efficiency. Improving industry efficiency inevitably involves supply chain adjustments, and distributors, as a key intermediate link, are the hardest hit. Many distributors are confused about their future business positioning. However, this cycle of industry chain adjustment has been experienced in the retail development history of all developed countries. Naturally, the solution for the 'middleman' business can also be found in global retail history.
张振宇Yonghui's Removal of 'Middlemen': A Microcosm of Traditional Retail's Farewell to an Era
At Yonghui's shareholders' meeting on March 17, Miniso's chairman Ye Guofu led the reform as head of the reform leadership group, proposing 'three major changes' and 'three improvements and two reductions,' signaling that Yonghui's adjustment has entered deep waters. The supply chain reform explicitly aims to eliminate middlemen, promote net pricing, direct sourcing, and private label development to enhance Yonghui's product competitiveness. This move directly targets the biggest ills of traditional retail.
张振宇When Retailers Launch Private Labels, What Should Brands Do? Lessons from Costco and Pepsi in North America
Whether it's hard discount, membership-based retail, or instant retail, along with private labels that haven't fully exploded, the impact of channel changes on brands is undeniable, and 2025 will only be more intense than 2024. In this context, what should brands do? Looking globally, China's retail industry is not leading. Many problems can be solved by looking at retail history. This article briefly shares the 'love-hate entanglement' between Costco and PepsiCo in the North American market, more precisely, a 20-year tug-of-war between brand and channel.
张振宇Convenience Stores Are Also Undergoing Adjustments
In 2024, several 'small events' occurred in China's convenience store industry, including strategic partnerships and product innovations. These changes reflect the intense competitive pressures from discount retail and instant retail platforms, prompting convenience stores to adjust by developing private-label products, expanding fresh food offerings, and partnering with coffee brands.
张振宇2024, the Chaotic Landscape of Offline Retail
2024 was a landmark year for Chinese retail, marked by major events such as the rise of discount retail chains, the transformation of traditional supermarkets, and the expansion of instant retail by online giants. These three trends are reshaping the industry and will continue to influence the market in 2025.
张振宇From Excess Inventory Wholesaler to Retail Legend: How Don Quijote Navigated Economic Cycles?
Pan Pacific International Holdings (PPHI), Japan's fourth-largest retailer (after Seven & i Holdings, Aeon Group, and Fast Retailing), is known in China's retail industry for its main format, Don Quijote. As the ultimate representative of Japan's soft discount model, Don Quijote has achieved dominant leadership in this competitive mode and has posted 35 consecutive years of growth during Japan's 'Lost 30 Years.' This article analyzes its development from the perspective of 'macroeconomic cycles to individual business models' to draw parallels and provide insights for China's retail industry.
张振宇The Distribution Business Still Has Great Potential!
Recently, the author exchanged views with a major snack food distributor and heard a very interesting interpretation: distributor brothers, when facing the current intense market competition, need to think clearly about what exactly they are competing on. Is it products? Is it prices? Neither—it's survival capability. Distributors are currently under two main pressures: the decline of traditional terminal channels with business being carved up by new retail channels, and brand owners' growth pressures leading to continuous inventory pushing. Under these dual pressures, distributors are having a tough time! Many say distributors have no future. But the author believes...
张振宇Retail Industry at Breakneck Speed, Traditional Retailers Seek Change
The retail industry has seen dramatic shifts recently, with new formats like discount retail, membership clubs, and instant retail disrupting the old order. Traditional retailers, facing changing consumer preferences for value-for-money, must adopt either an efficiency-leading strategy (selling cheaper) or a differentiated assortment strategy (selling better products) to survive the intensifying competition and industry consolidation.
张振宇