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Retail in 2026: Who's Rising, Who's Crumbling
The retail industry is buzzing as platforms and capital accelerate their entry with real money, aiming to become winners in the next cycle. The starting point is the instant retail war, with internet platforms expanding offline, opening stores, building warehouses, and investing in supply chains. A key outcome: just after the 2026 Spring Festival, Meituan acquired Dingdong Maicai for $717 million, taking over 1,000 front warehouses, 7 million monthly active users, and a supply chain with 85% direct sourcing. The industry sees this as a defensive move by Meituan to keep Dingdong from competitors.
窄播Farewell to the Era of Hero Products
The market is shifting from betting on a single hit product to operating a product portfolio. As traffic dividends fade and consumer attention fragments, new brands succeed by starting with a niche hero product and then expanding into multi-SKU strategies over a decade.
窄播We Visited Fresh Beer Fulujia: How Mixue Bingcheng Sells Beer
On September 30, Mixue Group announced it acquired a 53% stake in Fresh Beer Fulujia for about 297 million yuan, extending its product line from beverages and ice cream to fresh beer. Fulujia, founded in 2021, positions itself as an affordable craft fresh beer brand with about 1,200 stores across 28 provinces, and its business model mirrors Mixue's low-price, beverage-like approach.
窄播Fresh Pet Food Is Booming, but Who Can Solve Consumers' Purchase Anxiety?
Fresh pet food is gaining popularity in China, driven by new pet owners who treat pets as family and demand fresh, safe ingredients. However, the category faces challenges including unclear definitions, lack of standards, and regulatory gaps, leaving consumers confused and brands navigating a complex landscape.
窄播Why Are There So Many 7-Elevens in Thailand?
According to the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, in 2023, the three major Japanese convenience store chains—LAWSON, 7-Eleven, and FamilyMart—had a combined 12,943 stores in China. Outside China, in a country roughly the size of Sichuan Province, 7-Eleven alone has grown to 15,245 stores, making it the country with the most 7-Eleven stores outside Japan. That country is Thailand, where over 15,000 7-Eleven stores command 70% of the convenience store market share.
窄播Instant Retail: Forging Another 'Mega-Platform'?
Imagine an e-commerce platform that leads its market by a wide margin, is a go-to for consumers who mostly search, offers daily necessities and long-tail items, has its own platform operations and product selection logic, and whose merchants often source from 1688. It sounds like Taobao, but it's Meituan Instashopping, an instant retail platform that is showing signs of becoming an e-commerce giant.
窄播Retail is in an Era of Major Circulation Transformation; One-Stop Hypermarkets Will Eventually Be Eliminated
This year, retailers continue to face tough times. We are confronting a circulation revolution as Chinese retail has raised the banner of price destruction, which has had a huge impact on the distribution system. The old circulation system is collapsing, while a new one has yet to be established—this is the current state of our industry. The entire Chinese circulation industry is undergoing revolutionary changes. Japanese circulation expert Professor Shuji Hayashi, in his 1962 book "Circulation Revolution," proposed a viewpoint that I strongly agree with: retail revolution inevitably triggers the reorganization of the entire supply chain system, which is the circulation revolution.
窄播After Price Equalization, a New Round of Covert Warfare Among E-commerce Platforms Has Begun
Low prices have been the core capability emphasized by e-commerce platforms since last year, and this focus has been accelerating. Until about two months ago, Taobao, Douyin, and Pinduoduo successively shifted their primary goal to achieving GMV growth. However, value for money is the general trend. The shift from focusing on low prices to emphasizing GMV does not mean platforms no longer value low prices; rather, absolute low prices have completed their stage-specific mission on some platforms—price wars have always been the most direct and effective competitive tool. Also accelerating this shift away from low-price competition is the freezing of the supplier-retailer relationship. When platforms use aggressive tactics to flatten prices to a point where there is almost no difference—essentially leveling the price advantage weapon in addition to traffic advantages—competition inevitably enters a hand-to-hand phase. Moreover, as more suppliers become clearly disadvantaged parties in the entire transaction chain, such low-price competition naturally becomes unsustainable.
窄播The Chinese Dilemma in Retail
Lagging behind means being vulnerable, a harsh reality for China's retail industry. According to the 2023 China Supermarket TOP100 list by the China Chain Store & Franchise Association, over half of the listed companies saw revenue declines, and half of the top 20 saw both sales and store numbers drop. Learning from advanced Western retail practices is a key option, as highlighted by the new book "King of Sales per Square Foot" by Trader Joe's founder Joe Coulombe, which offers lessons for Chinese retailers.
窄播How Aldi is Conquering Shanghai, China's Retail High Ground
Aldi is continuously strengthening its high cost-performance positioning. Recently, its 'Super Value' line launched a 9.9 yuan 500ml 52-proof liquor, drawing widespread attention. The line, introduced in December 2023, underscores Aldi's shift from a community kitchen to a 'good quality, low price' strategy, a move that has been evolving since late 2023.
窄播Dairy Industry Enters the Second Half: No Easy Growth
In recent years, due to optimistic expectations for consumption, Chinese dairy companies have seen a boom in large pasture construction, and small and medium-sized farms have actively expanded their herds, but the overly rapid capacity expansion has laid hidden dangers for today's dairy industry difficulties. Nielsen data shows that from 2021 to 2023, the revenue growth rate of domestic dairy products significantly declined, with year-on-year growth of 7.9%, -6.5%, and -2.4% respectively, while raw milk production capacity maintained an average annual growth rate of 7% during the same period. Since this year, the impact of oversupply of domestic raw milk has further escalated. The direct impact is that the price of raw milk continues to decline, even leading to a price-cost inversion.
窄播Why Juice Is Becoming Increasingly 'Fresh'
Juice is returning to the public eye in a form that caters to health trends. After 2021, the shrinking domestic demand for juice gradually recovered. According to data from the '2022 China Shopper Report, Series II' jointly released by Bain & Company and Kantar Worldpanel, juice became the fastest-growing beverage subcategory in sales during the first three quarters of that year. Under this growth trend, the popular form of juice products on the market has shifted from the previously popular FC (From Concentrate) to NFC (Not From Concentrate). The biggest difference between the two lies in the processing technology; the latter reduces the concentration and reconstitution steps, preserving the original flavor and nutrition of the fruit to the greatest extent.
窄播Finding a New Fulcrum for Omnichannel Operations
As consumer demand diversifies and reshapes, the e-commerce industry is undergoing a significant transformation. Data shows that in 2023, China's FMCG retail market saw a slight 0.04% decline in overall omnichannel sales compared to 2022. With the slowdown in growth, consumer decision-making has become longer and more complex, with users often gathering information across multiple platforms before purchasing. Brands urgently need to establish a certain connection with consumers, and influencer seeding is gaining favor because it can influence consumer behavior and help accumulate target audience assets.
窄播Who Can Seize the Entry Opportunity in the New Era of 'Pingti'?
1688, aiming to become synonymous with 'pingti' (affordable alternatives), is Alibaba's most prominent price-competitiveness IP. As the platform with the largest number of factories in China, it offers white-label goods nearly identical to branded products. Consumers, like treasure hunters, seek out brand OEM factories, pushing 1688 from B2B to C2C. Recently, 1688 opened three stores on Taobao, shortening this chain.
窄播Four Decades of Retail-Supplier Dynamics: How Brands Navigate Cycles
Discounting has become the dominant theme in retail, affecting both brands and channels. As a process that squeezes out residual value from the value chain, it requires brands and channels to operate with lower margins, ultimately benefiting consumers through lower prices and better value. This has sparked a new round of brand-channel conflicts, exemplified by disputes between JD.com and Haishi, Xinba and DeRUCCI, and Hema and Wangxiaolu.
窄播Snacks: A Microcosm of the Discount Evolution
Snack discount stores are a rare bright spot in the sluggish consumer venture capital market. From the merger of industry leaders Snacks Busy and Zhao Yiming, to Bestore's lawsuit and price cuts, to investments from Haoxiangni and Yanjin Shop, the industry is fiercely competing on low prices and channel building. Since 2020, these stores have compressed gross margins from 50% to 30% or less, rapidly expanding from 2,000 stores in 2020 to over 22,000 by 2023, but now face homogenization and slowing growth.
窄播Brands Must Face the Era of Comprehensive Discounting
Consumption has entered an era of comprehensive discounting, where discounting does not mean absolute low prices but rather all brands are squeezing out premium bubbles. Amid promotion fatigue, cautious consumption, and low-price competition, the Double 11 brand rankings across platforms are largely stable with lackluster growth, with only niche emerging categories like outdoor and men's, as well as cost-effective domestic brands and industrial belt brands, standing out. Proya surpassed foreign brands to become No.1 in Tmall beauty, and together with Hanhoo became TOP2 in Douyin e-commerce beauty. This change is set against the backdrop of domestic consumers gradually disenchanted with high-end international brands since last year, shifting to domestic skincare brands with mid-range pricing and similar functional ingredients.
窄播Why Can Pinduoduo Keep Prices Low and Still Profit?
Pinduoduo's low-price e-commerce ecosystem is decentralized, anti-brand, and centered on single-product hits. This article analyzes how Pinduoduo maintains profitability through a cycle of supply, user expansion, algorithm-driven traffic, ecosystem control, and supply chain optimization.
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