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Articles by 周群
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The FMCG Industry Is in Chaos Right Now
Recent visits to multiple regional markets reveal widespread anxiety across the FMCG industry, affecting brand owners, retailers, and distributors alike. Since 2024, over half of listed food and beverage companies have seen declining revenues, while retail is being reshaped by new formats and online channels, forcing a fundamental redefinition of roles and collaboration.
周群Dealer's Product Selection Ability Is Ten Times More Important Than Before
When visiting dealers, I often ask them, 'What is your competitive advantage locally?' Two years ago, common answers were 'I have many top brands,' 'My compensation and performance are good,' 'My team is strong,' 'My store coverage is extensive,' etc. Since last year, I frequently hear a new answer: 'My product selection ability is strong' and 'My category management is good.' I've noticed that many dealer friends are beginning to realize that finding good products is also a core competency. Why did dealers overlook product selection in the past? Why has it become extremely important today?
周群Wines That Don't Sell in Traditional Channels Are Selling Out on Meituan Flash Shopping
In recent years, the sales model of the liquor industry has been undergoing structural changes. On one hand, traditional distribution models, including offline liquor stores and mass distribution channels, are facing increasing pressure, with issues such as high inventory, opaque pricing, and low channel efficiency becoming apparent. On the other hand, although traditional e-commerce has created some incremental growth by compressing distribution links, it has struggled to fully unlock the growth potential of the liquor market due to the mismatch between logistics efficiency and consumers' immediate needs. Against this backdrop, instant retail has rapidly risen with its 'localized + high-timeliness' model, becoming a new strategic high ground that the liquor industry is competing to explore.
周群Snack Food Distributor: 57 Employees, 200 Million in Annual Sales, Small Goal to Become Hefei's No.1 Snack Food Brand Operator
The distributor business is not complicated; it essentially acts as an intermediary, passing goods from upstream to downstream. However, despite the unchanged underlying model, operational difficulty has multiplied due to lower margins, declining per-store sales, rising costs, new channel impacts, and bare procurement by supermarkets. Snack food distributors face additional pressure from the rapid expansion of snack stores with discounts like 8.8折, 8.5折, even 5.5折. This article shares the case of Hefei Baili Food, which achieved 200 million yuan in sales with only 57 employees, aiming to become Hefei's No.1 snack food brand operator.
周群Distributors Need to Fully Tap into Localized Markets
In August 2024, a New Distribution industry report showed that over half of distributors experienced declining sales. However, in the first two months after the Chinese New Year, visits to over twenty top regional distributors revealed that despite difficulties, their business remained stable or grew, albeit with lower profits. Their common trait was full-channel coverage in localized markets, especially in non-first-tier cities.
周群Instant Retail vs. Traditional E-commerce: A Battle for 'Time Value'
Instant retail is rapidly capturing market share from traditional e-commerce by offering superior time value and convenience. With demand and supply both growing, instant retail is set for sustained high growth, eventually coexisting with traditional e-commerce.
周群Interview with C&S Paper's Yang Senlin: Digging into 5% High-Potential Stores, Low-Cost Market Growth of 67%
From January to September, in the Hefei market, C&S Paper achieved a maximum monthly growth of 106% and an overall business growth of 67% year-on-year. This was the result of the company's smart retail pilot project in 2024. The core strategy, as explained by CIO Yang Senlin, was to focus on helping distributors sell more goods more effectively, using digital tools to identify high-potential stores and match products to consumer demand.
周群Distributors' Business Is Indeed Getting Harder
The market has indeed become more challenging. From August to now, I visited over thirty distributors and received consistent feedback that business is tough this year. Sales declines are common, and even where growth persists, it's growth without profit gains. The reasons include market share redistribution and, more importantly, the market entering a phase of contraction.
周群The FMCG Industry Has Fundamentally Changed
With just over a month left in 2024, this year's business is nearly over. If one word were to sum up this year's FMCG industry, it would be 'difficult.' Retail channel transformations have come one after another, with intense competition both online and offline, including supermarket overhauls and the aggressive expansion of snack stores. Brand owners have also struggled, with financial reports showing severe declines, having been held hostage by e-commerce in the past and now by new retail. Distributors face even greater challenges, squeezed by upstream and downstream players in the past, and now facing abandonment by them, with the trend of big fish eating small fish becoming increasingly evident.
周群Flash Warehouses: Amplifying the "Incremental Value" of Instant Retail
Since the beginning of this year, New Distribution has been visiting brands, retailers, and distributors to discuss business and market changes. The consensus is that business is tough this year, with most channels showing weak growth or even decline. However, instant retail channels, especially flash warehouses, have maintained stable growth, presenting a significant opportunity for incremental business.
周群Distributors Doing Regional B2b: Price Wars Are Meaningless
At the China FMCG Conference in August, New Distribution released the '2024 China FMCG Distributor B2b Platform Strategy Insight Report' and held a closed-door B2b seminar. We observed that both brand owners and distributors are highly interested in the B2b model, driven by its value in deep coverage of small and medium stores. However, the underlying reason for this renewed attention is the lack of growth in the market.
周群From Traditional Trading to Regional B2B: Covering 15,000+ Stores in 5 Years, Business Doubles
In 2001, he entered the distribution industry and became a leading paper and hygiene products distributor with annual sales exceeding 100 million yuan within 10 years. In 2015, he began transitioning to regional B2B, losing over 10 million yuan in 4 years. In 2019, he cut off traditional trading to focus all resources on B2B. By 2023, he covered 15,000+ local small stores, with 5,000+ monthly active outlets, 8,000+ SKUs across categories like beverages, snacks, grain and oil, daily chemicals, and achieved annual sales of 300 million yuan. This is...
周群This Summer, How Does Instant Retail Use Small "Ice Cups" to Play Big "Business"?
The FMCG market has experienced a rapid development period of over a decade and has shifted from an incremental market to a stock market. For brands, finding new growth in a stock market is challenging. True new growth is not about reallocating existing market share or shifting sales between old and new channels, but about creating new consumption scenarios through marketing to stimulate potential consumer demand and expand the overall market. Instant retail is a channel that continues to grow, and this article analyzes how brands can leverage new scenarios in instant retail to achieve new growth, using the case of the "Ice + X" campaign on Ele.me.
周群How Offline 'Pinduoduo' Players Are Expanding Their Online Territory
In the past two years, two retail formats have maintained rapid growth: discount retail and instant retail. Discount stores, known for high cost-performance, have expanded rapidly despite intense competition and store closures in the supermarket sector. Meanwhile, instant retail has grown at an average annual rate of over 50%, with its market size expected to triple by 2025. Increasingly, discount chain brands like HotMaxx and Hi-TGO are embracing instant retail, blending these complementary formats to meet evolving consumer needs.
周群Distributors: Change is Painful, but Not Changing Means Elimination
In recent exchanges with distributors, first-half sales generally fell short of expectations, leaving many anxious. Market pressure is forcing distributors to attempt changes—whether in organizational structure, compensation, business models, or software—but the process is painful. This article shares common challenges and solutions, emphasizing that distributors must not be held hostage by employees, should tie pay to market performance, reduce reliance on secondary wholesalers, master small-store management, develop sell-through capabilities, use digital tools effectively, and approach B2B cautiously.
周群Dingdong Maicai's Profitability Still Questioned, but Traditional Retailers Have Already Embraced Front Warehouses
Two years ago, with the decline of Miss Fresh, there was a view in the retail industry that the 'front warehouse model cannot be profitable.' Miss Fresh has collapsed, and Dingdong Maicai continued to lose money from 2019 to 2022. However, Dingdong Maicai achieved profitability in 2023 and the first quarter of this year. Despite this, Dingdong Maicai is still questioned, and its US stock performance declined after the Q1 earnings report, as the industry doubts its sustained profitability.
周群Meituan Flash Delivery Warehouses Accelerate Supply Chain Layout: Where Are the Opportunities for Distributors?
Recently, we visited several distributors and discussed industry changes, noting a shift from purely offline thinking to integrated online-offline business development. Distributors are increasingly interested in local instant retail, particularly Meituan's Flash Delivery Warehouses (Flash Warehouses), and are asking whether they can participate in this business model.
周群Distributors Have Lost Their Sense of Security
Distributors are feeling increasingly insecure as markets stagnate while manufacturers keep raising sales targets, terminal stores show little loyalty, and talent becomes hard to recruit and retain. To regain security, distributors must focus on self-improvement through digitalization, broader terminal coverage, and better compensation plans.
周群Alibaba's Retail Link Retreats, Distributors Step Forward
Recently, a B2B distributor expressed regret over Alibaba's Retail Link, noting that while the physical warehouse part was profitable in his region, Alibaba lacked patience. New Distribution's visits to regional B2B distributors confirm that many succeed in both high-tier and low-tier cities. The article explores why internet giants fail at FMCG B2B while distributors excel, emphasizing density, cost efficiency, and the shift from transformation to career change for distributors.
周群How Did He Achieve Annual Sales Over 100 Million in a County Town with a Million Population, Representing Brands like Mondelez, Lay's, and Qiaqia?
A distributor in a county town with a population of over one million achieved annual sales exceeding 100 million by transforming from a brand agent to a channel supply chain company, focusing on the snack category, optimizing channel structure, and improving salesperson efficiency through a 'salesperson + merchandiser' model.
周群Three Key Factors: Why Waima Wine Delivery Attracts Entrepreneurs
Meituan's Waima Wine Delivery, piloted in June 2021, now covers over 40 cities across six provinces and has opened more than 400 stores nationwide. In 2023, its transaction volume grew 600% year-on-year. Behind this impressive data, New Distribution believes the core question is: why has Waima been able to open so many stores and achieve such rapid growth? The answer may be seen from Waima's partner merchants.
周群Meituan Flash Warehouse Takes Root in Local Markets: Should Partners Join?
Last August, Meituan Flash Warehouse partnered with New Distribution to host a study tour in Guangzhou, giving some partners a clear understanding of the flash warehouse business model. Since then, we have received more inquiries from partners about this model. They want to know: how big is the growth potential for Meituan Flash Warehouse? Over the past few years, Meituan Flash Warehouse has grown by leaps and bounds. At the 2024 Meituan Flash Warehouse Ecosystem Conference held in Wuhan in January, data showed that the number of warehouses grew from just over 600 in 2021 to over 6,000 in 2023, with daily orders exceeding 2 million.
周群The Distributor Business Can Thrive for Another Decade
Despite shrinking margins and rising costs in the FMCG industry, one distributor in Bijie, Guizhou, has achieved nearly 30% annual growth for three consecutive years. Fang Fan, general manager of Guizhou Fang Wang Yuan Trading, shares his 11-year journey from scratch to over 100 million yuan in scale, emphasizing market penetration, team management, and future strategies.
周群In an Era of Slowing Growth, Why Can Meituan Flash Delivery Create Incremental Growth for Brands?
With the deep integration of people, goods, and scenes, Meituan Flash Delivery is leading instant retail toward new growth. In recent discussions with brand partners, the common feedback is that growth has become difficult in the past two years, and sustained growth even more so. For brands, growth is an unavoidable topic, but now it has become a challenge. In fact, over the past decade, the total market volume for most FMCG categories has not seen significant growth.
周群