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Woji Fresh Makes Walmart Red Hot Again!
Today, walking into a Walmart supermarket, you'll see Woji Fresh everywhere. This private brand of Walmart has made the retailer popular again over the past year. According to industry insiders, Woji Fresh's SKU count accounts for only 1/8 of Walmart's total hypermarket SKUs, yet it contributes over 40% of sales. From January to February 2025, Walmart's hypermarket food category saw year-on-year growth across all categories—a rarity in today's hypermarket landscape. As the retail industry faces difficulties, many retailers treat private brands as a lifeline. But in the hypermarket format, few have achieved what Woji Fresh has. Why?
任文青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Hema, Meituan, Tianhong and Others Vie for South China Hard Discount Market: Three Major Concerns?
On April 18, two more eye-catching Hema NB stores opened in Shenzhen, and on April 17, Meituan's Happy Monkey opened its first South China store in Foshan. Meanwhile, Tianhong welcomed an Outlet Le discount store at the end of last month. With Walmart community stores already having 13 locations in Shenzhen, community retail in South China in 2026 is no longer a simple format iteration but a fierce hard discount alley fight. As a veteran with over a decade in retail, I've witnessed the golden age of hypermarkets, the proliferation of convenience stores, and the rise and fall of community fresh food. But this time, the explosion of hard discount community stores feels completely different—it's not an incremental innovation but a structural reshaping of the industry's survival.
天外飞仙To Win in Vietnam's FMCG Market, You Must First Understand Its Distributor System
Vietnam's FMCG market is dominated by traditional trade (70-75% share), with a fragmented and relationship-driven distribution network. Chinese brands often fail due to a lack of understanding of this complex system, which includes national oligopolies, regional distributors, Chinese merchant networks, and specialized channel players.
戚特Wojixian's "Little Green Bottle" at 9.9 Yuan Breaks Through Dairy Market: Retailers Are Grabbing Dairy Companies' Business
Some say 2025 is the first year of retailer private brands. Strictly speaking, this judgment is not accurate. Private brands are not new; Sam's Club, Hema, Aldi, Pangdonglai, and even many regional supermarkets have already tried private brands to varying degrees. But if we say 2025 is the watershed where Chinese retailers' private brands move from 'testing the waters' to 'scale competition,' it might be closer to the truth. More and more retailers are no longer satisfied with making a few low-price substitutes; they are beginning to treat private brands as a product strategy, supply chain strategy...
王莹Nongfu Spring, Master Kong and Other 11 Beverage Companies Report 2025 Results: Over 60% Achieve Growth, Highest Increase Reaches 115%!
A financial report is a mirror. Recently, multiple listed beverage companies in China have disclosed their 2025 performance reports. The same track shows vastly different results: some see both revenue and profit surge, while others face revenue decline and profit pressure. Behind this is a predetermined divergence. As health-conscious and scenario-based consumer demand reshapes the market, channel fragmentation and price competition add pressure, ending the era of 'distribution wins.' What replaces it is a comprehensive competition in product structure, channel efficiency, and brand capability. In 2025, the beverage industry saw significant changes; who is upgrading their structure, and who is under passive pressure? Through the financial data, a more realistic industry answer emerges.
杨玉琳From "Self-Procurement" to "Private Brand": Pangdonglai's Path Is Hard to Replicate
Driven by the "Pangdonglai renovation" of supermarkets, China's supermarket sector has seen a boom in private brands. Many see Pangdonglai's results but not its growth history. With over 20 years of private brand history, Pangdonglai's journey is difficult to replicate quickly. Without knowing its history, one cannot grasp its essence or learn from its present. Having followed Pangdonglai for over 15 years, I have witnessed its complete transformation from "self-procurement" to "private brand." Reviewing this history may help companies learning from Pangdonglai find their own path.
刘春雄Plunge 40% vs Surge 120%: The 'Heaven and Hell' of Consumer Giants
In 2025, China's consumer market reached a milestone as total retail sales of consumer goods surpassed 50 trillion yuan for the first time, reaching 50.1202 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.7%. Final consumption expenditure contributed 52% to economic growth, up 5 percentage points from the previous year. This achievement came amid global economic turmoil and weak consumer confidence, with policy support playing a key role, including 300 billion yuan in ultra-long-term special treasury bonds for trade-in subsidies. However, the industry showed stark divergence: some leading companies delivered impressive growth, while others faced significant declines.
张二河McCormick Integrates Unilever Foods, Betting on a New Health Track
In one of the most transformative deals in both companies' histories, the leaders of Unilever and McCormick have offered an in-depth 'unpacking' of the transaction. Recently, Unilever CEO Fernando Fernandez and McCormick Chairman, President, and CEO Brendan Foley each sat down for fireside chats with Barclays analysts, dissecting the latest deal and future plans. So, between McCormick and Kraft Heinz, why did Unilever choose the former?
潘娴Scenario Roadmap: Momentum Scenarios Break Through, Kinetic Scenarios Drive Volume, Long-tail Scenarios Sustain Growth
Sales expansion is essentially scenario expansion. A product's success depends on how many scenarios consumers associate it with. The scenario roadmap follows the path from momentum scenarios to kinetic scenarios to long-tail scenarios, guiding cognitive spillover in a controlled sequence.
刘春雄Copying Sam's Club, Imitating Pangdonglai, and Mimicking Aldi: Most Retailers Have Turned Their Private Labels into 'White-Labeling'!
Private labels are heating up, with over 48% of urban Chinese households purchasing them in the first three quarters of 2025, up 10 percentage points year-on-year. However, most retailers are merely following the trend without understanding the core logic: private labels are essentially a trust endorsement from the retailer, and without strong brand credibility, they risk failure.
周群2026 Global Retail Top 50 Released, Only Two Chinese Companies Listed
Recently, the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Kantar released the '2026 Global Retailer TOP50 list'. Data shows that the total revenue of listed companies in 2026 reached $3.57 trillion (approximately RMB 25.70 trillion), a year-on-year increase of 2.50%; the total number of stores was 308,700, a year-on-year decrease of 11.71%, showing a distinct feature of 'slight revenue growth and store contraction'. From the changes in the two lists, several core trends can be clearly observed: discount retail and membership warehouse formats are resilient, while hypermarkets and convenience stores continue to face pressure; Japanese retail giants generally slipped in rankings, and Latin American regional retailers saw weak growth; omnichannel integration, smaller store formats, and AI technology application are becoming common choices for retailers to cope with cyclical fluctuations.
联商网编辑部Surge 45.11%! Zhongju Hi-Tech's Q1 2026 Profit Reaches New High
On the evening of April 17, Chubang's parent company Zhongju Hi-Tech (600872.SH) disclosed its 2025 annual report and 2026 first-quarter report. In 2025, the company achieved operating revenue of 4.200 billion yuan and net profit attributable to shareholders of 537 million yuan. In Q1 2026, operating revenue reached 1.320 billion yuan, up 19.88% year-on-year, and net profit attributable to shareholders was 263 million yuan, up 45.11% year-on-year, setting a new single-quarter record. This record-breaking profit growth clearly confirms that after a deep adjustment in 2025, Zhongju Hi-Tech has officially emerged from its repair phase and is steadily entering a new growth cycle.
杨玉琳7 Sourcing Models Behind Private Labels of Sam's Club, Aldi, and Trader Joe's
As I've traveled recently, I've found that the debate over whether to pursue private labels has ended, and the focus has shifted to how to do it. The key is not product selection or pricing, but sourcing: where your products come from and how you obtain them. This article breaks down seven sourcing models identified by Kearney, from OEM to joint procurement, and argues that true differentiation comes from control over the supply chain, not just the model chosen.
袁来Even 7-Eleven Is Closing Stores: Why Are Japanese Convenience Stores No Longer Profitable?
Japan's convenience store industry is entering a contraction phase, with the number of stores falling for the first time in 36 years, including strategic closures by major chains like 7-Eleven. The core issue is that the traditional model of 'convenience plus value' is being squeezed by rising costs and changing competition, making individual stores increasingly unprofitable.
十里Private Labels Rise, New Brands Divert, Big Brands Get Stuck in the Middle
On April 8, McKinsey released a report titled "The State of Food and Beverage: How Consumer Companies Can Restore Growth." Many cases and key data in the report are more US-centric, but it takes a global perspective, with one underlying sample being a survey covering 10 markets and 15,169 consumers. After reading it, I felt that many of the issues discussed are highly relevant to the current situation in the Chinese market. New Distribution has been focused on changes in China's FMCG industry, and some of our viewpoints and perspectives, such as...
任文青AndyA Comprehensive Overview of Key Marketing Moments in Southeast Asia: How Can Brands Going Global Hit the Right Beat and Boost Sales?
By 2026, Southeast Asia is no longer the wild west where simply listing products could make money. With Shopee and Lazada locked in fierce battles, TikTok Shop wielding the sword of content commerce, and Temu disrupting the scene, traffic costs and conversion barriers are visibly rising. Many Chinese bosses, accustomed to the saturation tactics of Double 11 and 618, transplant these strategies to Jakarta, Bangkok, and Ho Chi Minh City, only to suffer heavy ad losses and dead inventory. This article provides a year-round calendar of marketing moments in Southeast Asia, explaining what to sell, the underlying consumer psychology, stocking strategies, and pitfalls to avoid.
戚特Benchmarking Against Sam's Club Member's Mark: China's Private Label Lags by at Least 9 Years
After systematically reviewing the development histories of Sam's Club's Member's Mark and Costco's Kirkland Signature, I believe most Chinese retailers' private label efforts are still at the stage Sam's Club was in around 2017—brand consolidation and quality standard definition. Member's Mark has evolved over 28 years, with its true rise occurring in the last decade, offering valuable lessons for Chinese retailers.
袁来Frequently Changing Distributors and Sales Teams: Manufacturers Destroying Their Own Markets
There are many reasons for healthy market growth, each with its own characteristics, but the two most common reasons for hindered market growth are frequent changes of distributors and frequent changes of the manufacturer's sales team. The usual practice of incompetent managers is only one: warning, closing accounts, splitting markets when performance targets are not met, and simultaneously eliminating salespeople. The result is only one: the more frequently the two organizations change, the weaker the market becomes, until no distributors can be recruited and the market is blank. Today we discuss how to stabilize these two organizations and build the cornerstone of healthy market development. The manufacturer's sales team...
高级研究员 海游Most Private Brands Will Die from the Lowest-Price Mentality
Recently, Discount Ox was publicly reported by its Xi'an franchisee over food safety issues with its private brand products. This is not just a problem for Discount Ox but a spreading industry crisis rooted in the 'lowest-price mentality.' Retailers must shift from price-only procurement to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) thinking to avoid catastrophic quality failures and brand erosion.
陈思廷Agentic Commerce Takes Off: 2025, the Last Year Humans Shop Online Themselves
Visa's announcement that the 2025 shopping season marked the end of an era signals the rise of Agentic Commerce, where AI agents autonomously complete purchases. By 2026, AI agents will not only recommend products but also execute purchases, reshaping retail and requiring brands to adapt to AI-driven discovery and decision-making.
戚特Distributors, Don't Be Kidnapped by 'Transformation Anxiety'!
During the CFC conference in March, I spoke with several distributor friends, and the most common topic wasn't a specific channel or product, but a shared emotion: anxiety. Many distributors are troubled not by a lack of direction, but by too many directions, leading to hasty imitation and investment that disrupts their core business.
周群No Advertising, No Sales Team, No Display Fees: How Can Retailers Succeed with Private Labels?
This article originates from a conversation with a brand executive. After hearing my view that private labels are a trend and brands should proactively co-create with retailers, he retorted: 'The logic seems off. We spend over a year on R&D, hundreds of millions on advertising, and deploy thousands of stores, distributors, and promoters to launch a new product, yet the success rate is less than 10%. How can retailers, with nothing, succeed with private labels?' This article explores why retailers can succeed and what it means for brands.
袁来