NEW DISTRIBUTION RESEARCH TOPIC
How can distributors keep growing across fragmented channels?
Front-line analysis of product selection, organization, channel strategy, profit models, and business transformation for FMCG distributors.
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4620 articles · Page 6 of 193
In 2026, Companies and Distributors Must First Think About How to 'Survive'
A sobering fact: for many beverage companies and distributors, 2026 is not about whether they can thrive, but how to survive. This is not alarmism but a conclusion based on real market feedback. From January to October 2025, the offline market, the most critical for beverages, saw a -5.6% growth compared to the same period last year, with nine consecutive months of negative growth from February to October.
AaronPackaged Drinking Water 2025: Nongfu Leads, Wahaha Rises, C'estbon Defends...
Domestic consumption upgrading has accelerated the packaged drinking water market into an era of stock competition characterized by 'one rising, another falling.' However, under high-pressure competition, higher demands are placed on companies' market execution. As the 'water war' continues, the market landscape is quietly shifting. According to a research report by Zhongtai Securities, as of September 2025, Nongfu Spring leads the industry with a 33% market share, Wahaha ranks second with a 2% year-on-year increase, while C'estbon's share dropped 3%. Meanwhile, regional brands like Quanyangquan and 5100 have achieved rapid growth in their key regions thanks to solid distributor relationships, local cultural ties, and shorter transportation radii.
让消费更纯粹的Covering 10,000+ Stores with Annual Sales Over 500 Million: How Did Chongqing Jiecang Wanggou Stand Out?
Recently, we visited Zhong Xiaoping, founder of Jiecang Wanggou in Chongqing, to discuss his insights on regional B2b. He emphasized that the company has been profitable since its inception, avoiding the common path of heavy investment for scale. Instead, it focuses on saving store owners' time through centralized replenishment, mandatory online ordering, and reliable delivery, turning supply chain into a replicable system.
周群Caught Every Time? How Distributors Can Spend Less and Reduce Risk Under Golden Tax Phase IV
A distributor client recently complained about receiving frequent warnings about mismatched cash flows and data discrepancies, despite not evading taxes. Under Golden Tax Phase IV, tax authorities now rely on system comparisons rather than manual checks, making it crucial for distributors to understand how they are being monitored and to maintain clear, compliant records across income, costs, expenses, and funds.
崔人文、张雨薇People's Daily Online '2025 Craftsmanship Product' Certification Unveiled: Why Kunlun Mountain Mineral Water?
As public health awareness continues to rise, discussions about the science of drinking water are heating up on social platforms, reflecting a growing consensus that drinking water is a top priority in daily life. However, water's uniqueness lies in its difficulty to distinguish quality by taste, leaving consumers overwhelmed by choices. Kunlun Mountain Mineral Water was recently awarded the '2025 Craftsmanship Product' by People's Daily Online, recognizing its exceptional quality and craftsmanship.
葛畅If You Only Deliver Goods, You're a 'Mover'! Without Category Management, Distributors Have No Competitive Moat
Recent exchanges with distributor friends have made one thing increasingly clear: the most critical lesson distributors need to learn today is not transformation or people management, but category management. On the surface, the biggest changes in the industry over the past two years have been at the retail end—supermarket overhauls, accelerated discounting, the rise of instant retail, chain convenience store expansion, and the explosion of private labels—but ultimately, these changes all converge on one point: the rules of the shelf are being rewritten. All retail changes are doing the same thing: re-screening SKUs, re-aligning price bands, and re-matching assortments based on demand.
周群The Self-Deceiving Manufacturer-Dealer Relationship Can No Longer Be Sustained
After extensive discussions with brand owners and distributors, the author concludes that the manufacturer-dealer relationship must change or collapse. The past year has seen unprecedented inventory pressure, sluggish sell-through, disputed expense reimbursements, price erosion, and widespread channel conflict. The old growth model of pushing inventory is no longer viable in an era of oversupply, and the future requires a shift from a 'upstream-downstream' dynamic to a 'left hand-right hand' partnership focused on matching supply with demand and moving toward the consumer.
任文青AndyDistributors Who Only Chase Sales Volume: The Busier They Are, the More They Lose!
The first step to breaking the deadlock is not learning more methods, but making operations 'visible' first. So we condensed the most complex operational issues into two charts: the Product Quadrant Chart and the Customer Quadrant Chart. This article explains the Product Quadrant Chart in depth: why your scale is growing but you're not making money, how to use the quadrant chart, and how to use structural adjustments to recover profits.
杨博帆Where Is the Certainty of Spring Festival Sell-Through? Insights from Lay's New Products on the Evolution of 'Scenario-Based Assortments'
As the year-end market enters a critical phase, many distributors are sensing that Spring Festival consumption is returning to rationality, making stock-up decisions more cautious, with inventory pressure, turnover efficiency, sell-through certainty, and profit margins becoming core factors weighed repeatedly in December. But it is precisely at such moments that a brand's 'confidence' in Spring Festival business becomes clear. Recently, Lay's 2026 Spring Festival series new products debuted, including multiple gift packs of various sizes, 'Fortune Bucket' and 'Family Bucket', plus the endorsement of the 'Kung Fu Panda' IP...
冯瑶Alibaba P8 Enters Lightning Warehouse for Three Years: It's an Opportunity, but 90% Will Be Cut (Pitfall Checklist at the End)
In the past six months, 'lightning warehouses' have become a hot topic among distributors. Many are anxious about missing the next growth wave, but the reality is that lightning warehouses are a high-barrier opportunity, not a simple 'put goods online and sell' business. This article, based on a three-year veteran's experience, reveals the true thresholds and provides a practical checklist to avoid common pitfalls.
陈思廷How AI Can Turn Millions of Retail Outlets into Growth Nodes
A six-year project involving Swire Coca-Cola used computer vision, mobile workflows, competitive intelligence, and connected coolers to improve outlet execution across a highly complex beverage network.
New Distribution"Don't Call Me a Distributor Anymore, Call Me a 'Daoye'!"
A top regional distributor, Mr. Wang (pseudonym), has recently dropped most of his agency brands and been 'banned' by several former manufacturers, saying, 'Don't call me a distributor anymore; call me a daoye (a middleman who buys and sells goods for profit).' Just months ago, he reported a 20% sales increase and a 29% profit rise, but now he chooses to exit. This shift is becoming common among distributors who, despite making money, are quitting due to forced inventory loading, price system collapse, and shrinking profits.
张雨薇Distributors Are 'Allies', Not Appendages of FMCG Manufacturers
The current FMCG market is undergoing a profound cyclical shift. Once, rapid growth meant distributors could easily profit by representing well-known brands, even tolerating pushy manufacturer salespeople. Now, with the market moving from incremental to existing competition, growth is slowing, profits are thinning, and distributors face harder times. This article argues that manufacturers must transform their mindset from self-interest to mutual prosperity, their role from manager to enabler, and take concrete actions to build ally-like relationships with distributors.
田沂桐“Innovation Leading, Crossing Mountains and Seas”: The Strength and Vision of a Leading Dairy Enterprise with 100 Billion in Revenue!
As China's dairy consumption enters the true second half, with factors such as supply-demand imbalance, weak consumption, declining market growth, and slow sales across all categories, dairy enterprises face multiple challenges including intensified competition and pressure on revenue growth. Only by continuously breaking through original boundaries and precisely grasping demand can they stimulate the recovery of dairy consumption and restore market vitality. How to transition from simply pursuing 'volume growth' to fully entering a 'quality improvement' environment oriented by diversified and refined demands, and find breakthroughs, is an urgent issue facing the industry...
AmandaIf Distributors Can't Make Money Themselves, Why Should They Help Customers Make Money?
Some say bluntly, "If I can't make money myself, helping downstream make money is pure fantasy." Others wonder, "Without price differences, are distributors just working for applause?" Some complain, "Execution is too hard—it requires capital, teams, and terminal cooperation that small and medium distributors can't handle." Others equate it to the 'big and comprehensive' store model of a decade ago, saying, "Tried it, didn't work." Reading these comments one by one, I understand that sense of helplessness—in a reality of price wars and inventory pressure, any new approach is bound to be met with skepticism. But the more I read, the more I realize one thing: while everyone is anxious about the future, there's a deep misunderstanding of the term 'category operations.'
张雨薇Zhao Bo of New Distribution: Why You Haven't Truly Understood the User's Job-to-be-Done (JTBD)
We spend our entire lives solving our own problems—financial, health, emotional, intimate family, life relationships, self-existence, social, etc. In general, the problems people need to solve can be divided into eight dimensions: 1. Survival dimension: (body, safety, resources) 2. Relationship dimension: (intimacy, belonging, ranking) 3. Ability dimension: (skills, execution, growth) 4. Narrative dimension: (meaning, goals, values) 5. Emotional dimension: (experience, regulation, patterns)...
赵波Bidding Farewell to Youth and Involution: The Time Has Come for Traditional Distributors to Exit in an Orderly Manner
Distributors will not disappear, but their numbers will significantly decrease. This judgment is not emotional but reflects the changing landscape of China's FMCG industry. Many distributors already sense that the path of relying on hard work and diligence for growth has reached its end. The article analyzes why the number of distributors will inevitably decline, which distributors should exit or continue, and how to exit in an orderly manner to preserve the fruits of years of struggle.
陈思廷Why Local Consumer Language Matters in Chinese Oral Care
The “internal heat” concept shows how a culturally familiar problem can reveal unmet oral-care demand, but functional positioning must be supported by compliant evidence, perceptible benefit, and repeat purchase.
New DistributionThe Life-or-Death Game for Distributors: Exhausting Yourself to Leave No Room for Competitors
During a recent visit to a trading company owner, he lamented that many distributors are engaging in 'suicidal' operations, knowingly supplying loss-making outlets with high fees and long payment cycles. This reflects the brutal reality of market competition, where only those with deep reserves can survive the elimination round, akin to polar bears surviving hibernation on their fat layers. The article categorizes this competition into 'external' and 'internal' forms, emphasizing that to win externally, one must first strengthen internally.
高级研究员 海游Let's Sentence the ABCD Outlet Classification to Death
The traditional A/B/C/D outlet classification, based on the assumption that all consumers are alike and that distribution plus visits plus merchandising will grow the business, is outdated. Today's retail market is oversupplied, and outlets have become highly differentiated by time, location, and consumer behavior, so brands must shift to a multi-dimensional model that defines outlets by people, time, scenario, and behavior.
赵波Lightning Warehouses Won't Take Away Distributors' Business, But Will Eliminate Some Distributors
Since the second half of this year, the closure rate of downstream stores has been rising, and B2b businesses nationwide are struggling, mainly due to the significant impact of lightning warehouses on small stores. As internet platforms intensify instant retail, the density of lightning warehouses is increasing, causing many distributors to feel a sense of crisis. Some distributors are considering building their own warehouse stores, but most have not succeeded; instead, those supplying goods to lightning warehouses are doing well.
葛畅China Instant Noodle Industry Report: Master Kong's Gross Margin Rises for Three Consecutive Years, Uni-President Has Four Products in Top 10 by Sales
The Chinese instant noodle industry faces dual pressure from food delivery and pre-prepared dishes, leading to declining sales. However, the market is rebounding with a shift toward health and mid-to-high-end products, as evidenced by Master Kong's three consecutive years of gross margin growth and Uni-President's four products ranking in the top 10 by sales volume.
专注消费的Ignoring Category Management Means Dealers Can Only Run Inefficient Businesses!
This article is a supplement and extension of a previous one, continuing to explore how dealers can do category management well in combination with the retail industry. Without category management, dealers' survival space will be locked down. The article proposes three core viewpoints: choose the right stores and sell the right products, optimize resource allocation to reduce operational risks, and increase volume and profit to enhance competitiveness. It also provides specific methods for dealers to implement category management, including deciding whether to prioritize category or brand, adapting to the retail trend of 'wide category, narrow product', and deeply binding category management with retail outlets.
高级研究员 海游From Deep Distribution to Super Sales: A Veteran Company's Nationwide Breakthrough
Founded in 1982 and headquartered in Zhengzhou, Henan,金星啤酒 (Jinxing Beer) has evolved from a regional player into a key modern enterprise in China's beer industry, especially in the craft beer segment. In the past two years, it has successfully transitioned to the Chinese-style craft beer track, with a strategic transformation that has drawn attention. This article analyzes the challenges it faced and the four-pronged strategy (new products, new channels, new communication, new organization) that drove its success.
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