多多买菜：换打法了

This article covers Duoduomaicai (Duo Duo Grocery, Pinduoduo's community group buying business) overhauling its strategy in the Chengdu (Southwest China) market this year: after previously focusing on B2B beverage and alcohol wholesale, it has fully shifted to curating a selection of high-quality products for C-end consumers. Key takeaways:

1. Category adjustment: Previously nicknamed "Water Duo" for its heavy focus on beverage wholesale, Duoduomaicai now prioritizes high-repeat-purchase categories including pasteurized milk and chilled fresh meat. Its pasteurized milk sales in the Southwest market now outpace all competitors by a huge margin.

2. Operation adjustment: To support cold chain categories, Duoduomaicai offers group leaders daily cold product subsidies ranging from tens of yuan. It also encourages group leaders to offer door-to-door delivery for an extra 2 RMB per order, which has significantly lifted group leader incomes while keeping order volume growing steadily.

3. Experience improvement: The company cut intermediate transit links, moving directly from central warehouse insulated packaging to dispatch via grid warehouses, which reduces product damage. It has also upgraded its overall product selection by adding a large number of leading national brands and well-known channel brands, driving clear increases in average order value and user repeat purchase rates.

Duoduomaicai's strategy upgrade in Southwest China creates clear new partnership opportunities for brand owners of all types. Key insights:

1. Channel value: Duoduomaicai is upgrading its product selection to target C-end consumers. The platform already boasts large scale, stable order volume, short payment terms and fast settlement, making it very attractive for suppliers. Its extensive coverage of lower-tier and rural markets also unlocks massive untapped demand for categories like pasteurized milk, which were underserved in these markets previously.

2. Tailored opportunities for different brands: Leading dairy players such as New Hope can leverage the platform's scale to expand sales in lower-tier markets. Channel brands like Sam's can partner to expand distribution of packaged staple goods into these markets and grow overall volume. Emerging brands built on Douyin can use the platform's logistics network to reach township consumers, solving the long-standing pain point of inability to deliver to these areas.

3. Key considerations: Cold chain categories have strict temperature control and fulfillment requirements, so brands need to coordinate closely with the platform and warehouse operators to upgrade capabilities. Brands can also develop exclusive SKUs tailored to bulk-purchasing habits of lower-tier consumers.

Duoduomaicai's strategy upgrade brings new opportunities for third-party sellers on the platform, alongside clear risks to prepare for. Key takeaways:

1. Growth opportunities: There is currently large unmet demand for high-repeat-purchase categories including pasteurized milk and chilled meat in lower-tier Southwest China. As Duoduomaicai prioritizes these categories, order growth is rapid. The platform also offers shorter payment terms, lower customer acquisition costs than competing platforms, and can help sellers clear excess inventory, making it seller-friendly.

2. New market opportunities: Emerging brands that grew on Douyin can use Duoduomaicai's established logistics network for lower-tier markets to reach township consumers they previously could not access, unlocking new growth.

3. Risk warnings: The explosive growth of pasteurized milk sales has already overloaded the existing cold chain capacity at grid warehouses, creating risks of product damage from insufficient storage space and temperature control failures. Meanwhile, the platform has cut subsidies for B2B beverage and alcohol wholesale, so sellers that previously focused on this segment need to adjust their business focus quickly.

Duoduomaicai's strategy shift opens new commercial opportunities for manufacturers and offers new insights for e-commerce transformation. Key insights:

1. New partnership opportunities: Duoduomaicai is upgrading its product selection by scaling up brand offerings and partnering with upstream manufacturers to develop platform-exclusive products. Compliance factories that currently supply to Elephant Supermarket, Hema, and Sam's can all partner on the platform, which offers faster payment, larger stable orders and simpler operations than running business for front warehouse models.

2. Untapped market space: Lower-tier markets have strong unmet demand for pasteurized milk and family-sized bulk dairy products, a segment that was almost entirely unserved previously. Factories can develop category offerings tailored to this demand to unlock new incremental growth.

3. Strategic considerations: Generic white-label factories from industrial clusters face further shrinking market space. To grow, they need to improve product quality while retaining price advantages. For cold chain categories, manufacturers need to coordinate with the platform on temperature-controlled packaging at the origin to optimize fulfillment and reduce product damage.

Duoduomaicai's strategy shift reflects changing demand across the retail industry, creating new opportunities for service providers. Key takeaways:

1. Industry trend: Community group buying platforms have shifted away from the early era of cutthroat price competition to focus on quality products for C-end consumers. High-repeat-purchase categories like frozen and chilled fresh meat have become the new shared growth track for the industry, driving fast-growing demand for cold chain warehouse and delivery services. There is a particularly large unmet need for cold chain infrastructure in lower-tier markets.

2. Core industry pain point: Since Duoduomaicai prioritized cold chain categories, explosive order growth has exposed insufficient cold chain capacity at the grid warehouse level. The core problem is that existing storage space is limited, and the traditional model of cold storage plus insulated boxes plus ice packs occupies excessive storage capacity, cannot keep pace with order growth, and often leads to temperature failures and product damage.

3. New growth directions: Service providers can develop optimized cold storage solutions tailored for community group buying grid warehouses, creating space-efficient temperature-controlled storage that fits the short-transit logistics model of community group buying. Partnering with platforms and suppliers to improve fulfillment capabilities will unlock new business growth.

Duoduomaicai's strategy upgrade in Southwest China offers valuable insights for competing retail platforms and outlines clear risks to avoid. Key takeaways:

1. Shifting industry winds: The community group buying industry has entered a new development stage. The old model of low-priced generic goods and B2B wholesale is outdated, and the industry is shifting to C-end focused operation centered on quality and branded products. High-repeat-purchase cold chain categories have become the new core growth track, with massive untapped demand still available in lower-tier markets.

2. Insights for merchant recruitment and operations: Platforms can prioritize recruiting leading national brands, top channel brands, and emerging Douyin-native brands, leveraging their own advantages of broad lower-tier coverage, fast settlement and large scale to attract brands. On the operation side, platforms can offer targeted subsidies to group leaders for high-value categories to boost engagement, while promoting door-to-door delivery to improve user experience.

3. Risks to avoid: When rolling out cold chain categories, platforms need to expand and upgrade cold storage capacity at grid warehouses in advance, rather than building out capacity after order volume explodes, to avoid product damage from insufficient storage and poor temperature control. Logistics routes should also be designed to cut as many intermediate transit links as possible to reduce the risk of issues.

Duoduomaicai's strategic shift reflects new trends in China's community group buying industry, while exposing new industry-wide challenges, making it a development with high research value. Key insights:

1. New industry trends: After the early era of cutthroat competition and consolidation, the community group buying industry has entered a new stage of refined operation. The original profit models focused on low-priced generic goods and B2B wholesale are being phased out, and the industry as a whole is shifting toward branded, C-end-focused, high-quality offerings. Leveraging existing community networks and lower-tier logistics advantages to enter the cold chain category track — creating differentiated competition against front warehouse players — has emerged as a new core development direction.

2. New industry challenges: When adding cold chain categories on top of existing community group buying logistics routes, the overall supply chain is longer than the front warehouse model. Current cold chain infrastructure at the grid warehouse level cannot keep up with order growth, with insufficient storage capacity as a particularly prominent problem. At the same time, unclear responsibility allocation across the supply chain has led to issues where some grid warehouses shift responsibility by returning problematic products directly to merchants, which hinders healthy industry development.

3. A new differentiated business model: Duoduomaicai leverages its existing large-scale logistics network, boosts C-end repeat purchases through group leader subsidies and door-to-door delivery, leans into its competitive advantages of broad lower-tier coverage, fast settlement and low customer acquisition costs, and integrates product offerings from multi-channel brands to form a new differentiated business model that warrants in-depth research.