On September 28, ZJLD Group (SEHK: 06979) brought the Wanshang Alliance annual conference into a livestream, with more than 28,000 people attending online.
During the nearly five-hour broadcast, the agenda was tightly packed and highly information-dense, from recognizing outstanding alliance merchants to speeches by alliance partners and top employees, from President Tang Xiangyang's annual report to Chairman Wu Xiangdong's address.
That day marked exactly 500 days since the first "Zunyi Forum" that launched the Wanshang Alliance on May 14 last year.
500 Days of Results: Turning "Channel Stuffing" into "Shared Responsibility"
Five hundred days ago, that forum had only just over 200 people in the audience, and the model and direction were not as clear as they are today.
Now, this organization has more than 4,500 Dazhen alliance merchants, 8,400 Zhen Shiwu alliance merchants, 800 Niushi super beer group-buying and channel clients, has held 104 forums cumulatively, and has exceeded 1.7 billion yuan in collections.
These figures demonstrate the impressive achievements of the Wanshang Alliance over its 500 days, but if one understands these 500 days only through numbers, the most important part would be missed.
Over the past several decades, the core action followed by liquor channels has been channel stuffing, in which manufacturers set targets, distributors pay, goods move from the distillery to distributors' warehouses, and risk is shifted downward.
This approach was effective over the past thirty years, but during the current industry adjustment period, with terminal prices inverted and sell-through slowing, channel stuffing has become a burden for the industry.
What the Wanshang Alliance has truly accomplished in these 500 days is changing channel stuffing into "shared responsibility."
Channel stuffing pushes risk onto the other party, while shared responsibility puts oneself at the table too, with both sides moving toward the same goal.
Almost every move made by the Wanshang Alliance over these 500 days can be explained by this one change.
Among the series of results announced at the alliance merchant conference, two sets of "quality data" serve as clear evidence: the online price of Dazhen has remained stable above 600 yuan, and the sell-through of the fifth generation of Zhen Shiwu has reached 1.35 times that of the previous generation.
This shows that through 500 days of effort, the sell-through of Zhenjiu's products has improved, and the first battle of the Wanshang Alliance has held steady.
In addition, attention was drawn to the fact that six awards were established this time: Outstanding Dazhen Client Award, Outstanding Alliance Leader Award, Outstanding Referrer Award, Short Video Creation Award, Outstanding Zhen Shiwu Alliance Merchant Award, and Outstanding Zhen Shiwu Convener Award.
The awards cover a very wide scope, rewarding behavior: completing tasks, bringing in customers, publishing content, and building teams.
From the design of the awards alone, one can see what this organization cares about, advocates, and seeks.
500 Days of Experience: Four Things Done Right
Looking at the Wanshang Alliance from nothing to something, from emergence to prominence, the core lies in doing these few things right.
The alliance itself is "selected." The Wanshang Alliance is not a recruitment platform that accepts everyone.
At the alliance merchant conference, a very clear statement was made: the threshold of the alliance is your obligation and responsibility, not finding people everywhere on the street.
What is selected? Group-buying capability, local influence, and willingness to contribute.
At the meeting, nine implementation commitment guidelines for all members were proposed, covering requirements such as completing tasks, recommending high-quality clients, and full completion of short videos.
The container carrying these is the alliance body, and 200 alliance bodies have now been established nationwide, with 363 events held.
In Tang Xiangyang's words, the alliance body should give people "a venue, a circle, cooperation, a sense of belonging, and growth."
The price line is "managed" into place. Price is the lifeline of this model, and the list of tools for managing price is actually very short: the Six Prohibitions, namely no direct low pricing, no online sales, no low-price bundling, no distribution sales, no low-price cashback, and no debt offsetting sales.
The list is short, but enforcement is long. It was disclosed at the meeting that 521 penalty notices for Dazhen and 79 penalty notices for Zhen Shiwu have been issued, totaling 600 public notices.
These are paired with three things: first, a quota system, with strict backend management to ensure balance between goods flow and sell-through; second, a public reporting channel, with reporting market violations written into the commitment guidelines for all members; and third, unconditional backstop written into the commitment, meaning that if one does not violate rules and no longer wants to cooperate, one may return goods unconditionally.
Management on one hand and protection on the other must exist at the same time.
With only management and no protection, channels dare not enter; with only protection and no management, prices cannot be defended.
According to industry observation, against the backdrop of price inversion at 60% of companies in the industry, the importance of the result that the online price is above 600 yuan per bottle lies not in its being high, but in its remaining stable for 500 days.
The content arena is "broadcast" into being. The most recognizable asset of the Wanshang Alliance this year is Wu Xiangdong's personal IP: the video account "Wu Jindong - ZJLD" has total views of 1.326 billion, 1.57 million followers across the internet, 52 livestreams with cumulative audience of 125 million, and ranked first on the Top 100 Entrepreneur Video IP List for eight months.
But what is more noteworthy is the other side: the main account has only 220 videos yet reached 1.3 billion views, which itself is proof of content efficiency.
The real foundation lies on the alliance merchant side: more than 3,700 employee and alliance merchant video accounts have cumulatively published 12,400 videos.
The hardest part of doing content is having no people, no time, and no know-how. The Wanshang Alliance's solution is tooling and training. It has created 122 exclusive AI digital humans for alliance merchants, produced more than 500 pieces of AI video content, and conducted 17 short video training sessions, teaching everything from account positioning and script writing to shooting, editing, publishing, and operations, with weekly hands-on instruction.
What this set of things reduces is not communication cost, but trust cost.
For a distributor to trust a brand and a person, the traditional path requires years of repeated adaptation; now, after watching a few dozen short videos, the basic judgment can be made.
Trust at team scale becomes the source of organizational efficiency.
The root of sell-through is "tasting" it out. Experience and tasting completed three levels of iteration this year: from the Dazhen Banquet to the Zhenniu Banquet and then to the Zhenjiu Elegant Banquet.
In terms of data, 3,169 alliance merchants have cumulatively held 6,478 Dazhen Banquets, of which 420 were Zhenjiu Elegant Banquets.
What is even more solid is bottle opening. The Zunyi market disclosed that cumulative sell-through bottle openings for Dazhen exceeded 120,000 bottles, while Zhen Shiwu has exceeded 70,000 bottles cumulatively since April last year; more than 1,000 "tasting return-to-factory" events were carried out together with alliance merchants, connecting with and cultivating more than 26,000 Dazhen consumers.
This is the most fundamental difference between the Wanshang Alliance and previous channel models: recruitment is a means, while sell-through is the goal.
The Significance of 500 Days: ZJLD's Answer to the Cycle
Amid the fluctuations of the industry cycle, we need cases like this, and the Wanshang Alliance has delivered a high-scoring answer to traversing the cycle with 500 days.
First, it turned the "manufacturer-merchant community" from a slogan into executable rules.
The industry has shouted this phrase for many years, but the real difficulty is implementation, because it requires manufacturers to first provide certainty: goods can be returned, rebates can be obtained, equity can be seen, and violations can be seen being punished.
The Wanshang Alliance turned these four things into systems at the same time, and this is the part most worth recording.
Second, it proved that during a deep adjustment period, prices can be managed.
It uses a quota system to control supply, notices to establish deterrence, and an independent inspection system to ensure enforcement.
The 600 penalty notices are the hardest footnote to this method.
Third, it provides a new dimension for channel evaluation.
In the past, manufacturers assessed channels by payment, inventory, and market penetration rate.
The Wanshang Alliance puts consumer filing, KOL/KOC cultivation, bottle-opening sell-through, and collections on the same report.
If this evaluation standard is accepted and followed by more companies, its influence and value will go beyond ZJLD itself.
Returning to the original question: how was the Wanshang Alliance forged? On the final page of his summary, Wu Xiangdong wrote only two words: passion and dedication.
Yes, he did not rely on some magical business model, but merely changed the direction of risk. In the past, manufacturers pushed risk to channels; now manufacturers take part of the risk back into their own hands: managing prices costs money, providing a backstop requires stocking goods, granting equity means transferring real value, and the founder standing in front of the stage means staking his own reputation. None of these things is easy.
And only when manufacturers are willing to bet first are channels willing to follow.
The first 500 days end here, and the second 500 days officially begin.
Producer: Wang Hemei. Editor: Bao Zhinan. Statement: 1. Jiu Shuo always practices the journalistic stance of objective presentation and truthful expression; 2. Original articles by Jiu Shuo are welcome to be reprinted and shared by individuals and public platforms, but the source must be clearly marked as Jiu Shuo in a prominent position. Otherwise, Jiu Shuo has the right to pursue legal liability.
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