Huitongda, which was raised by a husband-and-wife team, is now looking to steal business from other husband-and-wife teams?

Banzhuo Consumption Fan Jian

There are no eternal friends, only eternal interests.

Over the past decade or so, tens of thousands of township husband-and-wife shops have nurtured Huitongda Network. In the future, they may face competition from the company's multiple retail formats.

In just a few months since the end of last year, Huitongda has made dense moves in sectors such as hard-discount supermarkets, bulk snack stores, and convenience stores through capital means. It will leverage its accumulated experience in supply chains and warehousing/distribution from serving township husband-and-wife shops to launch a fierce offensive into the lower-tier retail market.

Former partners are finally turning into rivals.

Dense Layout in Retail Sectors

Starting from the end of 2025, Huitongda Network showed a clear shift in strategic focus, adopting capital alliances to layout multiple retail formats.

This industrial internet company, centered on supply chains, is stepping directly into the retail business.

On December 30, 2025, the first batch of 10 stores of "Zhezhefeng," its community hard-discount supermarket, opened simultaneously, formally entering high-frequency community retail scenarios with a hard-discount model, taking an important step in its "new model, new category, new channel" strategic layout.

Over the past decade-plus, Huitongda has accumulated extensive experience and capabilities in supply chains, warehousing/distribution, operations, and marketing by serving husband-and-wife shops in lower-tier markets. These can be perfectly reused in the Zhezhefeng project.

A company representative stated that in 2026, Zhezhefeng will launch diversified nationwide replication through "direct operation + member store franchise + social franchise," achieving rapid breakthroughs in store numbers.

After testing the waters in the retail industry, Huitongda could not stop itself.

In February this year, the company announced a strategic partnership with the bulk snack brand "Snacks Preferred" (Lingshi Youxuan), establishing a joint venture to operate the brand. Integrating quality resources from both sides to accelerate the layout of snack chains and hard-discount chains, aiming to build it into a leading retail chain brand. At that time, Snacks Preferred had over 2,800 stores in regions such as Central South, Southwest, and South China.

In May, Huitongda partnered with domestic trendy toy enterprise Baixingrui. Through a joint venture established by both parties, it formally entered the trendy toy sector. Combined with Huitongda's large consumer strategy layout, the cooperation will not be limited to trendy toys but will also extend to cultural/creative peripherals, trendy snacks, and other diverse consumer goods, relying on IP derivative capabilities.

Following Snacks Preferred, in early August, Huitongda scored another victory in the bulk snack sector, reaching a strategic partnership with the Zhejiang regional bulk snack brand "Orange Blossom" (Juzi Huakai) using the same method, focusing on laying out markets in Southeast regions such as Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Anhui.

On August 11, Huitongda's layout in the retail sector deepened further. Partnering with Qingdao Kehao Convenience Store, both sides will accelerate layout around the core direction of "snacks + convenience" and are about to jointly launch a new chain brand and new store format.

Thus, in just a short few months, Huitongda sequentially completed layouts in discount supermarkets, bulk snacks, and community convenience stores through capital means.

From Huitongda's own advantages and resource endowments, in the future, the main battlefields for these retail formats will concentrate on lower-tier markets such as county towns, townships, and communities. Direct confrontation with husband-and-wife shops is inevitable.

Husband-and-Wife Shops Nurtured the "No. 1 Rural E-commerce Stock"

Wang Jianguo, founder of Huitongda Network, is a big shot in China's retail industry and a serial entrepreneur.

The Five Star Appliances he founded in 1998 once reached the top three in China's home appliance retail industry. Later, squeezed between the wars of Gome and Suning, Five Star Appliances' growth stagnated. Wang Jianguo sold all his equity in Five Star Appliances to Best Buy in 2006 and 2009, leaving abruptly.

But Wang Jianguo did not choose to retire at this time. Instead, at the age of 50, he started a second entrepreneurial journey. In the directions of maternal/infant products, rural areas, and comfortable smart home furniture, he successively cultivated three unicorns.

Established in 2010, Huitongda Network focuses on lower-tier markets, serving as an industrial internet platform primarily targeting township husband-and-wife shops and individual businesses.

At that time, the battlefield of mainstream e-commerce platforms was concentrated in cities, with no time to attend to the township market, leaving ample room for Huitongda's growth.

Huitongda's revenue mainly comes from two types of businesses: trading and services. Among them, trading business is the main source of income. Its model is that the company cooperates with upstream suppliers, purchases products such as home appliances, consumer electronics, agricultural supplies, and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), and then distributes them to cooperative customers and member retail stores through its self-operated online mall.

Service business provides comprehensive services such as online-offline integrated supply chain solutions, store SaaS+ services, and merchant solutions to retail stores or other customers, charging subscription fees or service fees.

The lower-tier retail market has long been highly fragmented. There are tens of millions of husband-and-wife shops, but each store is small in volume and scattered in layout. Under the multi-level distribution system, small shops face high procurement costs and slow product updates, lacking basic operational guidance.

Huitongda's early core value was connecting the upstream and downstream links. By interfacing with upstream brands in home appliances, agricultural supplies, and FMCG, cutting out middlemen distributors, providing one-stop procurement channels for township small shops, and empowering shop operations through technological upgrades.

In February 2022, Huitongda Network (09878.HK) rang the bell on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Main Board, becoming the "No. 1 Rural E-commerce Stock."

By the end of 2025, it had formed a retail ecosystem covering 21 provinces and municipalities in China and over 25,000 townships, with business covering more than 255,000 member retail stores.

Growth Peaks, Must Do It Themselves

Huitongda is called the "Rural Version of Taobao." It achieved rapid growth precisely by relying on tens of thousands of township husband-and-wife shops. Before listing, it ranked first among trading platforms serving retail industry enterprise clients in China's lower-tier market.

Even so, for many years after its establishment, Huitongda Network never tasted profitability. From 2018 to 2021, when performance disclosures were available, the company's net profit attributable to parents continued to suffer losses, totaling 1.466 billion yuan.

After listing, the company's operations surged, breaking the 80 billion yuan revenue scale in 2022 and 2023, while turning a profit, achieving net profits attributable to parents of 316 million yuan and 448 million yuan respectively.

As major e-commerce giants established their patterns in cities, the lower-tier market became a must-fight ground for everyone. JD Jingxi, Taogongchang, etc., successively joined the lower-tier market battle, and Pinduoduo successfully enacted "surrounding the city from the countryside" through its group-buying model.

In recent years, offline retail has undergone major changes. Bulk snacks, discount supermarkets, and other formats have surged, and the lower-tier market has also received key attention.

With various powers competing in low-tier markets, husband-and-wife shops that used to dwell in townships are inevitably impacted, bringing operational pressure to Huitongda Network.

In 2024 and 2025, the company's revenue scale continued to shrink, to 60.06 billion yuan and 52.30 billion yuan respectively, with net profit attributable to parents showing an overall downward trend.

Regarding the scale contraction, Huitongda explained that this was the result of the trading business segment actively "slimming down," aiming to strip resources from the low-value-added "porter" role and concentrate efforts on high-growth technology empowerment and private label sectors.

According to data disclosed in financial reports, since 2021, the number of registered and active member stores has remained stable growth, but the transaction volume per member store has decreased significantly; meanwhile, the number of subscribed and paying users has declined significantly compared to peak periods, indicating that users' willingness to pay for Huitongda's service business is decreasing.

At the beginning of listing, Huitongda Network's market cap soared to 28 billion HKD. Now, it hovers around 5 billion HKD for a long time.

It is against this background that the company densely implements strategic M&A, intending to build a new industrial layout of "Large Consumer + Smart Manufacturing + AI Technology." Under this transformation strategy, increasing investment in the FMCG discount chain sector has become one of the company's innovation projects for 2026.

Husband-and-wife shops achieved Huitongda's past, but it is difficult for them to carry its future. It can only choose to step in personally and face the cruel competition of the terminal market.