New Retail 2025: Sam’s only for “members”: Why does the renewal rate reach 90%?

In the new retail era, Sam’s Club has achieved a renewal rate of up to 90% with its unique business model and excellent membership service, becoming a benchmark in the retail industry. This article provides an in-depth analysis of Sam’s Club’s success from seven aspects for your reference.

Let’s start by focusing on a few sets of Sam’s Club operating data:

• At the 2025 Walmart Investment Conference, Zhu Xiaojing, CEO of Walmart China, disclosed several sets of data: China already has it8Sam’s store realizes a single storeannual sales of 3.67 billion yuan.This performance not only exceeds the annual sales of a single store (3-500 million yuan) in traditional hypermarkets by 7-12 times.It is also comparable to the performance scale of top luxury shopping malls such as Beijing SKP.
• At present, the number of active members of Sam’s in China has exceeded5 million,Annual fee incomeMore than 1.3 billion yuan。 What’s even more NB is that the “excellent member” group shows amazing stickiness – the card renewal rate is as high as high92%, and contributed 60% of revenue.
• By early 2025, the total number of Sam’s stores nationwide will reach54。 Its strategic depth is reflected in the entry of Zhangjiagang, Jinjiang and Kunshan in the three “top 100 counties in the country” – this marks that Sam’s has broken through the traditional first-tier city layout framework and passed“High-quality sinking”The model accurately penetrates into the economically developed county market.

What is particularly rare is that the above performance was achieved in the contraction cycle of the consumer market. This trend of counter-cyclical growth strongly verifies the resilience and vitality of Sam’s Club’s business model.

This 9,000-word article breaks down the success of the Sam model from seven aspects:

1. Why did “all the way to learn Sam” come to naught?
2. What to learn from Sam? Start by asking “why renew”
3. Why renew? Select for “paid members”
4. Why renew? Selected “Can’t Be Bought Anywhere Else”
5. Why renew? Selected “surprises”
6. Why renew? The attitude of feeling “better life” from identity
7. Hema’s Lost VS Sam’s Inspiration

1. Why did “all the way to learn Sam” come to naught?

Since entering the Chinese market in 1996, Sam has gone through a 20-year dormant period. The real strategic turning point began with the 2016 membership fee price adjustment incident – the then CEO Wen Andeli defied the consensus.The annual membership fee was significantly increased by 73% from 150 yuan to 260 yuan。

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This seemingly risky price anchoring strategy unexpectedly triggered strategic expansion: accelerated store expansion, all-round efforts in online channels, and systematic construction of a closed loop of business. This has triggered a large number of industry observers to decode the craze:

• Some people believe thatSam’s growth lies in accurately capturing the wave of consumption upgrading, locking in the core demands of the emerging middle class for high-quality, healthy and branded goods.
• Some followers pointed out that Sam’s has successfully seized the opportunity in channel integration, with the help of physical store expansion and online layout two-wheel drive.Take the lead in creating a distribution system of “APP + express delivery + city-wide delivery”。
• Another study says,Sam’s advantage is the strong resources of Walmart’s global supply chain。

Based on this, the industry has summarized a set of Sam’s formulas:

• Brand dimension:China’s dividends + new middle-class identity + social scene empowerment
• Product dimensions:Carefully selected quality + scarcity + SKU streamlining strategy
• Operational dimensions:Paid membership system + omni-channel integration + suburban warehousing + front-end cloud warehouse layout

“You can do it, I can do it”,This formulaic perception has given rise to the industry illusion of “replication theory”: the mistaken belief that as long as a similar supply chain system is built, similar products are provided, the annual membership fee mechanism is implemented, and the integration of online and offline channels is completed, it can compete with Sam’s, or at least get a piece of the new middle class consumption dividend.

Hou Yi, CEO of Hema, once publicly said: “Membership stores are a valuable opportunity for us to humbly learn from an international giant like Costco.Only by comprehensively competing with them and comprehensively benchmarking can we achieve rapid progress. ”

So we see: touching Sam’s crossing the river Hema iterates more than ten formats; Yonghui test water storage store; Metro has repeatedly adjusted its membership fee standards; Wumart and Carrefour competed to launch member stores; Oriental Selection even wants to create a live version of “Sam”.The imitators copied explicit elements such as membership fees, storage shelves, and large packaging, and then superimposed digitalization and supply chain transformation in an attempt to replace Sam’s.

And then what? No more!

What’s even more ironic is that when the craze for “imitating Sam” gradually subsides,The retail industry has flocked to a new round of “learning from the fat east”.

2. What should I learn from Sam? Start by asking “why renew”!

In 2023, DT Business Watch’s survey data burst the bubble of “Sam for the Whole Industry”:

Nearly 90% of the users surveyed have purchased Sam’s Loyalty cards, more than twice as many as Hema members, followed by Costco, Metro, Carrefour and Fudi.

▲ Image source “Sams, what is there to go around? 》

When delving into the motivation of “willing to pay 260 annual fees” to Sam, various vivid and concrete answers emerged:

• A Shanghai drifter said frankly that in addition to buying for herself, she was also happy to buy Sam’s membership cards for her parents and relatives in her hometown in the county, because Sam’s things could not be bought anywhere elseIt will make her feel very face-saving.
• An elderly couple who visit Sam’s every week revealed the secret, and they didn’t understand why their son had such an expensive membership card at first.Until I found out that the soup stewed with Sam’s pork ribs would always be more fragrant than the bones sold by other stores.
• During the Double 11 period, the money-saving strategy proves that the beauty products purchased by Sam’s Global are more favorable than many e-commerce platforms with tens of billions of subsidies or the prices given by head anchors.And it’s also a naked price discount without any bells and whistles.

The data also revealed that Metro has the most “one-time customers”, with 2/3 of Metro members not planning to buy cards again, while Sam’s does not plan to buy a card again, at only 11.3%.

When asked about the reason for “intermittent”: 49% pointed to “expensive price”, 40% thought “average quality”, and 39% chose it“Low purchase frequency, renewal is not cost-effective”。

From this, a simple “renewal stickiness formula” is obtained:

Not cost-effective = (selected products + excellent quality + unique experience + continuous surprises) × consumption frequency/price

Among them, any imbalance of elements triggers the perception of “not cost-effective”, which will lead to the loss of members.

The brand ape brought Sam into the formula and found a soul core similar to Alzi’s “low price”, or the essence of Sam –“Selection” – Selected products for “paid members”, selected “can’t be bought anywhere else”, selected “surprises”, selected suppliers, selected lifestyle ……

So, why does Sam, who only serves “members”, have a 90% renewal rate?

This set will be decoded frame by frame belowThe operating logic of “selected” value creation.

3. Why renew? Select products and quality for “paid members”.

The annual membership fee for individual membership must be $260 per year. If a member can’t accept this number, then they are not our target users, and we need to complete the member screening through this upgrade to test how far we can take them.

——Former Sam’s China CEO Wen Ande

When Wen Ande explained the logic of the membership fee increase, he once said the deep meaning:“Through upgrades to complete member screening, do crowd classification to achieve customer focus, and then provide better products and services。 Its business philosophy is to transform membership into a demand creation mechanism – Consumers are not only buying tickets, but also “decision outsourcing” services.

Obviously, Wen’an De is from the perspective of the brand, if it switches to “thinking from the user’s point of view”, the paid membership model is the “shovel” that digs out the real demand.

1. Screen “worth buying” products to help customers save time, effort and money.

Wen Ande emphasized that the value of the membership brought by Sam is far higher than the price increase of 110 yuan.It is equivalent to customers spending money to ask member stores to help screen better products, saving the time and cost of “shopping around”.

The benefit of this model for users is that it translates massive choices into deterministic decisions. From a psychological point of view, in the face of endless choices and an infinite world of information,“Massive choices do not bring more happiness, and effective option management is the real need of users.”

Sam’s (and Costco, ALZI) have continued to consolidate the loyalty of middle-class fans by strictly controlling SKUs to 4,000 (only 1/5 of traditional stores) and realizing “selecting the best of the best” through the ultimate selection, so it continues to consolidate the loyalty of middle-class fans.

As promised in the first item on Sam’s official website:Trustworthy quality, enjoy excellent products all year round, and strive to save more for members.

2. Sift “quality” and temper the flywheel of trust.

There is a saying in the retail industry, ‘retail is details’, ‘member stores are discipline’. Our discipline is to strictly control the quality of goods, and at the same time effectively control costs to ensure the advantage of price.

——Wen Ande

Sam’s quality narrative runs through the capillaries: from concept to activity, product to experience, standard formulation to fulfillment of promises, etc., all of which subtly affect user psychology.

Typical cases can be seen: MM Swiss roll (59.8 yuan/16 pieces). Although it has been criticized for its large quantity (Hema’s small packaging is more flexible), its raw materials replace common vegetable cream with animal cream; use Earl Grey black tea to enhance the fragrance without adding flavors; Abandoning traditional wheat flour and using baking ready-mixed powder, etc., is different from similar types in terms of standard and shelf life, so it is still the first choice in terms of cost performance and brand trust.

At the same time, Sam’s food safety standards are relatively higher, such as Sam’s milk specially supplied by Mengniu meets EU standards; The ingredients for small lime juice are water, lime juice and sugar; Even Haitian soy sauce can be added with 0. Some consumers say Sam is“Ordinary people”The only supermarket with access to the highest food safety standards.Note that the key word is “ordinary people”.

Although China’s food safety standards have been in line with international standards, and most of Sam’s suppliers are local enterprises, Sam’s in the early days was also investigated by the Municipal Supervision Bureau in Chengdu and other places because of beef spoilage, strawberry mold, and paper balls in bread.However, with the persistence of Wenande, consumers finally formed a “value for money” perception:“I don’t know if it’s the lowest price, but I know that the one I bought at Sam’s must be reliable”; “I like Sam because it has the feeling of being ‘worth’ just by closing your eyes and buying it.”

Therefore, Sam’s success is not so much about quality, but about saying,Through strict “selection” and perseverance, the brand’s trust system has been established —— This is also the common law of successful people such as Fat Donglai and Alezie.

4. Why renew? Select private labels that you can’t buy anywhere else.

In the retail “private label” arena, strategic positioning determines its value tier:or as a price weapon (Wal-Mart Huiyi, RT-Mart Huixuan and other white label products); or as traffic bait (Hema 7 days fresh); or become the core of the strategy (Costco and Alizzi); Or strategic growth engines: 7-Eleven’s 7-Premium and 7-Gold.

Sam MM (Member’s Mark)It anchors the strategic growth engine, to build a renewal moat with “can’t be bought anywhere else”. Its core password lies in the dual value creation mechanism:

1. Standard definition : Establish new quality benchmarks in the ambiguous area of industry norms.
2. Efficiency reconstruction : When there is excess profit in a certain link, the self-built supply chain reshapes the cost performance.

Let’s explore how to systematically “can’t buy it anywhere else” (Sam’s Internet case study) from some examples:

• Australian beef:Cut off the middleman’s self-built cold chain, achieve a price 15% lower than the market price + freshness guarantee, and annual sales of more than 100,000 tons.
• Milk : Directly work with local ranches to customize sterilization processes and packaging, shorten shipping time, and cost 15% to 20% lower than commercially available brands.
• Baked goods : For example, MM mochi uses glutinous rice flour with a specific moisture content, which has a more elastic taste.
• daily necessities : Optimize the supply chain of paper towels, laundry detergent and other categories (such as direct purchase of puree and concentrated formula) to reduce costs and improve quality.
• Fresh food category : From the fat distribution of steaks to the fishing process of seafood, there are customized specifications, and some products even require suppliers to be exclusive to Sam’s.
• Specifications are specialized : Sam’s beef rolls are larger than the average supermarket, and the cake is 2 to 3 inches larger in diameter, reinforcing the “great value” impression with visual impact.

apparentlySam’s “can’t be bought anywhere else” is not absolutely scarce, is actually a combination of special barriers, physical separation, mental occupancy, experience perception, membership threshold, and emotional premium.Let consumers perceive its irreplaceability.

The secret of the endless survival of the system lies in the two capabilities of the operation layer:

1. Trend Capture:Card the health track (low-sugar snacks/organic oat milk) in advance, seize the outdoor trend (camping) in advance, etc
2. Agile iteration:Data screening products are more likely to retain only 10% of the top SKUs, such as categories with annual sales of less than 20 million yuan facing removal, forcing suppliers to optimize products or provide exclusive versions. “

Obviously, the “selected” nature of MM, not the halo effect of Walmart’s supply chain,Instead, it is rooted in the double helix of value creation rooted in standard formulation × efficiency reconstruction, and the operation dual engine of superimposed prediction × iterative power.

5. Why renew? Continue to select “surprises”.

The purpose of the existence of enterprises is to continue to create new value for users,

——Peter Drucker, the father of modern management

Peter Drucker’s classic thesis is embodied in Muneaki Masuda’s “Tsutaya Management Philosophy”————“Every day, I try to put myself in the customer’s shoes and think about how to make their time more wonderful and continuously improve”。 This pursuit of value is the common gene of outstanding retailers such as Aldi, Costco, Sam’s, and Fat Donglai.

Sam’s achieves continuous value innovation and “surprise” selection through four strategic dimensions:

First, from “product selection” thinking to value reconstruction – differentiation.

The essence of the shelves of traditional supermarkets is a “traffic auction field” – suppliers bid for exposure through entry fees and stacking fees. This necessarily leads to two outcomes:Commodity homogenization is serious and consumer decision-making confusion.

On the other hand, Sam’s has set “homogenization” as an absolute forbidden area and forced the removal of similar products from the shelves.

Let’s use the case of the fast food brand “with your side” to briefly illustrate: e-commerce charred beef mixed noodles: 13.9 yuan/bag (90g noodles + 92g materials); And Sam’s customized version: 59.9 yuan/6 bags (90g noodles + 122g ingredients + exclusive meat sauce packets per bag), although there is only one more pack of sauce, it completes the value reconstruction of “cost-effective→quality-price-effective”.

Second, from the procurement system to the buyer system of “proposal” to consumers.

We don’t make money by suppliers’ entry fees, nor by gross profit margin, we mainly rely on membership income, so the first thing we consider is not sales.

——Wen Ande

The essence of the procurement system and the buyer system lies in the value orientation:Procurement system = profit-oriented shelf filling from an enterprise perspective;Buyer system = The value creation system from the user’s standpoint.

This requires the buyer to have a triple capacity:

• First, the user-agent role.You must stand in the user’s shoes, select good products for members, provide surprises for members with differentiation, and help members save money with the advantage of the supply chain.
• Secondly, the buyer team needs to have both user insights and industry expertise.Taking Member’s Mark R&D as an example, each product will interact with and test members multiple times to understand their preferences and needs.
• Finally, “go up to the hall and get the kitchen”, that is, the ability to participate in the whole link。 In other words, buyers can walk into the factory or go deep into the field to improve processes or optimize planting standards.

The deeper significance of this model change is to transform the procurement function from a cost center to a valueCreate a hub。 As Zhang Qing, Chief Purchasing Officer of Sam’s China, said: “My first mission is to save money on the goods that members consume every day; The second mission is to help members discover surprises and inspire more ideas about products. ”

Third, optimize and iterate until a steady stream of “surprises”.

Many food brands can create explosive products, but most of them are short-lived. The crux of the problem lies in the delicious paradox proposed by Toshifumi Suzuki:Delicious things = things that get boring.

First of all, if you don’t provide delicious food, customers won’t buy it. However, no matter how delicious things are, they will always get tired of eating, because customers’ expectations will quietly escalate with time, and what they used to think was “delicious” will become “natural”, and finally end up being “tired”.

——Toshifumi Suzuki

Faced with this dilemma, Suzuki Toshifumi’s solution – asked the 7-Eleven product team: when the product is hot, it must provide an upgraded version within half a year (such as golden bread upgraded three times in a year; improve soba sauce and oden broth every year); 70% of the products are replaced every year.

Sam’s 4,000 SKUs have reached a 30% explosive rate, and this is also the secret.

Continuing with the example of the Swiss volume. Since its launch in 2018, “this product has undergone seven fine-tuning and optimizations,” Sam’s product manager said, “After the launch of the original version of the Swiss volume, we evaluated the performance of the product every quarter and collected consumer feedback.” “These optimizations include adjusting formulation ratios, improving processes, upgrading packaging designs, and more. Similarly, the selection of raw materials for osmanthus wine brewing daifuku and the localization innovation of Basque cakes.

▲ Image source “Supplying Sam’s 1.5 billion+ a year, winning a large investment from Mondelez, what is the origin of this company?” 》

Core essence: Please forget about “product life cycle management” (passive and enterprise position) here, and adhere to the belief of “continuously creating new value, creating new surprises, and new experiences for users”!

Fourth, become a partner with suppliers, from squeezing to empowerment.

Most imitators often stop at the surface of “factory customization” and are difficult to replicate“Industrial symbiosis”The deep logic is not only in the compression of the supply chain, but also in the reshaping of industrial value.

There is a premise here, that is, to complete the triple “selection” of yourself and your suppliers:

• Value screening: eliminate short-sighted players,Lock it inWillingness to changelong-term partners.
• Strategic layer screening: Positioning common growth allies, andNon-squeezing objects。
• Collaboration mode filtering:establish an equal dialogue mechanism,Put down your body, build trust together.

After this “selection”, Sam’s goal of creating new value can continue to be achieved (Internet case study).

• For example, special personnel are stationed to guide and track the process, and it is refined to the management of employment standards – workers are prohibited from working overtime to affect the quality and ensure that all environmental data conforms to the standard system.
• Some suppliers said that Sam’s procurement team is familiar with the cost model of the whole process of the product, and can quickly identify improvement links and cooperate with suppliers to optimize or reduce costs.
• Another case shows that Sam’s has promoted the upgrading of a certain non-organic grain to organic grain, so the supplier needs to renovate the workshop and upgrade the land in three years, and Sam is still very resolute in promoting the supplier’s implementation.

When discussing supply chain efficiency when traditional supermarkets are still charging stack fees, Sam’s has built a value chain co-creation ecology of “standard output-technology empowerment-demand feedback”. As the study shows:The real supply chain advantage does not lie in the ability to reduce prices, but in whether it can help partners achieve capability leaps.

6. Why do you renew your membership? The attitude of “living a better life” from a superior status

Remember, we sell emotions, status, and connection, not a service or something.

——Seth Golding, “This is Marketing”

The entrance of each Sam’s Club is hung with values slogans, the most eye-catching of which are:“Why only let members in? ——Sam’s is committed to serving members and providing high-quality products for elite life. ”

While most paid membership stores have similar publicity, Sam’s is fundamentally different:This commitment is translated into a perceptible ritual of consumption.

• Access mechanism:Rigidly implement the paid membership system (compared with Hema promotional paid membership and METRO’s flexible membership system).
• Value Penetration:Through spatial language and new media communication, we will continue to output the class symbol of “Sam’s Shopping = high-quality life”, and strengthen the consumer belief that “only high-standard goods can be obtained here”.
• Life platform reengineering (non-store):Reshape the experience scenes such as fresh dine-in, tasting treasure hunting, and cooking teaching, and upgrade member shopping to a family gathering place and a weekend social venue.

The key evolution here is (emphasis): Sam’s transition from a “middle-class identity” ——By providing cities with new ways of consumption and lifestyle symbols—— Move to “I deserve better” self-identity.

How to do it? A simple but effective way to do this is:Life inspiration + scene-based experience + new media planting.

• Be the first to show members a new way of life when they have not yet issued a clear need.For example, in 2022, camping culture will be promoted on a large scale, but as early as September 2021, Sam’s Club put a complete set of camping equipment on the shelves of the store. When major supermarkets began to follow up and supplement camping-related products, Sam’s Club launched new categories such as ski equipment and American home entertainment equipment.
• Scene blasting.For example, “Japanese abalone yakitori rolls in the dining bar and Angus double-layer beef burgers are often sold out on the shelves; Shenzhen/Ningbo/Beijing members queue up to “check in” roast chicken, which has gradually been promoted to the new standard of urban life.
• Embrace new media。 For example, the annual sales of 100 million boxes of Swiss rolls: lock in the family afternoon tea scene, with the selling point of “animal cream + ready-made taste”, plan the promotion of Xiaohongshu KOLs such as “office sharing pack” and “picnic portable box”, and it is said that there will be more than 100,000 related notes in 2023. For example, the opening of Jiaxing stores: the launch of a “one-day experience card” with a low threshold to drain traffic, convert annual fee members through service experience, and form a growth flywheel of “planting grass – tasting – placing an order – repurchasing”.

2024 data shows that 92% of excellent members renew their premiums, and 30% of ordinary members upgrade their excellent cards, and the commercial value of circle belonging is visible to the naked eye.

As a result, Sam’s broke through the original boundaries in the Chinese market: From the “middle-class family procurement station” to the “source of life for the new generation”, it has expanded from the family rigid need scenario to the whole life scene of Generation Z, young people living alone, white-collar workers in small towns and cutting-edge families.

7. Hema’s Lost VS Sam’s Inspiration

Before giving Sam’s “inspiration”, let’s talk about Hema’s new retail trek.

1. The loss of Hema new retail.

When we look inside and reflect on the past few years, we find ourselves falling behind because we forget who our real customers are. For users who shop with our app, we don’t give them the best experience.

——Alibaba President Cai Chongxin reflected

Once upon a time, Hema, as the initiator and representative of new retail, created a mixed business model of “fresh supermarket + catering” with new technologies such as “unmanned cashier and hanging chain”, combined with “offline store + online APP” and a 30-minute instant delivery system to reshape the imagination space of physical retail, and the brand ape also wrote an article to applaud.

▲ Jack Ma mentioned “new retail” for the first time at the 2016 Yunqi Conference

However, three years after its establishment, Hema started a wave of store closures, slipping from an innovation leader to a strategic follower: since 2019, it has tested the waters of multiple formats, developed Swiss rolls, durian cakes and other single products full of imitation traces, and even adjusted the strategy to “1 store + N warehouse” (that is, 1 fresh store + multiple front warehouses) in 2025, which is highly convergent with JD.com’s early strategy.

The root cause of this is the loss of focus of new retail and the deviation from the essence of retail.

An early interview with the founding CEO of Hema revealed the crux of the problem:The future of Hema is a super APP and platform, and the greatest value offline is to provide low-cost continuous traffic and achieve a closed loop of full-scenario traffic. ”Under this logic, Hema’s business model has evolved into an endless opening of multi-format physical stores, covering multiple scenarios to acquire customer groups, and then converting offline traffic into online repurchases, and achieving growth goals through circular expansion.

Unfortunately, the continuous exploration and pursuit of “new” has lost the essence of “retail”.

What is the essence of retail?

• Walmart founder Sam Walton once said: The opening of physical stores itself brings its own traffic.So the rest of the work is to concentrate on choosing products well and serving customers well.
• Toshifumi Suzuki, founder of 711 in Japan, said:“Value” is the eternal theme of user purchases, and the “value” of each era is different because of changes in people’s needs and consumption behavior.The essence of the pursuit of “absolute value” is the never-ending pursuit of change.
• Jim Sinegal, co-founder of Market Opener, said:It’s best not to forget this – they come to us because our products are cheap.
• Amazon’s Bezos said: There are two types of companies in the world, one is to persuade customers to pay a high profit as much as possible;The other is a company that desperately tries to keep prices to a minimum and gives profits to consumers.

▲ Sam Walton, Toshifumi Suzuki, Jim Sinega and Bezos

Wen’s is also a philosophy: “I ask buyers the same question every day: ‘How do we make Sam’s more different? To do this, which requires Sam’s procurement to know what customers Sam is serving; And learn to think like a member to buy the goods they really need.

On the other hand, Hema’s “new retail” not only wants to be an offline quality benchmark, but also wants to become an online national platform, not only to please the middle class, but also to dive into the sinking market. Its strategic background is actually a traffic game dressed in the guise of retail— Physical stores have become a strategic trial and error sand table, and user value innovation has always been absent.

Fortunately, Hema trial and error has revealed three major pitfalls of imitating Sam for the industry:

Trap 1: Membership fee mystery – mistakenly regard the threshold as a privilege

In the Chinese market, members renew Sam’s not for “membership rights”, but for a “sense of privilege”. This privilege is not discounts and deliveries, but a one-of-a-kind experience (items you can’t buy anywhere else) and an attitude towards life (be nice to yourself).The more critical difference is that Sam’s will fee is used as operating capital to give back to customers through price reduction and product upgrades.

And Hema’s membership fee stops at rights exchange:Free delivery, discount obtaining, free food pickup…, coupled with the frequent sales of “do you want to get a card” in the store, finally dissolved the scarcity of the membership system and formed a cognitive dislocation of the paid version of public services.

Trap 2: The illusion of “selection” – underestimating the moat of “ideas”.

Many people mistakenly believe that the barrier to Sam’s “Select” model lies in global supply chain capabilities, but this is not the case.

Whether it is Sam’s, Kaishi Ke and Fat Donglai, the real barrier is rooted in the concept system of Wen’ande: the concept of continuous “providing high-quality products for members”, self-evolution capacity building (detail control, professional improvement, collaborative innovation), and symbiotic and win-win partnership.

Trap 3: Strategic platter – unique value unification field.

On the surface, following the strategy seems to be a shortcut, but there are very few successful people – the root cause lies in the difference in corporate genes and resource endowments.

Hema’s “stitching monster” strategy: Sam’s large packaging + RT-Mart creative content + Aldi low price + fat Donglai high quality, seems to learn from others, but in fact, due to the lack of unique value proposition and unified business philosophy, local advantages are difficult to offset systemic disadvantages.

Brand Ape believes that Hema’s core ability may be in it“Fresh genes”——If you can deeply cultivate “small frequency and fast” procurement, accurately match the purchasing habits of Chinese families multiple times a week, and combine the advantages of digitalization, community group buying, instant delivery, etc., to achieve the ultimate in “fresh” positioning and “fresh life”, or open up your own value capabilities.

This just confirms the digital survival rule proposed by Philip Kotler, the godfather of marketing, at the age of 90:“Deliver the right goods at the right price to the people who need them at the right time, in the right form.”

2. 5 inspirations for Sam’s Club.

By asking “why renew”, it is revealed that Sam is inThe era of traditional retail ebb tideThe underlying logic of growing against the trend——The ultimate practice of “selection”:

• Select products and quality for “paid members”
• A selection of “nowhere else” experiences
• Selected “surprises”
• Select partners who are willing to grow together
• Selected “better” attitude to life

When the enterprise truly internalizes this set“Selected” logicTechnical means such as online and offline integration, instant delivery, and grass fission have naturally become tactical support, and the 90% renewal rate is just a natural commercial fruit.

Special warning: It took Sam 21 years to accumulate its first million-paying membership in China – any fantasy of quick success should be abandoned.

Finally, Brand Ape condenses its replicable strategic core into five major enlightenments:

Inspiration 1: Leaders and leadership determine strategic determination.

▲ The picture shows Sam’s former CEO Wen Ande

Before learning and imitating any pattern, it must be foundLeaders who align with their ideas.

• Former CEO Wen Ande appears in Sam’s stores almost every dayStop-and-go communication with employees or members, arranging the crooked shopping carts neatly, and natural actions are the professional instincts that have been deeply cultivated on the front line for decades. It is rumored that the font selection and color saturation of each poster in the store need to be personally reviewed.
• Founder Sam Walton engraves “on-the-spotism” into the corporate DNA:Frequent and large number of store inspections are compulsory courses for management； Walmart global CEO Doug McMillon even wore a pair of specially customized shoes that “can not only attend some business occasions, but also walk tens of thousands of steps in the store.”
• Such behavior also appeared in Yu Donglai, Toshifumi Suzuki, Muneaki Masuda, and Takao Yasuda.

It can be seen that without leadership soaked in retail genes, strategic determination will become a castle in the air, and imitation will be short-lived.

Culture is more important than strategy because culture itself is strategy.

Inspiration 2: The ultimate in the practice of the concept.

The business philosophy of most companies has been reduced to wall decoration] slogan, and Sam’s commitment to “providing high-quality products for the life of the elite” has been turned into a code of action.

Core Essentials:Find or choose concepts that resonate with the company’s genes (such as Fat Donglai’s “Happiness Management Theory”) and implement it into the capillaries.

Inspiration 3: Find a good basic plate and give priority to serving specific groups of people.

Don’t try to boil the whole ocean. Sam’s wisdom lies in accurately targeting the target group through the payment threshold, rather than indiscriminately covering it.

Key Insights:Users should be selected based on their dreams, beliefs, and desires, rather than relying on demographic labels. In short, psychological characteristics are used to replace traditional user portraits.

Tip 4: The essence of membership fees is a value contract.

The charging target is by no means simply profitable, but to establish a credit system that continues to fulfill promises, and profits will follow.

Most imitators keep an eye on the benefits of membership fees, but ignore the underlying efforts of Sam’s and Market Kaike to deliver on their promise of “great value for money”: including trend prediction capabilities, full-dimensional considerations from the user’s perspective (category, appearance, taste, price, packaging), and scenario-based demand satisfaction systems.

Inspiration 5: Trust is a compound interest nuclear bomb.

Reiterate the construction of trust system: covering the four dimensions of consumers, employees, suppliers, and society.

Trust is not a price tag that can be adjusted at any time, but the crystallization of a complete value chain. Sam’s Chinese-style expansion and phenomenal Fat Donglai jointly confirm:The ultimate competition in retail is a competition to reconstruct the trust system.

Only by comprehending this point can we study and get a glimpse of the doorway!

It’s time to get off the carousel of traffic, because this carousel is running faster and faster, but it can’t go anywhere.

It’s time to stop deceiving and bothering.

It’s time to stop doing TV commercials and elevator commercials and pretend you’re popular.

It’s time to stop making ordinary products for ordinary people and think that you can change the price of more than just one commodity.

It’s time to stop begging people to be your customers, and it’s time to stop feeling embarrassed about charging for your work.

It’s time to stop looking for shortcuts and start taking a long-term, workable path

Good luck and world peace!

Related reading: 《New Retail 2025: “Poor Ghost Paradise” Allazi: How to make “low price” into trust?》

Reference articles:

“Nearly 30 years of layout, Sam’s has entered a crazy stage in China”

“Walmart China CEO: Three key factors for Sam’s popularity”

“Sam’s COO: Sam’s Secret to ‘Sticking’ Millions of Members

“Sams, what is there to go around?” 》

“A year of supply of 1.5 billion+ to Sam’s, won a large investment from Mondelēz, what is the origin of this company?” 》

“Sam’s Mochi Supplier Earns 3.8 Billion Yuan, the Red and Black Behind Internet Celebrity Baking”

“How does Sam’s Club do a good job in differentiated product development?” Take a Swiss scroll as an example”

Sam’s Club’s “Buyer” Logic

“The trader with an annual revenue of 100 billion yuan from Sam’s Club has retired”

[To be continued: The following is a new retail article#Costco#】