The greater the market uncertainty, the more certainty the supply chain must provide.
2026 Brand Supply Chain Innovation Private Board Summit & "ZTO Cloud Warehouse Night" Brand Salon Held in Hangzhou
As brand growth shifts from traffic competition to deep operational waters, the value of supply chains is being redefined.
Can the warehouse and distribution system timely handle the order peak brought by a single live stream? When online, offline, instant retail and B2B channels operate in parallel, can inventory truly achieve full-domain collaboration? When brands enter overseas markets such as Japan and Russia, can cross-border logistics, local fulfillment and return & exchange systems keep pace simultaneously? Faced with the growing number of operational variables, how can AI move from a technical concept to real business scenarios?
All these questions point to one judgment: the supply chain has become a critical foundation for brands to achieve stable operation and sustainable growth.
On August 28, the "2026 Brand Supply Chain Innovation Private Board Summit & 'ZTO Cloud Warehouse Night' Brand Salon", co-hosted by ZTO Cloud Warehouse Technology and Ebrun, was held in Hangzhou. Nearly 200 representatives of brand enterprises participated in the event, exchanging views on topics including brand globalization, full-domain supply chain, cross-border fulfillment, and AI digital intelligence.
According to the sharing and discussion on the day, brand supply chains are undergoing three major changes: globalization is evolving from "selling products overseas" to long-term market operation, supply chains are shifting from back-end fulfillment to full-link value co-creation, and AI is also starting to move from single-point tools to specific business segments.
01 Globalization Enters Deep Waters: Brands Need More Than New Markets
Globalization remains a key direction for Chinese brands to find new growth, but the logic of overseas operation is changing.
Zheng Min, Chairman of Ebrun and Dean of Ebrun Think Tank, analyzed the new environment faced by Chinese brands in globalization with the theme of "Trend of Brand and Supply Chain Globalization". Against the background of simultaneous changes in market selection, product innovation, brand building and organizational capabilities, Chinese enterprises need to shift from single market expansion to a more diversified and robust global layout.
This means that going global is no longer just copying mature products to overseas markets, but re-understanding consumers, channels, fulfillment rules and brand relationships around different markets. Intelligent products, scenario-based branding, ecological operation and supply chain stability are becoming important directions for Chinese brands to build long-term competitiveness.
Wu Zhuohui, Vice President of Anker Innovations and CEO of Haiyi E-Commerce, shared the full-domain and omni-channel operation ideas of brands in the global market combined with enterprise practices. When online platforms, brand independent sites and offline retail channels develop together, brands are not only facing the increase in the number of channels, but also the collaboration issues between inventory allocation, sales rhythm, user service and fulfillment systems. Only by making different channels form a mutually supportive operation network can brands expand market coverage while maintaining operational efficiency and user experience.
Different overseas markets also present their own operational characteristics.
Zhou Yang, Chairman and General Manager of Rakuten Cross-border E-Commerce (China) Co., Ltd., shared the opportunities and capabilities that Chinese enterprises need to focus on when entering mature consumer markets from the perspective of the Japanese market. Japan's e-commerce market has stable consumer demand and a relatively complete platform ecosystem, but to achieve long-term operation, brands still need to build systematic capabilities in commodity planning, content operation, user communication and local fulfillment. With the continuous improvement of platform services, AI operation tools and cross-border logistics systems, the path for Chinese brands to enter the Japanese market is further evolving from "opening stores" to refined and localized operation.
Charles from Ozon China analyzed the e-commerce opportunities in Russia and Russian-speaking markets around the theme "Marching into the New Russian Market and Unlocking New Cross-border Growth". Against the background of the continuous development of platform infrastructure and fulfillment networks, Chinese merchants are gaining more diversified market entry methods. However, in the face of different commodity structures, price systems and logistics links, enterprises still need to consider product selection, operation, stock preparation and fulfillment in a unified operation logic.
No matter entering a mature market like Japan or exploring emerging incremental markets such as Russia, a common conclusion is: overseas markets are not a simple copy of domestic experience. Chinese brands can reuse their accumulated product, digital and supply chain capabilities, but they must re-adapt according to local consumption habits, channel rules and fulfillment environments.
02 From Back-end Fulfillment to Value Co-creation: Supply Chain Steps to the Forefront of Operation
If globalization determines where a brand will go, the supply chain determines whether the brand can operate stably and achieve long-term development.
Yao Huili, Executive President of ZTO Cloud Warehouse Technology, proposed in the opening sharing that brand competition is gradually extending from the front end to the back end. Front-end marketing determines how fast a brand can run, while the supply chain determines how far a brand can go. When channels are more scattered and demand fluctuations are more frequent, the supply chain needs to provide stronger certainty for brand operation.
This kind of certainty does not simply mean increasing inventory or warehouses, but enabling inventory, warehouse networks, systems and fulfillment methods to flexibly adjust according to business changes.
Focusing on the full-link value co-creation of FMCG brands, Guo Zhenqun, former General Manager of Omni-channel Retail of Procter & Gamble Group, shared the changes in supply chain cooperation modes from the perspective of retailer-brand collaboration. The relationship between brands, retail channels and supply chain service providers is evolving from a traditional transactional relationship to joint operation. Product co-creation, packaging optimization, inventory sharing, collaborative forecasting and integrated fulfillment not only affect logistics costs, but also are directly related to commodity sales, consumer experience and capital efficiency.
This change shows that the value of the supply chain is no longer limited to "delivering goods". From product design and packaging to inventory planning, warehouse and distribution execution and after-sales reverse processing, the supply chain is participating in brand operation at an earlier stage.
In the roundtable discussion themed "How Brands Build High-resilience Full-domain Supply Chains", Mai Haochao, Dean of Ebrun Research Institute, Yao Huili, Executive President of ZTO Cloud Warehouse Technology, as well as guests from BJHG, Zimei Group and an international beauty group, discussed full-domain supply chains from different business scenarios such as fashion brands, beauty and global operation.
The focus of the participating guests is no longer on whether to deploy multiple sales channels, but on whether the inventory, systems and fulfillment capabilities behind different channels can truly collaborate.
For fashion brands, the increase of SKUs, IP co-branding and small-batch quick response put forward higher requirements for supply chain flexibility; for beauty brands, validity period management, compliance requirements, inventory warning and reverse logistics directly affect the operation quality of overseas markets; for brands that are going global, how to divide the work between self-built capabilities and professional third-party services has also become an important issue in supply chain system design.
Therefore, the full-domain supply chain should not be simply understood as "same products, same warehouse and same fulfillment for online and offline". The true "full coverage" includes three dimensions: channel, region and link. It must adapt to the operation rules of different platforms, connect the differences between domestic and overseas markets in customs clearance, distribution, return & exchange and stock preparation, and cover the complete link from forward delivery, reverse return to intelligent forecasting and anomaly identification. Its essence is to build a unified, flexible and systematic logistics and supply chain system, so that orders under different channels, regions and scenarios can be handled efficiently and stably.
In the specific implementation, ZTO Cloud Warehouse Technology takes "full-domain response of one inventory pool, integrated efficient fulfillment, one-stop in-depth service" as the path to promote the collaboration of inventory, warehouse network and service capabilities. At the same time, in view of the differences between different channels and overseas markets, AI is upgraded from single-point application to chain collaboration that runs through front-end forecasting, mid-end warehouse network and path scheduling, back-end fulfillment and reverse processing, so that the supply chain gradually evolves from passive response to active prediction.
03 AI Enters Real Business Scenarios: From Local Efficiency Improvement to Full-link Collaboration
AI is providing new solutions for the supply chain, but what enterprises really care about is no longer how complex the technology itself is, but whether it can solve specific problems.
At the event site, Liu Junqun, head of the Information Technology Center of ZTO Cloud Warehouse Technology, shared the practical application of AI in the logistics and supply chain sector. From intelligent customer service and intelligent work orders to order processing, warehouse operation and anomaly identification, AI is gradually entering the specific business segments of the supply chain.
In the past, many digital tools solved a single problem in forecasting, warehousing, transportation or customer service respectively. As the business link continues to extend, what brands need is the collaboration between all links: sales forecast must be able to affect inventory allocation, order distribution must be able to promote the adjustment of warehouse network and distribution paths, and fulfillment anomalies also need to be identified and processed by the system at an earlier stage.
Therefore, the next step of supply chain AI capabilities is not only to complete the automation of a certain link, but to form a linkage between forecasting, inventory, warehouse network, fulfillment and after-sales, so that the supply chain gradually evolves from passive response to active prediction.
This change also extends to a wider range of business relationships. Tang Minglei, Co-founder of K2Lab and former General Manager of Investment of Alibaba DingTalk, shared the business changes that agents may bring starting from A2A native e-commerce.
The true value of AI does not lie in adding a technical label to the original process, but in reducing information breaks in the operation link, enabling brands to understand demand faster, discover risks earlier, and make different business units form more efficient collaboration.
04 From Supply Chain Cooperation to Long-term Ecological Collaboration
In the evening of the same day, the "ZTO Cloud Warehouse Night" further continued the discussion on brand growth and supply chain collaboration.
Hu Xiangliang, President of ZTO Cloud Warehouse Technology, shared the further transformation of the role of the supply chain around the trends of full-channel integration, changing consumer demand and accelerated brand globalization. As brand operation scenarios continue to expand, the supply chain is evolving from a back-end supporting service to a core capability that supports brand resilience and growth.
Relying on AI digital capabilities, warehouse and distribution networks and omni-channel fulfillment services, ZTO Cloud Warehouse Technology is promoting the further integration of capabilities such as domestic multi-channel inventory collaboration, cross-border supply chain and localized fulfillment. At the same time, by deepening collaboration with brands, platforms and ecological partners, the supply chain will participate in brand operation at an earlier stage to jointly respond to market changes.
From global market selection to full-domain inventory allocation; from local adaptation of cross-border fulfillment to the implementation of AI in real businesses, the topics discussed at this private board summit are not isolated industry hotspots, but a set of operational propositions that brands need to face together in the next stage of development.
Growth is still important, but the way of growth is changing. What brands need is not only a larger traffic entrance, but also a supply chain base that can cope with changes; what supply chain enterprises provide is not only warehousing and distribution, but also participate in operational collaboration with technology, network and industry experience.
The more uncertain the market is, the more certainty the supply chain needs to provide. In the future, whoever can connect commodities, inventory, channels, fulfillment and data at an earlier stage will be more likely to maintain resilience amid changes and find new space for growth.