Eight Consecutive Years on the Top 500 List: The Drivers Behind Huitongda Network's (9878.HK) Resilience Across Business Cycles

Recently, the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce released the list of 2026 Top 500 Chinese Private Enterprises in Tianjin, with Huitongda Network (9878.HK, “Huitongda”) once again featured. This marks Huitongda’s eighth consecutive appearance on the ranking. It also retains its place among the Top 100 Private Service Enterprises in China, ranking 48th in this service-sector list with operating revenue of RMB 52.3 billion.

A single ranking captures business scale for one year, while eight consecutive years of inclusion tells a far broader story.

The retail sector has seen dramatic shifts over the past eight years. Product mixes and consumer trends have rapidly shifted toward high-frequency fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG). Retail formats have also diverged into bulk snack stores and hard-discount supermarkets, while technology tools have evolved from basic digitalisation to AI-powered systems. Each wave of change reshuffles the market, with many players rising and falling along the way.

In an industry where players often enjoy only a few years of glory, what has allowed Huitongda to stay firmly in the game and consistently unlock new growth drivers?

Looking back at Huitongda’s strategic choices, its starting point was not to chase market fads, but to proactively dive into the challenging yet promising lower-tier market. Its network now spans 21 provinces and 26,000 townships, serving more than 250,000 member stores. From Zhitong Finance’s perspective, scale alone is no moat. The truly scarce asset is the business ecosystem built around these township mom-and-pop shops. Products may be replaced and tools iterated, yet Huitongda’s repeatedly validated business model – centred on who it serves and the operational contexts – underpins its cycle-resilient foundation. This explains why Huitongda’s standing has steadily strengthened amid the rotating waves of e-commerce, social commerce and bulk retail.

While revenue figures demonstrate Huitongda’s scale and market standing, three reusable core capabilities power the stable operation and continuous evolution of its network.

First, end-to-end supply chain management capability. Huitongda’s product portfolio has shifted from its early product lines defined by three key traits – high after-sales service demands, high customer experience requirements and high unit prices – to today’s high-frequency FMCG such as snacks and convenience goods. Yet its full-chain capability to move goods from factories to retail outlets remains robust. New product categories tapping into its established network immediately benefit from Huitongda’s mature channel operating efficiency. This is the primary driver behind its faster category expansion versus peers.

Second, customer service capability. Merchants in lower-tier markets have limited digital foundations; rolling out a system does not mean merchants can use it effectively. Huitongda’s county-level field teams handle promotion, training and ongoing operations, ensuring every upgrade translates into tangible in-store business activities. This delivers lower customer acquisition costs and stronger retention compared with purely online models.

Third, technological capability. Its tech stack has evolved across three phases: lower-tier market e-commerce, industrial internet, and now AI. The user base and real-world use cases built through the first two phases provide groundwork for technological iteration. Technology can be purchased from external vendors, but the user scenarios and underlying data foundation required to deploy it are not purchasable.

These three layers of capabilities reinforce one another. The core foundation stays robust while capabilities grow over time – this is the essence of cross-cycle resilience.

As the retail sector enters a new era shaped by smart supply chains and AI, the value of these three capabilities becomes even more apparent. AI deployment in lower-tier markets faces three distinct hurdles not seen in urban markets.

The first hurdle lies in real-world scenarios. General foundational models are mostly trained on data from highly standardised urban supermarkets, with little representation of the unstandardised retail landscape in lower-tier markets. Actual business activities themselves are a scarce resource. Huitongda’s multi-format store network and daily workflows including sales, ordering, inventory management, product selection and promotions enable continuous model calibration against live business data. Companies without on-the-ground scenarios can only provide tools; those embedded within real business operations can deliver tangible outcomes.

The second hurdle is a closed data loop. Huitongda serves three customer groups within its ecosystem: member stores, chain outlets and e-commerce merchants. Product selection and operational insights from member stores are reused for chain stores. High-frequency transactions at chain outlets feed back into the model. E-commerce use cases supplement online datasets. Scenarios generate data, data refines models, and refined models feed back into scenarios, forming a closed loop that lifts efficiency over time. Even if competitors build models of comparable performance, they lack the live scenarios and data needed for ongoing calibration and iteration.

The third hurdle is delivery. The limited digital maturity of lower-tier merchants means AI tools cannot be rolled out purely online. Deployment and sustained usage rely on offline support. Huitongda’s county-level field teams manage outreach, training and ongoing operations, making its AI offering service-led rather than traffic-driven, and delivering more predictable user renewal and retention. This represents a natural extension of its customer service capability into the new cycle.

While eight years of ranking recognition reflects operational scale, the foundation forged from users, real-world scenarios and capabilities defines sustainability – the scarcest source of cross-cycle investment value.

By integrating more than 250,000 township mom-and-pop stores into its digital ecosystem, Huitongda fosters a virtuous loop where commercial viability and social impact reinforce one another. A more robust foundation translates into greater certainty of returns. As smart supply chains and AI use cases, exemplified by snack and convenience retail formats, gain growing traction across lower-tier markets, the capabilities built atop this foundation stand to deliver operating results and shareholder returns at an accelerated pace.