April 2022 ICDP webinar: Direct Sales in China

As the Chinese market has slowed in recent years, and a number of global manufacturers have faced difficulties with their presence there, the focus has tended to switch to the arrival of Chinese brands in European and other export markets rather than what is happening domestically in China. In this webinar, we put our toe back in the water, looking at how retail channels have developed in China, led by the direct to consumer and agency approaches used by the new brands such as Nio, Xpeng and others. European and US brands such as Audi, Cadillac, Ford and VW have also been experimenting with new approaches for some products. We provided an overview of recent developments and took a deep dive into the distribution models of Nio, Xpeng and Cadillac. Are there any transferrable lessons relevant to European distribution, does it represent a new approach that could become more widely established in China?

The presentation shown is available below as a pdf and includes speaking notes, and video recording is also available below.