The epidemic has punctured the illusion of domestic wine consumption prosperity.

An epidemic caused the wine in the domestic market to enter the cold winter overnight. While waiting for the delayed "retaliatory rebound", the industry gradually realized that the cake in the domestic wine consumption market did not grow as fast as the import data in previous years. In order to eliminate the anxiety of not making money, the industry trend of "white dyed red" has been replaced by "red dyed white" or "red dyed sauce" again.

In the industry's view, in the next two to three years, the overall downturn in the industry may be difficult to change immediately. The urgent task of domestic wine industry is to find a way to take root in the market and make a big cake.

Anxiety of importers

Zhang Wei (pseudonym), a wine importer in Tianjin, has been anxious for half a year.

In the first half of this year, the epidemic caused domestic terminal sales to be almost suspended, and wine sales fell sharply. He is anxious about destocking; In the second half of September-June, the Mid-Autumn Festival market once tied the same period last year, which made him feel the hope of making up for it. However, the tepid sales since June,165438+1October, made him worry about the colors of the two peak seasons (New Year's Day and Spring Festival) this year. After all, the latter is also the main sales period of wine.

During the peak season of 65438+ 10 this year, Zhang Wei confidently ordered more than 10 containers of wine. However, with the second outbreak of epidemic in Europe, the shortage of European ports and the "empty container crisis", the wine ordered by Zhang Wei was delayed by about 1 month, and it is expected to be delayed to 202 1 month and 1 month, when the peak season has already ended.

Zhang Wei told the First Financial Reporter that 1 1 is often the peak season for stocking. Due to sporadic epidemics in China, dealers are very cautious in ordering. On the whole, it is a foregone conclusion that the sales of wine this year will be 20% to 30% less than in previous years, and business will always rise and fall, but what makes him even more anxious is that this situation does not seem to end in the short term. In order to avoid possible market fluctuations in the future, other partners of the company have contacted Maotai Technology Development Company.

Ming Sheng, another Shandong comprehensive wine merchant, is in a similar situation. Two years ago, the wine was hot. He used to make liquor, and he increased the proportion of wine business in his business, and was certified as a senior sommelier by the British Wine and Spirits Education Foundation. However, in the second half of this year, the contrast between wine and liquor business made him start Maotai Town again and start a customized wine with Maotai flavor.

When the imported wine market was booming a few years ago, the discussion in the circle was often "white and red", and big wine merchants turned to the wine field for gold. In 2020, this trend was reversed. At the 5th Global Wine G50 Summit of the 2020 China Wine Exhibition held in Hangzhou in early February this year, "red sauce flavor" became a topic of public discussion, and wine merchants turned their attention to the hot sauce flavor wine.

This change also reflects the weakness of the wine market this year.

After the epidemic, all kinds of wines in the domestic market have been hit, but the recovery of the market is completely different. In contrast, the recovery speed of liquor and beer industry is obviously faster, while the recovery of wine industry is obviously lagging behind.

As can be seen from the third quarterly report of listed liquor enterprises, the revenue and net profit data of Wuliangye and LU ZHOU LAO JIAO CO.,LTD, the representative enterprises of the first and second echelon of liquor, all turned positive in the first three quarters, and achieved double-digit growth in the third quarter; Tsingtao Brewery, a leading beer enterprise, saw its revenue recovery decrease to 1.9% in the first three quarters, and its net profit also increased to 15.2%. In contrast, Changyu, the leading domestic wine producer, has a slow recovery. In the third quarter, the situation improved, and its income decreased by 265,438+0.1%,which narrowed the decline. However, from June to September, the revenue was 210.90 billion yuan, down 38.3% year-on-year, and the net profit fell 45.5%.

Epidemics expose industry problems

There is no accurate statistical data on domestic wine consumption, and the change of imported wine data is one of the reference indicators for the general industry. After 20 13, the data of domestic imported wine continued to improve, especially after 20 15, and by 20 17, the total amount and amount of domestic imported wine increased for three consecutive years, thus judging that the imported wine market broke out.

At that time, the industry thought that there were more than 400 million middle-income people in China, and with the concern for healthy drinking, they would naturally switch from spirits to wine consumption. Under the influence of import data and earning money, a large amount of money poured into the wine industry, creating better import data.

Yin Kai, vice president of Yijiupan E-commerce Co., Ltd., once raised a question: China has a huge market, so it is easy to find some good-looking data to make optimistic judgments. But is the change of consumers' consumption concept in the actual market as optimistic as the data?

Now it seems that the import data at that time did not reflect the prosperity of consumption trend. From 2065438+August 2008, the import data of domestic imported wine began to decline, and the epidemic undoubtedly made the data "return to the original position" quickly.

At the 5th Global Wine G50 Summit of China Wine Exhibition, Wang, Secretary-General of China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Food, Livestock and Animals, revealed that in the first seven months of this year, the domestic import volume of bottled wine under 2 liters was 900 million US dollars, down 3 1% year-on-year. Although the decline has narrowed in the second half of the year, it is expected to maintain this level throughout the year, and the number of imported enterprises is expected to decline for the first time in five years.

In the industry's view, compared with other wines, the performance of the wine industry this year reveals that domestic wine consumption has not really "rooted" in the consumer market, especially after the epidemic, with the gradual recovery of consumption scenes such as gathering drinks and business banquets, wine is still not the fastest-recovering wine, which also shows that wine actually lacks a "mass base".

Wang Dehui, general manager of Shenzhen Zhide Marketing, told CBN that compared with other kinds of wine, wine entered the China market as a high-end product. For a long time, the domestic wine industry has mostly associated wine with high-end concepts such as identity, taste and sense of ceremony, which hindered the popularization of wine and made it difficult to really open the market consumption.

On the other hand, the upstream and downstream of imported wine are very scattered, and domestic consumers' awareness of wine is low, which leads to the maturity of domestic imported wine market and the slow growth of cakes.

According to Yang, dean of the Wine Business School, there is no problem with the track of the wine industry. What is wrong is the player and the rules of the game. Compared with the brand power of liquor and the cost performance of liquor, wine is obviously in a weak position.

The cold winter of the industry will continue

It is worth noting that some people call this round of adjustment in the wine industry a cold winter, but in the industry's view, this round of cold winter has just begun.

Wang Dehui believes that in the future, even in the next few years, the overall development of the domestic wine industry is difficult to be optimistic. Because of the international epidemic and the uncertainty of the international situation and the uncertainty of the future economy, it is difficult for the market to see collective prosperity again.

In the eyes of many people in the industry, whether it is domestic wine or imported wine, the top priority of the domestic wine industry is to make a big market cake and the river is declining. This is the most basic business logic, because the competition in the future market is between wine and other wines, and the total consumption of wine currently accounts for only 4% of domestic wine consumption, and it has a tendency to be marginalized.

But this is also the embarrassment faced by the domestic wine industry. At the 24th Portuguese Forum, Sun Jian, the general manager of Changyu, suggested that wine enterprises should strive to expand the basic market and become the cake of the whole wine market. The reason why we haven't done enough in this respect is that most wine companies are "poor children" and can't afford too much promotion expenses.

On the other hand, the development of Chinese wine before belongs to the period of collective unconsciousness. Many traders and distributors just make money with industry dividends and become good channel "porters", but rarely think about what to do next; In addition, because the cooperation mode between domestic wine merchants and foreign wineries is mostly agency mode, they are unwilling to be brands, which also leads to the bottleneck of domestic wine brand development.

At the same time, the change of "red dyed white" and "red dyed sauce" is a helpless move for some distributors, but it also reflects the unprofessional and speculative nature of some domestic wine distributors to some extent.

However, such adjustments are not all bad effects. For a long time, the domestic wine market has been in a state of fragmentation and disorderly competition because of the low entry threshold. Such adjustment is undoubtedly the best filter. In Wang's view, under the adjustment, the wine industry will enter a kind of squeezing growth, which can make more unprofessional and weak enterprises be eliminated and bring more opportunities to the head and innovative enterprises.

For example, in an epidemic, not everyone is sad everywhere. For example, the sales volume of Ningxia Xige Winery, which has just risen in the past two years, has risen instead of falling. In May this year, the contracted sales of SIG dealers reached about 300 million yuan.