At first, he was just an ordinary worker in the cigarette factory, but with his own efforts, he established his own cocktail brand, and in the case of more than 20 million debts, he was able to turn the tide and build it into the first cocktail brand in China.
Tell the story of the original business founder and pass on the business wisdom. This issue of Ziya Children's Fun Founder Observation, tells you about Liu Xiaodong's inspirational entrepreneurial history.
Liu Xiaodong
Liu Xiaodong is a native of Lanzhou, Gansu Province, born in 1976. In that economically underdeveloped era, he first entered the Lanzhou Tobacco Factory in 1990, and after working in the Lanzhou Tobacco Factory for two years, he felt that the job could be seen at a glance and had no future.
So when he saw that many people around him were looking for development opportunities, he also went to Shenzhen in 1992 to prepare for a career in the south with more opportunities.
After some inquiry and selection, he entered a spice company. Because of his hard-working, hard-working, and two years of experience working in a cigarette factory, he was soon promoted to the position of sales manager.
The work of the spice company is very simple, after working for a period of time, he feels that he has mastered enough sales experience, so he resolutely resigned, with the 200,000 yuan he had accumulated, founded Bairun Flavor and Fragrance Co., Ltd., and started a business alone.
At that time, the fragrance business was very prosperous, and Liu Xiaodong quickly earned the first bucket of gold for his own business with excellent management and sales experience. As the company develops better and better, Liu Xiaodong's ambitions are also getting bigger and bigger, and he wants to occupy his place in the business world.
Entering the cocktail industry
By chance, he learned from a friend that the liquor market at night was vast. The sales of cocktails alone in Shanghai overnight are higher than his company's total overnight sales across the country.
After learning about this situation, although Liu Xiaodong was very envious and his heart was eager to move, he did not rush to make a move. Cautiously, he believes that if you want to enter the cocktail industry, you first need to have a comprehensive understanding of this market.
After some investigation, he learned that the Shanghai night show at this time was mainly based on beer and foreign wine, especially the domestic Tsingtao Beer and foreign whisky were the most popular.
In this case, it is difficult for new drinks to re-enter the market. Therefore, he had to develop a completely new drink to catch the attention of customers with novelty.
When all is said and done, Liu Xiaodong contacted domestic and foreign liquor experts while beginning to learn about the sales and management of liquor.
RIO
With the help of experts, Liu Xiaodong combined juice and vodka, and after some careful preparation, he created a new pre-mixed cocktail and named this cocktail category RIO.
After the cocktail is successfully prepared, the next thing to face is how to open the market. After some thought and discussion, Liu Xiaodong adopted the most secure low-price strategy, priced the cocktail at 20 yuan, and this price was almost half lower than other cocktails.
In Liu Xiaodong's view, such a low price will definitely allow RIO to achieve very good sales, thus launching the RIO brand. However, the sales volume after the launch of RIO was not satisfactory.
In the night show, the drink is usually promoted by the sales waiter, but because the profit of RIO is too low, the waiter at the night show directly mixes it with ordinary drinks when selling.
As a result, RIO's sales were even lower than the original price of 20 yuan.
In order to increase sales, Liu Xiaodong had to re-set the price and raise the price of RIO to 30 yuan. However, the price of beer at that time was generally priced at about 30 yuan, so that RIO entered the beer market, which immediately caused dissatisfaction and exclusion from beer manufacturers.
As the bulk of the beer market, Tsingtao Beer first attacked, directly chartered the venue, and bought out the source of customers; subsequently, Budweiser bought almost all the sales attendants by investing more manpower and financial resources, and no one was willing to sell RIO cocktails for a while.
Immediately afterward, the distributors of foreign liquor also besieged the RIO cocktail. Under the strong exclusion of major brands and distilleries, Liu Xiaodong's RIO cocktail sales are dismal, and he can only sell a few bottles a day, with no profit at all.
Ice sharp
However, the blow to Liu Xiaodong is still to come. As Asia's spirits market becomes saturated, Theaco-Pacific drinker David has set his sights on RIO's pre-mixed cocktails, believing that the liquor should have great prospects.
Therefore, after some preparation, Dawerk also launched his own pre-mixed cocktail, named "Ice Sharp".
But what Davic did not expect was that after the launch of Bingrui, it was like Liu Xiaodong's RIO, it was difficult to break through in the night arena and fell into a passive stalemate.
In 2008, Dyvic's cocktails continued to sell dismal. At this time, Liu Xiaodong has also been in debt of more than 25 million yuan, almost facing bankruptcy and bankruptcy.
In July of the same year, Taobao held its own five-year anniversary celebration. Davic took aim at the e-commerce platform, ready to withdraw his cocktails from the sluggish night show and enter the e-commerce industry.
Daweek's decision proved to be very wise. Less than a year after Bingrui invested in e-commerce, sales have exceeded 30 million bottles.
Seeing the success of Bingrui, Liu Xiaodong also began to try to promote RIO to the e-commerce platform, but at this time, it has been a year since Bingrui entered e-commerce.
E-commerce platform
RIO suddenly started late, but Liu Xiaodong, through the success of Bing Rui, understood that the target customer of the pre-mixed cocktail should be some young people who are pursuing new trends.
After determining the audience, Liu Xiaodong readjusted the price of the product and invested his own cocktails on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com.
In order to increase RIO sales, Liu Xiaodong changed his distribution system and marketing methods. In 2013 alone, RIO occupied more than 40% of the shelves of pre-mixed liquor, with sales of more than 10 million yuan.
In order to further enhance the popularity of RIO cocktails and establish its young and innovative brand image, Liu Xiaodong set his sights on the variety shows and TV series that were on fire.
In the "Run Bar Brothers", "Why Sheng ZhenMo" and other popular variety TV series, you can see the figure of RIO cocktails, RIO also through this way, quickly out of the circle, become the new favorite of young people.
However, there must be pros and cons. Although RIO has circled a lot of good feelings by implanting fire programs, at the same time, the huge advertising cost is also a huge expense for RIO, who is just starting out.
In 2015, due to huge advertising expenses and declining sales, Liu Xiaodong directly lost 142 million yuan.
In order to save consumers and increase sales, Liu Xiaodong launched a new micro-drunk series of RIO cocktails in 2017, and selected "Girl Scout" Zhou Dongyu as the brand spokesperson, targeting the audience of the micro-drunk series as young women.
Under various marketing promotions, in just one year, RIO obtained a profit of 138 million yuan and quickly returned to the capital.
Since then, Liu Xiaodong has continued to work hard, and has successively adopted a variety of innovative marketing methods, adopted simple and fashionable packaging, and jointly branded with national brands such as Liushen Flower Dew, which has satisfied the appetite of young people, attracted a large wave of heat, and rio's popularity has been further improved.
Now, young people, especially young sisters, always order a few bottles of RIO cocktails when they get together, and Liu Xiaodong's marketing is undoubtedly very successful.
From a debt of tens of millions to a domestic cocktail leader, Liu Xiaodong has achieved his career with his persistence, seriousness, innovation and carefulness.
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