This content comes from @What's worth buying APP, and the views only represent the author's own |Author: Master of Wine
Hello drinking friends~ Have you had a good get-together with your relatives and friends on New Year's Day?
Just after New Year's Day last week, Lao Wang had a good get-together with his friends. It was also at this gathering that Lao Wang came up with the idea of writing this article.
When chatting on the wine bureau, a friend and Lao Wang frantically complained about the recent batches of the treehouse, presumably seeing this, friends who often drink IPA will smile, and there are always people who will buy oxidized products in several batches of the treehouse recently, and the friend will follow the oxidation problem and complain about the price, in short, because of the unhappiness brought by the treehouse, he complained about the monk, trillium, Fedennes and other brands~
In fact, there have always been complaints about the price of these "top goods" that are often 100 yuan, and there are even ridicules that "it's not that the tree house can't afford to drink, but the tyrannosaurus rex is more cost-effective", so why is the price gap between the same wine in the United States, which is in the early 4 US dollars, come to China? Today we will talk about those sky-high craft beers.
Just kidding, in fact, there are many factors that affect these wines, and Lao Wang believes that there are the following factors:
- Taxes: Taxes can be said to affect the domestic price of all imported goods;
- Premium: Some niche brands have few channels, resulting in "scarce things are expensive";
- Cost: The cost mainly refers to the transportation and storage costs, in addition to the labor costs that we want to focus on today.
taxation
In fact, taxation is best understood, after all, imported goods need to pay taxes, and the same is true for beer, but imported beer is not subject to tariffs, because China's current policy for imported beer is tariff-free.
Now imported beer needs to pay value-added tax and consumption tax, the tax rate of value-added tax is 17%, and for the consumption tax is divided into two levels, if the import dutiable price is greater than or equal to 370 yuan/ton, the consumption tax rate is 250 yuan/ton, if the import dutiable price is less than 370 yuan/ton, the consumption tax rate is 220 yuan/ton, in other words, in fact, the consumption tax amortization to each bottle of wine can actually be "negligible".
Therefore, if a can of 473ml wine imported from the United States is 4.5 US dollars, it is about 32-33 yuan when converted into RMB according to the exchange rate, and the value-added tax needs to be paid about 5.5-5.6 yuan, and the import is greater than 370 yuan/ton after the import is paid, so plus about 0.11 yuan, the price of this bottle of wine should be between 38-40 yuan, but the real situation is of course not so simple, let's go on.
Premium
Premium is one of the best aspects to understand, the essence of premium is still in short supply, the more powerful the commodity is the market myth, the rarer the channel, the stronger the premium ability, the representative of this part is nothing more than the tree house, monk, Fedense and other brands, the premium because of the subjective pricing relationship with the seller, not very universal, so here Lao Wang will not expand on it, and then Lao Wang will focus on the problem of cost, which is also the main reason why this kind of beer is expensive.
cost
The cost Lao Wang wants to be divided into fixed costs and non-fixed costs to explain, fixed costs mainly include transportation, warehousing and other links, and the second non-fixed costs mainly include labor costs and other costs.
First of all, let's talk about fixed costs, or take the United States as an example, imported from the United States to China, nothing more than air or sea transportation, and IPA products highlight a fresh, Lao Wang has a friend who claims to "never drink more than 2 months of IPA", and even more said "only drink IPA within the month", although there are exaggerated ingredients, it also shows how important the date of this kind of wine is, so merchants can only choose faster air freight if they want to sell more money, because of different departures/destinations, volumes, Under the influence of factors such as variety, the price of air freight is also different, but on the whole, the price difference between air freight and sea freight is actually more than 5 times!
As for the storage environment, the "requirements" of IPA type wine are also extremely strict, in addition to the basic conditions such as avoiding light, the most important point is refrigeration, which is to maintain the overall aroma as much as possible and to prevent oxidation of the wine. Transportation and warehousing together is the cold chain of air transportation, not to mention how much money is transnational, friends who have shipped seafood by air should know that this kind of domestic transportation is not cheap~
Then let's talk about the part of non-fixed costs, and to talk about this part, we have to talk about the sales model of these wineries~
Brands such as Treehouse and Fedennes, they do not have overseas agency channels, and in the United States, it is difficult to buy the "first-hand resources" of these brands in cities without stores, and their sales model is to order and pick up in stores on the official website, or buy directly in stores, and it is precisely because of this model that their wine cannot be bought in regions and countries without stores.
But as long as there are people, there is business, because people's strong demand for these brands has given birth to a group of "scalpers", who are committed to placing orders to buy wine in cities where there are goods, and then selling them to other places at a premium in their own way, for example, when Treehouse first arrived in China, most of the goods were carried back by "human flesh", which is almost the same as going to Japan and South Korea to "carry" cosmetics.
With the advent of the epidemic, this model has become unsustainable, but in this case, there are still people who can see "business opportunities", they register import and export companies in China and the United States respectively or find partners, and then still stock up in the United States through human purchases, and then import them into China through import and export companies, and now brands such as Treehouse and Fedense are still mainstream in this way and have become more mature.
In fact, whether it is the early "backpackers" or today's "import and export companies", they have incurred a lot of costs in the process of operation, first of all, they have no cooperation agreement with these brands, so they can only buy wine at the original price, and these employees who are responsible for buying wine in the United States need to pay costs such as wages and travel expenses, and their import and export companies also need various operating costs, plus premiums, so the overall price has soared.
We can take the most classic Julius of the tree house as an example, the price of a box of Julius (24 listens) on the official website is 90 US dollars, which is 3.75 US dollars per listen, equivalent to about 27 yuan, plus about 32 yuan of value-added tax and consumption tax, plus various fixed costs and non-fixed costs, the price of this wine has been as high as fifty or sixty yuan in China, and after the premium of domestic wine merchants or secondary distribution, it will be 100 yuan, but recently the price of the tree house has dropped a lot, and Julius is sixty or seventy yuan in many wine merchants~
Since we started with the Knockdown Giant to compare the treehouse, then Lao Wang will talk about Knock Down the Giant, drinking friends who have been in contact with IPA for a long time may know that when the King of the Tyrannosaurus first entered China, it was also a price of 100 yuan at every turn, and now the price within 30 has already become the norm, and sometimes there is a god price of 9.9 yuan, why is this so, in fact, it is that Knockdown Giant has regular distribution channels, and can sign sales agreements with various domestic and foreign agents, less most of the costs in the middle, and there are preferential prices from distributors, and there is naturally a reasonable price system in China~
Trivia: According to the retail price in the United States, the king of the tyrannosaurus is more expensive than Julius.
King of the Tyrannosaurus official 4 listen price
Julius Official 4 Listen Price
Finally, everyone who loves beer, we still look forward to the early arrival of a big winner in China to win the distribution business of Treehouse~ If you want to express your thoughts or have any beer knowledge you want to know, please leave a message in the comment area to discuss~ By the way, since the reason for the high price of imported craft beer is these, why is the price of domestic craft beer still high? If you are interested, let's talk about the price of domestic craft beer.