Yang Menghan, chief reporter of "Huaxia Wine News".
It seems to have become a consensus in the industry to enrich the connotation of products with "culture" and to achieve sales increment with "cultural and creative wine".
At the recent annual performance briefing held by Shede Liquor, Pu Jizhou, chairman of Shede Liquor, made it clear that Chinese liquor has entered a new era of cultural competition!
Moutai not only put forward the cultural concept of "beauty", but also combined it with its own existing and planned content, focusing on reshaping products with cultural power, and the effect was obvious in a period of time.
Since the launch of "Moutai in the Year of the Horse" in 2014 and gaining market popularity and forming a wave of "Zodiac Liquor" craze, Moutai's enthusiasm for "cultural and creative liquor" has been rising, and it has successively launched 24 solar terms liquor, "Xunfeng Moutai" and "Kweichow Moutai Spring Series cultural products" relying on "Xunfeng".
However, after many climaxes and being popular among countless consumers, the popularity of Moutai's cultural and creative series products has declined.
Nowhere is this trend more evident than at the price level. The first and relatively scarce horse hair, fescue and the like, the unit price once soared to more than 40,000 yuan, becoming a highly sought after hot product in the field of high-end consumption and collection. However, the Zodiac Moutai, which has been launched in recent years, is not as popular as before.
The latest information shows that the batch prices of chickens, dogs, pigs, rats, cows and other zodiac Moutai are all 3,000 yuan to 4,000 yuan. The Zodiac Rabbit Mao launched in 2023 and the Zodiac Dragon Mao launched in 2024 will be priced at 3,000 yuan-3,100 yuan.
The name is derived from the traditional Zhouyi culture "Xunfeng Feitian Moutai", which is also considered by the outside world to be one of the "culprits" that caused the price collapse of Feitian Moutai.
The "24 solar terms Moutai" launched in 2023 will officially end in January this year. However, in terms of the first launch of "Lichun", its market price has experienced several fluctuations, from the initial 4,000 yuan to more than 20,000 yuan, and then fell back to about 10,000 yuan, which also reflects the change of market trend.
In April this year, the "Kweichow Moutai Spring Series Cultural Products" was officially launched, which is known as the third digital and real fusion product after Kweichow Moutai 24 solar terms and Kweichow Moutai (Xunfeng).
There is no doubt that the "Spring Series Cultural Products" also belong to cultural and creative products, which can be seen from its 6 names - Wumeng Su, Light Rain, Peach and Plum Blossom, Butterfly Flying, Bird Noise, and Boating.
However, under the current market situation, the industry doubts whether this series of products can have the same popularity as the previous zodiac series and 24 solar terms.
The reason for this lies in the changes in the market situation and consumer demand, whether the added value provided by the cultural and creative concept can be continuously injected into the product itself, and whether the dynamic balance between innovative products and the original main products can be achieved.
From the perspective of market situation and consumer demand, the boom of the last wave of cultural and creative products, that is, the boom created by Moutai Zodiac Liquor, was actually caused by the improvement of the consumer market at that time and the preference of consumers for wine collection and investment. When the real estate investment boom declined, Moutai's financial attributes became prominent, and cultural and creative products were sought after for their scarcity and distinctive personality characteristics.
However, under the current consumption situation, the financial attributes of alcohol products have declined, which has led to the loss of popularity of many famous wines, including cultural and creative products.
From the perspective of the added value provided by cultural and creative products, alcoholic products blessed by scarcity and national cultural characteristics (such as traditional cultural concepts such as solar terms and zodiac) can naturally attract consumers and investors when they show a completely different personality from mainstream products. Coupled with the rise of "national tide and national style", it has undoubtedly become an accelerant for cultural and creative liquor.
Nowadays, it is facing two problems, one is the scarcity of cultural and creative products (such as Moutai 24 solar terms wine, each 500ml bottle is limited to 32,000 bottles), although it can highlight the value, but at the same time, there is also the problem of insufficient circulation, which makes the speculation group that pays attention to high circulation and waits for the price to lose motivation; There are very few cases of internalization into product personality, which undoubtedly makes the concept superficial and loses the meaning of cultural competition.
From the perspective of the relationship between cultural and creative products and main products, it is not easy to maintain a dynamic balance. When the market is good, the original main products of the enterprise and the cultural and creative products support each other, forming a two-way upward trend, but when the market fluctuates, it will adversely affect each other, and the large number of listings of Xunfeng Moutai is regarded as one of the important reasons for the downward trend of Feitian Moutai's price.
So, when the growth rate of the main products has reached the ceiling, and the added value and driving force that cultural and creative products can provide have been insufficient, what will wine companies rely on to maintain high growth in the future? This is undoubtedly a difficult problem in front of all famous wine companies that pursue high growth rate.