01
The fourth-generation Honghualang Red Ten ceased production
Recently, Langjiu has made frequent moves.
On May 8, Honghualang officially released a message:
From now on, the production of the fourth-generation Honghualang Red Ten will be discontinued.
As soon as the news came out, it immediately caused a heated discussion in the industry.
According to the logic of "the shorter the word, the bigger the matter", at this time, it was announced that Honghualang would stop shipping, and the strategic consideration of Langjiu was bound to be unusual.
After Qinghualang completed the fifth-generation upgrade last year, the market speculated that Honghualang's fifth-generation iterative upgrade would follow.
It's just that I didn't expect Langjiu to come so quickly for the layout of Honghualang! In the FMCG industry, the discontinuation of a product often means abandoning the product or upgrading it.
This not only means that the scarcity of the product is gradually increasing, but also reflects the adjustment of the company's product strategy.
In fact, Honghualang's layout this year is much more than that.
In less than a month, Langjiu made three moves in a row:
1. Langjiu's 7 strategic products are fully presented;
2. The fourth generation of Honghualang Red Ten was discontinued;
3. Longmalang Business Department and Shunpinlang Business Department merged to establish Langjiu and Xiang Business Division.
According to the timeline, the first thing that happened was the comprehensive presentation of the "7 strategic products of Langjiu", and as soon as the official tweet came out, some netizens called it "Seven Horses".
This was followed by the announcement that the fourth-generation Honghualang Red Ten was officially discontinued. The next day after announcing the suspension of production of Red Ten, it was officially announced:
Langjiu Longmalang Business Division and Shunpinlang Business Division were merged to set up Langjiu and Xiang Division, and coordinated the operation of Langjiu and Xiang series products.
The three things are connected together, and the general program of "Centennial Langjiu" announced by Wang Junlin, chairman of Langjiu Group, instantly appeared in people's minds last year. It mentions:
By 2025, the sales revenue of more than 30 billion yuan will be realized, and the revenue of the two single products of Qinghualang and Honghualang will exceed 10 billion yuan; It is also necessary to implement the "351 Project" from 2024 to 2033, that is, the annual income will reach 30 billion, 50 billion, and 100 billion respectively.
From this point of view, Langjiu is starting from the comprehensive upgrade of Qinghualang and Honghualang products, and it is necessary to implement the grand strategy of "standing hundreds of billions in ten years"!
02
Honghualang strategy increases, release stronger market signals!
In fact, the discontinuation of the fourth generation of Honghualang is not surprising.
Since its listing in 2003, in the past 21 years, Honghualang has undergone 4 iterative upgrades (excluding this one) to continuously improve its quality.
First generation: 2003-2005;
Second generation: 2006-2011;
Third generation: 2011-2019;
Fourth generation: 2020-present.
The first generation of Honghualang came out in 2003. Because of its ultra-high quality, it has quickly gained market recognition and become a representative of high-end soy sauce wine in the industry. In particular, in 2005, it won the "Special Gold Medal" of the London International Wine Evaluation Organization, so the first generation of Honghualang is also known as the "Gold Medal Version of Shanshui Honghualang".
In 2006, the second generation of Honghualang was launched, and the quality continued to maintain the first-generation high-quality liquor level, and the second-generation Honghualang made appropriate refinements in the packaging, optimized the printing process, adjusted the color of landscape painting, and returned to the green landscape painting style of the Song and Ming dynasties, and the color was more bright and dazzling.
In 2011, the third generation was launched, which won a number of awards at home and abroad, and was loved by liquor consumers for its flavor characteristics of "outstanding sauce aroma, mellow and clean, elegant and delicate, long aftertaste, and long fragrance in the empty cup", and was praised by the market as a "model of sauce aroma".
In 2020, it will enter the era of Honghualang 4.0, which is the "Red Ten" that announced the discontinuation of this time. After the launch of the fourth generation, it has received unprecedented attention from Langjiu, and it is clearly stated in the "Internal Control Guidelines for Sauce and Fragrance Product Enterprises" that "Honghualang 10 is specified as 5-year-old base wine + 10-year-old wine blending, and Honghualang 15 is specified as 5-year base wine + 15-year-old wine blending", so as to further promote market enthusiasm with continuously upgraded product quality.
We can see that for more than 20 years, Langjiu has been updating the brand's products in a timely manner, and constantly improving the product value and taste in the brand renewal, which is the main theme of Honghualang all the way.
The suspension of production of Red Ten is a major action for Langjiu to enter a new stage of development to re-examine itself and innovate quality.
The meaning behind it is very obvious -
It aims to build the value productivity of Langjiu and the new quality productivity of Langjiu.
For the fourth generation of Honghualang itself, it will also face an unprecedented value increase!
The liquor industry has been in the industry for thousands of years, and the market economy has also experienced a hundred years of operation.
What is scarce is valuable!
The discontinuation of Honghualang Red Ten has made the products circulating in the market become fewer and fewer, and the scarcity has increased significantly, and naturally, its collection value and market attention have also increased.
In the context of consumption upgrading, consumers' demand for liquor is no longer limited to simple drinking, but also pursues multiple enjoyment of taste, culture and collection value.
For example, the return of "landscape painting" in the packaging design of the four generations of Honghualang represents the return of the classic value of Honghualang, continuing to inherit the classic landscape painting patterns of Langjiu, retrieving the classic memory of history, and making the collection taste of the four generations more prominent.
More importantly, the market popularity of the four generations of Honghualang has only increased!
During this year's Spring Festival, Honghualang Red Ten and Honghualang Red Fifteen also jointly landed on CCTV Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Dragon, further expanding the brand's popularity on the stage of national attention.
Thanks to the super popularity and huge topic traffic of the Spring Festival Gala, during the Spring Festival, the average daily corkage rate of Honghualang increased by nearly 200% year-on-year, and shipments increased by more than 80% over the same period last year!
Therefore, in April, when the market circulated the news of Honghualang's price adjustment, the industry predicted that Honghualang's performance had been strong in recent years, and even during the Spring Festival, May Day and other festivals, there were many out-of-stocks. In the future, with the continuous improvement and upgrading of the main products of Langjiu, the fourth generation of Honghualang will usher in a wave of popularity.
The scarcity of products has increased, the market sales volume has increased, the average daily corkage rate has skyrocketed, and the value of the four generations in the future is self-evident.
03
In the battle of quality, the value of Langjiu is becoming more and more mellow
Tracing back to the source, the real value of Honghualang is still the quality of Lang wine.
What makes a good bottle of wine? There may not be a standard answer, but in the field of Chinese soy sauce wine, "Maoxianglang flavor" is one of the hallmarks of good wine. Judging from the map, Moutai and Langjiu are located on both sides of the winding Chishui River, and there is not much difference in latitude and natural climate.
The unique water, soil, climate, air and microbiota form a unique microclimate for winemaking, precipitate an irreproducible humanistic ecology of winemaking, and give birth to Jiangxianglang Liquor. Named after Erlang Town, Gulin County, Sichuan Province, Langjiu has a long history of more than 100 years from "Suzhi Distillery", "Huichuan Distillery" to "Huishalang Liquor" of "Jiyi Distillery".
Since 1984 and 1989, Langjiu has won the title of "National Famous Liquor" at two consecutive liquor appraisals, and Langjiu has opened a very distinctive brand development road. On the basis of traditional brewing techniques, it extracts the "secret recipe" of brewing and storing "born in Chishui River, growing in Tianbao Peak, raised in the pottery altar warehouse, and hidden in Tianbao Cave".
This is directly reflected in the fact that from the first generation to the fourth generation, on the basis of retaining the traditional sauce flavor, Honghualang has gradually improved the body and layering of the liquor, making it more in line with the pursuit of complex taste by modern consumers.
This is Langjiu's ingenuity in quality, and it is also the perfect fusion of respect for tradition and innovation - after more than 20 years of 4 iterations, the only thing that remains unchanged is to make the wine well.
It can be said that Langjiu practices a kind of long-termism, which is the strict control and unremitting pursuit of wine quality:
The ultimate quality, the ultimate brand, the ultimate taste.
"Langjiu takes making good wine as the company's first priority, slows down the pace of sales, implements controlled sales, makes the output greater than the sales, and gradually increases the storage volume, so that the quality will get better and better."
Wang Junlin, chairman of Langjiu, once said.
Do not deliberately pursue the scale of sales, do not reduce the quality due to market factors, rather sacrifice sales, sacrifice the market, choose the good and stubborn value trade-offs, in this keen "make quick money" market is commendable.
Others look at this year and next year, but he looks at the next five years and ten years.
Langjiu's persistence has finally paid off. From the perspective of the high-end camp, Qinghualang has initially stood in the first price band of high-end wine, and the momentum of steady development is basically determined. Under the idea of "paying equal attention to green and red", straightening out the value and price system of Honghualang will completely stimulate the advantages of Honghualang with a wide range of consumer groups and good market recognition.
In the sub-high-end price segment, the growth and value of Honghualang have been underestimated for a long time, which is determined by the fierce market involution. However, Langjiu's recent brand adjustment will inevitably make itself gain greater growth, and it will also make the value of Honghualang further jump.
After all, the idea of long-termism is scarce, and so is the spirit of pursuing quality.
At present, including Moutai, Langjiu and Xijiu, the total annual output of sauce-flavored liquor in the entire Chishui River does not exceed 200,000 tons, and will not exceed 200,000 tons for a long time.
The land that can be used to make wine on a scale of more than 10,000 tons is no longer in the golden winemaking belt of the Chishui River.
In the next five years, the market size of the liquor industry will reach trillions, and the market size of sauce-flavored liquor will exceed 200 billion.
In the big market of 200 billion, there are only a few big players that can be seen, and a dark war of comprehensive strength in quality, brand, product and other aspects is about to start.
And this time it is the main battlefield of Langjiu. Starting from the recent self-innovation of Honghualang, it is bound to trigger a round of restructuring of the industry pattern.
In the era of quality, the "ultimate standard" of Langjiu will undoubtedly become an important yardstick for the outside world to measure the future development of liquor, and will even force the industry to improve its quality control level.
The future is an era of quality and value, and it is also a great era of Langjiu!