Jiuxian.com: E-commerce Acts as Important Platform for French Wines to Enter China
PARIS, July 3, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- The inspection team of China's largest online alcohol retailer Beijing Jiuxian E-Commerce (http://www.jiuxian.com), led by founder and chairman Hao Hongfeng, arrived at Paris in the morning on July 3 for a one week business visit. Hao Hongfeng, who has over ten years of experience in the Chinese alcoholic beverage market, presented the latest data and his insights on the Chinese wine market.
"China produced 1.542 billion bottles of wine (approx. 1.15 million kiloliters) and consumed 1.835 billion bottles (approx. 1.37 million kiloliters) in 2011, representing a gap of 293 million bottles (approx. 220,000 kiloliters) between supply and demand in the Chinese wine market, which will bring huge opportunities for French wine producers," said Hao, citing statistics from China Alcoholic Drinks Industry Association. "It is unrealistic for China to use large areas of lands for planting viniferas, so the country needs to address the demand for wines through imports," said Shao Li in an interview with Chinese media. Shao Li, director of the Department of Foreign Trade under China's Ministry of Commerce, shared the views with Hao.
Official Chinese data showed that over the past five years, the share of imported wines in the Chinese wine market rose at a rapid pace of more than 25 percent annually. The high growth speed is expected to be sustainable in the long term. However, despite China's booming imported wine market with huge space for growth, there are many challenges to be addressed.
First, due to the non-transparency of information and excessive length of supply chain, the end price of some imported wines are extremely high, deviating a lot from that in their place of origin. Second, the threshold of the imported wine industry is low, leading to a large number of wine companies with good and bad qualifications to be mixed together. Most of the wine producers are medium and small companies, with nearly one third of them washed out from the market every year. The low threshold and high elimination cause some companies to one-sidedly seek returns in the short term and abandon sincerity and honesty during operation, all unfavorable to a steady development of imported wine brands in China. Third, the lack of ways to be open and authoritative may facilitate some bad dealers to copy international wine brands to sell as counterfeit, which is unfavorable to intellectual property protection of these brands in China.
Hao Hongfeng commented that these problems do not only lie in imported wines, but also in wines and Chinese alcohols produced in China. This is why Hao set up China's first online alcohol retail store Jiuxian.com in September 2009, during which he was already the largest Chinese alcohol retailer in Shanxi province, China, and then fast developed it into China's largest online liquor store. The success of Jiuxian.com also leads to a wave of online alcohol retail in China.
Hao said that online retailing has been deeply rooted in China. The China E-commerce Development Report most recently released by the country's Ministry of Commerce showed that by the end of 2011, the number of the country's online shopping consumers reached 194 million, with online retail sales totaling 782.56 billion yuan, representing a year on year increase of 53.7 per cent. Online retailing has made an impact on the traditional offline physical retail industry, and a transition of wine and other offline physical retail businesses to online mode will be trending.
Hao added that online retailing has more advantages when compared to traditional wine retail channels through shortening the supply chain, including a larger price space, higher public credibility due to transparency, and allowing consumers to go shopping wherever and whenever. Jiuxian.com can provide a strong support for French wine brands due to its well-established offline and online sales support system and good brand reputation, and the platform will be one of the important and favored choices for the French wine brands as they expand in the Chinese market.
The inspection team of jiuxian.com, led by Hao Hongfeng, will stay in Bordeaux for four days, during which they will meet with well-known French wine producers, among them Plaimont, Chateau Margaux, Chateau Cheval Blanc and Chateau Pavie, and discuss the issues related to cooperation.
About Jiuxian.com
Established in September 2009, Beijing Jiuxian E-Commerce Co., Ltd. (http://www.jiuxian.com) is the largest integrated online alcohol retailer in China specializing in a wide variety of alcoholic products, including Chinese baijiu, Western spirits and wines, as well as wine and alcoholic beverage accessories. The company's product lines include a wide array of both local popular brands and superior imported brands. Headquartered in Beijing, the company now has affiliates and warehouse logistics sites in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan, as well as in other Chinese cities.
With rigorous requirements in regards to sourcing channels, Jiuxian.com has been insistent on fulfilling its commitment to providing genuine alcoholic products and dedicated to taking full advantage of e-commerce without borders, paving the way for China to build a platform for its homegrown alcohol producers to go international and for international wine brands to enter the Chinese market.