2009年往后之中国葡萄酒市场发展：进口酒百花齐放
**此文曾邗载于深圳酒典2009年5月市场营销栏目内**
2009年往后之中国葡萄酒市场发展：进口酒百花齐放
如果你早在2000年初开始带进口葡萄酒登录中国，那你肯定要亏本损手离场，纵使你在2003年沙士事故后才进国内销售进口葡萄酒，你的结局还是一样。
那么，假如你在去年才进来又怎么样呢？如果你一直拥有充裕资金与懂市场的专业人才，加上你有很好的酒网平台和博大的人墨关系，性价比好的货色及有影响效力的媒体传播，那么，你在努力不懈的情况下还有机会“得见艳阳天”的。2009年下半年起中国将会是进口葡萄酒的世界。此话何解？且听听本人在这篇文章里解说一下吧。
进口葡萄酒的优势不在于国内任何政策上之优惠（每瓶酒还是要按几近进口价的50%课税，在某些情况下还更甚），只是“时机”所言而已。君不记得去年“三鹿”奶粉等国内质控问题吗？国产葡萄酒（不限于几个大品牌）原来一直霸占大众化的低端市场，自去年那宗骇人事件之后，一般消费者都开始意识到“还是低价位的进口酒比较保险一点”。加上外地葡萄酒的文化推广，中高端的消费者已屏弃一些价高的国产酒而转为品鉴同价进口酒。说实话，众多几百元一瓶的进口酒（不管是来自法国还是意大利等等）确实能找到不少好酒，无论是口感，层次，变化和后味这几方面。关键是有没有资深的评酒人参与挑选。
进口葡萄酒有了这样的“天时”，“地利”又能否接得上呢？没有一家进口酒销售能保证自己进来的酒能覆盖全国，皆因中国的地域实在是太广大了。东南西北中的口味与消费水平都可以完全不一，管你是什么特许加盟店，总部统一拿回来的品种在南方热卖，但在你位处的东北方可能变成积压库存。那么，众加盟店在每月或是每季调动一下货色便能速销库存嘛！谈何容易啊？深圳走陆路去广州或是汕头去厦门还可以，换上是广州去上海便加添了难度。目下的持续高温天气和国内的“三超”运输系统（超重、超长、超慢等等），不管好酒或普通酒，无一幸免地可能受破坏。
当中能解决“地利”障碍的做法可透过建立地区性或是全国性的“酒业联盟”，利用这类团体去加速互惠营销活动。譬方说，你是意大利酒进口商，我是法国酒进口商，他是德国酒进口商，大家可以互供货品去满足市场不同需要。在2008年11月18日由五十几家酒商在深圳组成的“粤港澳酒业联盟”便是当中的一个可行的模式了。这半年以来，这家联盟便在内部的平台里做了多个货柜量的买卖。在本年三月的成都全国糖烟酒会上，有不少的中西部城市如成都，重庆，长沙等地对进口酒的需求热切，促使当地经销商也想加盟在个南方酒业联盟，共享联盟的口号：快乐、共享和谐等等。他们这般举动是完全可以理解的，原因简单不过吧，正是他们那边均是散沙一盘，许多人对葡萄酒（特别是进口的）并不太了解。
可以预测，未来可能还有一个趋势，就是进口葡萄酒商的专业化，比如说要找澳洲酒的有几家，找智利酒的有哪几家，就算是法国酒，比如朗格多克地区的酒是哪些酒商出名，而勃艮第酒又有谁是专长。进口酒的门槛越来越低了，会有更多的有资金有兴趣的新手进入，但未来，可能更趋向专业化的道路，酒商之间相互换酒来卖，大家都不必积压太多存货，未必不是好事呢。
如果业界能多点付出努力，不太计较目前贡献，多把葡萄酒文化和知识让内陆酒业获取，让文化先行而产品后上，在物流这个环节多做工夫，改善运输问题，收成还是指日可待的，毕竟未来几年中，葡萄酒在中国还是一个上升的市场。
**This article was published in Marketing Column of SHENZHEN FINE WINE & LIQUOR May 2009**
Future China Wine Market as from 2009: Imported Wines are Blooming
If you started to enter China with imported wines as early as the beginning of 2000, you definitely had to leave the market there with heavy losses. Even you only did the same right after the SARS incidence in 2003, the result would just be the same.
What would happen if you entered the market since last year? If you now and then hold sufficient fund & professionals who know the market so well, in addition with very well platform & broad human relationship, best value-for-money wine merchandise & influencing media broadcasting, then provided that you keep on putting utmost effort, you might have a chance to achieve a brilliant future. The imported wine world shall belong to China as from the second half of 2009. Why? The answer might be found from my explanation in this article as follows.
The leverage of imported wines cannot be benefitted from any current policy application in China (each bottle of imported wines is still subject to imported duty which ends up almost close to 50% of its landed value besides some extreme cases), it is only a matter of RIGHT TIMING. Did not you remember the incidence of SAN LU (Triple Deers) milk powder and other events about the loss of quality control last year? Local-made wines (not limited to a number of famous brands) used to dominate the common market of low-end spending, since that kind of astonished incidence, normal consumers started to realize that EVEN LOW-END IMPORTED WINES MIGHT BE MORE SECURED. In addition to culture promotion of imported wines, medium-to-high-end consumers had dropped local-made wines like Great Wall Reserve 1992, etc. and moved to taste imported wines at similar price range. Honestly speaking, various imported wines worth for a few hundred yuans (no matter they came from France or Italy or else) are definitely better than the Chinese ones, by means of taste, complexity & overall performance. It is only a matter of whether there are any wine experts participate in the selection or not.
After imported wines have got that kind of RIGHT TIMING, can the other factor of favorable geographical position be linked up with it? None of the imported wine distributors can guarantee that it can cover the whole country of China with its product, as the country is really too big. The taste preference and living standard in the east, the south, the west, the north & the middle of the country may be totally different. No matter you are running a franchise wine store of Aussino or Jointek, wines centrally imported by these franchisers get sellable in the south, but might turn into dead stock in the north where your store is located. In that case, making BARTER movement of dead stock among franchise stores on a monthly or quarterly basis might solve the problem. Easily said not easily done. Land transport from Shenzhen to Guangzhou or from Shantou to Xiamen is still feasible, but from Guangzhou to Shanghai will make things difficult. As the current consistent high-temperature climate & the mainland three-over transportation network (over-weight, over-size & over-low-speed, etc.) will damage the shipped wines, no matter they are fine or ordinary wines.
One of the solutions to overcome the geographical obstacles is to set up regional or national WINE UNIONS to speed up the mutual sales activities among the unions. For instance, you are an Italian wine importer, I am a French wine importer and he is a German wine importer, and we all can inter-supply wines to fulfill various demands in the market. On the 18th of November in 2008, there were over 50 wine associates formed the GHM WINE UNION (Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau) in Shenzhen which is one of the feasible modes to achieve the said goals. During the recent half of a year, trade had been concluded via this internal platform of the union for a great number of full load containers of wines. At the National Wine & Tobacco Show in Chengdu in March this year, it was observed that there was heavy demand of imported wines at the mid-western cities like Chengdu, Chongqing, Changsha, etc. Such demand accelerated wine distributors in those cities to make fast move to join such a wine union in the south in order to share mutually the slogan of the union: HAPPINESS, SHARE OF HARMONY, etc. Such act of those distributors is fully understandable as a simple explanation of it is that, the markets there are still in a state of disunity and people there are lack of knowledge about wines (especially imported wines).
As scheduled, a future trend might appear that foreign wine importers might become more professional. For instance, there might be a number of standby Australian wine suppliers, some specialized Chilean wine suppliers. And even for French wine, some are expert dealers of Languedoc wine and some are focusing on Burgundy wine. Anyhow, the threshold of imported wine tends to be lowered that more & more new comers having sufficient fund & great interest would enter the industry. However, that is for sure that any party in the field tends to follow the path of professional & expertise. Inter-supply of wines among wine associates to avoid overstock sounds a good thing to the industry.
If the wine industry can put extra effort without counting so much their present contribution, delivering more information & culture of wine to mainland wine industry, letting CULTURE MOVE FIRST & WINE MOVE NEXT, putting more effort on the logistics sector and improving the transportation network, harvest could be just around the corner.
