Text | New Consumer Finance Research Agency
Recently, the well-known actor Huang Bo took Xifeng Wine, one of the "Four Famous Wines", to court. Although this case regarding name rights disputes and portrait rights disputes is not directly related to Xifeng Wine, it was also caused by violations and infringement by its distribution company, Shaanxi Qinhuang Yuyan.
Although Xifeng Wine has responded that the case has nothing to do with the company, and stated that "the responsibilities must be identified and rectified immediately to resolutely prevent such incidents from happening." However, this time the distribution company was involved in the lawsuit, which once again exposed Xifeng Wine's channel management and branding There are certain problems in operations and other aspects, which have brought this once top-tier famous wine brand back to the spotlight.
Xifeng Liquor is an out-and-out old-brand famous wine. At the first wine tasting meeting in 1952, Xifeng Liquor, together with Moutai, Luzhou Laojiao and Fenjiu, were called the "Four Famous Liquors". It can be said that the peak is at the beginning. During the later development of
, in order to quickly monopolize the market, Xifeng Wine authorized a large number of private label wines. Although it has begun to make rectifications in recent years, the number of Xifeng private label wines is still large.
"Xifeng does not carry wine, so we must take a detour." The proliferation of private label wine has always been one of the reasons why Xifeng wine has been criticized by the market. For many years, Xifeng Wine has licensed its brand trademark to other wine manufacturers, allowing them to produce wine on their behalf to meet demand. Most of these foundries are small wineries, and their quality varies.
A reader once said in a social chat with New Consumer Financial Research that the proliferation of private label wines has squeezed the external market space of Xifeng Wine into smaller and smaller areas. The quality of private label wines has also been unqualified and the pricing is confusing. It caused confusion in the market price system of Xifeng Wine, damaged the brand image, and also consumed consumers' trust in the brand.
Later, Xifeng Wine also realized this problem. In order to stabilize product quality, in June 2021, Xifeng Wine completely banned Sichuan OEM products, closed the strong aroma production line, and made efforts to rectify related OEM wines. However, at the 2022 China Food and Drinks Fair, the media still found that at least nine "Xifeng" wine booths appeared at the China Food and Drinks Fair. It can be seen that there are still a lot of Xifeng OEM wines, and the relevant rectifications are not perfect.
In fact, the failure of Xifeng Wine’s four IPOs is closely related to the market price confusion caused by the proliferation of private label wines, the decline in its own profitability, and even the product quality crisis. It also made Xifeng Wine gradually fall behind in its subsequent development and fade out of the first-line famous wines. ranks.
’s detailed analysis of the reasons for the failure of its IPO also revealed that corruption and corruption among senior executives within Xifeng Wine Group have emerged one after another. Performance fraud and chaotic management have also caused Xifeng Wine to have continuous “man-made disasters” in recent years. The development of “internal and external troubles” has greatly hindered the development of Xifeng Wine. its listing process.
wine industry analyst He Yong once pointed out that Xifeng Wine’s road to listing has been so bumpy, mostly because of the successive negative news. These negative news will directly expose Xifeng Wine’s internal management problems and product problems. Capital will not be optimistic about an internal, A company whose products have problems.
In addition, in terms of performance, although Xifeng Wine's performance has grown steadily in recent years, the gap between it and the wine companies in the same echelon has become wider and wider. Kweichow Moutai, which was rated as one of the four famous wines in the past, has already achieved revenue of 100 billion, and the revenue levels of Fenjiu and Luzhou Laojiao are no longer comparable to Xifeng Liquor.
public information shows that from 2015 to 2021, Xifeng Wine achieved sales revenue of 2.803 billion yuan, 2.867 billion yuan, 3.17 billion yuan, 5.014 billion yuan, 6.03 billion yuan, 6.3 billion yuan, and 8 billion yuan respectively, with an increase of 2% respectively. , 10.57%, 58.17%, 20.26%, 4.48%, 26.98%.
Until 2023, Xifeng Wine will achieve sales revenue of 10.34 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23%. Finally exceeded the 10 billion mark.
Among the “Four Famous Wines”, Xifeng Wine was the latest to enter the tens of billions camp. Moutai, Luzhou Laojiao, and Fenjiu exceeded the 10 billion mark for the first time in 2010, 2012, and 2019 respectively. At present, the threshold for first-tier wine companies has already risen to 20 billion. After
's revenue exceeded 10 billion, Xifeng Wine also faced many new challenges. For example, its profit margin was lower than the industry level, and there was still a lot of room for improvement in terms of high-end development.
In 2017, the gross profit margin of Xifeng Liquor was 30.15%, which was significantly different from the general gross profit margin of 70% and 80% of listed liquor companies.In order to increase profits, Xifeng Wine began to focus on the high-end market in the past few years, significantly cutting off OEM products and launching the Red Xifeng series. However, because it started too late, although the gross profit margin has improved significantly, the market education of Fengxiang wine is still incomplete.
In 2019, Xifeng Wine launched the high-end representative product Hong Xifeng, priced at 999 yuan/bottle. It is worth noting that although Hongxifeng is "young", it has not missed the rise in liquor prices. In September 2020, the market terminal price of 52% 500ml red Xifeng wine was increased by 200 yuan/bottle to 1,299 yuan/bottle. On June 1, 2021, the price was raised again from 1,299 yuan to 1,499 yuan. But the embarrassing thing is that the current market price of Hongxifeng is upside down, and the real transaction price on the e-commerce platform is only about a thousand yuan.
In order to stabilize the price system, Xifeng Wine launched a vigorous "price protection" operation in April 2023, using thunderous means to deal with dealers who disrupted the price system, and intensively dealt with 9 dealers within 20 days. Billion marketing templates lay a good foundation.
At present, Maotai-flavor, strong-flavor and light-flavor liquors have already entered the high-end market and occupied a place, but Feng-flavor liquor has been late in arriving. At present, Xifeng Wine’s major single products are still mid-to-low-priced products such as Old Green Bottle Xifeng Wine and Xifeng 375. However, by 2023, the sales of Hongxifeng series products will increase by 102% year-on-year, and the sales of products over 100 yuan will increase by 38% year-on-year.
In addition, Xifeng Wine still needs to continue to make up for the shortcomings in base wine production capacity. Soochow Securities Research Report pointed out that by 2025, my country's total demand for high-end liquor will reach 107,000 tons, with a market size of 306.2 billion yuan. This also means that in the next five years, the high-end liquor track will maintain an annual growth rate of more than 15%, and the requirements for liquor production capacity are also gradually increasing.
Although Zhang Zheng, Secretary of the Party Committee, Chairman of the Xifeng Group Company, and Chairman of the Joint Stock Company, proposed the “333” new production capacity project, the proportion of its self-produced base liquor should be greatly increased in the future. However, the production capacity of 50,000 tons is not enough for Xifeng Wine to become a first-tier wine.
By comparison, Yanghe's designed production capacity is 300,000 tons, Kweichow's long-term production capacity plan for Moutai is "double 100,000 tons", and Wuliangye, whose designed production capacity has already exceeded 100,000 tons, proposed a new production capacity of 100,000 tons in the past two years. construction. Luzhou Laojiao, Langjiu, etc. are also expanding their production.
Leading Xifeng Wine to "return to the first-class famous wine" has become a major vision and strategic goal of Zhang Zheng. Since the beginning of taking over Xifeng Wine, he has shouted the slogan of reviving Xifeng Wine. In September last year, Zhang Zheng refined and improved the specific path of this strategic plan and summarized a four-step strategic deployment.
Zhang Zheng said, “The first step is to explore and improve the company’s development positioning and development direction; the second step is to unswervingly promote the two strategies; the third step is to persist in brand confidence, category confidence, quality confidence and cultural confidence; and the fourth step is to fully enter the new era. Return to the expansion and development period of first-class sprint, and build Xifeng into a first-class national enterprise with excellent products, brand emphasis and modern governance by 2032."
According to the plan, Xifeng has completed the first two steps of the "four-step" strategy step. 2024 is Zhang Zheng’s fifth year at the helm of Xifeng Wine. Under the current trend of liquor industry resources being increasingly tilted towards leading wine companies, it has been very difficult for Xifeng Wine to achieve its goal of 10 billion. Zhang Zheng leads Xifeng Wine back to a first-class wine company and to a higher level. It seems that there is still a long way to go before reaching the goal.
