Feitian Moutai's frightening five days: some scalpers lost 100,000 yuan to sell wine, and some forced to wait for the Mid-Autumn Festival peak season

Tencent News Prism

2024-06-17 21:29Published on the official account of the "Prism" column of Tencent News in Beijing

Source: Visual China

Contributing Author | Li Mi  

Edit | Wang Weikai

Produced by | Prism Tencent Xiaoman Studio

In less than half a year, the price of Feitian Moutai has experienced two sharp declines in a row, and the circulation price of loose bottles among liquor merchants has fallen from more than 2,700 yuan to more than 2,200 yuan, setting the largest decline in recent years.

In a recent sharp fall, June 10-12, the price of loose bottles fell sharply from 2470 yuan to 2300 yuan, and in the next two days, as the price of wine fell below the psychological defense line of 2300 yuan, some hard-shouldered scalpers sold at a price of 2230-2250 yuan in a panic, and the price went straight to 2200 yuan.

These five days are called five days of horror by many scalpers.

On May 7 this year, Moutai's share price reached a high of 1,777.8 yuan per share, but it continued to fall since then, and on June 17, the decline once reached 2.8%, falling to a low since December 2022.

In the past two years, when the circulation price of many high-end liquors was declining, the price of Feitian Moutai maintained a relatively stable trend, and the outside world once believed that Moutai's multi-channel network system played a role.

However, in this decline, many people traced the reason back to Moutai's expansion of "1499 channels" such as supermarkets and e-commerce self-management, believing that a large number of Moutai liquor was hoarded in the scalper industry chain, resulting in a decline in prices.

Compared with the heated discussion of whether the channel is unbalanced and scalpers sell goods, Moutai officials seem to be very calm. In the days when prices fluctuated the most, the new chairman, Zhang Deqin, was busy researching the Guangdong and Hong Kong markets. It was not until June 14 that the news of some provinces and regions convening a meeting of dealers came out, and prices also temporarily recovered.

Which link of this complex industrial chain stirs the price of Feitian Moutai?

The "scalper industry chain" is unbalanced

"E-commerce subsidy of 10 billion yuan to modify the delivery rules" is considered to be the fuse of this price fluctuation.

A few days ago, an e-commerce store launched an activity of 5,268 yuan for two bottles of 500ml Feitian Moutai, and after the e-commerce platform subsidized 400 yuan, the average price per bottle was 2,434 yuan. At this time, the price of wine merchants is still about 2,530 yuan, and there is a price difference of nearly 100 yuan between the two.

Due to the revision of the shipping rules, some stores have extended the delivery cycle. Since most of the supply of these stores comes from scalpers, they do not rush to ask for goods from scalpers and wait for prices to continue to fall. According to the author of "Prism", only in Guizhou, e-commerce stores stopped receiving goods from major scalpers for more than ten days.

Faced with this situation, some scalpers also launched a counterattack. They require the store to issue an invoice, which will bring additional costs to the store, and if the store does not issue an invoice, it will need to provide some compensation to the scalper.

The reason why the rhythm of e-commerce stores can affect the price of wine in the entire market is closely related to the Moutai scalper industry chain.

"Prism" once mentioned this industrial chain in "Tens of Billions of Subsidies Fattened the Liquor Scalpers": the e-commerce platform will subsidize the store, the store will sell it at a low price, and the consumer will sell it to the scalpers who collect the wine, and then after layers of recycling, it will finally return to the hands of the platform store and continue to circulate.   

Since the beginning of this year, e-commerce platforms have reduced the investment of tens of billions of subsidies for Moutai, and the weekly change in the scalper industry chain has been slow. The suspension of stores during the June 18 period exacerbated this imbalance, which directly led to a sharp increase in the financial pressure of scalpers in this industrial chain.

A person familiar with the matter told the author of "Prism": "Moutai officials have already noticed that the e-commerce platform has subsidized the industrial chain of tens of billions of yuan, and has formulated relevant plans, but this time the e-commerce platform revised the rules to puncture the risk in advance." ”

There are two other factors that make the scalper industry chain more fragile.

On the one hand, with the reduction of the overall liquidity of the Moutai market, "account period" has become a problem that scalpers must face. In recycling, scalpers recover Feitian Moutai from consumers at a price of 10-20 yuan lower than the price of inter-wine merchants, and the key to profitability lies in rapid turnover and winning by volume.

"In the past, thousands of bottles of Moutai could be paid for on the same day, but now it takes 3 or even 7 days, and millions of funds are occupied for so long, which increases the financial pressure." A scalper told the author of Prism.

On the other hand, e-commerce stores, which had been receiving goods stably, suspended their requests for goods, breaking the balance between supply and demand in the market.

Under the financial pressure, some scalpers choose to sell at low prices, while other liquor stores and large wine merchants who want to buy goods choose to continue to wait and see, low prices or suspend the collection of wine. The downward pressure on prices was eventually transmitted to more scalpers, causing the entire recycling market to stampede and prices falling sharply.

The time has come to test the financial capacity

Although the price of liquor has fallen in the short term, few people can buy Feitian Moutai for less than 2,300 yuan. This is because many wine merchants or scalpers are still carrying it, and those with high financial pressure will only sell to big buyers.   

On June 14, a wine merchant in Shenzhen temporarily received a customer request to buy 10 bottles of Moutai for his own use. However, after asking a number of wine merchants who cooperate with each other on a daily basis, the quotations obtained are all more than 2,350 yuan.

"Everyone's cost may be more than 2,400 yuan, and there is no large amount of stockpiling, so there is no rush to turnover." The wine merchant told the author of Prism that there are still many peers who have chosen to suspend sales and wait for the market to pick up.

Moutai distributors also chose to wait and see, still shipping at a price of 2,300 yuan to 2,400 yuan. A dealer in Shenzhen told the author of "Prism": "We can stock up and sell it when the market picks up in the Mid-Autumn Festival." ”

In this fluctuation, the most anxious are those scalpers who stock up in large quantities. A scalper in Guizhou told the author of "Prism": "A friend carried it at more than 2,300 yuan, but when it was more than 2,200, he was worried that it would continue to fall, so he threw away 1,000 bottles, with an average loss of 100 yuan per bottle." Based on this calculation, the loss is as high as 100,000 yuan.

What caused this huge difference is the difference in capital and business models of different channels in the Moutai market, which is also an important reason for the fluctuation of Moutai prices.

In the Moutai liquor sales market, the channels that can directly obtain liquor from Moutai officials can be divided into direct sales and wholesale channels.

The direct sales channels include 42 self-operated stores, 8,000 group buyers and i Moutai. Among them, Moutai's official direct stores are opened in municipalities directly under the central government, provincial capitals and major cities in various provinces. The group buying channel is set up for those enterprises that have passed the audit of revenue, taxation, etc., and these enterprises can obtain the qualification of group buying customers and take wine from Moutai at the market guide price. i Moutai mainly sells Zodiac Moutai liquor, 100ml small Maotai and some sauce-flavored series liquor.

In the wholesale channel, it includes more than 1,300 traditional distributor channels that take wine at a factory price of 1,169 yuan, as well as e-commerce and supermarket channels that take wine at 1,399 yuan or 1,499 yuan.   

In this channel network, whether it is a dealer, a supermarket, an e-commerce, or a group buyer, Moutai has set a certain threshold in the review, resulting in the need for these channels to have stronger financial capabilities, and Moutai can have direct management capabilities for them.

In addition to these sales systems, there are many channels. Among them, scalpers are mainly reselling, while social liquor merchants are represented by the majority of tobacco and alcohol behaviors, taking wine from distributors or scalpers and selling it to peers or terminals. In fact, there is no clear boundary between scalpers and wine merchants, and scalpers can also become wine merchants when they become bigger.

Wine merchants do not stock up on a large number of goods, and have a certain end consumer group, so they have the ability to move sales. Once the scalping model has problems in the circulation link, it will face huge capital costs, which has become the most unstable factor in the Moutai market.

The turmoil of falling wine prices has gradually subsided. According to the author of "Prism", some provinces and regions held a dealer telephone conference on June 14, with the theme of maintaining market confidence. A Moutai distributor in Fujian told the author of Prism that the main thing that held the meeting was the dealers' association, not the direct presence of the Moutai sales company.

From June 15th to 16th, the circulation price of loose bottles of Feitian Moutai has stopped falling and has risen to above 2,300 yuan. Next, some of Moutai's measures in its channel network may play a role in the market recovery.

According to the author of "Prism", a number of "specialty channels" in Guizhou Province that sell 1,499 yuan Feitian Moutai have suspended their activities; The addition of group buying channels is slowing down, and Moutai has reduced the amount of wine it can give to old group buying customers.

According to the practice of previous years, the Mid-Autumn Festival three months later is the peak season for high-end liquor sales, and the increase in terminal demand will drive up the price of Moutai. This is also the reason why distributors and social wine merchants choose to carry it hard in the decline.

The glory of scalpers is dying

For a long time, there has been an active group of "Maotai Sellers" in the sales chain of Moutai, which is related to the adjustment and expansion of Moutai's sales network in recent years, and this group first appeared in the channels of Guizhou Province.   

The "Maotai" obtained the qualification to purchase 1,499 yuan Feitian Moutai through lottery or shopping, and then resold it at a price of dozens of yuan lower than the market circulation price to earn the price difference. In this process, a group of professional wine scalpers was born, who recovered Moutai from the hands of "Maotai pickers", and resold it to larger scalpers or terminal wine merchants at a higher price after reaching a certain amount.

For example, in 2019, Gui Expressway Mall launched the activity of "buying a bottle of Feitian Moutai for 1499 yuan if you buy a certain specialty", and so far, there have been many platforms to carry out similar activities, such as Guiyan Qianpin, Guilv Youpin, and Guizhou Hotel Group.

At present, a number of "specialty channels" are drawn by lottery, and consumers who are selected in the lottery need to purchase special products to obtain points, and 700 points can be exchanged for a bottle of Feitian Moutai consumption qualification.

This industrial chain gave birth to the earliest "specialty blind box", that is, the goods are not unpacked, recycled by scalpers, and then given to larger chain liquor stores and large wine merchants. At the same time, because these consumers are not for the sake of buying special products, there is a special product recycling industry chain, and consumers sell the special products to scalpers at a discount after receiving the wine, and the scalpers then sell them to merchants in the mall.

In addition, some routes at Moutai Airport can purchase two bottles of affordable Moutai liquor, which has led to many scalpers hiring elderly people to take flights, and attracting a group of professional "trapeze" people. At present, this phenomenon has decreased with the limitation of routes and the promotion of lottery methods.

There are also some hotels in Guizhou, where you can draw lots to get the qualification of Moutai, and there are still scalpers who specially organize guests to stay.

At about the same time, the three supermarkets of China Resources Vanguard, RT-Mart, and Wumart opened the era of 1499 yuan Feitian Moutai rush purchase of e-commerce and supermarkets, and the popularity reached its peak in 2020, thus giving birth to scalpers at the door of supermarkets or on the Internet. In 2020, in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen, there are even a number of stalls that used to sell electronic products to recycle Moutai.

But now, the glory of Moutai cattle is fading away.

On the one hand, major platforms have taken tougher measures against scalpers, such as SMS verification, blocking the intrusion of snap-buying software, and lottery. On the other hand, Moutai's own channel network is improving, and it is directly targeted at more consumers, which has changed the market structure.

Since 2018, Moutai has carried out drastic reforms to its marketing channels, cutting more than 600 Moutai distributors in three years, and the quota of these distributors has been used by Moutai to expand other channels.

During this period, the direct sales channel of Moutai has achieved great development. In 2023, the revenue of the direct sales channel will reach 67.233 billion yuan, 10 times that of 2017. After the revenue of the wholesale channel peaked in 2021, it began to decline slightly.

(Drafting: Author of "Prism")

Originally, the Moutai liquor collected by scalpers would flow to various distribution channels, and some of it would be sold to consumers after reaching the hands of social liquor merchants such as tobacco and alcohol stores.   

Nowadays, with the growth of Moutai's direct sales channels, a large number of liquor will be sold directly to consumers, and the sales of social liquor merchants have been affected. At the same time, some group buyers will also sell the wine to wine merchants to get the price difference. This has also led to a decrease in the demand for social wine merchants to collect wine from scalpers.

In the context of the slowdown in the sales of high-end liquor, the business model of "fast in and fast out" of Moutai scalpers has been affected.

The price fluctuations during the 6.18 period undoubtedly sounded the alarm for scalpers. At present, some scalpers have withdrawn, and some are transforming to try to get more end customers.    

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Personal opinion, for reference only