---
title: "Fruit Wine 'MissBerry': Founded Less Than a Year, Secures Tens of Millions in Financing from Matrix Partners China; Founder Discusses the New Fruit Wine Track!"
description: "China has long been at the forefront of global wine production and consumption, ranking first in spirits (baijiu) consumption, first in beer production and sales, and nearly first in wine consumption. However, in the trillion-yuan liquor market, the three major categories of baijiu, beer, and wine are dominated by established players, making it difficult for newcomers to break through channel and brand barriers. Yet, within China's millennia-old liquor landscape, a niche category has always survived in the cracks: fruit wine."
author: "何年"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2020-09-16"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/aR7C3FCaZXILYj-8bGZuSA"
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# Fruit Wine 'MissBerry': Founded Less Than a Year, Secures Tens of Millions in Financing from Matrix Partners China; Founder Discusses the New Fruit Wine Track!

> China has long been at the forefront of global wine production and consumption, ranking first in spirits (baijiu) consumption, first in beer production and sales, and nearly first in wine consumption. However, in the trillion-yuan liquor market, the three major categories of baijiu, beer, and wine are dominated by established players, making it difficult for newcomers to break through channel and brand barriers. Yet, within China's millennia-old liquor landscape, a niche category has always survived in the cracks: fruit wine.

China has long been at the forefront of global wine production and consumption, currently ranking first in spirits (baijiu) consumption, first in beer production and sales, and nearly first in wine consumption.
However, in the trillion-yuan liquor market, the three major categories of baijiu, beer, and wine have undergone long-term development and consolidation, and are now controlled by leading players. New entrants find it difficult to overcome the barriers of channels and brands.
**But in fact, within China's millennia-old liquor landscape, a small category has always survived in the cracks: fruit wine.**
Fruit wine, due to its ambiguous consumption scenarios, has been neglected by the market, stuck in an awkward position of "neither high nor low." **In the past, fruit wine either appeared in bars and restaurants as small brands of varying quality, or as an exploratory attempt by baijiu-focused companies.** For instance, baijiu giants like Moutai, Wuliangye, and Luzhou Laojiao have successively entered the field.
However, the involvement of these leading liquor companies in fruit wine also reflects the rapid rise of this new track. Especially in recent years, fruit wine has frequently appeared in social circles, and a batch of emerging brands have begun to make their mark.
In the first half of the year, amid the pandemic, New Distribution noticed that a fruit wine beverage innovation brand called MissBerry had achieved remarkable results. Shortly after its launch, it ranked first in the fruit wine category on Tmall for several consecutive months, and won numerous awards such as Tmall Super New Brand and Tmall Annual Emerging Brand.
Moreover, on August 28, MissBerry, founded less than a year ago, announced that it had secured tens of millions of yuan in Series A financing, exclusively invested by Matrix Partners China.
At the "China FMCG Conference" in August this year, New Distribution also invited Ms. Tang Huimin, founder of MissBerry, as a speaker to share insights on the new track and new categories. During the conference, New Distribution also conducted an exclusive interview with Ms. Tang Huimin, discussing the new track of fruit wine and her understanding of the female consumer alcohol market.
**-01- Viewing the New Track from Rational and Emotional Perspectives**
Speaking about entrepreneurship, Tang Huimin told New Distribution that after leaving her previous company, she saw a great opportunity: "One is the low-alcohol beverage track, which is also the industry I have been in, with all my resources and background in this field; the other is the female alcohol track, and these two can be combined because 80% of low-alcohol beverages are consumed by women."
Tang Huimin believes that the reason she identified this opportunity is that **when you are creating a product or brand, you don't know if the demand is one that consumers should currently have met. So, you need to look at it from both rational and emotional perspectives.**
For example, the industry trends reflected by data are very rational. According to data from e-commerce big data agency ECdataway, in 2018, sales of premixed drinks/fruit wine on Alibaba's platforms (Tmall + Taobao) increased by 154% compared to 2017, and although growth slowed in 2019, it still reached 45%. According to Tmall's 2018 consumption data for various liquor categories, the number of female drinkers is growing at a rate of 348%.
**Therefore, the future market for low-alcohol beverages like fruit wine has enormous potential waiting to be tapped, and young female consumers have significant purchasing power behind this.**
**Setting aside rationality and looking at emotion, men often drink based on category, while women's perspectives are more complex and demanding. Summarized into three points:**
First, confidence in appearance. For most women, appearance is justice; facial features determine worldview. What matters most when women drink? Whether they can post on social media, so looking good is the most important.
Second, taste freedom. It starts with appearance and falls for taste. It must suit women's tastes, and more importantly, Chinese women's tastes.
Finally, emotional freedom. Whether for self-pleasure or socializing, whether for relaxation alone or confidence in groups, a suitable tasting alcoholic beverage is needed for companionship.
However, the market has not adequately met the needs of consumer groups, with too few products that meet consumption demands. **Therefore, around new consumer groups and new consumption concepts, there are many opportunities to create good products and brands.**
**-02- From "Category" to "Demand"**
Earlier, we mentioned categories. In traditional enterprises, brands are usually defined by category. For example, in the baijiu industry, there are the "Moutai, Wuliangye, Jiannanchun" trio; in the beer industry, Budweiser, Tsingtao, and Snow; even in a small shop, if you ask for cola or herbal tea, even if you clearly name the category, the shopkeeper will directly hand you Coca-Cola or Wanglaoji.
**In new brands, however, brands are more often defined by demand.** Of course, there are also examples like Zihaiguo and Wangbaobao, which have achieved the effect of "brand equals category" in their respective categories. But from another perspective, Wangbaobao actually meets consumers' demand for "tasty but not fattening," while Zihaiguo meets the demand for enjoying hot pot anytime, anywhere. Take the currently popular Genki Forest; rather than being just sparkling water, it is more like a "sugar-free expert," providing you with sugar-free options.
**MissBerry is positioned as a low-alcohol beverage brand that better understands women's needs, matching different scenarios with corresponding channels and products to create innovative products suitable for the market.**
After recognizing the rise of social media platforms like Xiaohongshu and users' demand for high-quality images, MissBerry broke traditional perceptions of beverage packaging and launched the "Sweetheart Small Square Bottle" series, which quickly gained market favor. Social media influencers shared images, bringing the brand its first wave of positive word-of-mouth.
Currently, MissBerry has chosen to enter the fruit wine track first, targeting a niche but precise point. After establishing this niche, it gradually expands the opening, making it more mainstream. Ultimately, based on diverse user needs, it aims to build a product matrix with different alcohol levels, categories, and flavors.
**-03- Advantages of New Category Segmentation**
In fact, new categories currently have significant dividends, and general channels are very friendly to these new categories. If you launch a product in a mature category market, even with promotion on Douyin or Xiaohongshu, it is very difficult to create a hit product. However, in segmented new categories, there are considerable advantages.
MissBerry seized the "brand gap" in the fruit wine category. In today's context where low-alcohol consumption scenarios are widespread, young consumers seek more personalized flavors, yet the local Chinese market lacks low-alcohol beverage brands targeting the personalized needs of young people.
After the initial success of the "Sweetheart Small Square Bottle" series, MissBerry launched the "Sweetheart Small Bubbles" series of sparkling fruit wine, targeting young people's immediate drinking scenarios.
According to internal sources at MissBerry, traditional sparkling wines use external carbon dioxide injection, achieved through premixing, resulting in a bland taste. In contrast, this self-developed sparkling fruit wine naturally produces abundant bubbles during fermentation, making the taste more akin to fruit juice drinks. This meets the demand of most young users who want a little alcohol but also prefer a beverage-like taste.
Moreover, the "Sweetheart Small Bubbles" series is designed as canned products. Compared to bottled products, canned products are more friendly to large-scale offline distribution channels. If e-commerce and non-immediate consumption channels are incremental channels for alcohol consumption, then offline immediate consumption channels are the primary channels.
This is also MissBerry's strategy: **based on terminal channel needs, it stratifies channels, matching appropriate products to different channels, and is building its competitive moat with a trinity model of "people + scenario matching products + channels."**
**-04- Summary**
In consumer goods, whether investors or entrepreneurs, they all look for segmented tracks that have not yet grown, are not fully satisfied, and have large future market space.
In fact, whether it's the self-heating food or small liquor mentioned above, these niche categories have existed for a long time and have large market capacity, but they have not been successfully tapped until the emergence of hit products made people realize this is also a track worth hundreds of billions.
**In such new tracks, there are infinite possibilities for product innovation, and the window period with less competitive pressure also provides fertile ground for new brands to grow wildly.**
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