---
title: "Jiang Xiaobai: Can It Win the Second Battle of Consumer Demand?"
description: "A popular joke in the liquor sales circle goes: 'Previously, liquor companies could do things on their own, but then a 'godfather' appeared, and they could just wait and make a lot of money, for ten years. Now the godfather is gone, and they have to work again, but they can't.' This means that the marketing functions of liquor companies have severely degenerated. Liquor is a high-premium product, and for consumers, most consumption scenarios are related to celebrations, where price sensitivity decreases. As a result, famous liquors across the country boast of their long historical origins. With the protection of ancestors, who would focus on real product development and consumer demand research?"
author: "小镇青年朱迪"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2017-01-23"
language: "en"
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original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/0BS9zE4X4V0M_TgBI9OSUA"
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---

# Jiang Xiaobai: Can It Win the Second Battle of Consumer Demand?

> A popular joke in the liquor sales circle goes: 'Previously, liquor companies could do things on their own, but then a 'godfather' appeared, and they could just wait and make a lot of money, for ten years. Now the godfather is gone, and they have to work again, but they can't.' This means that the marketing functions of liquor companies have severely degenerated. Liquor is a high-premium product, and for consumers, most consumption scenarios are related to celebrations, where price sensitivity decreases. As a result, famous liquors across the country boast of their long historical origins. With the protection of ancestors, who would focus on real product development and consumer demand research?

A popular joke in the liquor sales circle goes: "Previously, liquor companies could do things and be self-reliant, but then a 'godfather' appeared, and they could just wait and make a lot of money, for ten years. Now the godfather is gone, and they have to work again, but they can't." This means that the marketing functions of liquor companies have severely degenerated.
Liquor is a high-premium product. For consumers, most consumption scenarios are related to celebrations, and in a joyful mood, consumers become less sensitive to price. As a result, famous liquors across the country boast of their long historical origins. With the protection of ancestors, who would focus on real product development and consumer demand research?
**Those who think they are masters of liquor rely on hype concepts to navigate the market, but the product itself has not improved qualitatively.** With the cancellation of the Three Public Consumptions (official receptions, official vehicles, and official trips), liquor companies complain about the difficult market, but they repeat the same mistakes, still operating with the methods used for group-buying clients, and their treatment of channel distributors, restaurants, and other main channels has not fundamentally changed.
**Unfortunately, this unspoken rule has become the standard thinking for most Chinese liquor companies.** Most companies and distributors still hold the closed mindset of guarding their own territory, and they operate the market with price increases, monopolies, advance payments, and other means to control market movement, rather than allocating resources from the perspective of consumer demand. When they lose the protection of the Three Public Consumptions and the economy declines, the old group-buying tactics become less effective.
**Opportunities always favor the prepared. When you see neatly arranged Laocunzhang or Longjiang Jiayuan on the shelves of a rural shop in Anqiu, you understand why mass-market liquor adopts FMCG tactics, why products can be sold nationwide, and why sales can reach 6 billion.**
In contrast, those local famous liquors that boast of their special characteristics, such as those in Anhui, Shandong, and Henan, work hard but only achieve sales of 1 billion after 50 years, indicating that traditional practices must return to the origin of consumer demand, and both products and marketing methods need to be updated.
Laocunzhang and Longjiang Jiayuan satisfy the FMCG attribute of being easily available through channel control. Jiang Xiaobai, which also started with low-end sorghum liquor, uses typical planning to segment the entry-level liquor market. With a strong 'loser' vibe, it carved a path out of the sluggish market atmosphere since 2012.
**How to sell 45° sorghum liquor and gain popularity?**
In marketing, selling history and aged cellars is the conventional approach for liquor companies. Without these, how can you establish a brand recognition system in consumers' minds and make them voluntarily spread the word?
From the consumer's perspective, liquor is a high-premium, high-emotion product. Jiang Xiaobai's opportunity is to turn the product into a stress reliever for the target group.
Thus, a low-alcohol sorghum liquor, small in volume, without any luxurious packaging, targeting the post-80s and post-90s generations, uses the bottle body as a medium to express their inner desires under current social pressure. Combining e-commerce and retail channels, it tore open a gap in the liquor market and launched a marketing battle of "Not liquor, but emotional beverage."
Jiang Xiaobai's founder, Tao Shiquan, has his own unique understanding of liquor sales: "When young people aged 25-30 gather for drinks, they usually don't choose liquor. They think: liquor is too strong for their taste; it's too formal for the occasion; it's high in alcohol and easy to get drunk; it doesn't feel fashionable. However, they face life pressures and need an outlet to release emotions, and alcohol is the best medium."
"Eating hotpot, singing songs, drinking Xiaobai, playing finger-guessing games, I'm a literary youth." With a self-deprecating tone, Jiang Xiaobai, which advocates "Life is simple," quickly became a topic of conversation at the dinner table, resonating with drinkers' inner feelings.
**With its low-alcohol, light-aroma style, it gained market recognition, especially among new职场 entrants. In 2015, Jiang Xiaobai's sales revenue increased nearly 100% year-on-year.**
To deepen consumer impression, Tao Shiquan designed a specific image for Jiang Xiaobai: slightly long black hair with a Korean style, black-rimmed glasses, and a standard comic book face. The outfit is a white T-shirt with a gray scarf, a black long trench coat in British style, dark gray jeans, and brown casual shoes. The name "Xiaobai" is also easy to spread; it represents new entrants in the workplace, a group of newcomers striving with their own abilities. This unique and memorable name quickly spread. On December 27, 2011, Jiang Xiaobai posted its first Weibo post: "I am Jiang Xiaobai, life is simple!" As of now, it has over 100,000 followers. **In addition to Weibo, WeChat has also become one of Jiang Xiaobai's marketing channels. Visualizing marketing concepts is key to Jiang Xiaobai's rapid spread.**
**Creating a high-cost-performance hit product**
**In terms of product, Jiang Xiaobai maintains a single flavor: Xiaoqu light aroma; **three product features: mass volume, single product, low profit; multiple specifications**, such as 100ml sorghum liquor, 125ml Beijing-Shanghai-Guangzhou same style, 300ml Xiaobieli, 400ml Banjinbaliang, 500ml Jiang Xiaobai Mild Natural Freedom, 750ml Sanwuzhiyou, and 2000ml (4-jin) Zhaohuan Shirenyin. **All products use frosted glass bottles, and the saved costs are an advantage, returned to consumers, while leaving high channel margins for distributors. This price design and product combination sets achieve a win-win-win for consumers, distributors, and the company.**
Jiang Xiaobai adheres to the SLP principle (Smooth Light Pure): the liquor is smooth on the palate, doesn't cause drunkenness, has no after-drinking burden, pure taste, and no mixed aroma. It also insists on extending storage time to over 1 year. This processing method increases time costs and capital occupation, but ensures product quality.
Obsessed with sorghum liquor quality, Tao Shiquan also invited 3 national-level liquor judges, 4 nationally registered senior brewers, 5 Chongqing liquor experts, and 8 provincial-level liquor judges to form an expert team, constituting a strong expert team.
On January 3 this year, the second phase of the Jiangji Winery production base started construction, covering 153 mu, with a planned building area of 100,000 square meters and an investment of 500 million yuan. This project will further enhance Jiang Xiaobai's pure brewing and liquor storage capacity, including manual brewing workshops, underground earthen jar liquor storage, tank storage, intelligent packaging areas, R&D centers, and food safety testing centers. After production, it will further implement the strategy of "True brewing and true storage, leading in both quality and brand."
Moreover, Jiang Xiaobai has solved the two biggest technical problems of Xiaoqu liquor in the production process: its inherent bitterness and insufficient sweetness, which have always been characteristics of Xiaoqu light-aroma liquor.
Jiang Xiaobai has solved these two problems in production technology: first, eliminating bitterness through process; second, changing the traditional practice of extracting all starch from raw materials to maximize liquor yield, while Jiang Xiaobai does some treatment during brewing. The former can cause a dry and astringent taste, while the latter can produce sweetness in later distillation.
**In terms of channels, Jiang Xiaobai implements a flat structure. "Consumers pay money, restaurant owners collect money, owners hand over to distributors, distributors hand over to manufacturers, with only three levels in between."**
When attacking the Chongqing market, Jiang Xiaobai avoided high-end restaurant chains and instead targeted second- and third-tier establishments, entering street-side eateries favored by local foodies.
In the first round, the target markets were the three C cities: Chongqing, Chengdu, and Changsha. After conquering these three markets, it moved north. In terms of business model and management philosophy, Jiang Xiaobai is clearly different from traditional liquor companies. Without historical baggage, it can move forward lightly. By positioning itself as a youthful small liquor for the post-80s and post-90s, it supplements the traditional liquor market in terms of category, creating and occupying the small liquor market.
**Returning to the FMCG essence of low-alcohol liquor**
Winning local consumer recognition is even harder than entering external markets. Jiang Xiaobai adopts FMCG operating rules: vivid terminal displays, dense store distribution, and in the process, becomes familiar with consumers, squeezes out competitors, and increases sales, which is reasonable.
But clearly, Tao is not satisfied with the marketing craze created by sentiment. Jiang Xiaobai has entered its second phase of battle.
**Returning to creating good products is the key to increasing repeat purchases, and expanding capacity yields the best return value; otherwise, sentiment without product support will ultimately be empty.** Tao Shiquan, born into a liquor family, ultimately returns to the real offline life of consumers. Whether in restaurants, grocery stores, liquor stores, or supermarkets, the established consumer preference and even loyalty for the brand and product will help Jiang Xiaobai increase its channel negotiation power. This is indeed not easy, and it is a new challenge Tao Shiquan must accept.
From the youth of age to the youth of mindset, **from the marketing differentiation of emotional beverages to the return to brewing quality liquor, Jiang Xiaobai's expansion must rely on the offline FMCG channel operation model of liquor,** such as developing special channels, using vivid terminal displays, themed consumption occasions, and buy-give promotions for channel customers, using the cultivated market reputation to bind consumer life scenarios and become an accompanying small liquor for daily dining. Can Jiang Xiaobai win the second battle of consumer demand?
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