Editor's Note: On January 15, Bottle Planet Group, the parent company of low-alcohol new wine brands such as Meijian and Guolifang, held its annual distributor conference in Chongqing under the theme "New Wine, New World: Walking on the Right Path" . Major distributors and large merchants, including Zhejiang Shangyuan, Sichuan Jiumao, and Yiwu Huihua, gathered to share innovative achievements and jointly create growth in new wine. It is reported that in 2024, Bottle Planet Group achieved a strong performance with 16% growth against the trend, showing the initial shape of a low-alcohol new wine platform group company. Tao Shiquan, in his first address as Chairman of Bottle Planet Group, released and analyzed the three stages of the rise of the new wine new world, emphasized the business principle of returning to common sense, and issued four declarations for co-creating "New Wine, New World" with the industry, distributors, talent, and society. (The following is compiled from Tao Shiquan's on-site speech, with some text deletions, not reviewed by the speaker.)

Good morning, everyone! Respected customers, leaders, and colleagues, welcome to the Bottle Planet strategic launch conference. In the current economic environment, everyone is busy with their own businesses, so we don't have as much time for casual greetings as before. I am very glad to take this opportunity to gather together. The theme I want to share is: New Wine, New World: Walking on the Right Path.

We can see that over the past decade, the consumer goods industry and the wine industry have indeed faced tremendous pressure. Of course, we may still be better off than real estate and some parts of the tourism industry. In recent years, companies have been very anxious. Why? Let me state an objective fact: Over the past decade or more, "volume" has dropped significantly. Baijiu production capacity has fallen from about 13 million tons to over 6 million tons, a reduction of half. Wine has seen a similar situation. In 2024, "price cuts" were evident. My objective judgment is that prices may continue to decline in 2025 and 2026. There is also expanding social inventory and serious price inversion. Many distributors rely on year-end bonuses and rebates to make money. Under such circumstances, doing business is certainly anxiety-inducing.

Let me use an analogy: China's wine industry has been running on a highway for nearly 30 years, and throughout those 30 years, it has been advancing triumphantly. Manufacturers, distributors, employees, and local governments—these four types of entities have benefited greatly. Over the past five years, my personal feeling is that we suddenly entered a tunnel on the highway, unable to see the road ahead, so we had to step on the brakes and think. Bottle Planet Group has spent five years to initially see the situation in the tunnel clearly. We see the light ahead , although we haven't exited the tunnel yet, we are adapting.

Many of the distributors present here have started businesses with us. Looking back at our history, since this is an internal meeting, I can say without modesty that we have had a small legendary entrepreneurial period of eight years.

From 2011 to 2019, we developed very rapidly, completing the journey from 0 to 1. In the Chinese baijiu industry, over the past few decades, 99.9% of enterprises were existing enterprises, existing brands, and those with history. So we created our own history and created our brand.

As for the tunnel period I just mentioned, we went through five years of difficult adjustment, and every step is vivid in my memory. Every decision and attempt in the past five years was filled with sweat and even tears. During the five-year adjustment period, we also tried to turn back.

In 2021, on our tenth anniversary, we launched 52-degree Jinkai (Golden Cap), attempting to challenge the traditional bare-bottle baijiu market. As everyone knows, we did not do well.

So we tried to turn back, but the path back to the old world is temporarily unviable. Because our resources, endowments, capabilities, and the impression we have in others' minds do not match the traditional market. The business world is a competition of relativity. We must find our own strengths and not clash our weaknesses against others' strengths. Over the past five years, we have also explored many new categories. In the fourth quarter of 2019, we launched the first round of "New Wine ." Actually, the term "New Wine" was coined by our company, and later the entire industry adopted it. In 2019, we launched five products, and to this day, two have grown: Guolifang and Meijian. In subsequent years, we launched new brands and products every year. Our rice wines, Suoyi and Mise, are like "sparks of fire."

During these five years, our corporate culture and entrepreneurial spirit have been diluted, especially the noise from various route disputes, which has caused a decline in team cohesion.

For example, countless people have told me that we must do sauce-flavored baijiu. In the early years, there was an investment boom in Maotai Town. Many big shots approached me, saying, "If you do sauce-flavored baijiu, I'll invest in you." We also envied those big companies, but we must objectively analyze our own situation and capabilities. This is something we cannot do; we are not capable of it.

Problems are endless, and they always delay us from seizing opportunities. In the past few years, we have been delayed by the biggest problem: the market always has new opportunities. And the greatest responsibility of enterprise managers is to find new opportunities, which is more important than solving new problems. As long as we find new opportunities, problems will naturally be solved.

Let me use another analogy: an enterprise is like a person. Our body and spirit have suffered torment and severe trauma. Although it has been torment and severe trauma, we have adhered to five mentalities:

First, strong mental strength. The strong never complain about the environment; the strong adapt to it.

Second, we should not expect a sense of security. There has never been security; only a sense of crisis can keep us alive. Strictly speaking, in the business world, there is no safe period. Once there is a safe period or a stable period, you are actually on the decline.

Third, create non-mediocrity. This is the biggest corporate culture of our company. If you work for this company or cooperate with it, you become a beneficiary. If the environment is bad, you become a victim. Actually, that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is to have a sense of participation. Fourth, adhere to vision-driven. Explore a correct path with difficulty and optimism. Fifth, continuously improve basic skills. Over the past five years, our strategy has been: First, be the star of tomorrow in the industry. The star of today cannot be chased; the star of tomorrow waits for the wind. Today's good companies, the industry leaders, are the stars of today. We cannot compete with the leaders today; if you compete with them, it's like hitting a stone with an egg. If you follow behind them, you'll suffer losses. If you imitate them, you'll never find a way out. So we cannot catch up with the star of today; we can only position ourselves to become the star of tomorrow in our own field in the future world. Second, once we aspire to be the star of tomorrow and become the future champion, we must use champion thinking to create champion products. Third, continuous improvement. This is the strategy that has guided us for the past five years.

At the beginning of 2024, I said three sentences. The achievements of the past year relied on these three sentences plus everyone's efforts.

First, survive with low consumption. This is a very important principle for dealing with an uncertain future world. Second, make effective improvements. Spend our time, energy, and money on effective things to produce effective results. This is a very fundamental experience and principle. As long as we do effective things, grasp the key points of problems, and seize the core "nose" of things, even without promotions or marketing, relying solely on brand power for natural sales, we might achieve such sales volume. Third, seize breakthrough development opportunities. In Japan's thirty years of economic depression, brands like Uniqlo and Muji emerged, offering "quality at fair prices, warming hearts." China will inevitably see a new batch of such brands. Real estate is so bad, but look at Aranya: it uses a completely different cultural tourism model for real estate, and people still scramble for houses, and the community is a popular check-in spot. This is the result of seizing breakthrough development opportunities. Here, I am very happy to report our 2024 operating results. First, our business performance achieved effective improvement, with unaudited revenue organic growth of over 16%. This growth is not through mergers and acquisitions; it is intrinsic growth.

Second, low-alcohol new wine achieved scale growth. Our Meijian + Guolifang low-alcohol new wine business grew by 30%, exceeding the overall growth of 16%.

Third, adhere to productism, and product quality improved significantly.

In 2024, Meijian launched a new big single product, Yuanguo Yuanliang (original fruit, original brewing), and product power improved significantly again. We now have the world's largest aged plum wine library. We applied for the group standard for grain, fruit, and flower wine. In the major category of baijiu, we developed and set standards ourselves, and also initiated an industry standard. We passed the certification of the China Food Industry Association, adding a grain, fruit, and flower aroma type to the entire Chinese baijiu aroma types. This is a very significant achievement. "First-class enterprises set standards," and we have begun to become an enterprise that sets standards.

Fourth, high-quality operation improvement achieved a major breakthrough, with significant results in urban operation improvement. The top five cities in incremental growth are: Hefei (growth 180%), Shenyang (growth 128%), Zhengzhou (growth 89%), Guiyang (growth 80%), Taiyuan (growth 79%), Guangzhou (growth 51%), Xiamen (growth 49%). What impressed me most is the Beijing market, which is the most costly and difficult. After improvement, it easily achieves challenging goals every month. Fifth, Meijian achieved two major breakthroughs in mainstream scenarios and new supply chain. The first mainstream scenario in China is the dining table. We seized the mainstream scenario of "eating fragrant, spicy, and drinking iced Meijian," which has become a driver of long-term strong growth. Family banquets and drinking occasions are the second mainstream scenario. Mainstream scenarios will inevitably bring scale growth. Data shows that Meijian has achieved high growth in Yonghui Superstores for two consecutive years, making it a typical representative of supermarket adjustment and transformation bestsellers. It has widely won the favor of large new retailers and distributors, becoming the annual bestseller for new supply chain quality products. In addition, Meijian's urban growth momentum has opened the valve for rapid development. The model market Chengdu achieved single-city sales exceeding 100 million yuan. Driven by the Chengdu market, Meijian's sales in the entire Sichuan Province exceeded 200 million yuan. Nationwide, Meijian's core city growth was 34%.

Sixth, deep distribution is no longer suitable for today's market environment. Only by shifting to omni-channel marketing, integrating online and offline, can we adapt. New retail, near-field e-commerce, and O2O are integrated to form an omni-channel marketing system.

The person riding the bike in that picture is me, riding from Lijiang to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. My skills are definitely amateur. In half a day, I fell 16 times. I fell and got up, fell and got up. It is not a flat road, not a highway, not a road that everyone can take. So I sighed deeply: The road less traveled allows you to see more beautiful scenery. I use this feeling to describe our mental journey. From success to struggle, from struggle to exploration, from exploration to failure, to clarity, we have embarked on a correct path—long-term struggle, with the goal of becoming China's largest low-alcohol new wine group. Around this strategy and this path, we even changed the company name. From now on, it will be called Bottle Planet Group Company .

I believe our new wine strategy can be achieved through fifteen years and three five-year plans.

2020-2024, the first stage, the budding stage.

It has four typical characteristics: youthfulness, differentiation, niche, and e-commerce. Relatively speaking, we had some lessons in the first stage. The winner prevails, and we survived and entered the second stage.

2025-2029, the second stage, the scale stage.

The first characteristic is quality.

Quality in new wine is the guarantee and the most important aspect of the second stage. People have the impression that low-alcohol drinks have low barriers and cannot achieve quality. But we took our Meijian to the world wine stage, to Japan for evaluation, and exchanged with Japanese peers. They gave us a thumbs up. They didn't expect us to achieve such a high level with plum wine.

In a sense, in the field of plum wine, we are setting standards. We have sufficient production capacity reserves. Our R&D capabilities and technical talent reserves have reached the highest level in the industry. We source green plums from the source, build green plum bases, and carry out industrial layout. All our efforts in product quality are also for the quality of new wine. To produce high-quality products, we are willing to invest continuously and keep improving.

The second characteristic is scenario-based.

The largest existing market is no longer business banquets, but casual dining and lively restaurants. Our main scenario, the largest scenario, is "eating fragrant, spicy, and drinking iced Meijian" in casual dining. Banquets, especially family banquets, are a key scenario we focus on building.

The third characteristic is mainstreaming.

It is precisely because of the foundation of quality and scenario that Meijian has moved from niche to mainstream, achieving full-chain advantages in mainstream users, mainstream channels, and mainstream markets.

After achieving the three conditions of quality, scenario, and mainstream, Meijian will inevitably achieve scale. 2024 is the first important step for Meijian to scale up, but there are still many markets nationwide that have not achieved the scale of Chengdu and Chongqing, with huge incremental space. As long as we are patient and maintain a healthy growth of 20% per year, we can seize the opportunity for scale development.

2030-2034, the third stage, the high-end stage.

Four characteristics: integration, efficiency, high-end, and internationalization. In the future, there will be integration, forming larger scale and larger industrial groups. Just like Jiangxiaobai, which didn't make much money in the first five or six years, but once you do well and scale up, it's easy to make big money.

In the first five years, we said "survive first, develop later." After we complete the second stage, from the scale stage to the third stage, we will find breakthrough opportunities to make profits; then it will become more efficient. For high-end, we have already made good arrangements. I don't know if you have tasted Meijian's aged wine, with oak barrels, whiskey, tangerine peel flavors, and high-end quality.

In the next five-year plan, we want to achieve a real international breakthrough. Together with Chinese culture, we will export the brand internationally.

This is our division of stages for the new wine new world.

How do we build the new wine new world? It is actually adhering to common sense and striving for consensus.

Common sense one: Strategic common sense.

Walk on the right path and do the right things. Brands and markets cannot be built in a day, so we need patient long-termism.

Common sense two: Management common sense.

"Effectiveness " is the management keyword for 2025. Use the JOS high-quality improvement operation system to empower distributors for free. In 2024, several markets such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Chengdu achieved very good practical results. Sometimes, price promotions are ineffective. The more you promote, the less consumers want to buy. Look at who has the highest price increase in the Chinese wine industry? The company that never discounts is the one with the largest scale and the most profits in the industry today.

Common sense three: Growth common sense.

Growth must adhere to intrinsic growth to drive high-quality growth. Besides profit growth, more important are quality growth, user number growth, user repurchase growth, consumer purchase intention, and brand power growth.

Common sense four: Credit common sense.

Why is Pangdonglai welcomed by everyone? It gradually re-established a credit system.

Common sense five: Cooperation common sense.

Do not fool, do not play games, do not force, do not consume, do not shirk responsibility. Establish a new type of manufacturer-distributor relationship based on the principles of "fairness, credit, integrity, and co-creation," and actively empower distributors to transform. In the future, we must not do forced things; forcing is the most ineffective. Employees who want to make quick money cannot do so in our company. Our company only has this bonus and this treatment. You can seek better opportunities in the market, but don't force it. Including human resources and organizational building, we should recruit talents widely, tolerate shortcomings, and not force perfection. Everyone has shortcomings; just use their strengths.

In our cooperation with distributors, let's be clear: sales is your job. If sales is not your job, why would I find an agent? Why wouldn't I do direct sales? Employee wages must never be delayed for a single day. In the company's history, there was only one day, a Saturday, when it was delayed by one day. The company issued a notice, and the finance personnel were fined. Since then, it has never happened again.

Common sense six: Price common sense. Since the company's establishment, we have always maintained forward pricing and never had inverted sales. This is the price common sense we adhere to, and we will maintain this understanding and practice in the future.

Common sense seven: Inventory common sense. Maintain the fine tradition of not overstocking and keeping low inventory, and improve customers' capital occupancy rate and return rate.

So Bottle Planet, low-alcohol new wine, being the pioneer of the new wine new world, is a correct path, and we are also walking on the correct path.

Today, I also want to announce four declarations:

The first is a co-creation declaration for the industry.

We are committed to learning from outstanding global enterprises, innovating and exploring, and jointly exploring the infinite possibilities of the new wine new world. We will jointly promote the formulation and improvement of new wine industry standards, enhance the product quality and brand taste of the entire industry, and create a diverse, inclusive, and prosperous new wine ecosystem, making new wine a new engine for the development of China's wine industry and leading the industry to a better future.

The second declaration is for all distributors.

We are committed to working with excellent distributor partners to establish a new type of manufacturer-distributor relationship based on the principles of "fairness, credit, integrity, and co-creation ." We will join hands with a group of capable, thoughtful, and willing distributors to explore the new wine new world, empowering them to become new-quality distributors with omni-channel marketing, high-quality operations, organizational, and digital transformation. We will share the rise and development of the future new wine market, the big cake of scale and mainstream.

Third, talent co-creation declaration.

We will recruit talents widely, encourage innovative thinking, leverage professional advantages, and actively participate in all aspects such as product R&D, brand building, and market promotion.

We must break the old world's employment relationship and distribution system, and work with talent on a more equal footing, turning the enterprise into a reasonable distribution system, incentive mechanism, and competition mechanism.

Fourth, social co-creation declaration.

Take the creation of the new wine new world as a long-term cause, brew high-quality healthy wine, promote the creativity of culture and art, and open a beautiful new world. Drive local rural revitalization through the agricultural industry, drive local economic development through taxes and employment, and strive to build a world-class consumer brand.

We advocate a new era of wine culture of healthy drinking and civilized drinking. At the same time, we maintain close communication with all sectors of society, humbly accept supervision and suggestions, and continuously improve and enhance the social value of the enterprise.

Finally, let us walk together on the correct path and be the pioneers of the new wine new world. Thank you all!