Click the image to sign up. Written on the seventh day of the new year, amidst the fading sound of 2018 New Year firecrackers. First, most wine merchants are about to open for business. How will the company develop in the new year? Where is the way out? These need thought and implementation. Second, driven by the new situation, after Tencent acquired Carrefour, the layout of Tencent and Alibaba in the new retail field has become very clear, basically showing a state of "Tencent + JD + Yonghui + Walmart + Carrefour + Bubugao + Wanda" against "Alibaba + Suning + Gaoxin + Xinhua + Lianhua". 2018 is the trend of new retail; after the strong joining forces, the new retail war is about to break out! What should small and medium wine merchants do? 2018 Industry Situation: Production and Retail, Integration and Differentiation In 2017, in the baijiu industry, new marketing methods and competitive situations such as consumption upgrade, product iteration, return of famous wine value, competition for sub-high-end, and scenario-based marketing gradually emerged. Under the trend of "integration and differentiation" in the wine industry in 2018, the integration of online and offline channels in the new retail environment; the differentiation between strong and weak leading baijiu producers, with the Matthew effect making the strong stronger; the Sichuan-Guizhou production areas developing together; the return of famous wine value; provincial regional wine enterprises are having an increasingly difficult time under the squeeze of famous wines' downward expansion, with the weak becoming weaker. So in this severe situation, what should I, a small or medium wine merchant in a second- or third-tier city, do? I don't have agency rights for famous wines, and my cash flow is insufficient. What should I do? I don't have agency rights for provincial regional famous wines, and my terminal control is insufficient. What should I do if I'm a mom-and-pop shop in a fourth- or fifth-tier suburb or township? Through scenario-based marketing such as Langjiu's Qinghua Feast, Luzhou Laojiao's Qixing Feast, and Shibafang's "Taste of Mellow" on the tongue, we can see that competition in the new situation is ultimately about the competition for high-net-worth consumers and consumer mindshare in the high-end and sub-high-end brands. Who exactly are the high-net-worth individuals? How to tap into them? What are their consumption characteristics? Since the 19th National Congress, under the overall development trend of "national advancement, foreign retreat, pushing high and selling expensive" in consumer goods, how to discover the beauty of baijiu and meet the beautiful needs of a cup of fine wine for the Chinese people? In the new consumption era, how can scenario-based marketing form a three-dimensional expression of quality, category, and brand? How should small and medium wine merchants actively transform to respond to new retail and embrace new marketing? To this end, we provide four real cases, hoping to give you some inspiration. Let's explore the answers together. 01 Cigarette and Wine Shop Turns into Nightclub at Night, Maximizing Single-Store Efficiency for Jiu You Hui Boss Lu is the owner of a wine trading company in Lishui, Zhejiang, mainly selling red wine. He was originally the Lishui general agent for a large domestic red wine company. Later, the company underwent channel flattening, and Boss Lu's region was split, leaving only the urban catering channel. To maximize channel efficiency, Boss Lu also tried introducing baijiu brands, operating a red + white strategy. After 2-3 years of effort, sales were mediocre, hotels responded flatly, and personnel and rent costs remained high. At the end of 2016, Boss Lu spent heavily to build the Jiu You Hui platform, opening a WeChat official account mall online and an experience store offline. In the early days of the official account, through activities like WeChat Moments likes, reposts, and bargaining, they accumulated over 10,000 fans. Later, enthusiasm faded, and they seemed to hit a bottleneck. One day, a friend's little girl, after participating in a wine tasting event at the store, saw the dazzling array of wines and the clean, elegant environment, and sighed, "If only we could sing while drinking wine." This prompted Boss Lu to immediately install a state-of-the-art KTV sound system. A daytime cigarette and wine store turned into a KTV nightclub at night. Friends all said the wine here was authentic and affordable. Gradually, Jiu You Hui gained considerable local fame, and Boss Lu was jokingly called the "Nightclub Prince" by friends. In 2018, he is about to open a flagship store of over 400 square meters. Boss Lu and his Jiu You Hui, through sincere social interaction, stimulated consumers' continuous pursuit of the brand, achieving maximum single-store efficiency. 02 Using Internet Digital Technology to Improve Efficiency, Yi Ke Gou Transforms Skillfully Boss Chen in Baoshan District, Shanghai, is also the owner of a trading company. He came to Shanghai to work hard in the early 1990s, gradually accumulated resources, and became a reseller of famous wines like Wuliangye and Jiannanchun. Later, he also became an agent for a regional baijiu brand. After 2013, the wine business became increasingly difficult. After the rectification of Shanghai urban areas in 2016, the number of stores sharply decreased, and terminal logistics and personnel maintenance costs surged. Boss Chen always wondered where the company's development prospects lay. Seeing the booming internet, Boss Chen's inherent boldness and hardworking spirit as a Hui merchant led him to create the Yi Ke Gou online community market platform. This is a location-based platform that creates a "1-kilometer convenient living circle" with the community as a unit, meeting consumers' core need for "community instant delivery." It basically achieves efficient interconnection between "APP + community residents + surrounding merchant physical stores (store commerce + e-commerce)", realizing a new shopping method where all online shopping is completed within 30 minutes, with fast and transparent delivery. In 2018, Boss Chen plans to lay out 13 directly-operated stores integrating logistics, display, and distribution in 13 towns in Baoshan District. A traditional distributor improved company operational efficiency through digital technology, achieving successful transformation. Small and medium wine merchants who do not want to develop their own platforms can cooperate with platforms such as JD's Dianzhanggui, Yijiupi's Yijiu Piling, and Alibaba's Cuntao, fully utilizing internet digital technology and capital turnover platforms to expand categories, add high-margin products, and improve capital turnover rates. 03 Focusing on Creating Consumption Scenarios, Pin Quan Zhai's Pot of "Old" Wine On February 3, 2018, in Quzhou, Zhejiang, Pin Quan Zhai held an old wine tasting and spring festival event called "Three Lives of Wine Luck, Drunk and Deserved," which caused a stir in the industry. According to Boss Zheng of Pin Quan Zhai, 150 guests and old wine enthusiasts attended, drinking various wines. In the end, everyone was reluctant to drink more and reluctant to leave. "Both host and guests were delighted," Boss Zheng summarized. With the upgrading of consumption concepts, the ideas of healthy drinking and civilized drinking are increasingly taking root in people's hearts. When drinking, one occasion might be high-end baijiu, another might be old wine. When posting on WeChat Moments, the reactions are completely different. Drinking high-end wine might be seen as showing off, while drinking old wine is mostly considered to have depth and quality. Since most high-net-worth individuals have strict requirements for quality due to their own pursuits, and old wine, especially those before 1994, is brewed from pure grains, with each bottle consumed reducing the supply, creating a consumption scenario through an old wine tasting event simultaneously meets most people's entertainment, social, and shopping needs, stimulating customers' purchase desire and showcasing the historical and mellow beauty of a cup of old wine. In the fiercely competitive Quzhou market, where home-brewed wine is popular, many wine merchants say business is hard. Boss Zheng's Pin Quan Zhai, with the rise of old wine collection fever, based on tasting, collection, and dissemination, found a differentiated development path. At the same time, experts estimate that the future market share of old wine will reach about 30 billion yuan. 04 Advocate of High-Quality Living, Yi Pin Trading's Pursuit of Excellence "When distinguished guests come, we serve expensive tea; this tea is also our agency product," Manager Yang of Yi Pin Trading introduced to the author at the Wuliangye flagship store in Xiong'an New Area. How could a wine merchant in Baoding, a prefecture-level city with annual sales of 250 million yuan, a four-star Wuliangye distributor, with three Wuliangye specialty stores and a three-story wine club, also venture into tea? After in-depth understanding, it was found that this trading company not only represents famous wines in the baijiu category but also extends to famous winery red wines, Northeast Wuchang rice, Niubeishan honey, Guizhou Guicha tea, and almost covers the most first-class products in most consumer goods categories involved in daily life. Being an advocate of high-quality living directly points to high-net-worth individuals. How to discover high-net-worth individuals? Centered on the high-net-worth consumer, each person is a big IP. This company uses famous wine as a leverage point to fully explore consumers' diverse needs, forming a closed loop of consumer goods categories for this group. Through category expansion and the advocacy and practice of high-quality living concepts, they tap into high-net-worth individuals. This enterprise has provided a relatively perfect interpretation. Communities and business districts, based on geographic consumer aggregation, fully express consumer attributes and preferences. By creating extreme consumption scenarios, experiential and immersive marketing role-playing attracts consumers, and sincere social interaction stimulates consumers' continuous pursuit of the brand, while fully utilizing internet and digital technology to upgrade company operational efficiency. By deeply exploring consumer needs, fully considering changes in operating models, and through the reconstruction of consumption space and consumer relationships, there are still ways for small and medium wine merchants to transform.