Yesterday, two things happened at Yijiupi: first, dealers in Taizhou blocked Yijiupi's warehouse doors; second, it received strategic investment from Meituan. The details are as follows:

News 1: Meituan invests in Yijiupi, which still gains joint ventures from nearly 100 wineries and wine merchants amid controversy

Beijing Yijiupi E-commerce Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Yijiupi), in just over a year, completed its B+ round of financing, with a market valuation exceeding 3 billion yuan.

Meituan strategically invests in Yijiupi

It is understood that the two parties have confirmed the cooperation content, and Meituan will strategically invest in Yijiupi.

After the merger of Meituan and Dianping, it has become the largest O2O e-commerce platform in China, with 1.6 million restaurants, and its catering business is its core business.

The cooperation between Meituan and Yijiupi this time is based on Yijiupi's leading advantage in wine B2B. Meituan hopes to form a strategic alliance with Yijiupi, integrate Yijiupi into the catering ecosystem, and provide better wine supply services for catering terminals. On Yijiupi's side, the cooperation with Meituan is aimed at Meituan's huge customer base in the catering market.

Yijiupi COO Chen Shengqiang said that as an internet company, Meituan has greatly helped Yijiupi in internet operation management and resource docking. After Meituan becomes a shareholder of Yijiupi, the 1.6 million catering terminals may become Yijiupi's resources, which will greatly improve Yijiupi's penetration capability in the catering channel, the main sales channel for wine, in a very short time.

Why is Yijiupi, amid 'controversy', sought after by major distributors?

According to other news, as of today, Yijiupi has established joint ventures with nearly 100 leading local major distributors in 38 regions across the country. Among them, Hunan and Shanxi have achieved full provincial coverage, and full coverage in other provinces is being rapidly promoted.

Chen Shengqiang said that Yijiupi has achieved rapid development by cooperating with well-known and mainstream local major distributors upstream to establish local joint ventures, and providing one-stop wine procurement services for terminals downstream. "One-stop distribution greatly improves logistics efficiency and reduces costs. At the same time, by flattening the overly long supply chain, it has greatly transformed the backward circulation model of the traditional wine industry, setting a model for the Internet+ of the wine industry, and is deeply recognized by the capital market and investors. Currently, monthly turnover exceeds 300 million yuan, and it has obtained three rounds of financing, with a market valuation exceeding 3 billion yuan."

Joining hands with famous liquor enterprises to promote from factory to terminal

In addition to forming strategic cooperative relationships with regional major distributors, Yijiupi has always focused on cooperation with liquor enterprises. Currently, well-known liquor enterprises such as Anhui Gujing, Jiangxi Zhanggong, and Zhejiang Kuaijishan have all established joint ventures with Yijiupi in their core strategic markets, strengthening the "factory to terminal" strategy through Yijiupi and greatly improving their management efficiency.

Yijiupi, 15 leading provincial distributors of Fenjiu, and Fenjiu Co., Ltd. just concluded a tripartite cooperation communication meeting. Fenjiu Co., Ltd. General Manager Chang Jianwei and Fenjiu Sales Company General Manager Liu Weihua both attended the meeting and instructed Fenjiu distributors to fully utilize the "Yijiupi" platform to strengthen terminal control, improve distribution efficiency, and regulate prices, supporting the healthy and friendly cooperation between Yijiupi and Fenjiu distributors in Shanxi.

Source: Micro Wine

News 2: Cross-regional sales and price cutting! Yijiupi Taizhou warehouse blockaded by Niulanshan dealers, business logic questioned

Recently, the incident of Yijiupi's Taizhou warehouse being blockaded by local Niulanshan dealers, which was hotly discussed on Weibo, has once again drawn attention to wine B2B e-commerce. While revolutionizing traditional channels, wine B2B e-commerce has also moved the "cheese" of many stakeholders, and the game with channels has once again raised questions about the business models of B2B platforms like Yijiupi.

A reporter from Wine Industry Home recently exclusively learned that on the evening of May 11, a Weibo post claimed that the wine B2B platform Yijiupi had its warehouse in Taizhou, Jiangsu, blockaded by local Niulanshan dealers on the 11th due to cross-regional sales and price cutting. The dealers protested that Yijiupi had shipped goods from Beijing and Hainan to Taizhou for low-price sales, disrupting Niulanshan's local price system.

Yijiupi vs. first-tier distributors: conflict imminent

The Wine Industry Home reporter contacted the aforementioned Taizhou Niulanshan dealer Ji Zhong (pseudonym). Ji Zhong told the reporter that Yijiupi's goal is to break the existing distribution system and directly control terminals. When communicating with us, they said they would eliminate second-tier distributors, but in practice it is not like that. If Yijiupi wants to gain "channels" in Taizhou, it must offer low prices, and low prices disrupt the existing distribution and price systems.

Ji Zhong also explained the reason for protesting by blocking the door. He said, "To force general distributors to cooperate with them, Yijiupi will purchase goods at high prices, then subsidize part of the cost themselves and sell at low prices to terminals. Although this does not violate the law, it is a moral issue," Ji Zhong admitted that he is very disgusted with Yijiupi's practices.

Yijiupi COO Chen Shengqiang responded in an interview with Wine Industry Home, "First-tier distributors fear Yijiupi and worry about being replaced. But if they don't supply Yijiupi, and others do, you can't sell, but others can, so you're waiting to die. Even without Yijiupi, there will be others. The world will not stop evolving because of some people's emotions and concepts: higher efficiency is unstoppable."

A person familiar with Yijiupi's model, Liu Lixing (pseudonym), told Wine Industry Home that such incidents often happen to Yijiupi, and Yijiupi is also trying to reduce such controversy.

In the view of the aforementioned Niulanshan dealer Ji Zhong, the beneficiaries of Yijiupi's practices are the retail terminals, "Because for these terminal small shops, there are subsidies and low-priced goods, so why not? But the first-tier distributors who don't cooperate with Yijiupi suffer." Ji Zhong said.

Ji Zhong also revealed that currently, the local Niulanshan first-tier distributors in Taizhou have reached an agreement not to cooperate with Yijiupi. Yijiupi can only source goods from other regions, with the ultimate goal of forcing local first-tier distributors to cooperate with them. Niulanshan's channel is already very flat with few layers, "This is actually a revolution against us."

Controversial Yijiupi: a large-scale cross-regional wine sales platform?

It is precisely because of the "too much cheese moved" in the early stage that Yijiupi began to intensively try to gain support from manufacturers by establishing joint ventures with them.

Liu Lixing analyzed from the manufacturer's perspective that Yijiupi's cooperation with manufacturers is actually ambiguous. B2B activity depends on traffic, and traffic requires super large single products to attract customers. Since manufacturers are mostly unwilling to cooperate with Yijiupi on super large single products, and B2B platforms like Yijiupi have limited ability to promote new products for manufacturers, Yijiupi can only turn to cooperate with distributors. For distributors who do not cooperate, they can only "go hard". Although B2B platforms can improve channel efficiency, this improvement in circulation efficiency may bring the risk of channel discourse power transfer for manufacturers, so from the manufacturer's perspective, this is not desirable.

Some industry insiders believe that Yijiupi first focuses on scale, increasing turnover, which is what venture capital investors value.

A senior industry insider questioned Yijiupi's business model. In his view, Yijiupi is more like a large-scale cross-regional sales platform, focusing on subsidies and turnover, only destroying without rebuilding or creating new value. "Yijiupi's influence in the industry is very bad now, but no one has pointed it out."

However, Yijiupi COO Chen Shengqiang responded to the Niulanshan dealer blockade incident in an interview with Wine Industry Home yesterday, "First-tier distributors fear Yijiupi and worry about being replaced. But if they don't supply Yijiupi, and others do, you can't sell, but others can, so you're waiting to die. Even without Yijiupi, there will be others. The world will not stop evolving because of some people's emotions and concepts: higher efficiency is unstoppable."

| Article / Wine Industry Home reporters Hu Jizhou and Su Qin

When B2B enters the consumer goods field, different models have different impacts on distributors, but in summary there are three types:

The first is breaking interests: moving existing stock: using A-category products to quickly increase GMV, bypassing the original distribution system from factory to small shops;

The second is extending channels: helping distributors deepen, lengthen, and widen channel coverage;

The third is improving efficiency: centralized procurement, centralized distribution, rapid information transmission, improving the operational efficiency of the entire supply chain.

Obviously, Yijiupi breaks the interest pattern and uses existing stock to do the market, which is the most labor-saving approach because it is a self-operated platform. As long as there is a price difference in goods, Yijiupi has value for existence. Therefore, the era of huge profits in white liquor is over.

It is certain that in the future, more and more B2B platforms will come to rob and harvest the existing stock of various distributors. This trend is unstoppable. Under huge procurement demand, if your products don't come up, other products will. If you all don't come up, the platform will source from other regions. Even if Yijiupi doesn't do it, sooner or later more platforms will.

The ones blocking the door are distributors, but the ones who truly decide whether to come up are the enterprises. As long as enterprises don't take a stance, no matter how many blockades, they are just advertising for Yijiupi.

The characteristics of white liquor determine that products initially require a large number of local people to invest and do ground promotion. It's better to harvest the honey others have collected than to make your own. Therefore, Yijiupi is destined to rob existing stock and harvest distributors.

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