On April 9, the fourth session (in Guizhou) of “Chinese Liquor Heroes Alliance Internet+ Seminar” was held at Empark Grand Hotel Guiyang. Wu Xiangdong, the Chairman of VATS Group and founder of Jindong Capital, and over 300 liquor industry giants from Guizhou whose business scale is over RMB10 million gathered to discuss the way of survival of traditional liquor dealers and the way to create the “No. 1 Ecological Circle of the Liquor Industry”.

On that day, 260 signed the agreement of intent of “Chinese Liquor Heroes Alliance”, signing rate reaching 86%. These clients mainly came from Guizhou, including dealers of Zhenjiu and Jinliufu, dealers of other liquor brands and some in other industries.Why were old and new friends from various industries willing to follow Wu Xiangdong to join “Chinese Liquor Heroes Alliance” to create the “No. 1 Ecological Circle of the Liquor Industry”?

 

 

 

The reason is obvious: Wu Xiangdong knew their “pain spots” which can be summarized with two keywords in “Chinese Liquor Heroes Alliance Internet+ Seminar”- Internet and alliance.

In the speech, Wu Xiangdong described the situation of liquor dealers as “having enemies in front and rear”. Liquor producers squeezed their profit space and emerging B2B and B2C websites grabbed their market shares. An increasing number of consumers got accustomed to online shopping. Everyone knows combination of the liquor industry and Internet will be the trend.

Participants had had the same feeling of “having enemies in front and rear”. They had felt opportunities and challenges brought by Internet but had not got good ideas. They heard that Wu Xiangdong would hold a “Chinese Liquor Heroes Alliance Internet+ Seminar” in Guiyang, so they participated. They drew a lot of inspiration and saw hope from the speech. So they signed the agreement of intent after the speech.

The keyword “Internet” made dealers’ brains “pain”: Internet restricted their development space and let them see the hope of development, but they did not know how to grasp opportunities behind it. Wu Xiangdong helped them “stop pain” with the keyword “alliance”.

The true meaning of “alliance” is opening and sharing. Wu Xiangdong established a platform- “Chinese Liquor Heroes Alliance” and opened the door to let dealers who want to “touch the Internet” voluntarily join it. Of course, there is a”threshold”. Those who want to join need to be selected as it is required that annual sales should be over RMB10 million (annual sales of a group-buying business should be over RMB5 million). Moreover, members must follow some rules, such as not confronting upstream enterprises, maintaining famous liquor price system and not seizing interests of downstream channel businesses. These rules which must be followed by dealers in usual business were emphasized by Wu Xiangdong. On one hand, nothing can be accomplished without norms or standards, and forming an alliance is not holding a casual party; on the other hand, it ensures that the alliance conforms to the principle of opening and sharing and the bigger enterprises do not suppress the smaller ones.

Under the concept of opening, any dealer could join “Chinese Liquor Heroes Alliance” to explore new opportunites in the liquor industry Internet age by reling on the “ecological circle of the liquor industry” no matter whether it had cooperated with Wu Xiangdong or had experience of liquor marketing. It offered a solution for dealers who faced Internet challenge, and will greatly relieve their problems in such aspects as talent, fund and consumer groups. They will be able to share resources on the platform. Sharing is bidirectional. They also need to share some of their resources with other “heroes”. Their resources will realize maximum utilization while others benefit from them.

Mode and prospect described by Wu Xiangdong were much attractive to dealers. But experienced and knowledgeable dealers whose business scale is over RMB10 million were not persuaded with just a few words. Why were they so confident about Wu Xiangdong and his mode?