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News
Fine wine sales decline sharply for 2013 Chinese festival
Fine wine sales in China during this year’s mid-autumn festival suffered a significant decline as consumers opted for cheaper labels.
In particular, a famous wine retail chain in Haikou saw wine sales fell by more than 40%, with the greatest declines among high-end wine, according to The Bohai Morning Post.
Many wine retailers in China felt that they are having a hard time in sales in 2013. “There were quite a large number of customers coming to purchase fine wine as a gift for business purposes during mid-autumn holidays since 2001 to 2012, but strangely we can hardly see any customers like that this year”, according to Song Huang, chairman of Hainan Song Light Wines Ltd.
Mid-autumn festival used to be a sales peak throughout the year. It has become a tradition that people reinforce their business relations by giving fine wines to their business partners. Although many retailers adopted sales strategies to stimulate consumption, the fine wine market is experiencing a sharp downturn this year.
However, the middle and low end wine market were not influenced by this trend. Many retailers have put more strength in lower-end wine marketing. According to Hannan Huanrui trading company, their lower end wine price tagged from £20 to £80 grew more that 30% this year.
Some local wine retailers have set up online sales to expand their lower end wine market, offering more reasonably priced wine to customers.
The high-end wine market in China grew sharply since 2001. However, from the end of 2012, as the result of Chinese government’s anti-corruption campaign, fine wine sales have declined dramatically.
The lower-end wine market in China is however rising quickly this year, according to Nanhai news. The mid-autumn festival is a popular harvest festival celebrated by Chinese people which is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar. This year the holiday commence from 19th to 22th September, followed by a seven days national holidays from 1 to 7 October.