Be a drink for young people and a high-alcohol substitute for middle-aged people

The drinking preference of young people tends to be low-level and personalized. Sweet and sour, colorful fruit wine is one of the representative categories of low-level wine. .

We recently recognized the project “Mei Lin” was established at the end of 2018, the main product is the original brewed green plum sherbet. The brand hopes to control the industrialization of winemaking to a minimum through the traditional original brewing process, so as to retain the taste and flavor of traditional fruit sparkling wine, and become a fruit juice wine brand for the public.

Yuan Kai, CEO of “Mei Lin” believes that compared with the Japanese fruit wine market with a market size of 100 billion and is close to saturation, the domestic fruit wine market is still a blue ocean. The opportunities are mainly reflected in two aspects:

  • On the one hand, new fruit wine brands that have emerged in recent years have educated the market and increased consumer awareness and recognition of fruit wine categories. Fruit wine brands that have been reported include: Juye, Bingqing, Fan Zuihua Pavilion, etc., Jiangji Winery behind Jiang Xiaobai also launched green plum wine The brand “Mei Mei”.

  • On the other hand, although there are many new brands, the fruit wine market is still in the stage of “category without brand”, with uneven quality, serious product homogeneity, and lack of representative brands.

The change of “people, goods, market” is the source of the birth of the new brand of fruit wine, and it is also the difference of “Mei Lin”. From the perspective of “people”. In addition to facing younger groups, “Mei Lin” also aims at social occasions for middle-aged people, hoping to become an alternative to drinking alcohol.

The target users of “Mei Lin” are divided into two categories, one is the female group between 25 and 35 years old, the other is the 40-60 year old, and even younger male business groups. Yuan Kai explained that men have more social entertainment needs. With the increase of age and life pressure, the body’s ability to bear high alcohol and other high alcohol declines, and there is a demand for healthier alternative alcohol.

(picture from Meilin)

The composition and positioning of the target population determine the brand’s approach to “goods” and “market”.

First is the goods. Looking back on history, the origin of green plum wine is in regions such as Guangdong, Fujian, and Zhejiang in China. Domestic consumers have relatively high awareness of green plum wine. Therefore, “Mei Lin” starts from green plum wine, and will also launch lychee wine, mulberry wine, lemon wine and other categories.

Taste is very important for fruit wine products. It is difficult for non-professionals to drink the differences between white wine, red wine, beer and other products, but for fruit wine, it is easy for ordinary consumers to quickly judge the quality from the perspective of fragrance, sweetness, acidity, alcohol, etc., “good drink is good drink , After drinking the first bite, I want to drink the second bite.”

Yuan Kai told us that the quality of fruit wine products in the domestic market is uneven, most of them are blended fruit wine, that is, blended with sorghum wine or alcohol and distilled, and then added fruit juice, flavor, cyclamate, etc. to form fruit taste, the product can be It was quickly deployed and filled.

“Mei Lin” continues the traditional brewing method in the production process, and the brewing time is up to several years. Only four kinds of raw materials, rice wine, green plum, white wine, and honey are used in the process. The fresh fruit is picked by hand, processed and fermented within 2 hours, and the nutrition and flavor are kept to the greatest extent. After being fused with the base wine brewed with rice, it is soaked for more than 5 years, and then filtered and extracted.

Whether it is stored in a wine cellar or has been bottled, the longer it is stored, the more mellow the aroma of fruit wine. The brand has also reached cooperation with local poverty alleviation projects on raw materials, and the construction of the second phase of the plant is also under preparation. It is expected to be put into operation in the second half of next year.

The appearance of internet celebrities, small fresh styles and Japanese minimalist styles is very common in consumer product design for younger groups. Because the target group is wider, the “Mei Lin” approach is to add popular national style elements on the basis of popular design, try to make the design simple, stable, memorable, and differentiated to meet the aesthetics of each age group Demand, suitable for a variety of drinking scenarios.

Let’s look at the “field” again. The new brand is relatively disadvantaged in terms of offline sales channels, and the development focus of “Mei Lin” is a composite channel. Since November last year, the team has polished the distribution policy, positioned service-oriented manufacturers, and used the team’s own advantages in marketing and branding to provide dealers with a complete marketing system, including online content output, offline experience marketing, and terminal marketing construction. , A series of planning services such as promotion of exhibition activities.

The founding team of “Mei Lin” was born in an international 4A advertising company and is good at user data analysis, brand trading and integrated marketing. In 2019, the brand will focus on the sales of ToB gifts, with a price of 108 yuan/600ml, and a business volume of about millions, reaching overall profitability.

As of June 2020, “Mei Lin” already has 5 regional distributors (branch offices) in the country, and plans to enter Japanese shops and bars in 5 cities this year.