Wine business in Beijing

Editor’s note: This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up, and huge changes have been made in Beijing, capital of China, over the past 40 years. We have invited 40 foreign experts to participate in a series of interviews named “New Era, New Insight” jointly hosted by GMW.cn（The official website of Guangming Daily） and the Information Office of Beijing Municipality and share their “Beijing Stories”. The following is part of the script of the interview with Claudia Masueger,CEO and founder of CHEERS Wines.

Claudia Masueger,CEO and founder of CHEERS Wines (Photo provided to Guangming Online)

We opened our first store in April, 2011. Our aim was to make the wine affordable. And because of my family history, we were convincing our suppliers to give us very fair and reasonable price for good quality wines.

So we sent the wines over to China, we were able to offer a wine to 20 kuai, even though it was imported and purely quality. It was from Spain, and it was actually fantastic.

So we want to make the wine drinking accessible to the mass of the people. And this wish has really enabled us to access a huge mass of the people so that everyone can afford a glass of wine.

In 2017, everything changed. A lot of street stores were closing in Beijing, because Beijing was renovating itself. A lot of new shopping malls opened.

So we managed to move our projects, our stores from the street into the shopping malls. Now having wines in the shopping malls has different targeted groups.

The targeted group has a different consumption habit. And everything has changed. So even the selection of wine is a bit different, the price now goes a bit higher, because people like to have more valuable wines.

And the entire marketing has also shifted towards the new generation who is going to buy wine in shopping malls. So in China, entire families with the kids are going for weekends into malls to be entertained.

So shopping malls is not only for shopping but rather for entertainment. And that has been a big change since last couple of years. And it’s fantastic, because the mall are full of people, the people are excited to experiment, excited to try new wine.

And then they order online. And the delivery in China today is so fast that within twenty minutes we have the deliver. Our consumers are between 22 and 38 years old.

We have daily free wine tasting in every single store. The reason is because we want to give consumers a chance to try different wines. You know, long times ago, about ten years ago, consumers were drinking red wine, especially heavy Bordeaux from France.

But they actually didn’t like it very much. But they know French wine is the best wine, which is not entirely true. I mean, they have very good French wine.

It’s about that we have given the people a chance to try many different wines. Those free daily wine tastings are offered in every single store. So they can discover what kind of taste a way level.

And every week on Wednesday, we have a mini wine course in all of our stores. The mini wine course is invented so that people can actually learn more about wine.

They can get deeper and deeper in this fantastic world of wines. My name is Claudia Masueger. I’m from Switzerland. I’m running a wine retail chain called Cheers Wines.

I love living in Beijing.

I love you all. And I wish you all the best.