Wajiu: Leading the way in the Chinese wine market

Promotional feature.

The Chinese wine market is evolving rapidly and Wajiu is a wine import company that’s poised to take advantage of the growth.

Promotional feature.

Wajiu: Leading the way in the Chinese wine market

Since it was founded in Beijing in 2014, Wajiu has expanded across China to major cities including Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Chengdu, and is now importing bottles from over 500 wineries in 20 different countries. It’s now the country’s largest wine importer by volume, importing 10m litres in 2017, from 20 different countries.

How has Wajiu achieved this success? More than just a traditional wine importer, the company offers logistics, warehousing, distribution and financial services, taking care of every step of the process of wine supply: from wineries direct to wholesalers and retailers.

Wajiu’s website now has over 50,000 registered users, who can order wine and make payments easily online. Customers can also download Wajiu’s App from the App Store, for a convenient way to manage their account. These innovative customer management systems are run by a dedicated technical team and are constantly being updated. All customers are also supported by a sales team of over 200 people in 31 provinces.

Wine selection

At the core of Wajiu’s business is a talented team of internationally trained wine buyers, who source bottles from all over the world, working with over 500 wineries. They currently list over 2,000 different wines, across a wide variety of styles and grape varieties, working with Bernard Magrez and Boisset in France, Spain’s Codorníu and Freixenet, GIV from Italy, Viña Errazuriz and Concha Y Toro in Chile, Australia’s Pacific Vintners and Peñaflor from Argentina – among other notable names.

As these producers have discovered, Wajiu solves the problems for foreign wineries entering the huge and complex Chinese market, with its direct overseas purchasing model and cross-border supply chain. Today Wajiu manages more than 50,000 square meters of temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouses – some situated in tariff-free zones – while its logistics distribution covers more than 3,000 transport routes in China.

What’s more, Wajiu can help with the marketing and promotion of foreign wine brands, responding to consumer trends in the local market and developing targeted strategies to help wineries access the most suitable sales channels. In this way Wajiu provides a comprehensive business solution for wineries wanting to access the Chinese market.

Looking ahead

What does the future hold? With its ambitious globalisation strategy Wajiu will be expanding beyond China to even more markets, starting with Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and India then on to the rest of Asia.

As well as successfully changing the face of wine imports in China, this dynamic company will make it easier than ever before to do business with wine suppliers in the Asian market.