Spring Sugar and Wine Fair 2026: Some exit, some enter the market; platform value is being reshaped

Ask AI · How can Spring Sugar’s recruitment function be reshaped under weak consumer demand?

Blue Whale News March 25 (Reporter Zhu Xinyue) “This time I’m here for Spring Sugar, and I have clear purchasing needs.” Longtime liquor-store operator Along admitted to a Blue Whale News reporter.

Along’s store has annual sales in the tens of millions range. After the partners exited last year, the store’s SKU lineup was also reduced along with it. “Right now, the core is to find new compatible SKUs. The retail price needs to be kept below 200 yuan, and ideally the products should be high-similarity to high-volume, widely distributed liquor products. After all, the store already has big-volume items. These products are priced too transparently, so there’s basically no room for meaningful profit. What I’m looking for is something with a similar taste, but with an opaque pricing structure—so I can get a reasonable profit.”

On March 21, as a prelude to the National Spring Sugar (Chunjiu) Fair, the hotel exhibitions were the first to kick off in Chengdu. Liquor merchants, distributors, store operators, and other professionals in the liquor industry have been steadily pouring into the city, and an industry exchange event centered on liquor category selection, recruitment, and channel matchmaking officially got underway.

Da Liu also showed up at this Spring Sugar Fair. He wasn’t there to purchase; he came with the purpose of familiarizing himself with the industry and figuring out its inner workings. The company he works for is preparing a cross-industry expansion into the liquor sector, and the related products are still in the R&D stage. However, when it comes to core parts such as product pricing and the layout for recruitment, they are still exploring. For that reason, Da Liu also took the initiative to visit multiple highly experienced people in the industry. He said directly: “Spring Sugar is a highly efficient industry window. It can quickly help you understand the industry’s pulse, and find the direction to enter.”

Another practitioner also had a clear plan for attending: first, to select new products for their stores; second, to connect with two wineries for the currently best-selling wine categories at their store, hoping the wineries can, based on market feedback on existing products, create customized SKUs with a higher cost performance ratio; in addition, they’re also taking the opportunity of Spring Sugar to meet and exchange with industry friends, talk about wine, and maintain industry connections.

Of course, some distributors choose not to head to Spring Sugar anymore. A major liquor wholesaler told a Blue Whale News reporter that the team’s current core focus is entirely on discovering opportunities in private-domain operations and To C market demand, while Spring Sugar’s industry format is more oriented toward To B channel matchmaking, so it no longer fits their development pace.

The liquor industry’s core demands for Spring Sugar are also quietly shifting. What used to come first was recruitment to expand channels; it has gradually shifted toward publicity needs primarily centered on brand exposure and market messaging.

This year, Guangliang Liquor Industry is once again participating in the main Spring Sugar exhibition. At the fair, there will be an offline activity themed around a young person visiting Spring Sugar, with the activity theme being the Baijiu Evil Cultivation Academy.

When talking about this activity, Yang Hongman, head of public relations at Guangliang Liquor Industry, told a Blue Whale News reporter that the Baijiu Evil Cultivation Academy is similar to a continuously evolving co-creation IP: “ ‘Evil cultivation’ represents a way of doing things that doesn’t follow the traditional path. “We approach it from the perspective of young people, using a more relaxed, more participatory way to re-enter the baijiu industry. Specifically for this Spring Sugar, it’s more like an open experimental field. We hand the initiative in cocktail-making over to young people, let them create ‘their first cup of baijiu,’ and then choose the works that can truly be turned into products. In essence, we hope young people can move from being observers in the baijiu industry to becoming participants—even co-creators. From a broader industry perspective, this is also our response to the shared proposition of baijiu’s youthfulness: using a more practical approach to help establish new connections between young people and baijiu.”

In an environment where overall consumer demand is weak, the alcohol beverage industry—an industry of “mood drinks”—has not been spared either. Channel merchants’ cash flow is generally tight, and therefore Spring Sugar’s core recruitment function, since the fair’s inception, has also shown real weakening.

Within the liquor industry circle, Spring Sugar is well known as an industry economic barometer. And the street in front of Chengdu Jinjiang Hotel is even more a key “tick mark” within that barometer. The heat of foot traffic on that street directly maps the market temperature of the entire Spring Sugar.

According to industry estimates for Spring Sugar 2026, foot traffic around the Jinjiang Hotel may be reduced by about one third compared with previous years. But standing at the intersection at the entrance to the Jinjiang Hotel, you can still see crowds flowing continuously—people moving between various hotel exhibition venues, looking at industry trends, seeking market opportunities, selecting quality sources of goods, and connecting with industry resources.

As a seasoned liquor industry professional told a Blue Whale News reporter, Spring Sugar’s value as a platform is actually continuously increasing. This is an extremely high-efficiency matchmaking platform. In a single day, it can concentrate about 3 to 4 major core matchmaking sessions, and most of the main decision-makers in the industry basically are all here. With opportunities like this, it’s hard to get them in other cities or events. “Take the opportunity to meet new and old friends. Once you meet, you have a chance.”