No inventory pressure, focus on actual sales: Guotai Liquor's 4.9 billion stable foundation

Ask AI · How does Guotai Liquor Industry achieve sales growth against the trend?

The end-to-end brand marketing strategy of breaking through across all channels and directly reaching C-end operations has continuously enhanced Guotai Liquor Industry’s market recognition.

Produced by | China Visitor Network

Reviewed by | Li Xiaoyan

In 2025, the Baijiu industry entered a deep adjustment cycle. Shrinking demand, high channel inventory, and declining performance among listed liquor companies became the norm. The entire Baijiu market was in the “winter” of reduced-volume competition. Against this backdrop of industry-wide pressure, the operating data disclosed by Guizhou Guotai Digital Intelligence Liquor Group at the 2026 National Distributors Conference, however, revealed a rare picture of steady performance: in 2025, sales revenue was about 4.9 billion yuan, basically flat with 2024, and sales volume grew 8% year on year. In an environment where the industry is overall declining and most companies are struggling to survive, Guotai Liquor Industry not only managed to stabilize its revenue fundamentals, but also achieved steady growth in sales volume. This “growth in volume with stable pricing” performance highlights the company’s unique resilience in navigating industry cycles, and also provides highly valuable, vivid reference value for high-quality development during the industry adjustment period.

From the perspective of the overall industry landscape, in 2025 the Baijiu industry is deeply laying its foundation, with revenue and profits of enterprises above designated size falling in both metrics. More than 30% of enterprises are facing a loss-making predicament, and the annual reports released by listed liquor companies also show negative growth to varying degrees, further underscoring sustained pressure on industry development. Against this backdrop, Guotai Liquor Industry’s achievements—stable revenue of 4.9 billion yuan and 8% growth in sales volume—are even more precious. This result is absolutely not simply about increasing volume by cutting prices; it is a phased success of the company proactively seeking change and transforming from the traditional “channel stockpiling” model to a core strategy of “C-end sell-through.” It is also the inevitable outcome of its coordinated efforts and intensive cultivation across four dimensions: market, channels, products, and branding.

Given the saturation of the frontline Baijiu market and the intensifying competition, Guotai Liquor Industry decisively turned its attention to the county-level incremental blue ocean. In October 2025, it fully launched the “Thousand Counties, Thousand Stores” project. Using county towns and key towns as the core development units, it implemented a dual “sinking” strategy for both channels and personnel. The plan is to achieve comprehensive coverage of county-level markets within 2 to 3 years. With a stepped penetration approach of “townships surrounding cities,” it avoids the red-ocean battles in frontline markets. Meanwhile, the company continues to intensively cultivate billion-yuan-level core markets such as Guangdong, Henan, Fujian, and Shandong, gradually building a three-dimensional market network of “core cities leading, full coverage in counties,” broadening market space for volume growth and laying a solid foundation for development.

The reconstruction of the channel ecosystem is a key lever for Guotai Liquor Industry to stabilize its performance. Within the industry, traditional manufacturer–distributor relationships often take the form of a game of “the factory is strong and the distributor is weak.” Blindly pushing inventory further exacerbates the core problem of channel inventory. Guotai Liquor Industry has completely broken this longstanding industry ailment by innovating and rolling out a distributor support system of “One Guarantee + Two Incentives + Three Packages.” It guarantees a portion of about 9% profit margin for distributor sales, firmly protecting distributors’ profitability bottom line. At the same time, it promotes sell-through through consumer cultivation; consumer incentive activities to encourage opening bottles directly address the difficulty of product movement. It is also supported by three layers of measures—image store construction, sell-through policies, and rent subsidies—fully reducing distributors’ operating costs.

Not only that, Guotai also implements an operating model of “separating benefits and fees, with matching rights and responsibilities,” thoroughly eliminating blind inventory push behavior. From the root, it repairs the channel ecosystem. In key cities such as Tianjin, Chengdu, and Xi’an, it works with major local wholesalers to establish platform companies. Through a model of factory–distributor cooperation, shared interests, and risk coverage, it achieves deep bonding, reshaping the adversarial relationship into a community of shared destiny for manufacturers and distributors. Entering 2026, Guotai further upgrades its channel layout and launches the “Guotai · Tongda Warehouse & Store Alliance” and the “Guotai · Tongda Warehouse Alliance.” The plan is to build 400 warehouse-and-store alliance units and 10,000 store alliance units within the year. It upgrades traditional terminals into composite terminals that combine the functions of instant-retail front warehouses and brand-experience service stores, further bringing the company closer to consumers.

Optimizing the product system and upholding quality are the core support for Guotai Liquor Industry’s resilient development. The company has completed the restructuring of the “Dragon, Standard, Star” pyramid product system: the Dragon series focuses on the high-end market, using scarce attributes to elevate brand stature; the Guobiao series, as the core flagship big single product line, covers mainstream consumer price bands and firmly secures the sales fundamentals; the Star series targets people-friendly pricing, accurately sinking into the mass Chinese sorghum flavor Baijiu track to capture incremental demand from mass consumers. In terms of quality assurance, Guotai relies on five production bases, a 100,000-ton base liquor reserve, and the Intelligent Brewing Standard System 2.0. With digital technology, it ensures consistent product quality and provides a solid quality foundation for market expansion. In 2026, Guotai will also optimize and form a “2-4-4” sales structure of top 20%, mid 40%, and base 40%. It will launch multiple people-friendly new products for the mass market, while achieving price segregation between online and offline channels. Driven by continuous optimization of product structure, it will promote sound development for the company.

The end-to-end brand marketing strategy of breaking through across all channels and directly reaching C-end operations has continuously enhanced Guotai Liquor Industry’s market recognition. The company always positions “transparency” as its brand proposition. Throughout the year, it built 37,000 core terminals, held more than 46,000 Guotai banquets (events), and directly covered more than 6.8 million consumers. In 264 cities, it launched 6,003 “Hundred Cities, Ten Thousand Meals” nationwide free-drink activities, facing consumers directly with bottle-opening cultivation. The fourth Guotai National Standard True Vintage Liquor Blind Tasting Challenge swept across 95 cities, with 142 events held, allowing millions of consumers to personally verify product quality with their taste buds. In addition, Guotai achieves brand breakthrough through diverse marketing scenarios. The “Xiao Sa Factory Tour” content campaign garnered 350 million views. It partnered with CCTV to create the “Singing and Sharing China” music gala, and carried out cross-industry marketing with village-super league football events and concerts in multiple cities, achieving an all-domain brand upgrade from deep channel cultivation to content dissemination.

In 2026, adjustments in the Baijiu industry will continue, and Guotai Liquor Industry’s development approach will become even more precise and decisive. On the market side, it will continue to deepen county-level sinking, and while intensively cultivating core markets, it will also launch international expansion. Across four major segments—channels, products, marketing, and branding—it will adhere to coordinated efforts. With a hard commitment of “absolutely no pushing inventory to distributors, and absolutely no pushing inventory to terminals,” it will continue to repair the channel ecosystem and fully shift to a strategic layout that directly reaches the C-end. Today’s Baijiu industry cycle brings both challenges and opportunities. With its steady performance in 2025, Guotai Liquor Industry demonstrates in action that only by centering on consumers, achieving win-win coexistence with distributors, using quality as the foundation for its standing, and responding to cycle changes through proactive transformation can it maintain steady progress and go the distance during industry adjustments. And as all strategic layouts are implemented in depth, Guotai Liquor Industry will also seize development opportunities in the new Baijiu cycle with solid quality, innovative operating models, and a mutually beneficial manufacturer–wholesaler ecosystem, continuously releasing strong resilience that carries it through the cycle.

Personal opinion, for reference only.