Price increase, what gives Moutai the right?

Ask AI · How Will Moutai Channel Reform Affect the Role Transformation of Distributors?

Produced by | MiaoTou APP

Author | Duan Mingzhu

Edited by | Ding Ping

Cover image | Visual China

On March 30, Guizhou Moutai released major news: starting March 31, the contract price paid by distributors for Feitian 53%vol 500ml Guizhou Moutai will be raised from RMB 1,169 to RMB 1,269, and the self-operated retail price will be raised from RMB 1,499 to RMB 1,539. Although it only increases by RMB 100 and RMB 40, this is the first time that Moutai’s official retail price has been raised since eight years ago.

At a time when the industry as a whole is under pressure and consumer expectations are cautious, why does Moutai dare to raise prices against the trend? Moutai has been making frequent moves recently—if you connect them, what strategic intent and tactics do they reflect? The defining event that marked the last cycle of baijiu bottoming out and stabilizing was Moutai raising prices—could history repeat itself this time?

A price increase—why can it?

Just three months ago, Moutai’s wholesale price was still sliding nonstop, with news everywhere about the RMB 1,499 baseline being repeatedly broken—so how does it dare to raise prices so quickly?

Judging from the most direct perspective, Moutai’s strong sell-through during the Spring Festival is the backing for the price increase (demand side).

Research shows that during the Spring Festival, sell-through for Feitian Moutai is expected to grow year over year by 10%-20%, and in some regions even higher. Most distributors have already completed 35%-40% of their full-year plans, faster than the same period last year.

On January 1, iMoutai officially went live for the sale of Feitian Moutai, breaking channel barriers and activating a large number of end users. There were 14 million new users; among them,成交 orders for Feitian 53%vol 500ml Guizhou Moutai liquor became the core engine behind the explosive jump in Spring Festival sell-through.

As a result, it has become a market consensus that Guizhou Moutai’s overall revenue in the first quarter will achieve double-digit growth. And from the wholesale price, the latest普茅 wholesale price is around RMB 1,600, which indicates that the market can fully absorb a higher official price.

In other words, this price increase was implemented only after Guizhou Moutai conducted a “stress test” on real demand through iMoutai, determined that demand far exceeds supply (67.5% still expecting to buy), and then moved forward.

MiaoTou has repeatedly pointed out that Moutai is irreplaceable in business entertainment. When普茅 at RMB 1,499 becomes easier to obtain, the “Moutai content” in various liquor-serving scenarios actually keeps increasing.

That is, due to Moutai’s own scarcity and strong brand barriers, it holds pricing power that any brand would envy, so it dares to raise prices against the trend when the market is full of uncertainty; and iMoutai also provides a quantitative basis for the price increase.

The above is the demand side. This price increase by Moutai also comes from having “solved” the supply side.

Note that in this adjustment, the distributor contract price is raised by about 8.55%, while the self-operated retail price is raised by only 2.7%. Behind this difference are deeper considerations in Moutai’s interest distribution, channel positioning, and strategic direction.

In Moutai’s distributor system, the purchase price paid by distributors (or the comprehensive cost price) and the official retail price have undergone multiple adjustments over the past nearly eight years. Overall, this has been narrowing channel excess profits.

After this pricing adjustment, assuming distributors purchase at RMB 1,269 and sell at RMB 1,539 retail, the gross margin falls to RMB 270. The gross profit per bottle for the channel is reduced by RMB 60, a decline of about 18%. This clearly shows that Moutai is further compressing distributors’ per-bottle profit space, breaking the comfortable zone of “making money just by sitting on it.”

In fact, the baijiu industry is in the bottom of its cycle adjustment, which is an important window period for reform. When the industry faces overall pressure, distributors have the weakest bargaining power and the highest dependence on the manufacturers. In 2025, distributors, under inventory pressure and with price inversion, urgently needed Guizhou Moutai to help “reduce their burden.” Moutai accordingly introduced new models such as “agency sales.” Distributors’ acceptance was far higher than during the upward phase of the industry.

Under the previous “bundled sales” model, distributors worried less about selling Feitian Moutai they obtained, but when you add the comprehensive cost of精品 Moutai, cultural-creative liquor, and more, the overall results were still loss-making. Under the “agency sales” model, although they earn less, it is more stable—so its advantages stand out.

At the same time, Moutai uses pricing policies to guide consumers toward self-operated channels, thereby strengthening its control over end-market pricing.

So you could say: on the surface, this price adjustment is a change in numbers. At its core, it is a key step in Moutai’s transformation from “channel-driven” to “consumer-driven.”

To fully understand Moutai’s strategy and the direction of its future evolution, you also need to look at its recent set of initiatives.

Reshaping the System

This year, Moutai carried out a series of intensive and systematic market-oriented reforms. In essence, they boil down to two lines: establishing price anchors and reshaping the channel system.

In the past, Moutai’s price system used the distributor ex-factory price as the anchor. Channel players and scalpers controlled the actual pricing power, and the official price was severely disconnected from the market price, which fostered speculation. To regain control of pricing leadership, Guizhou Moutai did several things:

• On January 1, using iMoutai as the platform, it sold 普茅 at RMB 1,499 on a large scale to establish “self-operated retail price” as the new price anchor;

• Lower prices of non-standard products to rationalize the price gaps across different tiers of the pyramid;

• On March 30, using the self-operated retail price as the anchor, it simultaneously raised the distributors’ contract price and self-operated retail price to complete the reconstruction of the price system.

As you can see, in January Moutai first put the price system in order—especially by solving the issue of non-standard products being overpriced—laying the foundation for market-based pricing. In March, it directly raised prices for the core big single product, Feitian Moutai—this is Moutai’s most core source of revenue, directly affecting the company’s income statement and turning brand premium power into real profits.

The overall logic is that manufacturers set the anchor price, and channels sell according to that anchor, under a new mechanism where commissions and price spreads are dynamically determined.

From the channel perspective, in the past Moutai distributors obtained allocations based on financial strength, earned huge purchase-sale spreads, and had strong incentives to stockpile and speculate, which was not fully aligned with the manufacturers’ interests. Guizhou Moutai’s strategy is to loosen first and then guide:

• On January 13, the board approved the “2026 Market-Oriented Operation Plan,” establishing a multi-dimensional coordinated marketing system of “self-sales + distribution + agency sales + consignment sales.” Among them, the new “agency sales” and “consignment sales” models do not transfer title of goods; distributors sell at the self-operated retail price and earn commissions;

• Remove the distribution tie-ins for non-standard products to reduce the burden on distributors;

• Clarify that the distributor contract price will be dynamically determined based on “operating costs, operating difficulty, and service capability.”

It is clear that the January adjustment is about “reducing the burden” for distributors, so they no longer need to bear pressure from inventory and price inversion. The March adjustment is about making distributors “share the benefit,” transferring part of the profit to the manufacturer.

Focus on Moutai’s new four channel models.

Self-sales model. Through self-operated stores and the iMoutai platform, the entire product line directly faces consumers (C-end) and enterprises (B-end). With real sales data from self-operated channels, Moutai can accurately grasp market demand and provide a quantitative basis for price adjustments.

Distribution model. This is the most changed part.

In the past, distributors’ profits came from fixed purchase-sale spreads: buy at low prices and sell at high prices, and how much profit they made depended on the size of their allocations and their ability to stockpile.

Now, Moutai has introduced a “dynamically determined contract price” mechanism. The manufacturer flexibly determines the distributors’ profit space based on the distributors’ operating costs, service capability, regional difficulty, and other factors. This means that earning more or less no longer depends on “how much stock you can get,” but on “how much service you can provide.”

This Feitian Moutai price increase is the first implementation of this new rule. The manufacturer raised distributors’ contract price rather than the retail price (purchase cost increases; what price they can sell at is uncertain), but overall the end retail price only adjusts slightly, which is likely to compress per-bottle channel profit.

This sends a clear signal: the old model of earning spreads by stockpiling is coming to an end. Distributors need to shift to new models like “agency sales,” earning stable commissions through services such as warehousing, delivery, tastings, and customer maintenance.

In the future, Moutai distributors’ role will shift from “traders” to “service providers,” and their earnings will depend more on service capability and operational efficiency than on allocation size.

Agency sales and consignment sales models. These are the new models added in this reform; you can think of them as a light-asset model. Agency sellers (such as large retailers and restaurants) and consignment sellers (such as private-domain traffic platforms) do not buy and lock in the goods’ rights; they are only responsible for sales. They must sell at the self-operated retail price, and then the manufacturer pays commissions. This model greatly expands Moutai’s ability to reach channels, and because title of goods does not transfer, it effectively prevents channels from stockpiling and driving speculation.

In the end, Moutai’s control over pricing, channels, and data will become stronger and stronger. A new landscape led by manufacturers, coordinated with channels, and reaching more consumers is taking shape.

But can this be seen as a bottoming-out signal for the baijiu industry’s next round?

Has baijiu bottomed out?

In August 2015, Moutai indeed took actions very similar to today’s: using administrative measures to raise a batch price and requiring distributors not to ship at prices lower than RMB 850 per bottle; otherwise, their next year’s contract would be canceled.

At that time, the baijiu industry had just struggled out of the shock from “restrictions on official banquets and excessive consumption.” Inventory was high and prices were inverted. Moutai’s “iron-fisted price protection” behavior, together with price increases from Wuliangye and Luzhou Laojiao, was later widely viewed as a landmark event marking a sector-wide bottom rebound.

In other words, during periods when the industry was sluggish, Moutai transmitted confidence to the market that “the worst moment has passed” by adjusting the price system.

Does Moutai’s current price increase also mark baijiu bottoming out and stabilizing?

The answer is: this is likely a structural, differentiated bottoming signal, not a recovery signal of across-the-board price increases.

Based on the feedback for the Spring Festival in 2026, the wholesale prices of baijiu core single products have already reached the bottom, and the risk of continuing to fall sharply is limited. After deep clearing in 2025, the core single products of leading liquor companies have had their inventory basically reduced to a healthy level.

And the Spring Festival 2026 sell-through shows a clear pattern of “strong at the two ends, weak in the middle.” High-end leaders such as Moutai and Wuliangye are performing strongly, but large-volume top brands such as Guojiao, Fenjiu, and Yanghe, as well as second-tier brands such as ShuTuo and Shuijingfang, are still facing compression from price leaders within the price bands where their main products sit.

The Spring Sugar Conference also shows “both hot and cold.” Hotel exhibitions cooled down, but liquor companies still rolled out many new products, and the C-end transformation remains hot. Behind this is a systematic industrial restructuring in the baijiu sector as it shifts from the B-end to the C-end.

Through iMoutai direct sales, channel reshaping, and the shift of price anchors, Moutai is further consolidating its position at the very high end. Its ability to conduct market-based dynamic pricing is difficult for other brands to replicate.

Other liquor companies either choose to follow the trend and reduce prices moderately to gain market share, or they firmly support pricing and cut costs to raise brand height. The results still need to be assessed.

So, leaders are bottoming first, while the industry as a whole is still looking for the bottom. Adjustments by most regional liquor companies and second- and third-tier brands may not yet be finished.

Overall, with the low-base effect and consumer demand reaching its low point, the second half of the baijiu industry has the potential to see marginal improvements. And as advantaged brands squeeze out others and complete clearing, it will help leading players stabilize. Therefore, the big investment opportunities still lie in baijiu leaders.

However, any profound change comes with risks, and failure is possible. For example, Moutai’s current reform needs continuous monitoring of three types of risks.

First is channel backlash. If distributors’ profits drop sharply, will it affect Moutai’s market development? In the short term, it is controllable. Moutai reduces burdens through actions such as lowering contract prices for non-standard products, but the effectiveness of the long-term transformation still needs to be observed.

Second is price pressure. Although the wholesale price of Feitian Moutai has rebounded at present and Moutai has the ability to adjust and control deployment volumes, weak demand on the demand side is the fundamental pressure.

Finally is brand dilution. If consumers form the perception that “Moutai is no longer scarce,” it will lead to a decline in the brand’s premium pricing power. The short-term risk is relatively low, but if low-price sales keep expanding, long-term risks need to be watched for.

In short, the success or failure of the reform depends on whether Moutai can precisely balance the interests of all parties in the coming period.

Ultimately, Moutai’s reform is essentially answering one question: when the financial attribute fades, can the consumer attribute support a market value of one trillion?

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