Ep. 335 Natalie Wang (Part 1)

Italian wine podcast. Chinchin with Italian wine people. Welcome to Italian wine podcast. My name is Stevie Kim. I'm filling in for, Monty. I I'm stealing away a session from him. I am actually I we I started Monty Italian Wine podcast about three years ago. I would really like to take this, moment to thank all of the listeners out there. We have reached two hundred and fifty thousand, listens the past twelve months. That is pretty amazing. I never thought when we started that we would be able to pull this off in a such a highly specialized niche. So we are up to, episode number three fifty ish. And, it's been a really a great ride. Thanks to also Julia. When, Julia, of course, has abandoned ship as a producer. She's now in Holland. In a city where I cannot even pronounce, but she's now trying to become the rocket scientist that she had always wanted to become. So we're still in touch with her because we need her help once in a while. Thank you, Julia, so much. You know, if you're listening. And, of course, now we have a new producer. He's a bit rigid. We call him the military man. He is Jacob on hand. So Jacob's sitting right next to me, and I also have lag. Who has helped get some questions ready for you as well as Shaawan. So here today is a special episode. I am filling in for Monte because it we want to talk about something, very, very close to My Hot. I used to go to China once a month. It hasn't been like this for a long time because now we have a, new, market person on hand, simone from China. But Natalie Wang. Hi. I'm not Natalie Wang. How are you? Welcome. Hi. How Natalie? I'm good. How are you? Okay. Sorry about the long preamble, but, you know, this is what happens when they give me might. So it doesn't happen very often. I met Natalie Wong when I think she was still running drinks business in Hong Kong. She's, of course, a wine journalist. She's based in Hong Kong, and she's work for international health tribune, Reuters, James Suckling, you name it, and anyone who's anyone in the wine business in China, of course Natalie Wang is a point person. For the China's wine market. And she's, a recent, started a new website called, Vino enjoy. Right? Vino. Vino joy. That's vino dash joy dot com. I really find this to be the go to place for Chinese wine market right now. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your website? Oh, yeah. Definitely. Thank you for the lovely intro. Yeah. I, indeed, I still started on my website last May, the idea of creating the website is really, to fill the void, you know, to report, on what's happening with the as a wine market as everyone is paying attention to it, everyone is saying it would be the second biggest of market next year. So naturally, there's a lot of interest, unfortunately, in the market for a lot of foreign wineries, a merch and unquarters. There's not enough information on this other market. The key players, what's happening with the market, what are the latest trained. So that's really the original idea of creating the website to fill that void. That is really fantastic. So anyone who's listening, please go check out vino dash joy dot com. If you can't find it, easily just do Natalie Wang. And you will definitely see that go to her website. I highly recommend it. So you are, originally from China. Is that correct? Yeah. I come from toting in the south west of out of China. After we're, where we do the big wine fair. And Right. Right. Where I, you know, studied my master's degree in Hong Kong and continue to work and live here till today. So you you are what they call a Hong Kong or Hong Kongese? What what's the difference? How do you say that? It's not, I, I mean, I consider myself a Chinese. I am I haven't got a, Hong Kong passport yet, so I don't think I can call myself a Hong Konger yet. Right. Okay. Very good. But you're you're living in Hong Kong. Right? You have been for the past few years. As long as I remember, since I've met you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I have been living Hong Kong since twenty eleven. So it has been nine years already. Okay. So listen, let's get get to the market, questions straight away. Let's dive into that. So, you know, if you can get kinda give us an overview, what are the key newsworthy insights you can share with our listeners regarding China's imported wine market, perhaps, you know, till now, the first half of the first semester of two thousand twenty, this crazy, crazy, crazy But she kinda wanna forget and have a new start, but it is what it is. Right? So Indeed, I mean, I wish we can just cancel two thousand twenty and we should go back. With that nineteen was bad. Right? I know we thought nineteen was bad, and then here it comes to it on twenty. It completely disrupted everything. It has been very challenging for merchants, distributors for sure, in China, and in the rest of the world. We don't have the official data yet, from China custom, the warning report for the first six months of the year, but so far, the review, the cover for the first four months of the year, and it's not very encouraging as we expected. I think for, why imports in terms of volume and value, we see a decrease of roughly thirty percent, which is quite a significant job compared with the same period last year. In particular, in April, we saw the sharpest decline. I think the main reason was because in late January, the pandemic already hit China and a lot of cities and provinces across the country imposed strict lockdown. A lot of the shops were closed, restaurants, and that affected the orders coming into China. Right. So, we'll talk about that a little bit more specifically later on. But, you know, I'm highly obsessed with pen folds. Is pen fold still the success story of China, even today? I think largely you can say Penfords still, quite a success story in China in terms of really localizing the brand and adapting to the Chinese market I mean, the significant thing happened in China's wine market last year is Australia for the first time surpassed the funds to become China's biggest wine supplier. And TWE as the country's biggest wine group, Well, TWE, can you just what is that? It's treasury wine estates for our listeners. Right? T TWE is the treasury wine estates. It's a parent company of Pemfords. And Pemfords, of course, it is the flagship brand for them and arguably the most powerful and most popular wine brand in China. And, yeah, they're very successful with marketing adapting to local market. But the uncertainty, of course, going into twenty twenty is the relations between China and Australia as I reported for the website, you know, a few weeks ago, and, the Chinese ambassador to Australia threatened to sort of, sort of, to cut wine imports and tourism to Australia. So we will see how that goes, whether that will play, an impact on Australian wine imports to China. Or was it? But what what I'm sorry. I completely missed that story. What was the story with that? Basically, it was, I think in late, April or something like that. I have to check at the time, but, the Chinese ambassador to Australia said in response to Australia's initiative to conduct an independent inquire to, inquiry into coronavirus origin and spread. Right? Oh, okay. So it's it's it has to do with, COVID. Yeah. It has to do with COVID and China's side came out strongly protesting it and saying, well, if you do this, it's all political. We might have to rethink about why imports, beef imports, soil being sports, whatever. So we'll see how that, will play out. A fingers crossed, I hope, leaders from both sides can see reason and rationality will prevail, but we'll see. You know, but, you know, I think most of our, listeners, I'm not sure they know, but Australia is the number one importer for China. Because, within that ninety percent of Australia wine, Australian wine in China is in fact ninety nine zero, crazy amount of, a wine is actually penfals. Is that still the case? Yeah. I think that's still the case if you combine the official data and the parallel traders, you know, trading trader wines of pen folks coming to the market. Yeah. So that's a little bit, I think misleading in in in a way when we talk about Australia, Any, any anyway, so, anyway, going forward, these specific months during COVID, so Australia, France, Chile, Italy, Italy included, who, which is a little, you know, I'm partial to. Have they adapted to the to the COVID situation in terms of the, China's wine market? Have they done anything to minimize the damage? Have they taken any preventative measure? Or proactive actions, for for the current situation? From my point of view, when I see the reactions from those countries, mostly, I see, more, co coherent response from, you know, wine trade associations. For instance, like wine, Australia, wines of Chile, or CIVV, I think from the onset of the pandemic, I see more efforts coming from Australia for instance. Early on, they announced that we're gonna postpone a lot of the wine tastings, a lot of the wine events, and Ouro shows, planned for men in China, and Also, I think it was late in late February. They already announced they're gonna withdraw from the next bill. So they acted pretty fast. Yeah, definitely. And then they teamed up with, why educators influencers to do, online streaming, online talk, online education course. So I think that's something a lot of the wine trade associations, like wines of Chile, wine, Australia, CIVB for Bordeaux and certainly even Italy have been doing during the COVID to adapt the change in situation. So let's, dive a little bit into, social media online e commerce in China. First of all, your website, Vina Joy. Why is it called Vina Joy? Vina? I think it was a great idea, of course. But Joy is really just, you know, we thought, you know, wine is something that brings happiness to people so that's something we want to emphasize. And for selfish purpose, my Chinese name, my Chinese name also means happiness. So I thought you throw that in there. It's really lazy. Great. Great. I think it's it's I think it's great. Except the dash. You know, I'm I'm unhappy about the dash. I but I guess Vina go wasn't available. It wasn't available. Someone already took it. Yeah. I hate the dash and the you know, the the the underscore and all of that stuff, but that's just my pet peeve, you know. So your website is actually in English. How do you communicate with the Chinese? Do you have another platform for that? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. With our readers in China, we do postings through WeChat, which is a all in one messaging app. Launched by Tencent, its parent company. Actually, it's more than a messaging app in online, social media, messaging, repayment, everything, shopping, whatever you can think of, you can find it through WeChat. You know, when I first came to China, and I convinced, like, you know, my team. First of all, it's it's it's a bit odd, but in in my office, you know, we're in Italy, but our main form of we don't use Slack. I mean, Slack is something very recent. We used actually WeChat. Right? So people think it's crazy. And when I first learned about WeChat, I I think it was about I maybe, like, eight years ago. Oh, wow. That's okay. When it first came out, I was one of the first users. And, I tried convincing, I recall this very distinctively. I was trying to convince sicilian wine producers that they have to be on WeChat if you want to sell wine in China. Right? Fantastic. And yeah. And it was a I and I convinced them by saying, like, if you shake you know, that shake feature? Uh-uh. You can find anybody, you know, your interest in perhaps dating, right, right near you. What? So that that was kind of a trick that I used to get people on WeChat. Of course not, it's much more, diffused. And luckily, you know, the Italian wines, wine producers are also on that. Listen, talking about WeChat, can you just give us a super, super skinny, dummy guide to social media in china, weChat Weibo, TikTok. We just started a, TikTok account. We're a bit obsessed with it because they don't like us very much. I think we're too old, you know, and wine. Definitely, there's nothing on wine, actually. So I'm I'm I'm I'm still confused what Penfolds did exactly to get the success. I think early, it was seven years ago. They already hired an agency to work on the, the WeChat. So they started the subscription account way over. And that Right. I'm already, you know, info is quite popular. It has recognition. It has popularity in China, so naturally. And, attracted a lot of followers. The thing they did very well is the market penetration. They have so many distribution channels. I mean, the chances of someone knowing the brand, the twin phones, compared to someone knowing maybe a sicilian wine brand is much, much higher. And also, the name of Chinese transliteration is very auspicious. It's a literal translation is changing prosperity. And for a lot of training, we still think it's, you're lucky. So that quickly, caught on. Yeah. But then once again, back to China's social media, I mean, we have WeChat. That's the main app people are using nowadays. And So that is like the go to, go to app. Right? Absolutely. I mean, do you just give us a small, like, functionality of WeChat? I guess, line can do that too, but For those who are unfamiliar, why is WeChat important, to communicate with the Chinese market? Yeah. For sure. Like, think about it. China is a country with one point four billion people. Right? WeChat alone has roughly one point one five billion monthly active users. So just look at the penetration and its coverage in the market for sure it's mostly used. App in China. And it's a super app that has the feature of messaging, for instance, you know, like WhatsApp. And also it has the feature of social media. So think about combining WhatsApp Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, PayPal, even Tinder into WeChat, you know, like the shake feature that you mentioned as well. So and also, you know, it has and the app hailing, taxi hailing too. So if you want to, you know, help a cab or anything, you can do that through WeChat as well by, you know, box office tickets, anything imaginable, you can do it through WeChat. It has become this massive ecosystem for a lot of, you know, features, on social media. Yeah. I mean, I remember, Alibaba, I came up with their, competitive, of, you know, platform. It didn't work. And it never worked. Right? Because why didn't it work in your opinion? I think at the beginning, there was because a lot of people were using part What part about what I was trying to do is you want to roll out, like, a messaging app. But primarily, those messaging apps are used to buy online shoppers. So it never really branched out into those non online shoppers. If you know what I mean. And then tencent or it, already before WeChat, they had QQ. That's another messaging app. So for a QQ user to join with them, and who are using WeChat, that was sort of, like, relatively easier because it's under the same umbrella. Yeah. I mean, I just highly recommend that, you know, I think it's, common, public domain now that if you want to do business in China, you cannot afford not to have we chat. And I I think everybody knows now that unless you have VPN, you know, Facebook, you know, western social media are are banned in China. And you can't open your Facebook or Instagram and often also Google. I I don't I don't know people realize that. So there is a natural barrier whether you like it or not. And I think you, it is it is absolutely important that people understand that if they want to, you know, have business in China. And this is what I tell, my Italian wine producers. Listen, Natalie, listen, we're going to break away, right now. And then maybe we can continue the conversation, in a little bit because it's already about twenty minutes into the conversation. So I wanna break this up maybe into two parts. We'll come back and we'll talk about the KOLs. What is KOL e commerce? And, maybe a little bit about, you know, your, crystal ball reading, predictions for the future. Okay? Yep. No problem. So stay tuned everybody. Listen to the Italian wine podcast wherever you get your podcasts. We're on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, HimalIFM, and more. Don't forget to subscribe and rate the show. If you enjoy listening, please consider donating through Italian wine podcast dot com. Any amount helps cover equipment and publication costs. Until next time.