I’ll Drink to That: China Gets First Specialist Beer E-Commerce Site

Beer: The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.

— Homer Simpson

I was waiting for this day. And here it is. China’s vibrant and increasingly niche e-commerce sector now has a site just for buying quality beer. Called Kuai Pijiu (literally: “quick beer”) it sells the kind of imported beers – with an emphasis on German brands like Paulaner and Krombacher (pictured below); but sadly no Benderbrau – that can only be bought in specialist outlets in some parts of China.

The Kuaipijiu.com site launched last week and is hoping to replicate the success of B2C wine e-tailers such as Moooton and TasteV, bringing luxury lifestyle goods to the country’s fast-expanding middle- and upper-income brackets.

At the moment, the site has a pretty nice selection of imported beers but not much in the way of social features – either online or offline – to recommend it. Kuai Pijiu could well take a look at TasteV and see how it’s forging a community of like-minded users with free wine-tasting sessions, and drumming up some excitement with flash sales.

Though the first specialist beer e-tailer in the country, it already has stiff competition from the country’s top B2C e-commerce site, Tmall, where you can buy pretty much anything. Yes: including a wide selection of imported beers. Plus, if some of those are grey-imported (ie: smuggled) into the country by the site’s various store managers, they’ll be cheaper than the more legit price at which Kuai Pijiu can offer them.

Anyway, it’s always good to see a new startup emerge. And I’ll certainly drink to this one’s success.

The new Kuai Pijiu site homepage (above), and a product page (below):