Young people often want to set themselves apart, especially from their parents. Bored with traditional baijiu alcohol and local beer, more and more young Chinese adults are looking to imported drinks, providing enormous opportunities to Brown-Forman, a leading wine and spirits company in North America.

With more than 30 well-known brands, including the whiskeys Jack Daniel's, Early Times and Southern Comfort, vodka Finlandia and Fetzer California and Fontana Candida Italian wines, the company is maintaining double-digit growth in China, and says its business, especially key brands Jack Daniel's and Finlandia, are taking off along with the country's rapidly growing economy, says Brown-Forman spokesman Phil Lynch.

"China will soon be one of our top-10 markets, and I believe ultimately the country will be in the top five for us," Lynch tells China Business Weekly during a recent visit to Beijing.

Since opening a representative office in China a decade ago with only 12 employees, Brown-Forman's distribution network now reaches more than 40 cities, with 10 of its brands now sold in China.

Lynch says Jack Daniel's Black Label is the world's best-selling whiskey and his long-term goal is to become the No 1 in the Chinese market as well.

Company figures indicate 9 million cases of Jack Daniel's are sold worldwide. While declining to reveal numbers for China, Lynch says it is already one of the top-three whiskey brands in the country.

On-premises sales - restaurants, bars and clubs - account for about three-quarters of Jack Daniel's total sales in China. The remaining 25 percent comes through off-premises channels including liquor stores and supermarkets.

Acknowledging that scotch whiskey, such as leading brands Chivas Regal and Johnny Walker, achieved rapid growth in China, Lynch says his company's experience is that where scotch has become popular, Jack Daniel's will too soon take off .

"We have found around the world, particularly where scotch got in first as a result of British colonialism, we often began as a small player in the market. But through our brand building efforts targeting the younger adults, who want to drink something different from older generations, we introduced Jack Daniel's, and then it started growing," he says.

"We then tended to keep those people. When they grew older, they kept drinking Jack Daniel's," the spokesman says, noting a famous saying in the company that Jack Daniel's "is for everybody - from bikers to bankers".

The brand's prime target consumers in China are young adults between 18 and 34 years old. As a result the whiskey is available in almost all discos and pubs.

Lynch says American whiskey has a different distilling process than scotch, so the taste is very different. "What we are trying to do is to tell customers what American whiskey is, the story behind it, how it is made, how to taste it," he says.

"We do a lot of on-premise marketing to teach customers to drink it with cola, lemonade or green tea," Lynch says, adding his favorite way is on ice. "I am a traditional American - I like to drink whiskey cold."

About 60 per cent of Jack Daniel's is mixed with cola, and markets like Australia sell "Jack-and-Coke", but the company does not have immediate plans to introduce that product to China.

Vodka high

Jack Daniel's whiskey has long been the volume giant in Brown-Forman's liquor portfolio, but the second slot in the distiller's lineup was recently shaken.

Finlandia vodka surpassed Southern Comfort in the three-month period ended July 31, building on solid double-digit annual growth, which in large part can be traced to Eastern Europe.

Brown-Forman acquired Finlandia from Finland-based Altia in a deal that started in 2000 and was consummated in 2004. Its sales volume has increased 90 percent to more than 2.4 million cases over the last five fiscal years.

The vodka has strong export markets in Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Israel and the United Kingdom also are big consumers.

Lynch points out that the groundwork is being laid for an expansion in China. Finlandia is such a mixable drink that goes with anything from fruit juice to tonic water, and the variations can easily appeal to local costumers, he says.

He adds that new vodka flavors, such as mango, lime and grapefruit, have also been introduced to the market, and have been well received.

Brown-Forman does not think it is a challenge that local sprits dominate the market at the moment. Statistics indicate the world's 10-largest companies control less than 20 percent of the market, so vast majority of sales are by local drink or small companies, Lynch says.

He notes that in an increasingly prosperous economy, people tend to look for ways to differentiate themselves from friends and colleagues.

"Adopting brands like Jack Daniel's and Finlandia is a way that they can demonstrate they are different and successful."

He notes that the company has been aggressively investing in advertising and marketing across the global market, and China gets its share.

Brown-Forman Corp was founded in 1870 by George Garvin Brown, a young pharmaceuticals salesman in Louisville, Kentucky, who had the idea of selling top-grade whiskey in sealed glass bottles. In the fiscal year 2006, the firm's wine and spirit sales reached $2.4 billion.

(China Daily 10/08/2007 page7)