Emilio Moro Uncovers Hidden Market in Mexico with xNova

1. Initial Context: Navigating Uncertainty in the Wine Market

Before implementing our solution, Bodegas Emilio Moro, particularly its commercial director for America, Alberto Medina Moro, faced a significant challenge: understanding the global market and its positioning as a winery and a wine brand. Although they had data on their own sales and aggregated reports from the designation of origin (Ribera del Duero), this information was limited. They lacked the crucial detail for effective benchmarking in their priority markets, such as Mexico.

"All I know is that Ribera del Duero in Mexico last year sold, let's say, 20 million euros," explains Alberto. "But I don't know if Matarromera grew, or Vega Sicilia grew, or if 5 new wineries called Pepito, Paquito, and Lolita have entered and they are the ones selling". This lack of granularity prevented a deep understanding of market trends and the performance of their competitors at the product (SKU) level.

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2. The Challenge: The Fog in Benchmarking and the Parallel Market

The critical problem Emilio Moro faced was the inability to perform detailed and accurate benchmarking of their competitors in Mexico. They had "brushstrokes" and could intuit the behavior of large competitors like Matarromera or Vega Sicilia, but they lacked visibility on:

• Transaction detail: They could not know what types of wines (premium or low-cost lines) their competitors were importing or at what import prices.

• SKU positioning: It was impossible for them to identify which SKUs were driving the growth of other wineries. For example, if Protos was growing due to low-end or higher-value wines.

• The "Parallel Market": An even greater challenge was the phenomenon of the parallel market, where wine from Spanish brands arrived in Mexico through re-exporters who were not the official channels. This meant that a significant portion of Spanish wine sales in Mexico was completely invisible to wineries, including Emilio Moro. "The winery, in most cases, doesn't even know what is reaching Mexico or can intuit it, but they don't have it measured, they don't know how much it is," comments Alberto.

This "pain" directly impacted strategic decision-making. Without this data, it was difficult to refine product, price, or positioning strategies in a market as dynamic as the Mexican one. They relied on intuitions that, while generally accurate, lacked the necessary precision to optimize their movements.

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3. Solution Applied: Our Platform as a Magnifying Glass for the Mexican Market

Emilio Moro chose our solution precisely because of its ability to directly address the need for granular and detailed information on imports in Mexico. What differentiated us from other information sources (such as IWSR, based on distributor surveys, or Iscam, which excluded large surfaces) was access to complete and disaggregated customs data.

"Of the information sources I have, the ones I currently have access to, Xnova is the one that generates the most value for me, because it includes all the market information, everything that is being imported," says Alberto.

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Our platform allowed them to:

• Disaggregate information by winery and billing in dollars (customs value), with SKU detail crucial for analysis. Although it required initial organizational work to correctly attribute SKUs, the value of the information was incomparable.

• Identify competitor growth trends: Now they can see if Cune, for example, is growing in low, medium, or high-value references.

• Quantify the "parallel market": This has been a revealing discovery. "We realized that they [Pago de Carrovejas, a direct competitor] sell more wine in Mexico through parallel exports than what they sell as a winery," explains Alberto. This data, unknown even to the affected wineries , highlights the importance of having a complete view of imports. An impactful example: "exclusive centralized," a re-exporting wholesaler, exports more Spanish wine to Mexico than any individual winery.

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Furthermore, it allowed them to identify clients who acquired products through parallel channels, directly affecting their budget and growth expectations. They were also able to confront importers who had supposedly ceased parallel market activities but were still making imports.

The solution addresses the "pain" of lack of visibility with more precise, concrete, and detailed data, making it the superior option for benchmarking in Mexico, a market that Alberto considers the most relevant for the analysis of their solution.

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4. The Results and Main "Value Driver": Clearer Strategies in a Dynamic Market

The "desired state" Emilio Moro wanted to reach was to have a clearer and more real picture of what was happening in the Mexican wine market, in order to be able to draw more refined strategies. Our platform has allowed them to get closer to this objective, although the impact on "big" strategic changes is a continuous process.

The main "value driver" for Emilio Moro is competitive intelligence and risk mitigation through a deep understanding of the market. It allows them to:

• Refine small daily decisions: Although it doesn't change the "general course," the detailed information allows them to adjust investments in branding, activations, tastings, or events.

• Validate intuitions and gain clarity: The platform confirms already suspected trends and provides the certainty of hard data. For example, it has allowed them to see that Protos, a strong competitor, specializes in a low-price range in Mexico (8 dollars average imported bottle price vs. 17 dollars for Emilio Moro), a segment in which Emilio Moro does not seek to compete.

• Make more informed decisions: "It provides me with a clearer, more real picture of what is happening in the market, and that, well, it does allow me to try to draw more refined strategies," concludes Alberto.

• Dimension the impact of the parallel market: It allowed them to quantify the magnitude of parallel imports (e.g., 130,000 dollars and 4 months of inventory for a specific client) and adjust their growth budgets. It has also allowed them to "cut off" these parallel channels and capitalize on those sales through the corresponding channels.

The ability to identify the real volume of wine entering the country and the trends of their competitors, especially regarding the "parallel market," is invaluable, allowing them to operate with greater knowledge and confidence in the complex and atypical current market.

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