About the Client: Domaine de Long Dai

Domaine de Long Dai (Long Dai) is the Chinese estate created by Château Lafite Rothschild, one of the most prestigious names in global winemaking. Established in the Qiu Shan Valley in Shandong province, this wine house represents the meeting point of French expertise and Chinese terroir.

The estate was founded with a long-term vision. As described in its origin story, the journey began 150 years ago at Château Lafite in France, and continued in China 15 years ago with the ambition to cultivate excellence on new soil.

Why Long Dai Set Out to Strengthen Its Direct-to-consumer (DTC) Foundation in China

Long Dai already benefits from strong brand equity, a distinctive Franco-Chinese identity, and high-value on-site experiences that create meaningful visitor connections.

Like many luxury brands operating in a distributor-influenced environment, the estate’s customer interactions and data touchpoints could still span multiple systems, channels, and manual processes.

That made it harder to build a connected view of the journey across discovery, vineyard visits, follow-up engagement, and purchase.

The prestigious Chinese wine estate set out to develop a three-year digital roadmap focusing on:

• Enhancing brand awareness and storytelling: Consistently communicate Long Dai’s unique story and values across all channels to connect with more consumers and reinforce its position as a luxury brand in China.
• Leveraging vineyard visits and estate experiences: Systematically capture and nurture luxury leads generated from these high-intent touchpoints to drive scalable follow-up and engagement.
• Strengthening direct engagement with high-value customers: Gradually reduce reliance on distributors by building direct client relationships, increasing visibility and ownership of top clients, while enabling distributor partnership enhancement.
• Establishing a luxury WeChat Mini Program: Create a digital flagship with e-Commerce and reservation features for a seamless customer experience.
• Empowering internal teams with data-driven tools: Use advanced CRM and segmentation to boost retention and repeat purchases.
• Connecting and optimizing systems: Unify fragmented tools and processes for a future-ready digital architecture.

Solutions

1. The Consulting Roadmap Behind Long Dai’s DTC Strategy

Cross-Functional Assessment & Insights

To support Long Dai’s Direct-to-Consumer ambitions in China, the engagement began with a review of the brand’s digital ecosystem, customer touchpoints, and operating model across Sales, Marketing, Management, and relevant external stakeholders.

Key focus areas included:

• Aligning on scope, strategic orientation, and governance
• Reviewing tools, operations, and clienteling workflows across key touchpoints, from vineyard visits to follow-up engagement
• Conducting training sessions on China’s digital landscape
• Surfacing stakeholder requirements, market realities, and priority gaps
• Evaluating system feasibility, scalability, and PIPL compliance constraints

3-Year Transformation Roadmap in China

The consulting mission culminated in a report outlining a high-level 3-phase transformation roadmap:

• Phase 1: Establish WeCom as the core clienteling hub to centralize interactions and strengthen journey continuity. In parallel, upgrade Long Dai’s WeChat Official Account into a stronger acquisition engine with better tracking and conversion visibility.
• Phase 2: Improve customer visibility and personalization by unifying data across booking, visits, commerce, and engagement touchpoints, whether by strengthening the existing stack or localizing the core customer foundation for China.
• Phase 3: Build on that foundation with lifecycle marketing, advanced segmentation, and loyalty programs to strengthen lead visibility and long-term customer engagement.

2. E-Commerce WeChat Mini Program as the Direct-to-Consumer Flagship

Alongside this strategic consulting and reporting workstream, Long Dai also launched a separate e-Commerce WeChat Mini Program to strengthen its Direct-to-Consumer presence in China.

At the core of this workstream is an e-Commerce WeChat Mini Program that serves as the brand’s digital flagship in China. It is designed to centralize wine purchases, vineyard visit bookings, and dining reservations in one owned channel inside WeChat.

Tech & Design

Magento was chosen as the compliant e-commerce backend of the Mini Program, enabling a robust and scalable digital boutique designed to meet Long Dai’s strategic needs.

Additionally, the user interface is elegantly designed with refined aesthetics and intuitive navigation, perfectly reflecting the brand’s luxury positioning.

Login & Registration

As a native WeChat Mini Program, user registration is fast and secure, leveraging WeChat phone number authentication and a streamlined sign-up process.

Additionally, Long Dai prompts users to complete a short form, helping the brand efficiently collect relevant user information. This enables the wine house to deliver more personalized engagement and loyalty experiences in the future.

The homepage also features prominent call-to-actions to scan the brand’s QR codes, encouraging users to follow Domaine de Long Dai’s Official Account and WeCom, which helps foster ongoing engagement and brand loyalty.

Key Functions

Currently, the e-Commerce Mini Program focuses on delivering a seamless, engaging shopping experience:

• Wine Shopping: All users can easily browse the estate’s exclusive wines. However, only registered users can add items to their cart. This ensures Long Dai can securely capture high-potential prospects and client data.

The broader vision is to integrate additional customer touchpoints into one unified brand experience, connecting online interactions with on-site experiences:

• Vineyard Visit Booking: Users will be able to book an estate visit online in just a few taps. Lead data will be collected in advance to enable O2O engagement and deliver personalized experiences.
• Dining Reservations: Guests will be able to reserve dining experiences at the estate, positioning the platform as a one-stop hub for key brand interactions.

Results

Overall, the consulting report and the WeChat Mini Program gave Long Dai a stronger foundation for direct-to-consumer growth in China.

Key outcomes included: 

• A clearer phased route for gradually reducing reliance on distributor-led customer relationships
• Earlier first-party lead capture around product interest and estate-related interactions inside WeChat
• Stronger owned customer identification through registration and profile data collection
• A stronger commerce touchpoint that can support broader journey consolidation over time
• A more coherent foundation for connecting brand storytelling, customer engagement, and future lifecycle marketing in China

For Long Dai, the value was not only in the deliverables themselves. It was in creating a more practical path toward better customer visibility, stronger owned engagement, and a more luxury direct brand relationship in-market.

Many luxury brands in China face the same challenge: valuable customer moments happen across multiple touchpoints, but the brand’s visibility and ownership remain uneven.

Long Dai’s case shows how a clearer roadmap and a stronger owned WeChat touchpoint can begin closing that gap.