Help

If you need any help, or you need to contact us, here’s the place to be.  Let’s start with some FAQs.  Contact methods are below the FAQs.

What is Liquor Town?

An online retail platform that sells imported alcohols.  Primarily liquor although we do sometimes feature wines and whiskies.

What’s the Point?  Why bother?  Consumers can buy booze EVERYWHERE in China.

Yes, that’s correct.  Alcohol is generally available everywhere but is varying amounts, at random prices and with rather limited ranges outside of they key Tier-1 cities.

For those of you that have travelled outside of the big top 10 cities, you would have noticed that the range of imported alcohols on offer is limited, if there is any at all.  Buying online does have better options.  However, most consumers are then left with the choice of taking a gamble about authenticity on the cheaper online platforms, or being absolutely gouged on what we might call the “foreigner-friendly platforms”.

We try to be something different.  We run our own online platforms (we don’t trade on any of those online marketplaces), we buy all our products from importers that are part of our group of companies.  We have our own group distribution network.  We also wholesale to bars and restaurants and of course we retail.

How long has Liquor Town been around?

As an online retail platform, Liquor Town has been trading in China since 2015.  However, it is part of a group that has been importing and distributing alcohols since 2007.

Where is Liquor Town located?

Our Customer Support Team (who help all our customers with order and tracking numbers) are primarily based in Shenzhen.  We also ship some of our retail stock from Shenzhen too.  However, sometimes we might ship from other sites within our larger group because our Shenzhen site isn’t actually that big.  We can’t hold more than 40’000 bottles at any one point in Shenzhen.

How do I know you’re a real company?

Caution in every country in the world with respect to online business is a good mindset.  But China has something very unique for any business in China that wants to have a website.  The ICP License process.

At the bottom of each page, you will see a reference to an ICP license.  This is what ours says:

The first bit is the copyright, the second bit is our company name, and the bit on the end (粤ICP备15064533号-2 tells you that our ICP License number is 15064533 and the final number 2 shows you that we have three websites on this ICP license.  We have Liquor Town, Oak and Barley and Chateau Bole on this same ICP License.

All companies in China, if they want to host their website in China, need an ICP license.  That proves that we are a real company, legally registered in China, with licenses to do our business.

In many other countries, any old chump can register a domain name, throw up some pages, type some blurb and pretend they are a real business, while cash trading out of their spare room.  China doesn’t allow that kind of nonsense, which is one of the many reasons we are here in China, working in an environment that helps legitimate businesses to stand out and be recognised.

Can I come and visit?

Well, probably not.  We’re not a bar or a shop.  We are located in an industrial park and it’s not exactly a destination location for tourism.  We don’t facilitate people that simply want to rock up, have a nose around and maybe buy a bottle or two.  Try your local supermarket for that.

But – if you have any serious matters to discuss that might require you to visit us, then use the QR code below to get in touch for us to help you.

I’ve bought some booze – where is it?

You can log back into your Liquor Town account, and check your own order status.  If will show either “processing” or “completed”.  Processing means we have your order but we haven’t shipped it yet.  Completing means we have shipped it.

If it’s shipped, we will add the tracking number and shipping details to the notes on your order.

What are Customer Support Groups?

Customers that we know, or have contacted us before, will have their own dedicated WeChat Group – we call them Customer Support Groups.  In this group will be you the customer, and typically 3 to 5 Customer Support Team Members.  This ensures that there’s always someone to help you with your questions, queries or to give you the tracking numbers in your Customer Support Group also.

What are typical delivery times?

China is a huge country so it can vary.  As a rough example, anything in Guangdong, orders places before 16:00 from Monday to Friday will almost always arrive the next day.  Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou and Guangxi, are typically 48 hours, the rest of China will normally be 72 hours, except Heilongjiang, Xinjiang and Tibet – all of which are typically 5 days.

Our advice is to contact us (using the WeChat QR code below) and ask us about product availability before you place an order.  This way we can ensure that we have your bottles to send out the same day before you buy.

Why are you so cheap?  What’s going on?

Volumes of bottles sold and very simple economies of scale.  We keep costs low by having offices and warehouses in cheaper suburbs and most of the time we use space from other companies within our group that help us out.  We have our own trucks to supply our warehouses so this is another cost-saving that helps us.  We get preferential rates on our express delivery fees due to the volumes that we pack and ship.  Finally, we work on very low-profit margins – typically we are putting liquor into the retail market at between 3% and 5% gross margin.

How can I know if your products are real?

Good question.  It’s also one of the reasons why we are so popular as a retailer of alcohols.

We developed our own NFC chip-based technology, which you can interact with by downloading a smartphone app.  We call it DMSJ.  The chips are all unique (yes, every single bottle has it’s own unique chip on it) which interacts with the smartphone app, and our blockchain back end.

The blockchain tracks the entire custody chain of the product, from distillery to your hand.  When you receive the bottle it will also have your name and home city listed on the blockchain record.  It also tracks how many times each bottle was scanned, and the GPS location of each scan, to ensure that the bottles are not being refilled.

If you would like to learn more about DMSJ you can CLICK HERE.

Why don’t you list any Whisky or Whiskey?

We moved all whisky and whiskey over to Oak and Barley – one of our sister sites, back in 2018.  If you want to link to Oak and Barley where we normally have up to 600 different whiskies, then please CLICK HERE.

What about wine?  Where can I find wine?

Wine retail is primarily run through another sister site, Chateau Bole.  We occasionally have wine here on Liquor Town, but if you really want to see a much fuller and extensive range, then you really need to go and see what Chateau Bole has to offer – you can CLICK HERE.

Who is The Mayor of Liquor Town?

The Mayor is essentially a character we created in 2015, as being the face of the business to give it a more familiar and personal touch.  We use a number of WeChat accounts to offer customer support and some of them feature “The Mayor”.

Over the years there have been more than 20 people involved in developing this character and he has been both loved and hated by many, depending on who is currently wearing the hat and dealing with customers.

The Mayor is often known as a vile and insulting man from Birmingham, England, but there are other Mayor’s and most of them are just normal, nice, helpful Customer Support Team Members.  WeChat IDs and handsets are shared between many staff, so hopefully, your first encounter with The Mayor will be one of the more pleasant experiences.

Contact Us on WeChat

If we haven’t been able to help you with our FAQ, or if you have any reason to get in touch (for example, you’ve just placed an order) then use the QR code below to get in touch.

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