After the recent forum, the Harpers website reported that Stranger saw such little innovation in wine that we’d offer free branding to an innovative wine based beverage.
That was quickly picked up by sites in the USA and the response crashed my email. If I had a hat I’d eat it. Washed down with an innovative wine based beverage MADE IN THE USA!
We’ve had a few UK responses and in March a brand new wine product will launch in the UK. We’re very excited. I’m about to pick the second and I’m prepared to roll out this initiative so please send in your NDAs and lets do something more interesting than just another wine.
The most heartening thing about all this has been the response that we’ve had from multiples who have pledged shelf space and want to make a difference. I hope we can keep the momentum rolling so that the wine shelves can be as interesting to normal people as the beer and spirit shelves.
See what I did there? I said normal people. Can we please forget for one minute the Chinese and their first growths and cola and remember that we are trying to sell products to your nephew and my auntie and for them a good example of a claret is some red wine in a bottle with the word claret on it.
There are 5,000 average merlots available to the public in the UK. Average. Not merlot for just drinking, not merlot to go with food, not fizzy merlot for parties, merlot to keep you sober, merlot to get you drunk, merlot for women, merlot for men, merlot to make you look cool, merlot in plastic to take to the beach, not really light merlot, not even merlot beer. No, just 5,000 average looking merlots all in the same bottles that bang on about the terroir and claim to go with meat.
No wonder most normal people just go for the cheapest. They can’t relate to any other differentiator. Wine isn’t complex but we’ve made it complex. It is time to forget about old world and new world and talk about real world.
The Britvic guy at the forum said that if we in the wine trade worked in any other FMCG sector we’d all be fired.
Let’s prove him wrong.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Dudey Dudey::::::I´ve been having a lot of fun reading you !!!Seems to me that knife making is much much more interesting than wine !!!!