May 25, 2007

post-wine fair

suddenly12321.jpg
[One of the designs for the new Stormhoek wine labels.]
So that’s the Lon­don Inter­na­tio­nal Wine & Spi­rit Fair over for another year. Yowza. Three days of inten­sity etc.
Looks like both the car­toon labels and Stormhoek Cou­ture were big hits. Good news.
I was thin­king this for the last cou­ple of days: None of Stormhoek’s suc­cess came over­night. There was no “one big thing” that pushed us over the top. It was just little things, one after another, till one day we reached some sort of tip­ping point in the mar­ket. A bit like wri­ting a blog, really. I think there are some inte­res­ting para­llels there.
More later…

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4 Responses to “post-wine fair”

  1. John Wesley says:

    I agree with the tip­ping point phe­no­me­non. I’ve been blog­ging about 6 months, and for most of the time it see­med like I’d be stuck in obli­vion fore­ver. I kept making gra­dual pro­gress, and now the growth is really star­ting to accelerate.

  2. Paul Ding says:

    Want more cla­rity in your work life? Talk to your bos­ses at the winery.
    Tell them that if I’m fixing a snack during a com­mer­cial break, I can grab an uno­pe­ned bottle of beer, stick it in my back poc­ket, and open it when I’m back at the tele­vi­sion.
    To have wine, I have to pull a bottle out of the fridge, find a corksc­rew, open the bottle, find a glass, pour a glass, figure out how to reseal the bottle, and then strug­gle to carry a dag­wood sand­wich in one hand, a bowl of cheese dood­les in the other hand, and a glass of wine in yet a third hand. And with the extra time I spent fidd­ling with the wine, I’ve mis­sed the sexy girl in the wet towel by the time I get back to the TV.
    Indi­vi­dual ser­vings, Hugh. They sell wine coo­ler that way. Why not real wine? If you want your life to make com­plete sense, you need to con­vince the winery to mar­ket 6-packs, 12-packs, and 24-packs of everyday-quality (as oppo­sed to celebration-quality) wine.
    Because until you do, wine is too much of a hassle to grab on the spur of the moment.

  3. It really goes back to Jim Collins flywheel — con­ti­nuous small move­ments in a sin­gle direc­tion.
    I think the thing that kills it for most people/companies is that they either want a big bang moment, or all the little actions are not in a con­sis­tent direc­tion, i.e. wor­king against each other.
    The more con­sis­tent the small actions are the fas­ter momen­tum can be built.

  4. John Dodds says:

    Drin­king a sin­gle glass of wine? Hmm I’m not sure that should be encouraged.