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Where are we going as an industry?

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Barrel Char Wood Products
webmaster said:
Muahahahaha...got a whole *box* of them from the beer fest! Sadly empty, LOL, but I will fill them...yess, my precious.

Also got an entire box *full* (of mead that is) of baby 175 ml bottles from the MCI. Those will be fun for sampling nights.
Click to expand...
Well I noticed that according to facebook, it's your BD, so maybe today is the time to give the 175's a good testing to.............. :cool:;D

regards

fatbloke
 
IanB said:

Just to summarize and keep things together

One Bottle at a time.
Click to expand...

Hi everybody: I’d read everything you wrote here and I will like to theorize I little. If you’re running a meadery or planning to run one for living, then you must have an strategy, first thing to do is your marketing mix:

Product – The mead you are planning to make and sell. Here are some tasks to do:

  • Validate your recipes. You should like it. You have to be sure that people will like it. You have to be sure that every time you are going to brew it you’ll obtain more or less the same mead every time. Your productions costs should be predictable. Thus you’ll size your start up.
  • Categorize your mead. (by sugars, by the occasions they should be tasted, etc).
  • Define how many meads you'll have. Just think a little: How many Budweiser were at the beginning? Yeah, I know bad example … but not at all … you have to leave your Home Making thinking and resign that (hopefully?) your mead someday is going to be cataloged like Budweiser does.
  • Make a profile of your target client (gender, age, income, ethnicity, etc.). Try to find out how, when and where they buy the wine they buy.
  • Define who your comptition is. Try to obtain some statistics.
  • Create your brand. Register them, feed them, take care of them and when they're done put them in your family mausoleum. It’s always a good idea to have a cheap brand, an expensive one and an emergency one.

Price – It is the amount that a customer pays for your mead.
  • Should cover your costs and give you a margin.
  • Should allow you to reach your breakeven point.
  • Should allow your distributor and retailers to obtain an interesting margin.
  • Should be not so far (above or low) from your competitors’ prices.
  • Your target client should be able to easy pay for it.

Place – It represents where your mead can be purchased.
Depending on your target client behaviors you should decide where and how you want your mead to be sold (Supermarkets, wine stores, restaurants, ethnic stores, Amazon, etc). You have to size your distribution channel, as shorter as harder it is, but with higher margins and vice versa. Remember, margin not always mean profits.

Promotion – It represents all of the communications that you may use to promote your mead.
Define which attributes of your mead you think your target client indeed values. Think how can you associate these attribute to your brand.
Once it's done it will be easier to communicate it through advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion.

Word of mouth is the most effective advertising system. Nothing is better that a satisfied customer. Sales staff often plays an important role in word of mouth and Public Relations, if you are going to use a sales staff you have to train them well, they must know about mead as much as you do or even more.

Promote and Spread the MCI, who knows, one of these years you could win a medal that could give a great shine to one of your mead.

All this is like the JAO’s recipe, it’s not easy but it isn’t hard too. I have been doing it since 1997 and that is why my sales started just last December. You may say that you don’t want to wait as long as I did, well I didn’t want too but that’s the way I like to do my things and that’s the way I can feel kind confident on what I’m doing. Making a strategy is a dynamic process, it always need adjustments that is why writing a log is always a god idea.

I’d read Brad’s history, well that’s his history, I’m writing my history and I’m sure that, as Brad, I’m going to make it. It’s just two different situations, two different persons, two different countries, but one goal, make mead for living.

I hope these lines will help those who are right now considering starting a meadery and will help those who already are running one.

A votre santé!
 
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