Ueber-Brands

Patagonia is the quintessential Ueber-Brand. This brand is fascinating and we have written extensively about what we think drives and sustains its success in our latest book as well as on this blog.  But it is quite another thing to hear it all directly from ‘one of the family’ – quite literally.  For Vincent Stanley is not only Patagonia’s ‘Director of Philosophy’, previously VP of Marketing and Communications as well as co-author with company founder Yvon Chouinard of “The Responsible Company,” the bible for leaders who seek to do good while doing business. He is also Yvon’s nephew and became one of the very first employees in the early 70’ies when he helped him extend the chicken coop in the back yard that served as ‘equipment forge’, as he will tell us.

In this interview we will touch on most of the elements of Ueber-Branding beginning with Patagonia’s strong sense of Mission, the brand’s Myth, the product to Behold, how the organization ‘Lives the Dream’, ‘Un-Sells’ and how they strive for Responsible Growth.  We will also get insights into:

And, of course, we will talk about the famous ad Vincent ran not to sell more but to change the way we feel and think about owning a garment (despite his denying, we still think it also helped sell more Patagonia ;-)

Patagonia Activism in a Chicago store: A call to help save our air, water, soil and to recycle your gear.

And if you like what you heard in the ‘official’ part of the interview, you will love some take-outs from the chat we had afterwards. Hang around to hear why:

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON to hear the interview. Scroll to further reading below.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ueberbrands-episode-12-vincent-stanley-at-patagonia.mp3

Yvon Chouinard and that mission statement Vincent talks about – more relevant now than ever.

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FURTHER READING:

For more insights what drives the success of Ueber-Brands like Patagonia, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands” and other case-studies on this blog.

Here is an introduction to the very rich social media world of Patagonia.  Starting with their introduction of themselves as an ‘Activist Company’ on the Patagonia Website.  Among many interesting sub-sites we want to call out the ‘Footprint Chronicles‘ co-developed by Vincent and documenting Patagonia’s efforts to source and manufacture responsibly and their appeal to ‘Vote Our Planet’ online and in store as well as the ‘Cleanest Line’ company blog  a continuation of the community-sourced adventure stories that were already featured in the Patagonia catalogs in the 1970ies. since the catalogues. Here is one of the many films Patagonia has made, this one about ‘Worn Wear: The stories we wear‘ and another one about in support of their efforts to build-back dams: ‘DamNation‘. Note that you are asked – overtly or implicitly – in all of these communications to ‘take action’ and help the environment you explore with those Patagonia garments.

Finally, another interview with Stanley on the Patagonia blog that provides more intimate insights on him as a person, as a novelist, as a Chouinard family member, as a husband of another writer and environmental activist – his wife Nora Gallager …

Want to compare and contrast the Patagonia story with another environmentally conscious brand that ‘shines from the inside out’?  Then read about our visit to the Freitag bag making plant in Switzerland here.

Audemars Piguet is up there, even in the already elevated world of ‘haute horlogerie’ and the Swiss Alps.  Le Brassus in the high valley of Joux is the birthplace and still the place of hand-crafting AP watches as Tim Sayler, Chief Marketing Officer of the brand is proud and precise in pointing out to us. And pride, precision and a strong sense of place are some of the key ingredients we talk, as we discuss what has made this brand and how it stays up there in the firmament of desired objects – despite the meteoric rise of first industrial quartz watches and now smart watches. Or because of it.

We will also talk about:

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON to hear the interview. Further reading below.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ueberbrands-episode-11-tim-sayler-at-ap.mp3

AP headquarters and museum in Le Brassus and the valley of Joux

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FURTHER READING:

For more insights what drives the success of Ueber-Brands, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands” as well as further case-studies on this blog.

Here is a link to the AP website, the backstory on the photography of Le Brassus used by AP by Dan Holdsworth and an article on the spectacular architecture of the AP watch museum (see pictures above).

Want to compare and contrast the AP story with that of lifestyle watch maker Shinola? Then listen to our interview with Shinola CMO Bridget Russo here.

If you are familiar with the ‘Hero’s Journey’ as described by Joseph Campbell, then the trials and tribulations Johan Buelow went through to concoct and share the perfect batch of liquorice – and create a thriving company on the way – will sound mighty familiar.  It is no coincidence that Peter Husted Sylvest, Sales Director at Lakrids, retells the journey of the brand’s founder in our interview.  Himself, us and you will be drawn-in by Johan, his brand and the myth surrounding it.  That’s because Johan (picture to the left) lives what Campbell called a ‘public dream‘, a mythical story.  Us human’s can’t help but root for a young hero as he follows a calling to make the world taste the true , deliciously diverse flavors of liquorice and fight the ‘goliath’ which has fed us the poorly tasting ersatz forever – call it the ‘industrial candy complex.’ All the ingredients for an epic journey (and some good liquorice) are there, as you will hear. And you will also learn how:

Did you know that a Scandinavian kid is likely to taste liquorice before they do a banana – at least according to Peter?  Which means we also talk food and how to scale this business from the (liquorice) root-up.  Just think of the potential…  Finally, there are few extra minutes of insightful chat after the regular half-hour interview, if you want to hang around. – Enjoy.

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON BELOW to hear the interview on your device. There are also a full interview transcript at the end of this post, a PDF file for downloading, as well as relevant links, discussions and further reading.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ueberbrands-episode-10-peter-husted-sylvest-at-lakrids.mp3You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes, Android , Stitcher or to our blog for new post notifications by clicking the button in the sidebar –>

FURTHER READING:

For more insights what drives the success of Ueber-Brands, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands” as well as further case-studies on this blog.

Here is a link to the Lakrids website and Johan’s story.

And then compare that with the structure of Joseph Campbell’s ‘monomyth’ as explained in this video by Matthew Winkler and Kirill Yeretsky.  Learn more about Joseph Campbell and his idea of myths being ‘public dreams‘

Wonder where liquorice is coming from (its a legume) where it is from (south) and most consumed (north) or how else it is spelled?  Here is the wikipedia link.

Want to hear more founder stories and how they shaped their brands? Listen to the story of Smith & Norbu, Brunello Cucinelli or read about the Eureka moment that shaped Yvon Chouinard and his Patagonia brand.

APPROXIMATE TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST:

JP: I want to welcome Wolfgang. Yes, he exists Ladies and Gentleman, and then, last but not least, and most importantly, Peter Husted Sylvest, who is Director of Sales for Lakrids, a very intriguing licorice brand we discovered, made by Johan Bülow

Hello, Peter welcome to the show.

PS: Hello Wolfgang. Hello JP. This is Copenhagen calling.

JP: Great to have you.

PS: So is this going to be an inter-Atlantic phone call, so from Germany to the U.S. to Copenhagen?

JP: We just were looking for the best way to completely take you apart so we thought two interviewers is better than one.

PS: That sounds like the Eurovision Song Contest actually.

[01:54]

JP: It is the Eurovision Song Contest.

Peter, before we start. For those few people who might not know Lakrids yet, can you tell us a little bit about Lakrids? What is it all about?

PS: It’s about black candy. A young entrepreneur back in 2007 had an idea that he wanted to create his own company and if you’re a great lover of sweets, why not make a sweet company? He looked upon categories of chocolate and said, “there are people who are trying to perfect this. There are people who are trying to do this in a caramel. ”The category of black licorice had been neglected. It had been only a mass-market super market product. He said, “Huh, why not try to do the world’s best licorice?”

And that’s the journey that today, 2015, we’re not there yet, but we have the products and we spread it out to more than 20 different countries. And I think if you start asking the licorice connoisseurs who are making the world’s best licorice, they will probably quite often refer to a small Danish company called Lakrids by Johan Bülow.

[03:16]

JP: Excellent. But liquorice (= licorice) I guess, wouldn’t be the first choice of many people because isn’t it quite an acquired taste? It’s not really a sweet, is it?

PS: If you start by talking to the people in Scandinavian countries: Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Denmark. You probably had your first licorice before you had your first banana.

JP: Wow.

PS: So this is part of our DNA. And then all depending where you go in the world, if you say “black licorice,” you either make a friend or you might make an enemy, and this is what are about to change.

WS: Peter, I think one of the things that’s fascinating, among many others, with Lakrids, is that you do concoctions that are not the traditional ones. You know, I mean there’s lots of Lakrids that are very puristic. But you kind of combine it with chocolate or things that I tried where I thought like, wow, those are like completely new flavor combinations.

PS: I think in order for stuff to happen when, first of all, you send a person on a journey. Or he sends himself on a journey, where he wants to create the ultimate of his own likings and Johan at the age of 21 did not have a background as a candy maker. But basically had… he was on a quest, trying to do the world’s best and trying to unfold why mass industry had never made a superior quality product. So, you do that by starting to plate. You start that by actually doing trail and error. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, you might be able to venture into new fields. And to do this, we’re talking about flavor combinations that no one had tried. But if you don’t know that it isn’t possible, you might still just give it a go and then you go “ooo, worked!” So these are some of the combination where you have mixed sweet black licorice with white chocolate, and passion fruit.

[05:16]

WS: Lakrids is not only introducing a big part of the world to a category or to a product it doesn’t know, it’s actually pushing the boundaries of that category even further.

PS: Yeah, but I think part of this is a game; if you look at the big players of our industry. It is usually something that requires millions of dollars. It requires a lot of machinery. So when Johan started investigating: what kind of recipe? What kind of help can I get? Can I call upon this sequence of big industry? But when you call up the likes of Coca-Cola, well, if you’re lucky enough to get through, I think they just hung up and you don’t get anything. And this is exactly what Johan experienced by calling upon big industry. When he finally got through to someone, who wanted to listen to him: hello, do you know how big we are? Do you know what it takes [xxx]. We don’t believe that this could happen. I might know bits about recipes, but second of all- I am not allowed to help you. It’s interesting, give it a go, and don’t cry if you fail.

JP: In our book we talk about Ueber Brands to have a strong sense of mission and kind of a myth. And just these first couple of minutes, a lot of that seems to come through right here. I mean there’s a creation myth it sounds here like David verses Goliath. Or at least, the guy who doesn’t know better who is trying around, nobody helps him so he has to go out on his own. But there’s also mission…

PS: That combination of David and Goliath is very true, because of the exposure that we have had in media in Europe or we start seeing worldwide. We had a lot of young people who are not really afraid to call upon us because they see a CEO, who is now just over 30 years of age.  And some of these have written reports about what we do, how we handle things and taking that to professors of business schools. We usually encourage them to go in with a one page, saying this has been the mission statement and strategy of Johan Bulow, 2007: I want to sell the world’s best licorice. I want to use ingredients that no one has used before. I will avoid super markets, hypermarkets, gas stations. I want to sell it exclusively. I want control and own some of the best retail square meters in the world. I want to be close, if not trying to out perform sales of the big guys…  if anyone had looked upon a young man at age 27 and said good on you. And then they’re going to put it upon a shred of decency….There are so many things, young man, in the world that will make this impossible. And then we asked them to come in with the actual statements of 2015. And then the very same people are now trying to adapt all the same kind of marketing strategy to why we actually made it happen; and then usually the professors with just shut up and actually have a noble attitude towards the young people who had written these reports.

[08:31]

WS: Since you’re talking about the distribution, I literally stumbled over your brand at the Copenhagen Airport, where you have like a small shop. How important is it to set up in those locations? Is it exclusively only in Copenhagen? Or also at other airports? How do you choose your distribution currently?

PS: Today, 2015, we have 14 of our own flagship shops. We have flagship shops of 4 square meters, at Copenhagen Airport, and we have shops of 45 square meters. This goes back to the very first summer, at the small holiday island, where Johan was cooking the very first potion of licorice. The idea that you have cooking on-set at that very first shop, and if you have spent 12-14 months trying to actually make the first real product; something that is good enough that it will actually serve as a sample [xxx].

But have you had accomplished this after 14 months, Johan is so proud of what he created so he actually offers a sample to everyone that he meets in this small city. And then he basically turns around and goes back to his shop and then he suddenly realizes that 5-6-7 people are standing at his shop, and he goes “so what do you want?” They looked at Johan and said, “we want more!” So the idea that we created first fix for free actually started that very first summer at the island.

We had made what we believed was the ultimate licorice. Before we turned it into, before you actually come to the adjustment that you don’t like black licorice, please- shut up, open up your mouth, try this. In the case they go- I don’t like licorice. Then today, we have now arrays of products. We can go, “oh, you don’t like licorice? Do you like chocolate? Do you like black chocolate? Do you like a fruity flavor?”  Or for the American, or for the Australian market where people can be slightly scared about black licorice, we have created the ultimate black licorice. And there’s no question about that. That they go, is that not? And they go, I find this in the ultimate licorice and I want this, this, this, and this and you sell out, the very first day, in about 2 hours.

[10:51]

JP: Right. Beyond the business story, if you like, there’s also a cultural and a culinary story here. How does, let’s say a nation like France receive you? Do they know better or do they get convinced by you? How does the process work?

PS: If you go back 25-years, I think the culinary world of France ruled the world. In recent years, there has been a shift, which means that somebody else in this restaurant for a period of time was no longer concentrated in a French region. Suddenly, Copenhagen and the Nordic countries is no longer just a pit for food, we are actually part of the culinary world for cuisine.

So this is an eye opener to our French potential customers. We recently gave a very high informing show in Paris. If you ask people in France if they like licorice, they go: ‘no no no’. [xxx] So they’re not afraid about flavor patterns of licorice flavors. They have just been treated very, very bad. This is the feedback that we get from most of the world: I don’t like licorice. And then we laugh a little bit and say, “the world of licorice is as wide as the ocean.” An automobile with a steering wheel and four wheels. Do we agree upon that? Then they look upon us, and shake their heads and go, “yeah.” And we go, the world of licorice is just as wide and no one has yet shown you the Lamborghini.

JP: I love it. With a lot of brands we talk to there is a definite fan group, but then often there is a group that definitely does not fit in. And it actually helps the fans and the cult following to feel even better about it. Is there such a dynamic in Lakrids?

PS: You bet. You bet. A go or go no product. We usually say that we are out converting people from non-licorice lovers to Lakrids lovers. But sometimes you meet pretty cocky people. We have a lot of Asian friends that they eat everything. But I can tell you they find it very very tough to eat a salty licorice with fresh habanero chili. But then they can just get them a chocolate coated licorice with strawberry or passion fruit and you still make friends.

[13:34]

WS: How important are the rejecters? Are those actually some that you could use from a marketing standpoint or that you use from a marketing standpoint to position yourself as something very special only for those with an acquired or sophisticated taste?

PS: If you’re standing in Copenhagen, in one of our flagship shops and there are three people coming in. I can guarantee you that one might be quite interested. The one would be looking at this predisposed: no way. No, no, no, I am not interested. But that is the kind of challenge that we love. So that is actually someone who had predicted this, and then that’s when we start to preach. And the real challenge is to convert a non-licorice lover. Sometimes when we go into new markets and we meet people, we just actually say, “you’re not the first one we converted from a non-licorice to a licorice lover.”

JP:  This sounds like almost a religious culinary mission. You talk about preaching and converting.

Earlier as we chatted you talked to us about your relationships with retailers that you work. You made some very interesting statements about how you qualify them. Can you tell us that story?

PS: Usually, because we have created a different type of packaging. It means that if you go into a big trade show, there are people who are walking past the presentations that we have done and said: this looks very stylish. This looks very interesting. And they go: how much is this? We usually look at them and smile and say, “Well, my name is Peter. What’s your name?” I am not interested in telling you my name, I need to know about the package. “Who are you? Why do you want to know what we are selling?” I don’t really care, I just need to know about this beautiful packaging.  And then the first time we did this, sorry- these products are not really for sale.

These are our babies and you can’t buy these, you can adopt babies. So, if I get the assurance you are the right type of adoption parent, we will let you adopt them. People look at us as crazy and ask, “don’t you want to sell products here?” And we go, “yeah, but 99 percent of the people here only want to sell and they don’t care to who, as long as they sell something. But our products need a second buy. So I need to ensure that I send it to the right people and if you don’t like what we do then you don’t understand it. If you don’t understand it, there is no chance you can make a success with these products.”

[16:17]

JP: This is a wonderful example of Wolfgang and I call the “Art of Unselling.” You know, sometimes, you just don’t do the pitch- you don’t sell, but you draw people in and the attraction is based on the knowledge and a common appreciation that others might not have.

PS: I had the joy of setting some of the world’s most beautiful design products, but if you’re doing this and you’re doing cultural and you have to ask someone: which of these two designs do you like the best? And then it’s down to one individual person’s own perception, do they like it with this pattern or with that pattern. In the case of what is in my platform today, it is the easiest product I have ever had to work with because you can go and say, “do you? Do you?” I like this and I believe this is the world’s best and I think you should try it. And in the case where you can actually give people two or three of an entire collection by giving them example samples. And then you look them in the eyes and you go, “so, what do you think?” And then usually people chew and they look upon you and go wow. I says, hehe. So we’re doing it one sample at a time.

[17:30]

WS: These are the kind of things that we say you have a clear design target, someone you want to focus on. Those are the ones you want to convert first because those can become the missionaries for you brand. Have you decided this kind of design target for yourself? The ones that you definitely want to become your ambassadors, your missionaries, to spread the word, the gospel?

PS: Yes. Yes.  These are people that usually approach us, I am the gate keeper of my shop. And kindly give my full family I trust that you’re the one and they all like Lakrids. Then we all start speaking the very same language. If I am standing there selling our products to them and I go, “how many different SKUs have you got in your shop?” And they go ”five thousand.” And then you go, “okay, do you know all five thousand? Have you tasted all five thousand” And if the answer is “do you know what five thousand products, there’s no chance I can go through all of this. Some of them are just SKUs.” And we go, “we don’t want to be just another SKU,” and then we say, “no thank you.”

“In order for me to sell at a highly gourmet price, I need to try them. I need to understand them. And if I can fall in love with your story, than I can become creative. I can start writing poetry. I can start singing songs.” If the people tell us, “I don’t have time for all this, I just need to make an order.” Then make the order somewhere else.

JP: It’s almost a self-selective process. I mean you seem to emphasis a lot. It’s not about buying, purchasing, and selling your product. It’s about adopting it, truly loving it, and thus being qualified to talk about it.

PS: As a brand owner, as a manufacturer of all of our own products, it is also a matter of eight years down the track and learning that doing this in our own shops. I mean the first time doing this that one summer, if you sell out by the end of the day, then you sold more than you could produce. That’s how you start skewing your production. So the very first retail shops of ours, 85 square meters with production on site. Today we have a factory that is 3500 square meters. Taking people on factory tours is not able for the public, but only VIP and only by invitation only. We do it twice or three times a week. And we can see that the retail shops of ours is having a retail set up on the same premises. They So go back to the people doing excel spreadsheets, we are doing amazing results where people reading those spreadsheets they go, “what is going on?”

 [18:43]

JP: But it seems obvious that if you choose your retailers that well that will have an impact on the economics and on the hard numbers. In terms of them obviously being more productive per square foot or square meter or linear foot or whatever. Verses somebody who just says I’m selling this spoil because it looks nice and I have never tasted it, right? It is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

PS: A key part, the key part in why we stay away from supermarkets is that none of these distribution channels are filling anything. They’re making beautiful presentations, and they do market them, and they sell on price but if you ask the real retail professionals if it would make sense to do a dedicated licorice shops with 16 different SKUs, that are 16 square meters, to do sales of more than 1.5 million US dollars. This is unheard of. But again, it’s bound to act the same. It’s back to having more staff. More staff than any other retailers we actually put on the floor. What’ll that do? We do very much the same. If we can win people one sample at a time and the first fix is for free. The easiest way to get out our product is to try.

JP: On the one hand it sounds very broad as an approach and democratic. But I heard also a story of what we call the velvet rope in here. You were talking about VIPs that are allowed into the inner sanctum of your plant and to experience that and you emphasized that it’s not open for the public. Tell us a little bit about the role of that. How does it transform or impact people who’ve been in your plant and how does it make them special in the world of Lakrids?

PS: Many of them see our no compromise approach to a product like licorice. The different types of raw materials we are using are not that advanced. But from what mass market has done for 40 years it allows you to buy [xxx]. And then suddenly having a candy factory. Have you met people who are not interested in visiting a candy factory?

JP: You’re right.

PS: I haven’t. We have furniture. We have a show kitchen. We have an auditorium. I have never seen that in any other licorice factory. We host dinners working with many of the world’s best chefs. Where they’re working with flavor of pure licorice and creating menus of 3-4-6-8-10-12 courses.

[23:10]

JP: So you make it a very special experience they will talk about?

WS: You talk about the idea of how you lay out that production with these kitchens, etc. and that goes exactly to the point of what we call, “living the dream,” or that you really create a culture around the product or the organization around the product that is fully dedicated to it. How does translate to your choice of co-workers or colleagues? How do you keep the passion alive among them? Verses now just pure architecture or lay out of the factory?

PS: This is probably the biggest challenge that we face and if you see this from day one. When I joined the company, we were 17 and today we have close to 140. And we now have people in 6-7 countries. It’s actually the search or the hunt to find like-minded people and one of our colleagues who have been sitting on our regional team joined an interview that I joined. We greeted each other and we sat down and then within the first 10 seconds he chewed a jar of our licorice and gave it to the applicant who just came and says, “well, before we try to do anything, could you please try to sell me this jar of licorice?” And some of the people came, they froze, and they looked upon us and said, “thank you for your business, I don’t want to waste your time. Goodbye” Some of these, they looked upon us, they took the jar of licorice, they opened it, they took one piece. Then they presented the jars to us and said, “this is an amazing product you should actually try to have one.” And they look upon the same person and say, “thank you, you are hired.” Whoa, whoa whoa- don’t you need to know a little bit more? He said, “no. I went through their resume, I know quite a few things that they need to know but this is just so basic, do they like what we do?” If you get your hands on a sealed jar of what we do, it’s not my name. It’s the name of Johan. If you twist it 180 degrees you will find a statement of “cooked by”. So the person who cooked that specific batch of licorice has his or her name on the jar.

JP: And that makes it very personal, of course, and that is what a lot of people look for. So, pride of being there is very clear. Matching is very clear; you have your heart in it. If I was to visit Lakrids, would I find other things in the way you act in any of your rituals, in the way the place looks or smells? Seems pretty obvious when you say that is the Lakrids way of doing, thinking, acting.

PS: In the very beginning, there was a no compromise attitude of buying the world’s best ingredients but you don’t have an office, you don’t need an office. Then you start building layer, upon layer, upon layer. We tried to keep learning from within the company. So it’s about getting a learning curve. We don’t buy very expensive consultants to come and help us, but we try to find the inspiration and to make sure that it stays within the organization.

 [26:36]

JP: So you defy the industry standards there?

PS: I don’t think that we are looking upon industry standards but  we are looking upon our self, and that is the focus. Going 8 years and suddenly seeing this very very nice market response. There’s a lot people who have been inspired by what we do, and this is where our lawyer says, “well, if you want to look into the mirror and start fighting people who are trying to catch up or do you want to live up to your mission and just step on it and try to go even faster?” He said, “I can take all your money and try to fight these bastards, but at the speed you’re driving, they will never catch up. So keep going at the same speed or push the pedal to the metal. “

JP: Gotcha.

WS: To that point about growth and expansion, how do you manage growth? Do you go market by market or do you go on a broader scale not over inundating a given market but keeping a relatively selective presence in each market?

PS: If you go old fashioned thinking there will be national borders, we think region to region. If you are on the east coast of the US, does it make sense to include Toronto, Montreal, Washington, and New York? It’s an easier than going New York to Los Angeles. So, we’re doing this at a very lovely approach, where it’s us. And we at the speed of how we do things. And we found it very very complicated to find a distribution partner with ten thousand SKUs, who should handle our story. Because There aren’t many people in the sweet industry who have done what we have done, as fast and as effective. So we have to find black blooded team members that’ll do it our way, or as much of the distribution channel as possible. Then find these related family partners who are willing to adopt our babies and then support

JP: Black blooded team members- you got to love the language too.

WS: You were talking about production and that you have like personalized batches, where you actually name- if I understood that correctly- where you actually name the person who, the producer who was cooking the licorice. Did I get that right?

PS: Exactly. So the person who is responsible for that specific batch has to sign off saying, “this is approved to my standard, the company standard.” You find that suddenly standing in your shop consumer standing there turning a lot of jars. You say, “can I help you?” “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am actually looking for a single jar of this that has cooked by [xxx].” And you go, “what?” “Yeah, I love, I love the licorice that comes from [xxx].”

[29:43]

JP: We talk a lot in our book about people wanting to know again where stuff comes from. Particularly the things they care about and food tends to be something people care about. And this personal connection to knowing, you know it’s from the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker around the corner. And even having a name attached to it is very dear to them. So I am not at all surprised.

PS: Truth is the things that we’re doing to the back of licorice. We put an emphasize that you could actually read and understand a label, and it’s true. Again, there’s a no compromise. Trying to do the very best. We haven’t developed this for you, we love this; so we have made products that we like. And there are people who ask us, “so, you do focus groups?”  No way. We do stuff we like, and if we like it- we present it to other people.

JP: Excellent. I have one, maybe a bit personal question. Which is, you talk with such passion about this brand, this product, how it was born. The feeling of togetherness as an organization, yet you also are very clear, you said this is Johan’s company after all or brand after all. How do you reconcile this? And how do you reconcile this as an organization? If [31:07] is super passionate about what he does, how does it reconcile with- but it all belongs to Johan. Is there some share ownership, some participation in financial or other way?

PS: I think that actually at the end of the month, you actually have to look at your paycheck. I actually get something back. And you find, if you look into your history of this company very very few people have joined. So he must be doing something right, but he still controls 100 percent of his company.

I think the idea that you do have a conversation, you have to give people freedom, freedom of choice. How many other CEOs do you have, who at the age of 31 have tried to figure things out. He is willing to say “for this I have no idea”, so I will hire someone who is actually smarter than me, or someone who has tried it, who actually made a lot of mistakes in this category and then I hire him or her to actually take responsibility for this. Dedication and responsibility are number one. And then second, I think that he has created this company, the first recipe- created by him. So each and every one working for the company had to refer to a very flat conversation, that the owner of the company that knows exactly what you’re doing. So if you’re on the production side of things and you find, “ahhh, this actually isn’t right.” You can actually go to the CEO and say, “well, can you come help me because I think this machine does not really do the job.” And he’ll go, “yeah, yeah.” That’s insane. Let’s actually buy a new one, let’s buy a better one. Most others will go, “no I am CEO. I wear a suit and tie. I don’t go to the production floor.” But he’s curious and he’s built everything himself. That family feeling is the number one feeling we get. You can’t pay to get that.

[33:25]

JP: Question: will we be admitted to the holy grail of Lakrids making?

PS: Do you like licorice?

WS: I love licorice, that’s why I stopped there.

JP: If I get this whole interview right, you will make me like it, right? You are the converter.

PS: I was supposed to say, if you said, “no, not really.” Then I would think we would convert.

[33: 40]

JP: I like your incredible missionary sense here. I can feel it.

What’s the best way to get in touch with Lakrids?

PS: It depends on where you live in the world. We have sent licorice products to basically every corner of the world. So, online is a very good way to actually start this. The word Lakrids is L-A-K-R-I-D-S. Then it’s dot nu. N-U is actually Danish for now. So when people call upon us and they go, “dot N-U? What is that?” And we go, “it means now. So it’s actually licorice dot now.”

WS: The story of the company that is also featured on the Ueber Brands site. [34:13].

JP: Excellent and of course we are going to feature your links on our site so people can just click through that.

Peter, thanks so much for being a host. It was so rich and we talked for almost an hour and I will have such a hard time editing this down.

And to our listeners, of course, you can always read us at [email protected]. And Ueber Brands is spelled with U-E as it should be. And if you like the podcast, please let us know. It’s always encouraging. And subscribe to it on iTunes, Stitcher, or our website, wherever it is right.

With that, thanks a lot. Thanks everyone. Thanks Wolfgang for calling in too.

WS: Thank you Peter. Thank you.

[34:55]

What do if you like cocktail parties or ‘having a drink with the mates’ but not the alcohol that usually goes with them? Ben Branson often felt silly, sometimes socially stigmatized with his glass of (sugary) water, juice or ‘mocktail’ in hand – who can blame him?  Besides, many of the usual alternative offerings taste just as artificial and industrial as the labs and plants they hail from, he told us.

Hence the motivation to change all that and the idea to distill the ‘world’s first non-alcoholic spirit’ – Seedlip – an “appropriately complex drink with an adult taste,” the former innovation consultant and ad exec says.  The inspiration? A mix of 300 years of family farming tradition – and “that smell of fresh cut hay” – and a 1651 book, ‘The Art of Distillation’, by the alchemist John French.  The sub-title: ‘A Treatise of the Choicest Spagyrical Preparations Performed by Way of Distillation’. – Sounds mythical?

For good measure, the first of the Seelip concoctions – distilled of allspice, grapefruit, cardamom, American oak and cascarilla bark*, among other botanical ingredients – was launched at ‘Chelsea Physic Garden‘ described as a 17th century ‘secret apothecaries training ground’ with its own micro climate…

But Ben resists the thought that he is actively trying to spin a myth as he talks in a down-to-earth way about :

We did not talk about the link between Ben, Seedlip and his taxidermy collection (see pictures above and at the end) but if you stick around past the end of the regular 30 minute interview, you will hear us discuss the explosion of ‘arisanal/craft’ brands and why Ben does not want his to be one. – Enjoy.

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON BELOW to hear the interview on your device. There is also a full interview transcript at the end of this post, a PDF file for downloading as well as relevant links, discussions and further reading.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ueberbrands-episode-09-ben-branson-at-seedlip.mp3

You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes, Android , Stitcher or to our blog for new post notifications by clicking the button in the sidebar –>

Sources and Further Reading:

For more insights what drives the success of Ueber-Brands, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands” and more on this blog.

Here is a link to the Seedlip website and and the take on the drink by a foodie reporter at the Evening Standard.

Wonder where the term Teetotaling comes from?  We did, too and discovered that, apparently, the word was created with the help of ‘tee-tee stammering Temperance Society’s Mr Turner‘ in Britain around 1836. – Not very socially correct in today’s context.

*The cascarilla bark is what gives Campari its distinctive flavor, for example.

To check out what the Daybreaker movement is all about, visit them here. Apparently, ‘….At Daybreaker, we dance our faces off before work and feel gloriously healthy while doing so. … Daybreaker is about choosing to live life differently, choosing to be happy, and choosing to pursue the best versions of ourselves. …‘.  Intriguing, We might look more into that later.

APPROXIMATE TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST:

JP: I’m delighted to welcome Ben Branson, today. Ben is the founder and owner of a very interesting spirit called Seedlip.  Hello Ben, welcome to the show.

BB: Hi JP, thanks for having me.

[00:47]

JP: Ben joins us from… where do you join us from? From Buckinghamshire in the U.K.?

BB: I am actually sat in our studio in London.

JP:  London, sounds great. New York – London connection here. Ben has this very interesting spirit called ‘Seedlip’, which I read from the website he calls “the world’s first distilled non-alcoholic spirit.” Is that correct?

BB: That is correct.

JP: To get us started, tell us a little bit about yourself, particularly as it relates to ending up making a non-alcoholic spirit. Before we even talk about what that is.

BB: I am kind of a man of two hearts. Half of my family have been farming in the North of England for just over three hundred years. The other half of my family is in brands, design, marketing. So I grew up on a farm, outside, in the countryside and then went into working with brands and design and marketing. And so really, I am putting on my love of nature and kind of my farming history as much as my career at working on other people’s brands to kind of build something and do something that solve the modern dilemma what people are facing of what to drink when you’re not drinking. By working on other people’s brand but also wanting to keep us farming and continue my family’s legacy of working with the land; I kind of ended up creating something that we’re reliably informed no one’s ever created before which is pretty excited.

 [02:34]

JP:  And when you talk about that dilemma, just to be clear, the dilemma is what to drink when you’re not drinking. Is that based on some personal experience? Like, you like to drink but you don’t want to get drunk? Or is there a personal story behind that?

BB: It’s based on I spent ten years working on a lot of spirit brands and alcohol companies. And also working on a lot of soft drink companies. My favorite project, by far, were the ones the Absolutes and the Glenmorangies of this world, rather than the soft drink projects. I think they kind of depth and the story and the history behind them I just found more exciting. The irony within all this is I actually don’t drink. Part of wanting to solve this dilemma, initially started wanting to solve my own dilemma of I love food, I love going to a great restaurants. The world of food in London is absolutely incredible and what’s going on in the world of cocktails and with spirits in London, and across the world, has never been more dynamic and more exciting. I think when it comes to what’s on offer when you’re not drinking, it’s really poor. The same kind of fruity, sweet fairly childish options. So initially it started out: I wanted a better drink.

 [04:00]

JP: Is there also an element of social pressure? Like if you don’t have a drink you know, you aren’t really participating in the party or whatever it is?

BB: Yeah, I think, you know, it’s a very fundamental human need to want to belong and if you’re in a group of people and you’re singled out or ridiculed or pressured because you’re not drinking. Personally, in this day and age when you can get pretty much anything you want from wherever in the world that you want, I think it’s a sad state of affairs. But, if your options are juices and sugary sweet drinks then it’s not surprising because you’re compromising because you’re not actually satisfied with having a great drink whether it’s got alcohol or not.

JP: Right. I think this is a good time to actually tell us about what the product is all about. It’s a spirit that is distilled, yet has no alcohol. I thought distilling means extracting alcohol but I’m no expert. So tell us how this all works.

BB: First of all, distillation is a form of extraction. Fermentation is how alcohol is actually made, but alcohol is used as part of distillation to extract flavor from herbs, spices, from botanicals. What we do is quite similar to gin. We are using herbs and spices and different botanicals. We are using copper stills as gin and most other spirits are made. What we do slightly different is that we managed to find a slightly laborious, but very kind of specific and special process working with our distillery to actually individually distill all of our ingredients at different temperatures, under different pressures, for different amounts of time. Which means we can get the best flavor that we want from each individual ingredient. Respecting the oak and grapefruit peel for example, are two very different things and therefore the rates at which they give off and give out their best flavors and the best compounds are different. We’re then blending those individual distillates without any sugar or sweetener back here in England. So yeah, we’re very transparent about what’s in it, but we’re not transparent about how it’s made, if that makes sense. We’ve got to keep some secrets.

[06:19]

JP: Right and this all happens in this cottage, this stone cottage, that you have on your website?

BB: JP, I am guessing you just answered a future question around you know, myth verses what’s going on. I am really glad that that’s how it appears in some ways, but no, I don’t. I started distilling in my kitchen, quite quickly became apparent that I was not going to be the man that was going to be behind the distill wheel doing all the science around it. So no, we have a distillery in Germany that we work with. A man called Norbert, who is our master distiller, who does all the distillation for us.

[07:00]

JP: All right. This is interesting. I think this is a little bit where rubber hits the road in the story telling and myth-making arena. You, yourself, use words like “laborious.” I read on your website about 1400’s stone cottage and I seen beautiful pictures of you working on your Apple laptop but in a kind of rustic, modern, really clean line kind of environment. So this is obviously all about story telling. You have an agency background.

How do you reconcile this? Do you try to create authenticity or is it very consciously a façade? Or on the contrary, you say no, if you scroll further down on the website you’ll read about Norbert and about the German distillery as well? How do you handle this?

BB: I think we wanted to bring Seedlip to life visually, obviously, and to do that in a, forgive the pun, instill in a beautiful and natural way. And certainly, given I’ve had a career in it I would hope we could. I don’t know much about the science and distillation and about building the business of a drink company but the brand, and the storytelling, and the aesthetic are something I feel very strongly about and I’m very passionate about. We make no efforts to conceal the fact that we couldn’t find a distillery to work with in England.

[08:33]

JP: Why couldn’t you find any in the U.K.?

BB: Part of it is that we couldn’t just go to a normal spirits distillery because it does take more time; it is more complicated to do than just creating a vodka or gin. We had to find the right partner that was willing to help. The other thing is, when you wind the clock back and you haven’t got a product and you’ve got the bare bones of the brand, and you’re one man band asking people to get on board with your journey at creating a non-alcoholic spirit; people laugh and shut the door and say no because they can’t get their head around it. They don’t think there’s anything in it and it’s one guy who’s had an idea. So that was, you know, that took a lot of time to find the right people to help us. Norbert, fortunately, is crazy enough and thinks we’re crazy enough said, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s give it a go”

[09:30]

JP: Right. Beyond the idea of non-alcoholic, did you have a very specific taste in mind? You didn’t know what it would taste like before you started it right, or did you?

BB: So I have two very key points of guidance. One was the book the book that I found which was published in 1651 called  “The Art of Distillation.” This book, I didn’t find under my grandfather’s floorboards. I found a copy of it online, which I since have seen the original, which was King George III’s copy that lives quite happily in the rare books section of the British Library. In this book are all these alcoholic remedies, but all these non-alcoholic remedies. All using herbs and spices, and all using distillation, all using copper stills. This is back when there was a lot of illness, a lot of people looking for cures, people were trying to turn water into gold, looking for the elixir of life; it was a fascinating time, certainly in London, in terms of spice routes and trade routes being set up.

There are two hundred ingredients mentioned in this book, so that gave me a really good reference. I then had a guide, in my own mind, how I wanted it to kind of smell and taste. It was very personal to me… it was inside of my grandfather’s combine. So, during harvest, when it’s dusty and when you’re moving the earth, and there’s a lot of smells, and a lot of movement going on. That smell of being on the inside of the combine with my grandfather… however strange it sounds. A very great post marker for me in terms of is this what I imagined it to be.

JP: We’re obviously not able to taste here over the podcast but can you get us a little bit of a feel of the flavor, and how you mix it, and how it all comes to life from a product prospective?

BB: Sure, so we use two barks, two spices, and two citrus peels and so, Seedlip, our first product, has got a very good spicy and earthy flavor profile. Think clove, pepper, cardamom, with some kind of nice grapefruit/lemon juiciness. We recommend it to be served in a very simple way with tonic and a nice slice of red grapefruit. You can play around with different kind of mixes and sodas for long drinks. And then we do some kind of short, martini style non-alcoholic cocktails. We try not to use fruit juices, we try not to use lots of syrups; we use more interesting, hopefully, ingredients like brines and vinegar.

JP: But it doesn’t remind of an alcohol, does it? It doesn’t have like, oh, this is more like gin and this is more like whiskey. It has nothing to do with that?

BB: No, no. There’s no chili in Seedlip, so that you get a burn. We purposefully didn’t use juniper berries to try and make it taste like a gin. I think we wanted to create a new category for people to have a new experience rather than what they’re used to at the moment, which we think is a compromise and a less than and that something has been taken away.

[12:43]

JP: So it’s nothing that existed before? You’re the inventor outright of this kind of flavor?

BB: Exactly.

JP: Wow. As I listen to your story. I wonder whether, how should I put it, whether you’re too honest? We have done many of these stories, as listeners will know. It’s very heavy story telling, it’s very heavy myth making. You going out and saying, you know what? This book- I didn’t find it under the floor board, which by the way, would be a great story. Right?

BB: Yes.

I found it at the British Library and he only distillery that was game enough to play with us is in Germany. Which kind of bursts the bubble again there a little bit, right, because we’re in Buckinghamshire here and you take us to industrial Germany, which has a whole different image. Are you afraid to be too honest? Or on the contrary is that maybe part of what’s going to make your mission and myth? Have you thought about what you want to stand for beyond the product?

BB: Having worked big brands from bleach, to cheese, to yogurt, to water, I think I’ve seen first hand, and really been part of, creating too many of those myths. I think A. consumers today are more savvy and they kind of, excuse my language, bullshit alert. They’re a lot quicker to catch on when they’re being sold to. We want people to read in and discover and love all the depth and layers of Seedlip. And so, what you take at whatever layer, I think, is really important. If you look at our website, you’ll take your own perception of that. If you’re reading, you will get the full picture, that backs up some of the, what I call the “substance behind the style.” We want to look great and we want to be desirable and use design to that effect and use storytelling really well.  But I don’t know, maybe we are too honest but my conscience is clear. I find the number one purpose with Seedlip is to solve this dilemma of what to drink when you’re not drinking. That’s our number one mission.

JP: Okay.

BB: If we do that with the right people on board and I have the right team then the money will take care of itself.

 [14:50]

JP: You talk a lot about “we” and “the team” so that’s clearly important to you. Tell us a little bit about key players and why they are key to this proposition.  

BB: When I don’t see that [xxx 15:07] I had about a hundred prints made of our illustrations on nice card. I counted up how many people have been involved, really in helping Seedlip get to launch. Because although, it was me living and breathing full-time Seedlip. Everybody from Norbert in Germany, to the guy that makes our cases, to the guys that print the labels, to the bookkeeper, to the courier who we still use today- who has been an absolute hero. They all got one of these cards because I cannot do this by myself. We now for four people full time, which happened in the last few months, which is pretty quick. I definitely can’t do this on my own so the more people the merrier.

JP: And are they also all or many of them owners of the company?

BB:  No.

JP: You’re the sole proprietor?

BB: I own the majority of the company. We have a design agency that has a stake in the business. And then we’ve got some investors as well. I was the crazy one that thought, I guess when I tried to launch this on my own I didn’t think it was go as quickly as it has so I didn’t think I would maybe need any other kind of full time staff for a while after the launch.

[16:19]

JP:  Right. Right. Growth is another interesting arena. It feels like this is the right place to talk about this… so it sounds like your design agency verses you having to pay them, which is often as barrier as you start out, they took a stake in you? Then you also have investors.

How do you look at raising capital and growth, is there a plan? Or is it kind of let’s see what happens? You chose Selfridge’s, it sounds like, as an initial retailer partner. How do you choose your distribution? Can you talk a little bit how you look at growth right now and where do you see Seedlip in five years from now?

BB: Again, connected to how do we solve this what to drink when you’re not drinking dilemma. I thought a way to do that is to give people a really great, desirable premium brand. They would feel good about drinking, and would feel good about choosing, and feel good about ordering. We’ve launched a kind of top end brand in top end places and for the moment, we want to stay there. There are, for example, 158 Michelin star restaurants in the U.K. We’re in twelve of them, which is great, but there is a lot to go at in terms of the really top quality food and drink hotels, bars, restaurants, members clubs, fine food stores. There is a lot to go at. We said no to a lot of people. We’ve said no to a lot of big retailers. We’re not chasing volume for the moment. I think we want to build this brand in the right places, with the right people, in the right way.

JP: And how much does it retail for? And how can you afford that because often, being in a place like Selfridge’s demands an incredible retail margin so that not a lot of money can be made.

BB: There’s an issue in that Seedlip’s not cheap to make and it’s not cheap to buy. You know, you have fourteen servings in a bottle and Selfridge’s sells for 29.99.

JP: Pounds Sterling.

BB: Pounds, exactly. Let’s say top gin, vodka, other spirit without, you know we don’t pay the duty so you take the duty off, 29.99 is a good, strong price.  It’s ten times what a premium soft drink would cost. We set the bar very high. We do want to keep it there because we think that’s part of giving people a really great grown-up adult drink.

[18:48]

JP: And you don’t feel the pressure to scale faster because it’s tough to get to profitability at this point? I am just saying that because it’s often the story. Right? At the beginning, you’re bleeding because these light house, early distributions- a couple of restaurants and a department store- they have such low volume and demand and such high retail margins that a small business that has mostly cost in overhead at this point can’t afford to stay with that little volume. That’s not an issue in your model?

BB: We’re trying to strike a fine line between, we’re in a Michelin star restaurant that sells more Seedlip in a week than it does gin and vodka combined.

JP: And how come?

BB: Because we have some drinks in the menu and the chefs are absolutely huge fan of it, and so is the bar manager. It’s a restaurant that some people have to drive to so there’s a drink/driving element that we know comes into it. And as part, I think, of what we’re learning at the moment, is certainly food in restaurants is potentially a very big area. I think we are fortunate we don’t, we can’t just chase volume. I think it would be detrimental to the brand. Trying to hold our nerve, which is nerve wracking in itself is critical to see them sticking around and us building a sustainable business for the future.

[20: 12]

JP: What is your ideal growth vision?

BB: You mentioned it before we started the interview in terms of, we have two choices really, we can go to other cities in the U.K. and we could keep saying no to all the international requests that we get and sort of go through some of the layers, go into big city markets, and then look at export. I think what we’ve learned and certainly the demand that we’ve experienced, and the internet is a fantastic leveler for this, is that the global food and drink trend setting organs, for want of a better phrase, are just that they are global. Things that are happening in New York happen in London and they are happening at the same time. Our plan is to actually start seething into other key culture capitals of the world; where there’s a fantastic world of restaurants, there’s a fantastic world of kind of culture, design, and arts. There’s a real, I guess an appetite actually for more of a balance and moderate approach to drinking.

JP: I guess you have a unique advantage over your liquor competition in that you’re actually not alcoholic. So, from a regulatory and duty perspective you have an unexpected advantage there.

BB: We do, and certainly when you take the States for example, there’s this three tiered system if you have an alcoholic drink and there’s no way around that with alcohol. We don’t have to be a part of that.

[21:48]

JP: That can be a huge enabler. Now interestingly, we have another podcast coming up, as I told you, with Lakrids which is a Danish gourmet licorice. They’ve talked to us about how interesting and important Michelin star restaurants are. We had a podcast already with Diageo and Johnny Walker, I am sure you’re very familiar with them, and they tell us how important it is to be in the right premises and to have the support of the barkeepers. It sounds like, for you, as well. In general, what we find is that there needs to be a group that really loves your proposition, that really sponsors it, and that you need to keep engaged. We call them the design target.

And we chatted a little bit before we started recording, we said it’s the hogs, the Harley ownership groups for Harley Davidson, even the Hell’s Angels kind of making the reputation of Harley, even if they might not be the majority of actual drivers. They might be bankers in the mid-life crisis, right, buying Harley Davidson’s. Do you very deliberately plan for this design target? It sounds like, for example, restaurants you need to drive to might be such a supporter group, do you have an emerging design target?

BB: One was planned; we’ve started to discover another. One was planned and is work, which is bartenders and chefs. And chefs, just love great taste, great flavor, and ingredients, and produce. And we have our second product that launches in two weeks time and that will start using ingredients from my farm that we’ve grown. Chefs are very engaged by that and they’re engaged by offering food pairing ideas with Seedlip drinks because typically soft drinks and non-alcoholic drinks don’t necessarily pair well with food.

The other audience within that is the bartenders. These guys are kind of hungry for new things and they are there to really make guests happy.  So if they can make a guest happy who wants an alcoholic drink, they’ve got all the tools behind them, sitting on the back bar. They want to do the same for non-alcoholic drinks, someone who isn’t drinking. They don’t have that same whole plethora of ingredients to work with. And so, you know, we are effectively helping them give their guests a great time.

Those two, chefs and bartenders, great.

[24:24]

JP: If I may say, I can imagine some bartenders do not always feel comfortable serving alcohol to people. This might be a nice addition to your portfolio if you feel like somebody had too much but they want to keep being a part of the party. Or, you know, is that an element? I might be making this up.

BB: We were at an awards ceremony last night. I stood and was talking to a lady, she started asking what I do, and she stood there with a glass of champagne and it was a Monday night. She’s like, I didn’t really want this glass of champagne. The amount of people that say to me, well, yeah, if it’s a Tuesday lunchtime or Wednesday evening or I don’t really want to have a drink but there’s nothing good that’s non-alcoholic; I always sort of opt for, well, I’ll have a glass of champagne anyway because it’s fits the occasion. If you have a non-alcoholic drink that you feel fits the occasion, that’s good enough to fit the occasion, I think that’s potentially super interesting and will be part of us sort of having done our job.

This sort of leads onto the other design target that we really didn’t expect, which is the sort of, there is group of healthy foodies. They will do yoga and they look after themselves and they do drink, but very much in moderation, they might not drink much. They appreciate good quality food and drink. There’s a kind of cult wave of these people now in London. A lot of kind of untrained chefs who, seriously people will kind of literally hang on every Instagram post that they’re doing for breakfast.

[26:12]

JP: Can I hear a bit of sarcasm in those descriptions?

BB: It’s not so much sarcasm; it’s more just disbelief.  You know, taking a photo of your breakfast and people commenting on that, it just kind of astounds me.

JP: As you describe that, on the one hand, absolutely now want to try this drink.  And hopefully a lot of listeners will say that too, which would be great for you in terms of trial. And as you describe the foodies, the big question in my mind is: how will you avoid this being fashionable and a fad? I.e. I’ll have my Seedlip, I’ll spend a relative fortune on a soft drink once and then I’m like, yeah fine, I’ve had it. I suppose you want to be in the business for a longer time, maybe you don’t, tell us. But how do you work to avoid, this is a fashionable fad?

BB: It’s a really good question because I don’t think that the problem that we’re trying to solve, given the way the world is now moving. We are a bit more conscious of health, and we’ve got a sugar tax coming in the U.K. next year. I heard last week about are we going to ban alcohol in planes? There are lots of forces at work that we are not having to do all the kind of shouting. The world is not drinking more alcohol, it’s spending more on it, but it’s not drinking any more. People are drinking and have been steadily for the last fifteen years less Coca-Cola, and for the last ten years less diet Coke. Now certainly here in the U.K. people are sort of a bit more worried about how much juice they drink. These aren’t fads; these are things that seem to be going one way. Therefore, I think we are hopefully not just part of the trend or a fad but part of just the future.

[28:17]

JP: Was that all ingenious foresight? Did you have all these macro trends in mind? Or is this kind of all slowly sinking in as you are obsessed with your proposition and of course read every article that is about sugar taxes, etc.? Or was this kind of a driver of your landscape analysis before you even started out with Seedlip?

BB: So two and a half years ago, I wanted to solve my own problem because I want a great grown-up nonalcoholic drink. I then was mucking around at home growing different herbs and old spices.

JP: And at home is not in London, is it?

BB: No, at home is out in Buckinghamshire.

And that lead me on to finding the book that was written in 1651 and that lead me on to buying a little copper and playing around in my kitchen. And then, that lead me to hey this could be interesting, I wonder if anyone has ever done this before.

[29:07]

JP: Interesting because I think it gives a lot of hope to some of our entrepreneur brand builders because it often looks and sounds like in hindsight these creators, whether it’s Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, had it all figured out before they started. But the reality, and you’re currently creating your start-up reality, is a lot of the things come together as you go I guess. And it sounds to me like there is a lot more story-telling, myth making, cultural relevance, design target discovery, and design target support yet to come as you come along. Does that sound right?

BB: Absolutely, because the two most incredible things that have happened are totally beyond my control are luck and timing. You know, I think if we launched in two years time, we’d have been too late and I think if we launched two years ago we’d have been too early.

JP: If people listening to the podcast want to find out more about Seedlip, what’s the best way to get in touch with the brand and you maybe?

BB: When I launched Seedlip, I put my personal e-mail and my mobile number on the website and that was a really big mistake. I sort of was like, is anyone going to call? I don’t know. Now there’s not a phone number on the website, but there is an e-mail address on there. I am on Instagram, that’s kind of a favorite channel of ours because we’ve got a lot to show and share. But yeah, the website: seedlipdrinks.com is going to be the easiest way to get in touch.

JP: Excellent and that’s S-E-E-D-L-I-P for Seedlip and Ben Branson. No relationship I guess with Richard Branson. Even though entrepreneur as well.

BB: No, no relation.

JP: And for you our dear listener, you can always reach us [email protected], and Ueberbrands is written with an U-E as it should be. If you like this podcast, let us know. Give us some stars, do great reviews, that’s what keeps us going. And we hope that you listen in next time.

JP Commentary: For those interested in the subject of myth making, I append another four minutes of the full length interview I had with Ben. I just want to keep the regular podcast about thirty minutes. So, take a listen, if you’re curious. Enjoy.

Bonus:

JP: It does seem to me that there are more and more critical articles about the artisanal. And I wonder if there’s going to be a backlash against you tried to get us by calling everything fair-trade, organic, local, homegrown, healthy, no fructose corn syrup and so on and so on.

BB: Yep. I think we don’t, so there’s a few words that are absolute no-nos for us. You’ll never hear or see us talking about craft, you’ll never see the word artisanal or us using the word artisanal, you’ll never hear boutique. All that. All those words that slightly make me cringe. A. We don’t want to stay small. We’re very open about that. Yes, we started hand-labeling bottles; now that a machine puts it on I don’t want to keep it in my garage. I don’t want to be making it in my kitchen. The problems big that we want to solve and the problem’s global.

JP: It’s funny because in that film that we posted on our blog on the artisanal, critical of it. In the film, Timmy Brothers, they actually make exactly that, the hand written labels and then say, “I don’t know why people think 11 dollars for a bottle of water is too much! It is hand crafted water!”

BB: Yes, yes. I don’t think people really give a shit. If I go and talk to a bartender, they want to know about how it’s made. They want to whether we use a Carterhead Still or not. We’re not going talk to somebody sampling at Selfridge’s- they don’t care that it takes six weeks to distill a batch or they don’t really care about Norbert and whether he’s got long hair or short hair.

JP: Even though, you do look the part when you go on the website, right? I don’t know if it’s intentional but it is the very crafty, artisanal kind of look.

BB: That’s just me.

JP: But in that sense, I guess, you might in hindsight make the right choice of, we said earlier, being maybe too honest. I.e. not pretending that it’s all happening in that little stone cottage. You know, you’re digging out the carrots and distilling them yourself in your little copper pot.

BB: Yeah, no. Myths are really powerful.

JP: So what about the Seedlip myth then? Is that work in progress? Do you expect it to kind of emerge by itself or do you deliberately start to create something?

BB: You know, I hear other people tell the Seedlip story right in front of me. I heard it last night! A friend of mine, who is a restaurateur saying to another restaurateur, “oh, this is Ben.  You know, he was the Queen’s entrepreneur of the year this year.” We weren’t. I was invited by Buckingham palace to meet the Duke of York. We did an event with the Duke of York. That’s great. Seedlip is in, there is a bottle of Seedlip in Buckingham Palace, great. But he’d then taken it on to all right well the Queen’s, you know, knighted Ben for his services to the drinks industry, you know in his first six month. You can’t stop people doing that.

JP: So in a way, I get a feel that you’re quite relaxed about not having everything totally figured out, ready, planned in advance. That things actually are created quite organically, like maybe a more authentic myth is one that isn’t totally planned because that would be very apparent and is something that comes together over time. You just help it along a bit.

BB: Yeah, I think we’re not set in stone and we never should be. You have to allow perception and word of mouth to happen and that’s something that so like, I can’t tell you. It kind of just takes some patience, right? To let people talk about it, you’ve got to let people discover it, and you’ve got to let people make up their own stories for it, of how they then tell someone else. I’ve heard it. I’ve heard someone else go, oh yeah, Ben’s a farmer and he grows it all himself. He’s got his tractor up in Lincolnshire, and he you know, he comes down to London and sells it.

One of the founders commented ‘You don’t know shxx from Shinola!‘ during a meeting – This is how an American saying lead to the rebirth of the formerly popular shoe polish it is referring to … at least according to Bridget Russo, CMO Shinola who shared this and more about the brand, business model and legend with us.

Fact is that a group of investors has acquired and lead the transformation of the iconic but dormant mark from Rochester, NY that had peaked in the mid 20th century to a modern lifestyle brand and has associated it with the dream of a hip and fine-motor-skilled Detroit rising from the rusty, bankrupted ashes of the motor city.  To true fans, new  ‘Shinola City’ – located in the rehabbed former GM innovation lab building – is worth a pilgrimage.  This is where the brands’ creatives and their supply partners conceptualize hip, retro-romantic accessories that range from watches via leather bags to commuter bikes and analog audio equipment that allows one to listen to those Mo-Town tunes the ‘original’ way.  And, important to the brand’s narrative, this is also where one can witness re-trained auto-workers craft or assemble some of these items. And there is a constant stream of journalists, bloggers, politicians and other ‘influentials’ who visit to see or be seen with those workers and to spread the word.  “If this keeps up, we might have to convert some condos back into factories” the Shinola ad reads.

We sat down with Bridget to talk about this transformation story. You will also hear about

and more.

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON BELOW to hear the interview on your device. There is also a full interview transcript at the end of this post, a PDF file for downloading as well as relevant links, discussions and further reading.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ueberbrands-episode-8-bridget-russo-at-shinola.mp3

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Sources and Further Reading:

For more insights what drives the success of mission driven brands like Shinola, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands” and more on this blog.

You can experience Shinola and connect with them on their website and Facebook page.  Politicians liking to be associated with a good turn-around story certainly does not hurt, as you can see here.  Read how the New York Times reports about the revival of Detroit’s Cass Corridor called a “Brooklynesque … Shinola City” by the press.

Our Shinola Teaser Video:

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST:

I’m delighted to have Bridget Russo with me. Bridgette is the CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, of Shinola, that Detroit brand we will hear a lot about.

JP: Thanks for coming Bridget.

BR: Thanks for having me.

[00:37]

JP:  What we want to do today is talk about the logic, the marketing, and maybe the magic behind recasting an iconic shoe polish called Shinola from the New York/New Jersey area into the maker of affordable luxury lifestyle from Detroit and what’s all behind that.

Bridget, again, thanks for coming. Maybe just start us out. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to Shinola.   

BR: Sure. I have been working in the fashion industry my whole career. Always had the intention, I grew up in a factory actually. My mother had a factory in Queens and was very passionate about the industry. I thought at one point I would be a journalist. As many journalism degree students end up in PR. Started in PR, and really at a time when writing was an important piece of PR. I think that’s changed a little bit now and slowly learned that the money was in marketing.

BR: I also felt my approach was a marketing approach. I was terrible really at pitching. I always kind of wanted to tell a story. I was very much so into events and the selling of a brand verses just pitching independent stories or one off brand stories, product stories. I was very lucky once I went from the agency side in house, Diesel being my first in-house job, to start to work within presence marketing. At the time events were more so a function of PR so the idea of the words even “Presence Marketing” was new. It was through that experience that enabled me to make a shift from PR into marketing.

It was also good timing because all of a sudden the regular or traditional model of advertising wasn’t working any more. Social media started to hit. People were getting their information from every where, much more quickly than they were before so it wasn’t about dictating to the consumer, it was about a conversation. That really falls in line with the experience I had in PR. So with that experience I was able to transition.

Had a few other stints in other places. Then found my home, really at the time, with a company at the time called Eden. Eden was a brand started by Bono and his wife Ali Hewson and their intention was to build trade with Africa by manufacturing fashion goods there. That’s where I really started to get the passion about story telling of the supply chain. Which was something before in fashion that was behind closed doors. You didn’t tell anybody for proprietary reasons and also, it wasn’t sexy. This really flipped that story around and that’s how I got interested in the area.

[03:55]

JP: That seems to already explain what was appealing to you about Shinola I guess?  Can you tell us a little bit, what in particular attracted you to that brand?

BR: I think I am pretty lucky in my experience in that I was in fashion but I always worked for brands that worked on the fringe of fashion. Always sort of an edgy approach, if you think of Diesel in the early days of heir marketing and what they did they really pushed the envelope. Other fashion brands were not doing that. The idea that you could even sell jeans for over 100 dollars in the United States, the home of Levis, was something completely unheard of at the time. I have been lucky to always have that experience.

Then being at Eden and being able to sell basically a product that necessarily you don’t need, but you want but to have a positive story behind it. That you’re actually creating jobs in a continent that needs it was really compelling to me. It was a natural when I heard the story of Shinola, to take that experience and then flip it to creating US jobs. For me, certainly the product, always with all of this, and I think anybody who wants a career in creating products that create social good, you have to start with great product. That was the one thing we learned at Eden, we put the focus on mission first and the product came second. It took a while to come out of that, whereas Shinola, we’re very clear with what the products were going to be. They were very clear on what they were going to look like, the design direction was very clear. By the nature of making those watches in Detroit, we were going to create jobs.

[06:48]

JP: Before we go into jobs – because, like you say, there is almost a risk that that takes over the entire brand- tell me a little bit about what is special about the products that Shinola is making? What’s the logic of the product extension? I think it started out, well obviously originally it started out with shoeshine, which I don’t know whether you are doing. Second, the watches, then leather goods, bicycles. Is there a logic and what’s special about these products?

BR: The original brand Shinola was a shoeshine brand. It was popular in the fifties. There is a saying, “you don’t know…. from Shinola.”

JP: Beep…

BR: Exactly.

In a moment of frustration, when the founders of the company were sitting around a table trying to figure out what to call this brand….   Various names came up and somebody said, “oh, you don’t know…. from Shinola,” and they said, “there’s the name.” So really it was a combination.

Number one, it was symbolic, in the sense that the fifties and sixties was when the U.S. was really known for making great products. Products that were built to last, it was like the heyday. It was also the heyday of Detroit. Also, it was something familiar certainly for an American audience. You heard your grandparents say it; it just had this warm sort of familiar feeling to it. For those reasons, we decided, you know, to call the company “Shinola.” Some people say that’s crazy because it is affiliated with the word that is the antithesis of luxury.

[08:23]

JP: Other people will find it interesting and that makes a little bit of the myth I guess of the brand to know about this background story.

To come back to the products, what is special about a Shinola watch or a Shinola bike?

BR: We reimagined this shoeshine brand, first with watches. We actually do do shoeshine now produced in Chicago. So there is homage to the past. It’s a leather care line, which is connected to the leather goods we make. I think there is a natural connection; you can kind of understand how small leather goods would fit with watches. Bicycles. Now we’re going to be launching audio with turntables later on this fall. Some people might say, “I don’t get it.” But I think it was a differentiator for us in the market. It was categories that we were passionate about and also, if you think about the lifestyle of our consumer, it made perfect sense. If you see it maybe written, or even speaking about it, it sounds odd… Well, I don’t get it, how does it all sit together? But if you go into our shop, straight away you completely get it and then you’re like, “I love it.”

I’ll give you a good example, when we were talking to the department stores about buying the collection we started with the watch buyers. They said, “yeah, sure. We’ll test out a couple of styles and see how it goes.” We said, “no, no. You have to come to Detroit, see what we’re doing… and by the way, you aren’t just buying watches.”  At first they thought we were crazy. They came to Detroit, saw what we were doing, met the people. Then all of a sudden you had stores like Neiman’s, and Nordstrom, and Saks trying to figure out how they get a bike into their watch department. Not because they were going to sell a bike but because it was part of the story.

JP:  It’s like the motorbikes at Kiehl’s.

BR: Yes.

JP: You talked about creating jobs in Detroit. Let’s talk about that aspect now. The brand is much more than the product you said, the product is important but it’s much more. What is it primarily, beyond the product?

[10:20]

BR: I think it’s the story. We could go out there with the same products that we have today at the quality and the craftsmanship we have today, but if you don’t have the story behind it. You don’t need to be from Detroit, or even know someone who’s from Detroit to be connected to that story. It’s the comeback city. You want to root for the underdog and I think, you know, even for our business overseas you might say, “what do they care about creating jobs in Detroit?”  Everyone has a Detroit. There are Detroits around the U.S. There are Detroits in the U.K. Look at Manchester, look at Glasgow.  So everyone can connect to that story and I think if you can make a purchase and there is a positive impact to that purchase, whether it’s in your backyard or elsewhere I think people relate to that.

[11:09]

JP: You touch on two points actually which I noted down. It almost feels like you read my notes. How does it translate abroad or how does it translate outside the U.S. in particular? But you say, “Everyone has their Detroit.”

Then the other one about almost the archetype of the brand. Which is about the comeback …  it’s a comeback story…. the underdog coming back. 

BR: It’s the champion brand.

JP: On that point about abroad, you say, there are cities that are celebrating a comeback or a dream about a comeback. How do you approach then an extension abroad? How do you translate that? 

BR: I think it was good timing with Detroit. We certainly didn’t know what was going to happen. We had no idea that the bankruptcy, you know, was going to happen or be announced. That really put Detroit on a global platform, such an iconic American city. Now, in that instance that was somewhat of a negative story but I was happy to see six months/a year later that the media started to turn around and say: well, hang on… yes, this happened but look at all this great stories. We’re just one piece of what is happening in Detroit today.

[12:52]

JP: You were one of the stories of hope, I guess.  And got a lot of visitors. I remember Bill Clinton I think went there. There’s like pilgrimage, right? A lot of people going?

BR: Definitely. There’s a lot of people now, taking these “urban tourism,” where they are going into cities to visit factories on their vacation.

JP: And I heard, I think from your CEO that the Detroit store has more footfall than the New York one which is quite amazing in that many people…

BR: And does double or triple the volume.

JP: Right, and people go there from New York to see it rather than go to the local New York store.

BR:  Definitely. It is like a pilgrimage.

JP: I guess ones want to contribute and you want to vote with your credit card. You want to invest into the revival of the city of a bigger idea of America as a manufacturing place, place where manufacturing happens?

BR: Definitely. I mean there’s the consumer today started with food. Started with the question of: what’s in my food? Where is this coming from? And then that continued into consumer goods. Well, hang, on where are my products being made? Who is making them? How are they being made? Those were questions that we never really asked ourselves in the 80’s and 90’s.

[14:15]

JP: You opened a store in London. What’s the story you tell there? Do you tell the Detroit story? Do you try to link it to Manchester? How do you tell this story?

BR:  I think, you know, again, back to the timing and also the people really thinking Detroit as this cool city because of its history in music. Certainly in London there was this cool factor, being from Detroit.

JP: Motor City.

BR: Exactly, Mo-town. There was this sort of respect that came straight away from that community around Detroit and what it represented and I think particularly in that market, and in other markets within Europe, the social aspect of doing good by making these products, by purchasing these products was something that resonated.  You know, there is a connection there with Detroit. There is a connection when it comes to electronic music and Berlin. Music is something that is universal. There’s a weird attachment to Detroit or least an affinity because of the music.

 [15:49]

JP: So you play it slightly differently I guess in those places? Or you adapt the message?

BR: We didn’t go, apart from not that we’re getting into audio, heavy on the music thing; we felt that was really obvious. We stuck to our story, which is the people who are making our products. We put them in the ads. We didn’t put models in the ads. We didn’t put ourselves in the ads. We put the people who are making the products in our ads because the story starts there and they are the heart and soul of what we do.

JP:  Right and I heard interviews for example NPR; Kai Ryssdal was there and interviewed people on the shop floor.

BR: Yes.

JP: So a lot of people root for you, cheer Shinola on but I also read critics. They say for example: well it’s all a marketing gig or trick. Here’s the proof, the movements which make up 80% of the value and labor intense process of a watch is actually from Switzerland, so how is this creating skills?

BR: Basically, and unlike other companies that are assembling watches. The movement is also assembled in Detroit, so they don’t come already assembled.

We have Swiss partners, Ronda, who manufactures the movements. They helped us both build the factory and train the employees. So you have people who are now learning a new skill set in an area that cannot rely just on the automotive industry anymore to create jobs. That piece of it is very important. Yes, the components are coming from Switzerland for the movements and the case and the dials are coming from Asia. But we’re also assembling from the movement, to the watch, and now also manufacturing our leather watchstraps right in Detroit.

We also worked with our Taiwanese partners to create a dial factory in our store in Detroit. So that opened the end of last year where we’re printing some of our dials right there in Detroit. So we’re always looking to build the capacity, but there is a reality today, and I think in this global environment of how you make things. That components come from whomever is making them best at the quantity and the quality that you need and that is not likely to be down the street.

[18:10]

JP: And at that, it almost seems like you make your life more complicated than it could be by bringing in the components rather than the fully assembled piece to bring your mission to life. Do I understand that right?

There is a price to pay for that I guess in terms of the cost of goods and so on.

BR: There is an investment certainly in building the factory and bringing in machinery, but also in the training. The beautiful thing is the first individuals that started now have the ability to train new people that come in. Anyone who knows watches, it’s an intricate process. I can tell you I can’t do it. I watch them and there’s no way I could put together a movement.

You know, I think there’s a lot of education that needs to happen with the consumer to understand, well, what exactly does that mean? Assembly isn’t a bad thing and it’s not a monkey can do it. We get pretty defensive about that stuff because we’re defensive about the people who are working there, who are pretty passionate about what they’re doing and don’t feel like just anybody can do it.

JP: When I listened to that NPR interview, on the shop floor, things that came to my mind were:  One, it almost seems like people move from, move to find motor skills almost from having assembled cars. There was one woman that was pretty straightforward and she said you know, it’s much more comfortable, quieter, and clean work here than it used to be where I was working before.

BR: She used to leave and be full of soot.

JP: Ueberbrands Podcast Episode 08 Bridget Russo at Shinola Podcast Transcript So, you’re very adamant that you’re actually living your mission I guess?

[20:02]

BR: One hundred percent. Anyone who comes to that factory would see it. If this was all smoke and mirrors and it was all a marketing scheme, I didn’t have to move to Detroit. I could have stayed very comfortably in my home in New York and done this from you know, the fifth floor of our store on Franklin Street. But that’s not what it is. It is a huge level of investment. We just expanded to a second floor in the building we are in in Detroit

JP: Which is in itself a historic building that you redid. So it’s almost a symbol as well of the transformation.

BR: We didn’t redo the whole building; we just redid the floor that we’re on. But it’s a beautiful building. It’s called the Argonaut. It was an old GM design center so there’s so much history just in the building. Today, it is the College of Creative Studies.  A lot of design students come out of that school, particularly in product design and certainly automotive design.

JP: Right, and so, can you tell us things that you do around management, so beyond the shop floor? And maybe choosing what product categories come next, etc. that would show how this mission influences your choices and your processes, and maybe your hiring, and maybe your corporate culture.

BR: We look at two sides of products. One, are brand builders. So, bikes. It’s never going to be a huge business, we probably sell about a thousand bikes a year but it’s such an integral part of our story. People love them and they’re gorgeous. Is everyone in the market for a three thousand dollar commuter bike, probably not. But, you know, they understand the quality and the craftsmanship; they can appreciate it. And for the consumer that is in the market for that it’s certainly a differentiator for us.

Another one in that would be, of course now I am losing my train of thought. Pets, pet accessories would be another one.

JP: You already have pet accessories?

BR: Yes, we launched it last year with Bruce Webber, the photographer, who is well know for his love of dogs especially. He said, I’ve always wanted to do this. I think everyone at Shinola has a dog, or almost everyone. And, so we came out with a pet accessories line. Again, never going to be a huge business, but certainly in line with the lifestyle of our consumer and is complimentary to the brand.

On the other side of that, are the volume drivers. Watches. Leather goods have a huge opportunity to expand beyond what we’re doing today. Audio, if you look at what Beats did to the headphone market, there’s huge opportunity there.

So that’s how we look at the brand, there are volume drivers and brand builders, and those brand builders they’re really more than just window dressing. They’re really an answer to the lifestyle consumer.

[22: 50]

JP: That makes sense, and it’s very classic model. On the audio, I can’t wrap my mind around yet. Is there something being done with the hands or manufacturer that would employ people in the audio product?

BR: Yes. With each category, and same goes for audio, we work with experts that are leaders within that category. In the case of bikes, it’s Sky Yaeger who for decades is very well known in that industry. Same with audio, with audio it’s a combination of working with partners that we’ve painstakingly identified. People like VPI, who are turntable manufacturers, a family owned and run business out of New Jersey, in fact, to help us, guide us through that process.

We always look to what part of the manufacturing can we do in Detroit. Assembly, of course, is something that’s a no brainer. In the case of the turntables, they will all be assembled in Detroit and potentially assembling the cartridge, which is the needle portion, in Detroit as well. I recently learned that there’s a correlation between watch making and cartridge making. In fact, one of the top cartridge makers happens to be Swiss.

JP: All right, and you have one big factory there that does all these product categories or you distribute it over town?

BR: So we have on the fifth floor we have our watch assembly. We have our leather factory where we’re producing over fifty percent of our leather watchstraps, and we’re also doing some of our small leather goods. We are looking to expand that to do more of our leather products. We assemble all of our bikes in the Detroit store, and we’re doing the dial printing which represents a percentage of our dials out of Detroit as well. So, assembly will happen there on the fifth floor as well.

[24: 43]

JP: What’s the culture of Shinola as an organization?

BR: Oh, it’s super fun. I mean it’s such a, I suppose I am biased because I work there, but it is such a great place to work. No one has an office. It’s great, open plan space. You go in the factory, there’s R&B music playing. People have smiles on their faces. There is only one cafeteria, so everyone from the watch factory to e-com to graphic designers are all eating in one place. They know each other’s names. We go out for drinks on Fridays around the corner to a local bar called Northern Lights. I think it’s a rarity to have, certainly me on the marketing side, to know the names of the people making the products that I am promoting. It’s really something special.

JP: How many people work in marketing by now in Shinola?

BR: Marketing we’re a small group. Shinola, in totality, we employ over 500 people. That includes retail staff in our now thirteen stores. In manufacturing we have, I believe, three hundred. In marketing, gosh, we’re about five.

JP: Any stories yet of people coming from the shop floor and taking up management positions or…?

BR: It’s funny that you mention that. I know there was a recent instance; I think somebody moved from the leather factory onto the other side. And certainly from retail moving up as well. That opportunity is there.

We have regular town hall meetings where everyone gets represented with the campaigns that we have coming up, the new product. I let them know after I’ve presented the campaign that if you have any ideas, come up to me. They make an appointment, they come by and we sit and chat, and they have ideas about new products, about events, about how to market the brand, and we listen. In some cases, we take them up on their ideas. For instance, and this is a small thing, but believe it or not, we didn’t think of it. One of our head watchmakers came and said, you know for the daylight savings time that comes up in March I believe, why don’t we do a video to change the time on their watch? It sounds really simple but some people don’t understand how to do it. So, you know, it’s that kind of dialogue that we have.

[27: 14]

JP: The last thing I wanted to ask you about is you talked a lot about the lifestyle of your audience and that the product extensions would be logical etc. We talk a lot in our book about the balance between ‘inclusivity’ and exclusivity as being a tool of modern prestige and modern premium brands. Where in the past, it was all about exclusivity based on price, prominence, precious material, VIPS, and exclusion. Today it is much more subtle and exclusivity might come more from knowledge or from subscribing to an ideology or even a certain political view, etc. Do you see this in your community? Do you have people who are part Shinola and those who are not? And those who want to be?

BR: No, what’s great is that there’s such a wide spectrum of consumers that are attracted to this brand. We are absolutely inclusive. That doesn’t mean that we’re trying to be everything to everyone because we all know that’s a recipe for disaster.  But it appeals to such a wide variety of people and you see that when you go in our stores. Over the Christmas holiday, we all have to sign up, and work in the stores in Detroit. So we all have to do it, whether you are a designer working on the website, or if you’re on the marketing team, or if you’re graphic designer- you have to work in the store. What’s great about that is you get to see the variety of the consumer.

It’s everything from a 65-year-old retiree who just believes in the story and wants to support the brand to a young Wayne State University student that’s buying into the brand. Either buying the notebooks or having mom or dad buying them a watch, to the professional, who’s maybe working at Quick and Loans, and is really passionate about the story. The styling, its pretty classic product. It’s not trendy. It’s product that’s evergreen. You’re not going to feel like, oooo maybe I won’t wear that in a year or six months from now.

It really does have a broad appeal. But I think that the running theme, I would say, across all those types of individuals is this belief in the story and wanting to wear products that they feel good about and they can talk about.

[29: 51]

JP: So you don’t have people who say, “these are all fools being fooled by marketing and I’m never going to buy a product like this?”

BR: There are definitely some nah-sayers, most of which have never been to the factory. Who just think this is, you know, carpet bagging, whatever words you want to use. Now everyone can give their opinion, which is the beauty of the internet, but also you know, not backed up by facts.

JP: Right. Right.

BR: Look, in the end, everyone has a right to their opinion. We know what we’re doing. We feel good about what we’re doing. We wouldn’t continue to market and position ourselves as such if we didn’t feel like we were telling an authentic story. Like I said, all you have to do is walk into the factory. I don’t need to tell you, you just need to go and see it and you’ll go, “Okay. Got it.”

JP: But obviously, this belief and this way of executing comes at a price so, these products will not be the cheapest in their categories to come around for what they do.

BR: Correct, this is not a fifty dollar watch.

JP:  So at a minimum you need to be willing to pay for this belief.

BR: Definitely. I think our prices are approachable. I get that not everyone perhaps wants to spend seven hundred dollars on a watch. For someone who’s used to spending more, it is a great value and a no brainer. For some people, they save up to buy a Shinola watch. We think it’s approachable enough that it’s at a price point certainly to enable us to do it in the U.S. But also it’s accessible enough, perhaps with a little savings you could, or you buy a notebook, or you buy shoeshine.

JP: Thanks a lot Bridget for your time and insights.  I am sure people will want to engage with Shinola after hearing this. What are good ways in to learn more about the brand, to join the brand, to visit the brand?

BR: Certainly, I encourage anyone to go to our stores, but certainly a first stop is our website.

JP: And you have 14 around the world?

BR: Yes, including London, there’s 14 now. San Francisco was the most recent one in the States. We have a few more to go this year… I want to say eight more. That’s a lot of work to do.

Our website, we also have a section of the website called “The Journal,” which is our blog. In fact, there are ten or eleven stories right now up on some of people who are working both in the watch and leather factories. And our social media, we are very active on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest. We’re not on Snapchat yet.

JP: Excellent. You don’t need to be on every platform I guess, only the ones that fit.

BR: I agree. It’s what makes sense for the brand.

JP: Excellent, well thank you so much again Bridget, this was great.

BR: You’re welcome.

“If toilet paper can make you happy… Why not? Life is hard enough! …” – In this podcast episode we muse with Paulo Pereira Da Silva, CEO of the Renova about how he has transformed this long-standing Portuguese tissue maker into a brand that brings live and style to ‘citizens’ across the world – and grows despite competing in a very mature consumer goods category and charging premium prices (or because of it). Paulo dislikes the term ‘consumers’ used by most marketers and he is puzzled when journalists or academics ask him why he colors his toilet rolls in bright colors, packs them in yogurt-like cups, has them worked into pieces of interactive art and sold at museum and designed stores.  “Why Not?” is his answer, and this quote is written in large letters on the walls of the Renova plant. That plant in the rural center of Portugal has been transformed into a reactor where creativity, art and engineering fuse to create ‘surprises for our citizens’ and where a community gifted youngsters work and experienced paper engineers work and -for some- live together in historic factory buildings that are now lofts decked-out with modern art.  It is more than symbolic that this ecosystem sits atop the source of the Almoda river.  The river feeds the production and the souls at Renova and also attracts classes of spelunking anthropologists who have discovered Pleistocene human remains in the cavernous underground.

If this all sounds bigger than toilet paper to you, almost mythical, then you will make Paulo happy.  Because that is how this student of quantum physics got stuck at Renova after he started an internship there over thirty years ago and it is what he wants to create with his brand: some myth and magic in our lives that is ‘hard enough’.

You will also hear about…

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON BELOW to hear the podcast on your device. There is also a full interview transcript at the end of this post, a PDF file for downloading as well as relevant links, discussions and further reading.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ueberbrands-episode-7-paulo-pereira-da-silva-at-renova-v1.mp3

 You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes, Android , Stitcher or to our blog for new post notifications by clicking the button in the sidebar –>

Sources and Further Reading:

For more insights what drives the success of mission driven brands like Renova, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands” and more on this blog.

You can connect with Renova and Paulo on their Facebook page.  Read about one of their recent art installations ‘Lovers of the river Almoda’ or how artists experience the event , participate in the project yourself or order your own custom-made rolls here (no, we do not get a commission).

Renova’s ‘flagship toilet’ in Lisbon as visited by Perrine Renard

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST:

JP: I’m particularly delighted to have with me the CEO of Renova, Paulo Pereira da Silva. Renova is a paper tissue manufacturer in Torres Novas, Portugal. You’re going to say, what is paper tissue? Yes, that is toilet paper and I assure you, it is a very special kind of toilet paper and toilet paper brand, Renova.

Thank you so much for being on the show Paulo.

PP: My pleasure to be with you.

[01:02]

JP: Now, the listeners are going to be intrigued: toilet paper of a special kind. Can you tell us a little bit about Renova. What makes it special, and your relationship to this brand? I think your background is quite special.

PP: It’s a very long story but I will try. My field is Physics. I studied Quantum Statistical Physics and that’s the field I like and I still like to study a little bit on the weekends. It’s a passion. But life sometimes can surprise us. I studied in Switzerland and when I finished my studies, I had an opportunity [do an internship at tissue maker Renova]. I think more than 30 years afterwards I am still [having thid experience, not] being very sure if [Renova] is my place.

[01:53]

JP: Quantum Physics, did I hear that correctly?

PP: Yes. A little bit different from paper.

JP: So, how do you bridge this?

PP: I should say that physics is related to everything- to the world, to every single atom in nature but that is not a relation. I started in Renova, working as an Engineer. The production department of Renova just to know if I should stay in research or industry. I start to work with people, on the shop floor and in production. I love to work with people. That’s my big pleasure in life. I like people. In some ways, it was a discovery.

I started in production. I spent 12 years on the production side. Ten years after, I was on the board of the company and since 1995, I am the CEO of the company.

[02:55]

JP: It seems that the company and the brand has gone through a similar discovery. It is a tissue maker but by now, it has become very human. I would say: very much part of the cultural tissue, if you’d like. Your product is going a lot beyond the material, isn’t it? It involves design and it is actually becoming a very active participant in the art scene. Can you tell us a little bit about how this happens and why you’re doing this?

PP: You know when I had been elected CEO of the company, for me, it was important to develop the company and so, the brand. Our strategy was to have a branded product and to develop Renova as a brand. For me, a brand is much, much more than what addition of atoms or molecules; a brand should interfere with people. We start this venture to build a brand and to try and have a global brand. It is still a big challenge for us. Not to think only in terms of fibers, of atoms, of molecules, of industry but try to work with the brand even if it is toilet paper.

[04:31]

JP: That must be a double challenge because [first] we’re not talking about some hipster upstart in Brooklyn, but a company that has been around for quite a long time, right? And second, we’re talking about an enormous commodity, I mean how much “lower can it get than toilet paper, ” I guess. Can you talk about those two challenges?

PP: It was my starting point. If you want sometimes I was – how can I say? – shy to work about the product, about my work, it was like a taboo.  And for me, when I go to a supermarket; the shelves with toilet paper, with napkins, with kitchen rolls are the most boring shelves. But it shouldn’t be like that, it was  little bit a challenge to change that, to reinvent the product in a way that people could hate the product, could love the product, but to have an opinion about it.

That was our work. We start with the product, of course we have to have very good products, very different products. We have to advertise the products in a different way. It’s a question of culture, of a community inside this country. We are in Portugal, we are not in a big town, we are in a small town. We have a river, Almonda River, inside our company. So very much related to water, to nature, and we build around some kind of a culture. Very well motivated people that start to love the brand we are working with. Usually, we don’t bring people from other companies to our company. We like to build our own culture, and to share it with lots of crowds, and the outside world.

JP: And it started with, I think, the paper became colored then it got into beautiful rolls that were minimalistic, modern design. Now you have toilet rolls that are in, I would call them oversized yogurt cups. Is this still the engineers or have you hired artists? Is there a community of both working together? How does creativity in paper tissue happen?

PP: You know, that is my passion and I think that’s the source of our differentiation as a brand. Of course, we have very good engineers. We learned a lot about textiles and other industries. The other side, we have to advertise. We have to build products that could surprise our clients. I don’t like the word consumers; we talk always about citizens and not consumers.

As a source of inspiration for me: artists, travels, different people from our engineers are very important. But it’s like speaking different languages and that was a problem. On the other side, I didn’t want to have artists inside Renova, like in a jail, working for creativity. For me, it doesn’t work like that. I want inspiration from different people, but from people outside the company that we have to bring inside. They must be in freedom, doing what they are doing all over the world.

So, I start to develop here a small department. Each one of the people that work in the department, they must be very creative. They must be like a child in some ways. They shouldn’t accept the world as it is. They should like to construct all the concepts, everything thing we know for sure. On the other side, they must have very eye precision skills. Every person in this department, a very small department must be like an artist but also like an engineer.

I found such people in the, you say, hard sciences: mathematicians, physicists. They are very different people. They are very open to the world, to the creativity. They don’t like to see the world as the common person; they like to destroy every concept, like a child. But at the same time, they are good to speak with artists but they are also very good to speak with engineers because they think like mathematicians and physicists. They say that engineers are not enough precise. They are very good for both sides.

This group, for me, is like a reactor of root concepts, inside the company and outside the company. I believe a lot in networks. I see the world as a super position of networks. We have to be reached with the network of every person that works at Renova. But also, with all the fans of the brand, people that are giving us ideas, like you and your books. Those guys in this department, what they do is they collect, in a very very informal way, concepts and ideas that are everywhere: inside and outside the company. And for me, there are so many, so many, so many ideas, so many talents all over the world. It’s important just to attract this talent. It’s to, in some way, to the clients some ideas from other business to our business. It’s how we get new products.

[10:33]

JP: It sounds like they are bridge between the outside world, which you want to not interfere with and you don’t want to put in a box. And your engineering group at the inside, they are the bridge between the two?

PP: Yes, but they are there also physically because I put them in a very big warehouse. They are in the center of that warehouse with some coffee machines around. Around them, I must have some people from all departments of Renova. I want that people take coffee with them, to visit them if they have an idea, to start to communicate that idea, because sometimes just if you ask someone to write an e-mail with the new idea you are creating a filter. I have to write this e-mail, I have this idea, I will write that e-mail. This one I will write tomorrow. Tomorrow, perhaps I forget it. Today, I have another thing. I want that people communicate in a very formal and very quick way and sometimes the ideas, we don’t know where the ideas start. A snowball is starting to build this idea, this concept. If it grows a lot in a biologic way, the idea will reach my office very very fast. I am not very far from there.

[11:58]

JP: It sounds like a breeding ground for creativity. If somebody was to step back you might say a lot of this creativity, a lot of this thinking probably goes way beyond engineering a better paper tissue. I was reading about your, “Lovers of the River Almonda” art installation in Toronto. I have to read this out: It says in the newspaper “it’s an interactive, participatory art installation where lovers can photograph themselves within an artificial tableau of the riverbank made of toilet paper.” (see link above) That goes beyond the job of a toilet paper. What is the thinking behind doing all of this?

PP: You know, just to tell you a small story. When we launched bright colored paper, it changed our company a lot in the industry because it gives us in some ways legitimacy in the business. I had all the journalists were asking me, “Why did you launch such a product? Why? Why? Why?” I was a little bit surprised with the question and all the time trying to have a rational answer for that question “Why”. And my answer and sometimes I start to say, “Why Not?” In our very big campaign inside the company, we have put in very big letters with a quote from [unsure: 13:30], “Why Not?”  Why do we have to do everything the same way everyday?

[13:35]

JP: To me, that might be part of the higher mission for Renova, which is why accept that so much of our life is mundane and passes by without reflection or at minimum without enjoying life. And so maybe Renova’s mission is to make life more beautiful, make life more engaging. Even in areas, no pun intended, that you would exclude usually from your life. It would be a wasted part of your life. And so, you’re a part of something much bigger than just providing utilitarian benefit to the people you don’t want to call consumers for that same reason.

PP: Exactly. But you know, you told it in such a perfect way, I have nothing to add.

 [15:08]

JP: It sounds like a lot of what you do, you and the organization do, comes from intuition and passion and you might only be able to rationalize it later in the way we currently do. And a lot of your feeling in terms of, for example, not liking the word consumer, which we find a lot among the people we talk about. They are very uncomfortable with this concept of consumption and selling, and we call it the art of the unselling. You do a lot of that. I think you haven’t run a TV ad in a couple of years. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of things you do, and what kind of reactions you want to steer with that?

PP: You know… You understood it quite well. I don’t like the word consumers but I like that people interfere with our brand, more than do a video in television. I should like it that people take selfies with our products and share it with their networks. I like that people have pleasure with our products, that they love our products. When I became CEO of Renova, all my background was in industry. So I was learning in the commercial side of the company, if I can call it like that, and I start to ask questions about advertising, about branding. You know, sometimes I like some artists. Perhaps one of my first campaigns, it has been done with Peter Lindbergh. It was for television and it was black and white, it was very different.

After I start to choose young artists and we have done some art projects- or advertising. But I call it art projects. In some way it seems to make sense, I ask an artist to do a project for us. But he should do it in all freedom of creativity, you know? Perhaps in the Sistine Chapel, the Pope asks to do, I don’t know- the Last Judgment but Michael-Angelo had the freedom to do whatever he wants. That’s the way I like advertising with artists. I chose an artist because I like his work. That like if it was a commission from Renova.

JP: You were talking earlier about selfies ….  I found on the Internet that you have quite the community. A community of people but also of influencers. The Press likes you a lot. You have tons and tons of business school case studies and journalists who are following you around. Renova is kind of the toilet paper superstar; in fact, there is probably no other toilet paper that would have this kind of level of stardom.

PP: Let me just tell you one thing about that. That’s true. That is a lot about intuition, about our way, our adventure because we love it. It is very very funny, because you have tons and tons and tons of papers from Harvard, INSEAD, etc. Very big schools where people study what we are doing and sometimes it is very funny to read all the rationales after and to write the story before.

JP: It’s called ‘post-rationalization’. …. But what I wanted to get at was, I am sure you have some kind of community….

PP: That community is fantastic. Our fans, they are quite different, they different from one culture to the other. But I will not to pretend to understand exactly what it is, that way I will be lost. If they are academics that want to do it, I love that but the actual world is very complex. You can have all the big scholars and everything but in this complex world, it is a very fluid world.

If we make a mistake, they will tell us [our community]. Once we have done a small video, for the Internet. A very very small video and they think that that was not a surprise that it was similar to one that has been done before. They complain a lot. They gave us an enormous amount of pressure to be coherent, to stick to our DNA, to surprise them.  We are inspiring and they are inspiring us. It’s a two-way relationship but with very different people.  There I agree a lot with you. We try to manage all those networks in a different way. Sometimes we are doing a lot of things for very big towns, ‘urban archipelago’. We have a strategy for ‘urban archipelagos’.  And that’s very different from our strategy, for instance, for French regional retailers, that are huge.

In some ways, it’s always our DNA, but we must communicate in different layers. It’s not possible to be exactly the same to everybody, because for that, we have to put lots of money like big consumer product companies in advertising, to have everywhere the same product. We try to work in exactly a different way. We talk about personalization. We are doing a lot in that we are investing a lot into personalization.

[21:02]

 JP: That’s interesting because it almost counter-intuitive to me. You say, “we cannot afford to be like the big brands, to have the same message every where, and to pump big dollars into marketing.” It seems to me, that working both: the mass world of supermarket and the long-tale world of museum designer stores in South Korea – I heard you just got distribution there – or even the individual, one-on-one product making on the Internet… Trying to balance both, must be even more complex and more difficult. How are you able to handle that?

PP:  As a physicist, I love complexity. I hate a very predictable world. Nature is not like that, nature is very complicated. I think we must start to love complexity. It makes part of life, it makes part of business.

We just launched a Christmas package, and it costs 30 Euros. That we send to the houses of people directly, very quickly. In Europe, if you talk to a retailer, 30 Euros of toilet paper is enormous. You know, sometimes we have to look to the world in a different way because if I propose that pack to one of my clients in the supermarket they will say: ‘No, it’s too much’. Sometimes we are doing directly but to see, and it works with not too much people.

[Backround Noise on Paulo’s end of the line]

I am sorry because it is a warehouse…

JP: I see, because there is a big interference, here.

PP: Mario has asked them to be quiet…

[22:55]

 JP: So, you’re located very close to the warehouse as well? Not only from the thinking center, but also the making center?

PP: You know, the headquarters of our company are inside the original factory of Renova. It is a very old factory where we have inside the factory, the source of Almonda River.

JP: Inside the building is the source of the river?

PP: Yes. The factory has been built around the source of the river. So, it’s our river in some way and it’s very related to our soul. Very related to water, to nature, and our headquarters are here. We are changing these buildings like a start-up office in New York. People are quite amazed the way we work. We have a lot of young people coming from different countries that are working here in this building. Even with Lofts, where they can live inside. It’s a little bit crazy.

[24:00]

JP: It sounds like a mythical place. You know, to have the source of a river inside the center of your company…

PP: It is!  … And with lots of stories because you have some caves, very big caves at the source of the river. Some universities they are doing speleological studies in the caves. Diving inside the caves. They found human bones inside thousands and thousands of years old. It’s a special place.

It gives us a lot of personality.

JP: And as all things mythical they make us digress… I wanted to get back, though, to the supermarket, the design store challenge, because you are creating magic.

How are you able to have a brand that is allowed to exist and be respected in both? Usually the designer store would say: no, thank you if you are in the supermarket. The supermarket will struggle with what you said earlier, an intellectual toilet paper that wants to sell itself for thirty-five dollars or thirty Euros.  How are you able to create this enormous bridge?

 PP:  It is not easy but we have very different products and are the same brand. I think all the old concepts are changing. You can’t have a Mercedes car that is not expensive nowadays. Or in H&M, you have every year designers that are doing something for H&M. I think more and more the concepts are changing. I don’t like to put a label in people about income or social class or something like that because almost everybody goes everywhere. But of course, we have to be very careful not to purpose the same products in the same places. There are some things that do not work in one place.

[26:13]

JP: In spirit, it is still trying to be the best product for you [the customer]. Maybe that is what’s holding it together and it doesn’t matter at which spending level and which retail environment you encounter it. It’s true to itself.

PP: That’s absolutely true. You should not discriminate people.

 JP: And so, the obvious discrimination that is sometimes happening, the concept of: Basic, Better, Best, Deluxe… Maybe that actually achieves the opposite because it makes the brand look like it is obviously discriminating. 

PP: Yes, I agree with you.

[26: 58]

JP: I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I’m just thinking out loud. I have two final questions, if you have just five more minutes. How do you approach growth as a CEO of such a company and what’s your way of growing and what makes you happy in terms of growth?

PP: I don’t know if I should tell you the truth or not. You know…., I am totally unhappy because we should grow and I think we will grow much more. But we are talking about the brand.  It’s very easy to grow in our industry of our product doing private label [product]. If you are in Portugal, a country with 10 million people and you are trying to globalize that brand with your own resources, you must be very careful. I don’t want to lose our strategy and that means that also financially I must be able to decide about our future. I don’t want to be in the hands of the banks; investors that, at the end of the day, will decide about our future.

So I prefer to have growth that is quite slow but congruent with our strategy. Nevertheless, we are investing a lot in this moment here because we have doubled capacity. We are building a new factory in France. So we are increasing a lot, our capacity.

JP: If I was a Goldman Sachs analyst, would I be right to say then that you are growing at least in line with the industry. If you’re building factories, it would seem to me that your growth rate at least, maybe not your absolute size, but your growth rate might be above that of an industry that is probably quite mature.

PP: Our growth rate is much bigger than the industry.

[29: 04]

JP: Okay, so that’s what I wanted to confirm without asking you for numbers. So, while you’re dissatisfied, other people in the industry would be jealous of your growth rates at least.

 PP: Because we are quite small.

JP: But with the kind of price points you have, you might not be struggling for margin either.

 PP: Yes, yes that is true. Our margins are…

JP: … are good. Okay, I don’t want to…. I know how sensitive this is. Let’s keep it at that.

PP: It’s not a problem.  You can ask me anything. It’s no problem.

JP: Couldn’t Renova be much more than paper tissue?

PP: That’s a very nice question. I should say, yes. Perhaps very soon I will surprise you.

JP: And I very much expect that. That is something we find at what point a brand that is able to create meaning beyond the material is able to go beyond the borders of that definition.

With that, just a few words on your headquarters. Are they as fantastic as everyone writes about? What makes them special?

PP: The biggest part for me, I think is the people. They are special because you have your living community of very passionate people. In many, many ways we try to work differently.

JP: And they live, some of them live at the factory and you said they come to you from around the world?

PP: Yes.

JP: So, what do you think attracts them to come and join a tissue factory in the middle of rural Portugal?

PP: I think it is the experience. Perhaps they studied abroad in university, if they come from management, or from marketing and things like that. If you want, I had a young French guy that worked for me for 18 years here but now is an important guy in Tokyo.

JP: I can imagine that.  I can absolutely see that. So, you’re a magnet actually for the business scholars and the marketing scholars and an inspiration.

To close this podcast. If people want to connect with Renova, where should they go to?

PP: Many people are getting to us through social networks. I receive many messages every day through Facebook or through Twitter. And I love, I love to receive, how can I say?, “feelings” from the fans. Sometimes there is some confusion between the brand and myself, as the face of the brand.

JP: I can fully understand that. When I met you in New York you were saying you’re being solicited so often, it explodes your calendar when we were talking about a podcast.

All the more, thank you so much for sharing your time, insights, and wisdom. This has really been incredible.

Renova rolls in their yogurt-like cups

In this episode we talk to Matteo Fantacchiotti, Global Vice President, Diageo Luxury Division in Singapore. Diageo calls their high-end liquors the ‘Reserve Brands.’ These brands have grown well above category average and well past the previous segment leader in the past years and now make up a significant portion of Diageo’s profit growth, as we will hear.  Matteo and I talk about the drivers behind this success – particularly as it relates to the Johnnie Walker brand which stretches exceptionally wide from the entry-level ‘Red Label’ at about $20 a bottle to limited edition blends in elaborate flasks that can fetch $150,000 or more. You will also get to learn…

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON BELOW to hear the podcast on your device. There is also a full interview transcript at the end of this post, a PDF file for downloading as well as relevant links, discussions and further reading.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ueberbrands-episode-6-m-fantacchiotti-at-diageo-reserve-brands.mp3

You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes, Android , Stitcher or to our blog for new post notifications by clicking the button in the sidebar –>

Sources and Further Reading:

For more insights what drives the success of mission driven brands like Chipotle, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands” and more on this blog.

You can connect with Diageo Reserve Brands on LinkedIn.

Watch the Johnnie Walker ‘Gentlemen’s Wager’ films on the Ueber-Brands Youtube channel. There is also a film about the John Walker House in Shanghai and about the Odyssey Yacht and Tour around Asia and then the world in the spirit of John Walker & Sons.

The re-enactment of the John Walker voyage and balanced Odyssey bottle we talk about in the interview. Epic in action.

A short presentation on the Reserve Brands portfolio of Diageo and some of the key marketing tools mentioned in the podcast.

More perspective on the changes in luxury and high priced liquors from Diageo Reserve Brands Managing Director James Thompson.

Just a few of the Reserve Brands offerings. Note the Johnnie Walker base portfolio.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST:

JP Kuehlwein (JP):  I’m particularly delighted to have Matteo Fantacchiotti on the other side of the line.  Matteo is  Global Vice President at Diageo of the Luxury Division, they also call it ‘Reserve Brands’ and he is located in Singapore.

JP: Thanks for joining us in this podcast Mateo.

MF: Hi JP, delighted to be here and thanks for having me.

[01:07]

JP: Mateo can you tell us …what is Diageo? What is Reserve brands? And why are you in Singapore?

MF: Well, I’m enjoying the lights of this beautiful city here. That being said, Diageo is the leading company in spirits, globally.  We are a British company have some of the biggest spirit brands in the world not only brand like Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Baileys, and Captain Morgan but also like Guinness in beer.

Now, these are big business as you can imagine and few years ago we created this new luxury unit which is called ‘Reserve Brands’. We wanted to do something different which was taking our luxury portfolio grouping all the brands that we thought, both from our price point and also because of the model that we want to apply to grow those brands. The stories, heritage and craft are the root of those brands and liquid. So, this is our Reserve business unit and I’m leading the commercial function of this unit.

And the reason why I’m based in Singapore is because two years ago part of the team as moved to Singapore for two reasons – one Asia was one of the fastest growing market in luxury and it still is, and the consumer dynamics in this part of the world are really different. So, we wanted to be here to understand this part of the world better. But I still have a global job and I travel most of the time.

 [02:56]

JP: Interesting… We will get to the Asian consumer but before we do that I want to get back to something that you imply with how you describe your department. It seems like somebody in the Diageo organization felt the need to create a separate unit and it seems like it is geographically removed from the rest of Diageo. Can you talk a little bit about the drivers? Why you need to separate from the rest of the brands that you listed earlier?

MF: We see the way to build those brands and to commercialize those brands. And the way that we talk to consumers has been really different from what we will do for brands like Smirnoff or Captain Morgan. They (Smirnoff, etc.) are still premium brands and we operate with our marketing capabilities that historically have been quite renowned and awarded in the industry in a much more traditional way.

When it comes to Reserve brands, first I just want to clarify the price range is pretty wide. We move from $40 dollar that is for brands like Kettle One or Johnnie Walker Gold Label (their price range is between $40-$60) to brands like King George V, Johnnie Walker or our special releases in whiskeys, that might range from $5000-$150,000

JP: How much liquor does $150,000 buy you?

MF:  Well, when it comes to that price it is really high end and it might be either very limited edition of one of the commemorative releases like Diamond Jubilee, that was a special Johnnie Walker release we did for the Diamond Jubilee to celebrate the Queen. I think in my memory we sold something like a hundred bottles but it might be also really bespoke whiskey.

So, there are a number of programs like the whiskey taylor or the single cask that can later expand on later, if you like. They are really much selected number of bottles for high network individuals that would require a brand that can either pick and choose from our incredible selection of cask that we’re having in Scotland or they can even work hand in hand with our master-blenders to create their own blend, as they like. This is where the price goes up to that level. This is where Asian or Chinese consumers would go crazy for those kind of opportunities.

[06:06]

JP: So, we will definitely get into that because a lot of readers are very keen to understand how that works. But one more time can you give us an example how your organization is set up and/or acts differently from the part of Diageo that sells Smirnoff, for example?

MF: It is different in the way we organize, so in every single market we have a dedicated business unit with dedicated people and those are the people who we select with specific skills and capabilities in mind and are different from the rest of Diageo people. The commercial approach and the distribution is very different. So, in the luxury division we have a very specific customer segmentation and a very specific city strategy whereas in our premium business we focus to be everywhere and to invest and activate our brand everywhere. In our luxury division we have something that we call the new city growth which is a very specific number of cities and hotspots globally that we decided to activate our brand and focus and we want to connect with our luxury consumers and luxury travelers.

It is a city strategy approach, within those cities very specific customer segmentation to make sure that we focus on the right places and those places might also change brand by brand, there is a fine tune element. And then, it is the marketing model which is about creating the needs as opposed to meeting and satisfying the consumer needs.

[08:38]

JP: I notice a couple of things that we come across in our Ueberbrands, one is we talk in our book about this concept of “in mass marketing the consumer is boss”, and many of the brands we talk about it is more “the brands that is boss” and it seems to me that is kind of what you described when you said it is more about the creation of needs than hunting needs that exist.

MF: That might be right. And I tell you something, JP.  Sometimes to be extreme we even say to our people in the market “Don’t do too much consumer search” because sometimes when we think we have a good idea, we think we have an amazing experience and we just go for it and if we ask for consumer in advance they will not know what they are looking for or they will not give us the right answer and we don’t want to hear that.

JP: Exactly. And another element that you bring up is what we traditionally call PR and events, maybe much more important than retail work and featuring, or come at least in addition to the tradition mass marketing advertising work for example.

MF: Yes, absolutely. So what I will say is, we are very clear for each one of the brands who are the people that we want to be our advocates and who are the people that we want to be our amplifier. We need to find a way to connect to those people so that they will have the best possible brand experience and they will learn our story and also go to them in away and would right tone so that they would be able to tell our story. And storytelling, word of mouth and advocacy are one of the most powerful and also profitable, I will say, growth drivers nowadays.  Because consumers and especially Millennials are one of the biggest chunk of luxury consumers, You know, we always think about high net worth individuals that are of course key target for us.  But Millennials are really the biggest chunk. They prefer not to be really marketed-to.  They are less loyal and more informed, and they prefer recommendation and word of mouth and they prefer to discover. So, we use PR and a typical influencer mobile to make this machine that we call ‘social diffusion model’ to work in the right ways of our brands.

[11:08]

JP: How do you recruit? Do people stay longer or is it just as the rest of the organization?

MF: When we started we started recruiting mainly externally just because we needed to drive capabilities. There was the need for us to create a new DNA for a company and to protect the DNA because we are still part of a big FMCG company. So, there will always be the temptation to scale up fast, to go more mass with a much more mainstream mindset, if you like. So, it was about creating this DNA and we started recruiting more from outside, and I can give this example as an Italian.  The beauty of being Italian is that for years you are being surrounded by beauty, in every possible form whatever it is – art, design, food, wine and most of the time luxury is running in your blood, you just get it – whether you are rich or not. And there are many people, you don’t need to be Italian to understand it. So, we were first recruiting from the entertainment and hospitality industry and always looking out for ‘Does this guy get Luxury? Does this guy have a global profile?’ Someone that gets global trends, is a traveler, is interested in what’s going on in the world and has this sense of executing differently in luxury. This is the lense that we apply and I think today the balance is also internal growth because once you establish that community of people that really understand what it is then it is much easier and faster to grow your capabilities internally because it just becomes as a community with self-nurturing talents.

[13:10]

JP: And that totally makes sense… Interesting to see that you choose entertainment as a source [for recruiting] versus luxury. It also sounded like you’re pursuing something, that we call the concept of “ring-fencing”, to basically separate people and try to create continuity and skill development within your little group. Is that also something that you’re doing?

MF: Yes, absolutely. And I think we are in much better place today but I will say that four-five years ago part of my role was really ring fence and protect and insist with each and every senior stakeholder in the organization why we needed something different.

[14:03]

JP: It’s interesting also that you make reference to a natural feeling as to what luxury is and your ‘Italianess’. We had a podcast talking about Brunello Cucinelli and a big part of the conversation there was the concept of ‘Sprezzatura’, which is a Renaissance concept about the beauty of things and the beauty of living, refinement and luxury.  So, it reminded me of that conversation.

After talking about the organization everyone burns to understand your incredible price range with stunning price points at the top – and that by itself is already something people will want to understand. But what is even more surprising is that you have such a price range within one single brand and that particular brand is Johnnie Walker where you have the Red Label which is kind of your entry segment or diffusion line as a luxury brand would call it, price around $20-$30 depending on the store and then it goes up and its Gold, Green, Blue and Special Edition and George V and Odyssey and John Walker, …. and can reach several thousand dollars. Can you explain a little bit about how you build such a portfolio? How do you make it credible and authentic so that people who spend thousands of dollars don’t feel cheated by the fact that something that’s called the same is also available for $20?

MF: Yes, let me split the question in two parts – one is the overall portfolio. That is quite easy. We think luxury today is much more multi-dimensional than it was in the past, it is growing, evolving and democratizing and it has different forms. We segment our portfolio in such a way that it has luxury which is entry level price $50-$100 and ‘Core Luxury’, which is the sort of ‘proper luxury’ we (all) have in mind with brands like Johnnie Walker Blue or Louis Vuitton bags or ‘Prestige’ which is the real high net-worth bespoke treatment. And when we do that we have a quite different approach.  The philosophy is the same, the social diffusion model is the same, but the way that we execute that model is quite different.

Now, when it comes to the single brand this is of course quite different and to answer your question also quite difficult. So, how do we do it? This is a million dollar question!  I think with Johnnie Walker we managed to do it so far in quite nice way, we managed to create an icon brand like Johnnie Walker Blue label that is really helping us along the way. When a consumer buy a Johnnie Walker they’re not just buying one of the best couture whiskey’s in the world, they’re buying the whole experience that Johnnie walker brings … with all the meaning that the brand has.   Johnnie Walker as a brand inspires and celebrates personal progress and that is something that matters to everybody. Personal progress is what drives people to go far . There’s story in the heritage of the brand that is where all these concepts of personal progress come from. Created by a man who was part of a family of farmers and had a grocery shop in Kilmarnock.  All the story of the brands comes through. That is where the brand is not just whiskey, it is an icon of progress and the consumer are just feeling the experience.

When it comes to price point, we are trying to get Johnnie Walker Blue Label to be seen as the iconic part of the brand and provide halo to the rest of the portfolio. But what I like to think is that even a consumer that is drinking Johnnie Walker Red label at a price point which is skewed towards $20-$25 they will feel that they are having a sort of luxurious experience because they are still experiencing a brand with hundred years of heritage, with an incredible story that even at that price point has the mastery of our master-blenders at the service of that entry level variant work.

[18:43]

JP: Well, let me just clarify two things. Can you tell me what the price range of the blue icon is?

MF: Blue is around $200.

JP: And then what existed first – the red label or the blue label?

MF: The Red Label. The blue label is actually quite new and has been around nearly 13 years. The blue label has been a game changer in the whiskey arena.

JP: Let me attempt my interpretation of how this mystery of being able to up-tier from Red and Black to Blue and then Green and ‘George’ and so on might work…  If I’m using what we find across these brands (in our research), I would say you’re been able (and generations of Johnnie Walker Marketers have been able) to distill not only a great whiskey but also a great meaning into this beverage beyond just being a whiskey, and that (meaning) is, as you call it – “a celebration of personal progress’.  – That is much bigger than the product itself.

And then you tagged it to an iconic representation that, in this case, is this Blue Label manifestation of the brand.  And then you celebrate it with a lot of icons and rituals. The icons being, for example, the walking figure on the bottle.  A you add some history and some myth – i.e. parts that are not completely explained about Johnnie Walker as a person and what you call his ‘odyssey’ or legendary voyage which you interpret in new ways…   How does that sound to you?

MF: Yes, JP. This is where I tried to get, the whole story and heritage of the brands is such a powerful one that we just decided to elevate the story and the symbols. And Johnnie Walker Blue Label is a pinnacle because it is the tribute to the legacy of one man’s vision, his skills, and his views of the world, his entrepreneurial, visionary way of changing the world of luxurious Scotch whiskey, perfecting the art of blending.  And the way in which we execute that is of course, what we think helps to break through to consumer’s impact the way they perceive the brand. Because we created over the last couple of years, experiential events for Johnnie Walker Blue Label that are absolutely pioneering in 9beling) multisensory and linked to the story.

[21:43]

JP:  And there are two that stand out for me that I would love to talk about – One is the Johnnie Walker ‘Odyssey’ and you told me that there’s a new movie with Jude Law that we’d love to hear about, and the other one is a place which I think you call the ‘Johnnie Walker House’ in Shanghai. Can you tell us about the Odyssey and its significance and how it works and what it is supposed to do, and then about the House.

MF: Odyssey was a variance which is a very interesting liquid because of the blend of three different malt whiskey that we launched to celebrate a experiential campaign that we did a couple of years ago which was called “The Voyager” and what we did was to replicate the voyage of Johnnie Walker with a sailing ship that cruised from Asia up to Latin America.  Basically we were bringing to life the whiskey (sea transport) experience and celebrating the story of Alexander Walker and his vision to supply the world. The Odyssey bottle shape is made in a way that was exactly how one of the oldest Johnnie Walker variances was made with a swinging bottle that is shaped in a way that when you sail in the sea the bottle (is always stable).

JP: I’m a sailor, I appreciate that…

MF: This is again a way where you link a limited with a big experiential event, celebrating again the story of the brand and the story of its founder. The Johnnie Walker house in Shanghai is something quite similar.

Everywhere in the world but most of all in some of the developing markets, we feel that partnering with our best customers either on premise (ie bars) or off-premise (at home) to believe in the brand experiences and believe in the story telling either of the bartender or of the staff is not enough.  It is not enough to bring the consumer along on our journey.  So we started to feel that we needed to create physical spaces that we own so that we can have a more personal conversation with our target consumers. We can recruit them and we can control the experience to an even greater degree. This is how the Johnnie Walker House started because we felt that with Chinese consumers in China there was an opportunity to tell the story of whiskey, and then specifically of Johnnie Walker in a more powerful way. This is our way to have consumer’s understand what our whiskey is, giving them the right experience, giving them the stories to tell and also to open up to a certain kind of consumers access to some of the more limited edition that are exclusively sold in that House.

[24:40]

JP: This is an interesting part here because you’re talking about giving people tools and stories to share, is that correct? Does this come back to what you talked earlier about advocates and amplifiers?  Who is going to the Johnnie Walker House?

MF:  This is exactly that. The Johnnie Walker House is only open to the consumers that are invited, they become members of the House; especially the one in Shanghai that is the first one we opened.  So we have what we call ‘patrons’, which are members of the house and then they can invite friends, have dinners or access our whiskey bar or buy limited edition that they can just find there. And learn stories that they can tell a lot of people and this is where you balance the exclusivity of the experience with much higher audience who want to reach anywhere with word-of-mouth and storytelling.

JP: This is a fantastic illustration of a concept that we call in the book ‘the Velvet Rope’ and the principle of creating Longing vs Belonging.  What it means is that you have that one group has access and is able to get beyond the velvet roap (which comes from the club environment with the bouncer who basically decides who’s in and out) and has this exclusive experience.

And of course, if it was just about these few people, you would not have the sales and you would not create the awareness that you need to create a substantial business. So, the important point is here they’re so proud about it that they will tell everyone outside about it and then also its enabled by modern technology, because I’m sure there’s a lot of social media going on about what’s going on inside this House that other’s cannot have access to, but it creates an incredible desirability to be there. – Is that right?

MF: The balance between longing and belonging is of course something that we use a lot and all the brand experience that we create in what we call the ‘trend leading accounts’ of course is not only targeting the people that are part of the experience at any given night, but the whole purpose in PR magnification is to reach as many consumer as we can with that message.  Which is part of what internally we call the distance we create between the people that know and see the brand  and the people that can afford it. But I think it reflect your concept.

When it comes to the high-net-woth individual and Prestige, you need to do that in a much more subtle way. And therefore, it is much more about word of mouth, creating the myth and much less magnifying through PR in a more aggressive and visible digital strategy or media strategy.

[27:52]

JP: That absolutely works. Today’s ways of creating this Longing and of creating this ‘who’s in and who’s out’ can be much more subtle. They don’t need to be any more about ‘ I have the gold ‘ or ‘I have the precious materials and you cannot afford them’. In fact, this is considered too obvious. Often it’s about knowledge, it’s about access, it’s about recognizing subtle signals that you’ve been taught to know about but the others have not that you’ve found ways to find out and others have not and those create the difference versus the classic ‘I’m in and you can try, but you won’t be admitted because you don’t have the money’.

But I saw – I think it was in the film about the Johnnie Walker House – that there is a quote above the door that says “Only few can get in, but many want to”. Is that right?

MF: Yes, absolutely. And this is the difference. So, when it comes to the Johnnie Walker House it is about creating the myth of what has happened in that House. About the dream to get the money to be able to get invited to be a ‘patron’, to experience what is in there.  But I really do not know what it is, unless I’m a friend or fan and I’ve heard the story in the media.

JP: Wonderful, you used the words we are using (in the book) which is ‘mythical’ –  you can’t quite grasp it, you don’t quite know and that makes it all the more desirable to be part of it.

Do you do ROI payout calculations and can you share if it is worth it?  Because it sounds like it’s a very heavy investment?

MF: Of course, we make a ton of investment and we make a number of PR ROI claculations. I don’t think I’d personally have the confidence that we found the recipe yet.  You will always have these sort of PR values and numbesr that are ‘debatable’.  You really need to see the quality of the coverage to understand what the message that the consumers got in the end.

[30:05]

JP: So your measure at the end is your Reserve brand business is growing.  Are there other overall measures that give you enough confidence and support to give you management to say “Yes, I want to put down another few hundred thousand or million dollars to shoot a film with Jude Law” or to send 200 bartenders on a cruise ship? ’

MF: But this is exactly the point JP. The point is, our reserve business has been doubling in the size over the last few years. It was 5 % of our total Diageo business 4 years ago, now it is 15% of our business and is delivering for the last two years almost 50% of the company growth. So, it is really a growth engine for our company. We were not leader in the super-deluxe segment 4 years ago, now we’re definite leader a couple of points distance to the second player. So, it is just working in a fantastic way.

Now, is this enough to say if we need to invest another million will we just go for it? Yes and no. In a way it will be enough because it is really delivering across the board, across every single brand and every single market but in other way the attention on productivity is so high that you really want to understand exactly what that extra million would deliver. And this is where, of course, we have a set of metrics.  But I need to tell you that it is my gut feel and sometimes also a leap of faith.  We just think it’s going to work and we just do it.

JP: We also talk in our book about ‘Living it’. Are there things that you do as an organization that bring Reserve brands to live?

MF: Yes, absolutely. Our company purpose is to “celebrate life every day, everywhere”. When you have that kind of purpose I think you just need to enjoy the opportunity, live the purpose and make the most of your contribution to the company. One of the example the way these purpose come to life – simple things like every single Diageo office in the world will have a fantastic bar that is open most of the time every Thursday and Friday from 6 pm and every employee have the opportunity to go to the bar and enjoy our brands, experience our brands.  …

[32: 40]

JP commentary:    Let’s just add a note at the end of this podcast. Matteo and I really went on quite a while talking about programs like a worldwide bar tender competition and a bit more about millennials as well as the organization but I would explode the framework of this thirty minute-or-so podcast. If you’re interested I will post some bonus materials after the podcast that you can also listen to. But I want to close it here, so let’s listen to the end.

MF: … just order a bottle and offer that bottle to anyone they see around and who they think it is worth to bring on board to experience our brand.

JP: So, I guess with that Matteo you will get a lot of phone calls now with people applying and wanting to join or at least wanting to get to know you better to be invited to a drink. I will post a lot of the materials that you shared which look fantastic. You also said you might give us the new Johnnie Walker voyage, the odyssey movie.  If people are interested in the Reserve brands, what’s the best way to get in touch with those brands.

MF: I think from professional standpoint we have a nice LinkedIn Reserve brands community where we post most of the things that we do. We have websites for all our different brands that have contact information and then they can always reach out personally. It is always great for us to get consumers talking to us who are open to the world.  And the invitation to the bar, especially to you JP, is there.  Of course, I want you to see our bar and enjoy a nice Johnnie Walker Blue Label.

JP: That’s exactly why I do these podcasts! It’s interesting to hear that you have a LinkedIn group of Reserve brands.  Greetings to Singapore.

MF: Thank you very much, JP. I really enjoyed the conversation and looking forward to talk to you again.

In this episode we talk to William Espey, Brand Voice Lead at Chipotle Mexican Grill, the booming ‘casual food’ restaurant chain sought out by most for offering hearty burritos at a relatively low price*, admired by many for being an advocate for ‘food with integrity’ and attacked by some who seem to feel threatened by this outspoken stance. William and I will be talking about…

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON BELOW to hear the podcast on your device. There is also a full interview transcript at the end of this post, a PDF file for downloading as well as relevant links, discussions and further reading.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ueberbrands-episode-5-william-espey-at-chipotle-v1.mp3

You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes, Android , Stitcher and/or to our blog for new post notifications/RSS feed by clicking the bottom in the sidebar –>

William and some Chipotle communication. Click to see the ‘Farmed and Dangerous’  trailer – exploding cows included.

*…while still selling its foods at a premium over traditional fast-food chain competitors that start with an ‘Mc’ or end with a ‘-Bell’.

Sources and Further Reading:

For more insights what drives the success of mission driven brands like Chipotle, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands” and more on this blog.

You can connect with Willian via LinkedIn.

**Click see the ‘Scarecrow‘ or ‘Farmed and Dangerous‘ films by Chipotle we talk about in the podcast interview and which have created quite a stir…

… and see the reactions it triggers by some of Chipotle’s competitors.  Some more witty and subtle like this “Scarecrow (Honest Version)” and some more overtly aggressive like the one to the right by the ‘Center for Consumer Freedom‘ a lobby for the fast food, meat, alcohol and tobacco industries.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST:

JP Kuehlwein (JP): I am delighted to welcome William Espey (WE), the ‘Brand Voice Lead’ at Chipotle Mexican Grill – that sounds very intriguing and we’ll talk about that.  He’s been involved with Chipotle for the past fifteen plus years, particularly with their design and their voice, and the tonality of that voice which is fantastic, at least as far as business results would tell because, I think, Chipotle has been growing in the high double digits for the last twenty odd years or so.

JP: Thanks a lot William for being on the show.

WE: Thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

JP: I know it’s a very busy time in many, many respects right now at Chipotle, so I appreciate it even more. Now, brand voice lead is an unusual title. Can you explain a little bit about the background of this, your history with Chipotle and maybe how it mixes with Chipotle’ history overall.

[01:04 – pls always add 45sec. to adjust time stamp accuracy]

WE: It’s an unusual position and it’s everything about here has been rather unusual. I started at Chipotle over sixteen years ago, and when I started we only had twenty locations at the time and now we have over two thousand.

I had no background in marketing whatsoever. I just kind of stumbled into this, I have been living in Europe and painting. I came out of fine art and really didn’t know what to do with my life. Family, friends just sort of looked into advertising and ended up landing in a very small agency back here in Denver, where I grew up. From there I met a freelancer who became the first director of marketing at Chipotle and I gave him a call when I heard he was here. He was like “Dude, you want in?” and I was like “Sure, why not?”

So I was the first hire in the department and there really wasn’t anything here, in terms of structure. There came the opportunity that something had to be written and so, I wrote this thing and he was like “Oh, that’s easy!”, because already the established voice that had been created for Chipotle was very close in line to who I was as a person and how I communicate. I’m very reverent, snarky and I try to be intelligent with what I say. But all these things were just a very natural fit for me.

JP: So, you were writing this ad, and it came quite naturally…

WE: Yes, that was the moment of “Oh, I can do this!”, and so, I started producing stuff primarily for a local store marketing team. The main core of our early marketing was all word-of-mouth, and so we had people in each of our markets as we grew, connecting the restaurants to the communities around them, either with employers, schools or community groups. And then I was producing all the collateral that was connecting our restaurants to those groups, using the specific languages of the groups in order to create something relevant to them in terms of language, but also connecting them to the message that we had. So, there was always this playful use of words and this thing just started snowballing. For a period of about ten years, I was the sole internal creative.

Now, you give me credit for Design but I really don’t see myself as a designer, especially in those early years when our design was so incredibly simple where you had those white spaces with the floating burrito and the headline.  For me design was pretty much relegated to simply making that headline look balanced. And then I was also ragging my headline. So, how it was flowing  and made sense to me. That was the extent of design, really it was about just the writing. It wasn’t scientific at all, it was just me doing what we thought was funny and it was really kind of nirvanic experience as a creative, because I was both creative and a client.

So, I just did whatever I wanted and it was tremendously fun. And occasionally I would offend people because you don’t know where the edge is until you cross over it and then you can say, “Oh, now I know”, because if you don’t know where the edge is you’re not relevant. So, that was part of the processes.

[04:38]

JP: Now you bring up a lot of points that we find being common among Ueber-Brands, one is approaching communication and advertising in a very non-traditional way, we call it ‘Un-Selling’. And your advertising, like you say, is extremely simple and it seems to be, from the beginning, on the billboards and the gift cards. And the other thing is that it’s a very personal voice.

WE: The phrase that I coined around this was ‘The genius of naïveté’ and it was the genius of the fact that we just didn’t know what we were supposed to do. Again like I said I didn’t come from a background of marketing, so it was simply trying to engage with the audience, whatever audience that may be, based on their truths, and based on what’s important to them. A big part of what I believe in is empathy, having empathy for your audience, understanding who they are, both intellectually and emotionally, and then speaking to them in their language.

[05:40]

JP: Definitely you have a love for conversation and language, it sounds like…So I guess that’s how, … poems and essays being printed on Chipotle bags , that all made sense because it continues the tradition and integrates into the packaging of your life. Is that right?

WE: I totally agree and that too was the opportunity to do something completely unexpected in context of fast food. That idea came to us from Jonathan Safran Foer, he was the one who was sitting in one of our restaurants and said, “Hey, I’m sitting here. Wouldn’t it be nice to be reading something?” So, he approached Steve and pitched the idea and Steve’s like, “Yeah that sounds awesome”.

JP Commentary: I just want to quickly interject that we’re talking about Steve Ells who found Chipotle in 1993.

[06:33]

WE: It fits totally in line with what we’ve been doing over the years which I call the democratization of fine dining. Steve was a classically trained chef that tried to make burritos using classic cooking techniques and offering that at a price that was just unheard of for the quality of food, so that’s the democratization of this culinary process. But then, creating a space architecturally that was the democratization of a design which you just couldn’t expect for a price of $6.

So, here we are offering a $6 experience that was so far above in terms of the quality of the food, the atmospheric that we’re creating with handpicked music, I was a part of that process as well early on. We’re trying to create this thing that was almost overwhelming in terms of the quality and the experience. So, the ‘CUTS’ that we’ve done recently, the CUltivating Thought Series, that falls in line historically with what we’ve tried to create in the restaurants just because we love the experience as well.  This has been a kind of personal expression of the people who have been involved with the brand very early on. This wasn’t a thing as a strategic moment, like twenty years ago people where people are sitting around the conference table saying “Okay, we’re going to be like this”. It was just an actual genuine expression of the people who are involved with it, just wanting to share the things that we thought was cool and the things that we loved.

[08:10]

JP: Now, this mission of ‘Democratization of Great Foods’, as you call it, seems to have evolved over time and have gotten an edge. You are playing the role of ‘David versus Goliath’ and the Goliath here is obviously the industrial big foods, gene manipulated foods and others. I just discovered this comedy series that you had called ‘Farmed and Dangerous’, which has exploding cows and all kinds of things in it…explain that.

WE: We call that our ‘Food with Integrity’ mission and just like everything with Chipotle, it’s kind of happened by accident. Steve started the very first restaurant in 1993 with no intention of creating a chain of restaurants. He was just going to open one and that was it. And then, he accidentally ended up creating a chain that kind of revolutionised fast food because it wasn’t designed to be fast food from the beginning.

And the in 1998 he read an article Ed Bera’s ‘Art of Eating’ about these pork farmers in the middle of Iowa who are raising their pigs naturally. They are rotating their crops, alternating the crops with the pigs every other season and they were naturally fertilizing the soil and getting nitrogen in there and breaking it up and they would raise flakes or corn. So, he decided to go and check this out. At that point, Niman Ranch was very well known on either coast, you may go to New York or San Francisco and that’s what you’d be eating in a fine dining establishment. Steve went and checked it out and was blown away by how beautiful this experience was or how good the meat was. And so not knowing, he wanted to see one of his current suppliers. So, he arranged with our pork supplier and went and saw a normal, conventional pork farm, and he was horrified at what he saw in terms of how the pigs were being treated, what they were being fed, the filth and the stench.

And his immediate response was, we’re going to stop this right now, and he was able to work with 9 meter ranch to better utilize the carcass of the pigs. So, most of the nice cuts were going to the nice restaurants but the rest of the carcass was being sold at commodity prices, because no one else was buying. So, these farmers were putting extra effort into creating meant, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to sell it at a premium. But we went in and said, “Okay, we want all your pork shoulders” and we needed our pork recipe for the carnitas using  the pork shoulders and were able to create economies for these farmers that didn’t exist before.

When we started working with nine-meter ranch, there were approximately thirty farmers in their network. We created enough demand every time we opened another restaurant that they could bring another family farm into their network. I think, currently, they have between five to six hundred farmers, because we have so much demand for their meat.

[11:14]

JP: But, those carnitas got you into supply chain trouble… I have read a couple of times those almost cute photo-copied notes saying “No carnitas today because we cannot get enough responsibly raised pork” In my mind, this actually has a positive brand-building and brand authenticity effect. In fact, if a business is willing to not serve something – not because it’s not available at all but because its level of quality isn’t available – that’s a good signal. How does Chipotle management look at that?

WE: There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, when we got to that point. We found out that one of the suppliers wasn’t raising their pigs according to our humane raise standards, everything else was correct, in terms of diet , no hormones, etc.. But the pigs were not being treated humanely, and there was just absolutely no way we can stand for that, especially because the sort of establishing moment for us was pork. The differences in chicken and beef are purely ‘chemical’, it’s very little about how they are handled, except for the chicken to some degree. But for pork it’s a stark contrast and there was no way we could live with ourselves getting conventionally raised pork. It was just a matter of necessity, and so we decided that we’re just not going to do it.

JP Commentary: Just to point out how passionately Chipotle defended this icon of theirs, which is the Carnita Burrito. It is not only their icon in terms of product but also in terms of bringing their mission to life.

WE: We were very concerned but the reaction was amazing from the public. We were like “Wow, that was a beautiful surprise”, because people were very impressed with our stand and our unwillingness to compromise on that.

JP: That almost answers the question I had …usually people challenge me and say, “Well it’s all nice for these brands to have such high standards and this mission but the average ‘Joe’ in the street, who streams into these restaurants or buys these products, they don’t know about it.”

WE: We have studied this a lot and people are very aware of what we’re doing. And some people are on board with us because that’s an important thing for them and they seek us out, but I wouldn’t say the majority do, for the majority it’s about great tasting food. And I think for a majority of people in general, as a restaurant company, you have to realise that on a basic instinctual level a person just wants to be fed delicious wholesome food and that’s what they desire. And I think, that’s what we’re providing after all going to this idea of ‘Truth’ and it’s about tasting great, that’s the common denominator that pulls everything together … and if you would layer on top of that other conversations – maybe about culinary preparation or sourcing or other things – people come along with you, and either consciously or unconsciously become aware of important things and hopefully they become important to them.

[14:29]

JP: And you used the word ‘Truth’ a lot, which is interesting and rare and we use it in our book when we talk about ‘Living the Dream’ and brand authenticity.

… I also wanted to look at your traditional advertising, your communication. It seems to be split, where on the one hand you’ve these very simple visuals with focus on the Burrito as the icon – they literally levitate it up there and give it a saint’s halo.  And then, on the other hand, you have these – mostly digitally based – critiques   … you have the scarecrow film that talks about sustainable farming and food versus the industrial complex, you have this comedy series… is that a very conscious communication strategy you’re pursuing there? Did I get it about right?

WE: Yes, definitely. The realisation we had was you cannot talk about food with integrity in traditional advertising on an outdoor board. Someone is driving at 65 miles/hr and you can put up 5 words up there that he can read, so what can you say in that context is very little. It has to be equivalent to a pick up line in a bar. In order to have a deeper conversation about food with integrity we again came to the realisation that we needed to create deeper content and do storytelling. So, it started with ‘back to the start’ which was an allegory about pig farmer going from traditional to industrial back to traditional again. And after we did that piece, and it was so successful, we realised “Oh, this is the way we need to do this”. And by telling the story and doing it in a very truthful and transparent way, so people can see what we’re talking about and what we’re up against out there, because the machine, as it is, industrial agriculture and industry, in general, they’ve got a lot of money pouring in to make people buy whatever they are selling. So, the truth is very diluted or hidden, so we’ve realised the best way to serve the truth is in an entertaining way. Hence, looking back to the scarecrow or the farm endangered and you’re taking real truth, and presenting it in a fun, engaging and entertaining way like a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down  and people engage with it and they learn, because they are entertained in the process.

And what we’ve come to understand is that the more than people know about the industry as a whole, the more that people know about food and about what we’re doing they are likely to become our customers. So all we have to do was educate the world about what we’re doing. If you look at those pieces like farm in dangers, Chipotle has never mentioned all the actions as joke. We didn’t put the logo in there at all. The term I coined while we were developing these things was ‘It is not brand integration, it is not product integration, but it is values integration’. We’re integrating our values into those content in order to connect with the audience on an emotional level, bring them along with us as we teach them about what’s going on with us and connect with them  in a way that they want to connect with us.

[17:43]

JP: I guess the proof of the pudding that that “goes deeper” is that even though you’re irreverent and cheeky in delivering your messages, you also seem to make quite serious enemies. There is, for example, the ‘Centre For Consumer Freedom’ and they have serious attack ads [against you]… it almost seems like a political campaign. So, I guess, that makes you a player way beyond providing food, a player in the cultural and ethical sphere, maybe even in politics. Is there a mythical element to Chipotle’s? Is it the “Fighter for Better Food”?

WE: I don’t think we’re taking a position as a ‘Fighter’, we are just determined to do the right thing. Period. Honestly, it would make more economic sense for us to buy conventionally raised meats. In reality, we stand for this thing because we think it is the right thing to do. The fact that it was becoming politicized wasn’t our desire, it wasn’t our desire to make it a political issue, and it wasn’t our desire to get pulled into this dialogue in that way. But stand what we stand for and we’re not going to back down.

So, that makes it political because other people are willing to politicize that or make it an issue or make it turn into a conflict like this centre for consumer freedom and if you dig in to those people there’s some much dirty blood on their hands, it’s unbelievable.We’re simply going to say that it is about standing for the truth. It’s being truthful, honest and transparent, and if someone else wants to politicize it, Fine! But if you’re standing in the truth you can stand confidently and say whatever you need to say and need not worry about what you’re saying or how you’re saying it.

[19:36]

JP Commentary: I guess you can feel the passion here in William’s voice and the use of the word truth. In our book and in our research of Ueber-Brands, we find this very strong desire by many consumers, what they think of as the truth and, living and manifesting that truth, being a strong driver for Ueber-Brand trial and loyalty.

JP: Now, there’s one thing that I’m sure, which the listeners want us to talk about is you have not only run into this episode of supply chain trouble with the pork but also recently into some food scares like salmonella in Minnesota or E. Coli in Oregon. Some people are sarcastically saying that in the end Chipotle goes the same way as all the others, they grow so fast, they have so many restaurants, they need to process so much food, and of course they’re now ramming into the same food safety issues as everyone else. What is Chipotle’s reaction to all of this? How are you dealing with all this?

WE: This is tremendously unfortunate, we just feel awful for the people that have been affected by this. But then as we look in terms of what we are doing and how we are doing it, we determined not to take the tag of the industrial food companies because how they are preventing this kind of thing. There’s bleach in their food and if you watch the list of the chemicals that these companies are using on their food which in turn is going to people’s bodies…that is not the position we want to be a part of. So, I don’t think we’re taking the way of industrial food, in that sense. But the solutions that we’re coming up with, in order to ensure that this never happens again, is:  ‘How do you work with fresh ingredients without additives, preservatives and bleaches and be able to make it the safest food possible’.

We did an open letter from Steve and put it in 64 different publications in order to be completely transparent about what had happened, what we are doing about it and what the future holds.

[22:02]

JP: So transparency and trying to figure how to approach food your way in a safe way is your reaction?

WE: Yes. Transparency is key. You built a relationship with the public that is based on the idea of truth, speaking truth, and when something like this happens the best way to deal with it is being absolutely transparent.

I was talking to a group about this, a couple of days ago and I said this was akin to messing up with your girlfriend. The first thing you got to do is apologise profusely, you take responsibility, and you really own it. And then, you need to look at how you connected with that audience in the first place meaning how she fell in love with me in the beginning to have her fall in love with me again. So, that’s how as a brand in a crisis like this we need to look at this as be transparent, take ownership of what happened and then how do we fall in love again.

And that’s a big part of why it has been so dramatic, in terms of the media and people’s reactions, because there was so much connection, so much love with our customers that they feel hurt.

JP: That’s what we call ‘seducing rather than selling’, but obviously the fall can be even harder when you’re at that level in the relationship. Now, it gets harder though, doesn’t it? You started when Chipotle had only 20 restaurants, and now it has 2000, it’s growing at incredible speed. How does Chipotle look at the future? Is it just building one restaurant after the other to push out burritos… what’s the vision there?

WE: It’s not just to push out the burritos. Of course, we [the restaurants] are all corporate-owed. There’s no franchise involved or anything. It’s about doing what we know we can do based on a sustainable rate. And what the market will allow in terms of demand, and we found demand was there and we’re opening a new restaurant every other week, and they’re doing just fine.

Where that growth goes to? Well, we’re not pointing at a number in future and saying we’re aiming eight thousand, we’re going to aim for what naturally is. Again, this is kind of based on the psychology of how the restaurant was founded. Steve had no intention of making more than one restaurant, and the next units that he ended up opening were based on the demand that were there, the natural flow of expansion. Now, we’ve expanded into Europe and UK, we’re in Germany and France. We’re very slowly letting that develop and grow on its own pace, we’re not pushing it at all.

[24:58]

JP: I want to switch gears and talk about the design of the stores because I think it is quite exceptional in terms of integrity, not only it’s the advertising, the cards the billboards but also the restaurant themselves. How does the setup have such a consistent execution?

WE: The architecture and design of the restaurant has been a priority, from the very beginning. And again this came out of a happy accident. When Steve opened the first restaurant in Denver he had very little money to work with, so he got creative with a school friend of his, Bruce Goosewell, who was a sculptor and artist. And they used very simple materials in order to create the very first restaurant, corrugated steel and plywood and bare bulb fixtures and did it in a very clever and beautiful way to make it work but be very inexpensive. What he ended up creating was sort of this industrial chic look.

From the very beginning we had a design director who was working with every single restaurant we are opening for design for that space. You go into multiple Chipotles and you’ll see they’re all designed differently but they’re using the same ingredients over and over again, but they’re using the natural form of each space in order to make it work best for where it is.

Now, coincidentally or not, our current CMO, actually he doesn’t want to be called a CMO, he is the ‘Creative Officer’, Mark Crumpaker is also our chief development officer. So, he’s been overseeing the development team for at least two or three years now. He’s intimately involved in the architecture and the planning and the development of the restaurant as well, and he’s a designer by profession. He has done tremendously successful designing before coming to Chipotle’s and he was a long-time friend of Steve’s from way back. Actually, he designed the very first Chipotle logo. So, he comes at design with his aesthetic idea of what it is and how it works, and that’s bake into our DNAs. There’s no conflict between the operator and the designer, it is all one thing and we’re all part of the same mission and we all understand the importance of that.  So we’re all brought in to this vision, this idea.

[27:18]

JP: And Steve’s role within the organization:  Is it more towards design, creation and product development or is it more towards business, operations and financials?

WE: Steve is primarily in the realm of food. He’s a classically trained chef. We weren’t started by a banker, we were actually started by someone who lives in the culinary world. That’s where his focus is, it is on the food. But we have a cool CEO Steve, and then we have Marty Moran who is the Co-CEO, another old friend of Steve’s and he was our counsel for many years. He oversees the operations in the restaurants but most importantly he had this revelation when he came on board that we were busy hiring our middle managements for operations from outside the company trying to get other people’s experience who had been in other fast food chains and all, and he realised that it was completely broken and toxic. Because we’re bringing people who are bringing in habits from other places that were broken and he realised that the people who had the real experience of what was going on, the ones who had institutional knowledge were the ones on the Tortilla press, they were the people on the line who understood how the restaurant worked. And he turned everything on its head and we started hiring everyone at crew with the expectation that they will be running the restaurant, if not multiple restaurants.

So, we’ve created a culture of empowerment and cooperation that is just absolutely unprecedented in the fast food world. Our expectation is that we will grow these people and have them running the restaurants and be our future leaders as opposed to the other fast food restaurants where the expectation is every single person will be gone in the next three months. Because some place like McDonald’s or Burger King have a three to four hundred percent turnover rate and we’re totally against that.

[29:20]

JP: We find again this notion of more ‘Artist’ oriented and ‘Operator’ oriented leaders working together in this case [as we do find frequently in our case studies], knowing each other for a while and of people being attracted. I heard that people come to you rather than you needing to spend a lot of effort, and as you say your turnover is lower. It also seems that now that the economy is back, at least back more than it was, and you’re not the stand out in terms of growing while there’s a crisis around you, isn’t hiring getting more difficult? I heard you had this one day binge hiring, for example. I heard that you voluntarily offer a higher minimum wage. Is that a sign that the love only go so far …

WE: We need to attract good people. So, we’re talking about the base level of the economy. It’s an absolute competition in that level, it’s not about higher concepts but about ‘Can I pay my bills?’ and ‘I need a Job’. But just bringing it up a notch is allowing us to draw people that we can filter through and then get the right people too. We interview a ton of people that we don’t hire because we are very picky, our mission is that every single hire is ultimately going to be a manager. And every person coming at the restaurant, they’re getting interviewed by the entire crew and not just the manager. The entire crew is interviewing this person because they know as a team that’s how they’re going to get forward and they need to bring a team member that they can all believe in and not just someone the manager picked up from the street because they needed a warm body to push a button on a microwave, cause that’s not how we do it.

[31:11]

JP: That makes total sense. Do you think that beyond the aspect of money and career development, your passion for food, your almost missionary push for food integrity also has an impact at that level, when you hire people at the lowest level of the organization? Or does that become relevant later only in the headquarters?

WE: I think they grow into that. I don’t think on that level people can afford to think about that. I think about my life and I have been a vegetarian for twenty years and I remember that I started becoming a vegetarian when I could afford it. And then in the corporate level, they ask you questions from earlier, and I think yes, a lot of people who get involved have a greater awareness of the food system.

Now, I was speaking to an orientation group [the day before] and I was mentioning about the mission and I mentioned the fact that I was a vegetarian based on a moral principle. There was a guy in the back waving his hand in the air because he could relate to that and he clearly wanted to be a part of this because of the mission, because that’s a powerful thing to have a job where you’re doing something which is actually greater than yourself. And in the non-profit world that’s very typical, I would imagine, but in the profit world that doesn’t happen very often. Usually, it’s about money.

What my efforts are doing is making it better for animals over all, the humane treatment of animals than I can ever hope to do by protesting on a street corner. So, I’m fully committed to this mission, I’m very passionate about it. And having been here sixteen years I can’t imagine myself anyplace else because I can’t just simply believe in any other thing.

[33:07]

JP: And I can certainly feel the passion. William thanks so much for sharing that passion, those insides, your wisdom and the Chipotle story. I think it has been fantastic.

WE: Thank you for giving me the opportunity here. So, it is always sort of good to talk about this stuff holistically. I really appreciate your questions and enjoyed talking about it.

JP: I guess it’s good to like to talk if you’re the brand voice lead, isn’t it?

WE: Laughs out loud… Yes, I guess it is. It better be.

JP: If readers (listeners) want to get touch with you, where should they turn to?

WE: I speak publicly a lot, and so there are a lot of opportunities for people to connect with me. I actually can be reached through LinkedIn.

In this episode we talk to Maria Sebregondi, co-creator and VP of Brand Equity & Communication at Moleskine, the storied, little black notebook brand.  Since its creation in 1997, Moleskine has become a favorite tool among urban knowledge workers and everyone who still feels the need or appreciates the analog experience of scribbling and sketching.  The brands steady growth seems contrarian, almost defiant in an increasingly digital world.  We understand from Maria that the success can, on the one hand, be explained by Moleskine serving the fundamental human need to express ourselves and create an identity – every handwriting is very unique, even dependent on our moods, after all.  Many masterpieces start with a scribble – Maria was inspired by the many black notebooks Picasso filled.  On the other, Moleskine also invests into helping to bridge the analog-digital gap, collaborating with soft- and hardware suppliers that ‘translate’ and/or sort those scribbles into more easily manageable archives and data.

Here are some of the topics we cover in the podcast:

Get a chance to WIN OUR BOOK if you catch the German psychology term we all laugh about towards the middle of the interview. Just put your best guess into the comments below and we shall mail a book to the best, right guess.

If you want you can read along. The *approximate* interview transcript is pasted below and a pdf file download is also provided.

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ueberbrands-episode-4-maria-sebregondi-at-moleskine-v2.mp3

Sources and Further Reading:

For more on Moleskine and what drives the success of modern premium brands like it, read our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands”

The Moleskine website.  And the ‘Moleskinerie‘ website which is all about how inspirational Moleskine book contents can be, was created by a Moleskine aficionado and gathered such a dedicated following that felt compelled to buy it to access its biggest fans.

Here is a good article ‘The Virtual Moleskine’ by the New Yorker on the myth, the brand being about more than a notebook and about bridging the digital divide.

You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes or Stitcher, subscribe to our blog for notifications or have new posts fed to your RSS (see sidebar buttons on right).

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE PODCAST:

JP: Our co host and co author, he is actually here today hi Wolf Schaeffer (WG).

WG: Hi everybody, this is Wolfgang 

JP: And I know why he is here, it is because we have a very special guest today – Maria Sebregondi (MS).  Maria is co-founder, co-creator of the brand Moleskine, or is it ‘Moleskine’ (pronounced differently), we don’t quite know, and we will talk about it, and the VP of Brand Equity and Communication. Thank you so very much Maria to be with us. 

MS: Hello everybody and thank you for inviting me.

JP: Well Maria, Moleskine where do we even start, maybe with the name, because people don’t quite know how to pronounce it. Is it Moleskine; is it Moleskine can you tell us about it? 

MS: [1:57] Okay, I like to say Moleskine, but this is a literary name coming from the English travel writer Bruce Chadwin, and we think that everybody can pronounce it as they want. We even did a nice video on that, because people were asking “oh how do I pronounce this name?” and we made this video, which is representing tens of languages and pronounced it each in a different way. We love to say that Moleskine is a brand made by by the public so it can be pronounced however you want to. But take from that, that Moleskine is first of all an enabler for creativity, so it’s not a platform, hiding from blank pages from a notebook, but expanding from other kinds of platforms.

WG: Maria the conversation we had in preparation of our book [Rethinking Prestige Branding] you said that one point if I remember correctly that you see the brand in yourself also.  As someone who wants to protect the analogy kind of recording in the age of the digital. Is that right? Is that something you see as your mission?  And then how does that translate?  You’re doing a lot of projects also, that are going digital as well.  How does the mission connect with that?

MS: [3:43] It is probably more correct to say our mission is to fulfill the continuum between analog and digital activities. We need this kind of continuum; we use different kind of technology, all the time; low technology, and high technology. Even right now we are using technology. We need both analog and digital technology. You could say human beings are made of “high-level software” in the same way, we are very physical, but at the same time we are mental. And there is a part of Moleskine this will always be very physical, and we need it, but at the same time we are experimenting with the new opportunities that technology offers. Nowadays there is a continual passage from one world to another, and we at the Moleskine brand are wanting to build a bridge between these worlds in a meaningful way. So we are now, for example,experimenting with this opportunity to expand the experience of paper into the digital world and to make the transition both seamless and useful.

[5:35] For example, we have this collection of smart notebooks that we have created in partnership with technology and products by Evernote. Evernote is this very useful piece of software that allows the customer to organize their notes and memories in a very useful way. So we partnered with them a few years ago, and we are continuing to experiment, and develop a very solid partnership, with a different kind of notebook. Especially now that we have come out with an application for the smart phone, you can take a picture of your page, and have them immediately sent to a special area of your digital archive. This makes them searchable and sharable in a very seamless way. You can also edit your physical notes on the page of the notebook with special stickers in different colors for sending them different ways, like uploading them to the Cloud and then edit them, and continue your work in the digital space. We are experimenting with a digital pen and a physical Moleskine notebook. On paper pages you can write and the pen is able to recall the writing or sketching, and record it on your digital device. – And there is more to come.

JP: [7:31] Now, Maria, it sounds very exciting this idea of looking to bridge the digital divide to allow us to have our analog scribbles and notes, that might become masterpieces, but then also utilize digital technology. I can imagine however, that there’s some skeptics – maybe the ‘Millennials’, that would say ‘why would I bother to have everything you just described that basically translates my notebook to the computer. I am already beyond that, I’m just on my smart phone’. Are there ‘Moleskine people’?  Is it a certain creed?  A certain belief? And how are they different from the non-believers?

MS: [11:40] I would say both, we have been more experimental, but it’s more an experience that we are doing with our public. But we are also more and more interested in acquiring thought leadership on some aspects of our contemporary cultures.  For example]  We created a conference last year for the future, quoting different experts on those matters and we would like to go deeper on that.

MS: [12:53] Yes, I think that is very important the closest part of our public. They are studied in general, and they are people in need of selecting, curating and editing their content in a meaningful way and also meeting the brand as a partner in this spot.  People that are cultivated in terms of knowledge or in terms of creativity also expect to in the Moleskin brands a partner helping in this XXX (what is the German psychology term???)

JP: Nice, German psychological word.  WS: Is a good word.

JP: Maria are there also non-believers? Now I’m asking because we find with a lot of our brands that having a group that doesn’t believe, is not passionate, or is even passionately opposed, often help a brand to attract its core audience. Think about PC versus Apple people. Now I guess its maybe Samsung versus Apple. Do you find that as well? And how do you leverage that or how to you acknowledge that?

MS: Yes…

JP: Is there a risk of Moleskine inflation, of too much Moleskine?

JP: On the other hand, excellent, and knowledge are, of course, higher aspirations within themselves. So in a way it is an exclusive tool, or at least it is a sophisticated tool isn’t it?

MS: [16:39] Yes, Yes, it is sophisticated and it is exclusive but in terms of what you want, not what the brand wants.

It’s your choice to be excellent in knowledge or to have a high aspiration in the domain of culture and creativity. It’s not related to your power in terms of money, its more related to your values and aspirations.

WG: I think that this whole mixing of exclusive and inclusive at the same time, and not to retain the old idea of premium or prestige as being elitist, but really being democratic, is really modern and is one of the reasons we think Moleskine is an Ueber-Band in that sense. I think it is very important, and yet having said that, for a brand to retain its premium price and also its aspirational value its sometimes important for it, as you grow out and become more and more present, to at the same to grow up. Do something at the top of your brand to lift it up again, to innovate or take yourself to a higher level. How do you deal with that aspect?

MS: [18:13] Well I totally agree with your consideration and yes, we are developing a lot our publishing area. I don’t know if you are familiar with that. We are also publishers and we have a collection of the most important contemporary architects with a collection on inspiration and process in architecture. We have already more than twelve volumes. We have another collection related to fashion designers, which is collecting the design and the creative process of some interesting fashion designers. And the publishing area is something that is making our excellence in terms of culture and knowledge visible. And we are creating for our public and community different experiences. Recently we had sketch done a ‘sketch mob’ in Milan during the Expo by designers and sketchers guided by Carlos Tanga, an important illustrator. This was a very nice experience.  Very high in terms of quality but also very democratic and open to everybody.

WG: Do you see these ventures actually becoming a business model or evolving your business model, where, eventually, it may not be so much about selling the actual notebooks anymore? I mean they will always be a part obviously. – If you think of Red Bull, which is more and more morphing into a media house for all intense and purposes.  Is that something you could see for Moleskine as well?

JP: You are getting into Moleskine physical experiences beyond what is in the books, which you’ve already started with museums and tours. Can you tell us a little more about the role of the Moleskine store and now its seems like this experiment with the café.  Why do you think they are important?  What’s your goal in creating these physical places?

MS: [21:38] Well, the more that we expand our style and journey together with our public the more we need to offer a wider experience that can’t be offered by just the retailer, or the wholesaler model. So having our space is creating a very direct relationship and allows us to respond to the needs of our public in a deeper way. For example, in our retail store you can customize your notebook and create something with stamps on your pages, or you can experiment with our bags. So there are many different experiences that you can have. This is what we want to offer.

WS: But to that point, if I think, for instance, about the Fundazione Prada in Milan.  Which is obviously a lot about glamour.  It’s about creativity. It’s about design.  But it also has a very Prada-typical ‘brainyness,’ a very cerebral attitude, by the choice of architect – Rem Koolhass. –  When I look at your stores, I would have expected them to have a little bit more of that … let’s call it ‘brainyness’. That cultured, intellectual feel that I get whenever I talk to you, and when I think about the Moleskine brand and all the things that you do. But I don’t feel that as much when I’m in the store, as much as I would love to. Would you agree with that?

MS: [24:20] I totally agree with your feeling. I personally will not deny … we as a company would like to find a way to create a more cultural and involving and engaging aspect to our stores. For sure, when you enter our office you get more. Wherever you turn your eyes you find things created by our people, you find handwritten things, notes, creations everywhere, books, bicycles… you find a creative and lively atmosphere, which is not totally repressive in our stores.

JP: Well there’s a growth opportunity for the brand, I guess. I wanted to switch gears one more time, because I have one more question that I had to ask because you’re not only the VP of Brand Equity and Communication, as it says officially, but you were also a part of the entire brand creation, and that brand creation is very rich in stories – I would even say myth. You have the little booklets in every Moleskine product, and there you talk about Bruce Chatwin and about him liking his little black book, but then it also references Hemingway, Pablo Picasso and so on.  And it gets very inspirational. Now some call this a market ploy, because they say, ‘well, Pablo Picasso for sure never has used this book because it didn’t exist, this brand,’ and others call it just a ‘myth’ that is a catalyst and it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy because now people like Francis Coppolla and others, true greats, are actually now using the brand. – How are you looking at the role of story and maybe even a bit stretching it into a ‘myth’ in the creation of this brand? 

MS: [26:29] The story for me is very, very important. When I proposed to the company to create this notebook and this brand I was totally, and deeply immersed in the Bruce Chatwin story and in the way he used his notebook. I personally used some of those notebooks. And I was missing them personally. Because I used them in Paris when I was there between the 70’s and 80’s and I was missing them.  And when I read read this chapter in Chatwin about how sad it is to not having any more of these kinds of notebooks … and the story related to Picasso and Hemingway … and I went to the Picasso Museum in Paris, and saw how many of those notebooks Picasso had filled. – I said to myself ‘we should recreate this notebook’.

JP: A truly inspirational story. Maria unfortunately as usual we’re running out of time. This has been fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing your brand. If people want to contact with Moleskine, where should people go first to meet the brand and its people?

MS:  We have a very nice website, moleskine.com for sure, but also we are present in the main social channels so you can find us everywhere.

For this episode of the Ueberbrands Podcast we went all the way to the end of the L-train line on the New York subway system; to Canarsie in southeast Brooklyn to visit one of the last seltzer filling factories in the US.  The ‘Gomberg Seltzer Works’ have been in operation since the early 50ies. Here young Alex Gomberg has set out to fight the odds and revive and evolve the tradition of hand delivering wooden crates of heavy glass bottles filled with seltzer* directly to his customers. (* filtered, pressurized and carbonated -thus sparkling- water)

His business is growing behind quite a bit of local and even international word-of-mouth.  –  We are not that surprised, since this story is a nice example of products and services that give ‘meaning beyond the material’, that quench our desire to re-connect with what we consume and know where it is coming from.  It illustrates the power of memories, myths and iconic products.  Take a listen as Alex tells us about the roots and aspirations of his ‘Brooklyn Seltzer Boys’ brand and see if you can resist wanting to have a look and sip.  Maybe not an ‘Ueber-Brand’, yet, but possibly one in the making.

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON BELOW AND ENJOY

https://ueberbrands.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/ueberbrands-episode-3-alex-gomberg-and-the-brooklyn-seltzer-boys.mp3

The Gomberg Seltzer Works in pictures (from top and clockwise): The old filling machine (still in use) and clock (‘tells the right time twice a day’);  siphon spare parts ‘fait maison’ as well as wood boxes. The bottles are up to a hundred years old. Alex holds the ‘Arlington’ seltzer bottle and wears a special t-shirt. An egg cream measuring glass and a picture of Pacey Gomberg, Alex’s grandpa at his seltzer works. You will hear about him and everything else in the episode.

If you want you can read along. The full interview transcript is pasted below and a pdf file download provided. You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes or Stitcher, subscribe to our blog for notifications or have new posts fed to your RSS (see sidebar buttons on right).

Sources and Further Reading:

Read more about Ueberbrands in our book “Rethinking Prestige Branding – Secrets of the Ueberbrands”

Brooklyn Seltzer Boys Website and their Facebook page

The German newspaper article we talk about.

You can subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes or Stitcher, subscribe to our blog for notifications or have new posts fed to your RSS (see sidebar buttons on right).

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

I’m your host JP Kuehlwein (JP) and today I’ve come to the end of the L-line in New York at Canarsie to the last seltzer works factory and I’m sitting here with Alex Gomberg (AG), fourth generation owner family of this seltzer works. Thanks Alex for having me here in your office.

AG: Thank you for coming. It’s a pleasure to have you.

JP: This is almost as close to live radio as it can get. You can hear background noises because this is an operating business after all, we won’t be disturbed by that.

[01:20]

Alex, I think the introduction threw up enough questions and intrigue in people’s minds. Can you explain a little bit?  Seltzer works, what is that even particularly in today’s context?

AG: Well, I guess I’ll just start from the beginning. Our family business actually started out in 1953. My great grandfather Mo Gomberg entitled all this business, ‘Gomberg seltzer works’, and essentially back then we were a filling station for many seltzer men who distributed to hundreds and hundreds of customers in Brooklyn. At that point, in the fifties, Seltzer was in its heyday. Many people, I would say nine out of every ten people, would get Seltzer delivered to their home. Similar to the milkman who would get milk delivered to their home or the meat guy who would come around, the seltzer man would come to your house and he would deliver a case of seltzer.

JP: I remember seeing seltzer bottles in films like ‘Casablanca’, classics from the Second World War period or more recently ‘Mad Men’. So, this was going on even in the sixties, and it was a regular beverage to drink as a mixer or straight or how do you drink seltzer the classic way?

AG: And I guess people mostly drank it straight. There were not a whole lot of soft drinks that people drank. There was Coca-Cola, but seltzer was really one of the only drinks that you could have other than water or milk. Many people made egg creams which is the traditional Brooklyn dessert drink, and it’s carbonated chocolate milk; there is no egg but it is called an egg cream.

JP commentary: I’m going to interrupt here, just because we can and it’s fun in a podcast, and just point out the significance of what Alex and I are talking about here. In an age where we have lost touch and connection with a lot of the things we buy and consume, and in particular food, people desire to create that connection again with the neighbourhood butcher and baker, and with locally made items and the local recipes, like the egg cream that Alex is talking about. So, a lot of premium brands nowadays share a local handcraft, provenance, or at least a known origin, and a wonderful nostalgic story around this can only enhance the desirability. Let’s move on.

[04:10]

JP: And you’re wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Brooklyn Seltzer Boys’ and in the back it says ‘Good Seltzer should hurt’, which, I understand, is a quote from your father. But what does that mean?

AG: Good Seltzer has a lot of pressure, has a lot of CO2. When you drink you should not be able to gulp the whole glass down. You should feel a tingly sensation in the back of your throat, it should hurt. That’s the way we feel about it. When the CO2 is mixes with water and it is contained in the bottle, the pressure is 60 pounds, much more than the soda gun or the soda fountain.

JP: Now as I walked in here I immediately took pictures because it’s an incredible sight here with all these classic seltzer bottles sitting in wooden crates and you almost feel like you’re walking into a museum. And they have the metal top, I don’t have the technical description of what you call those.

AG: It’s a siphon.

JP: They look like they are old, are they?

AG: They are very old. I’m glad you saw that as you walked in because these bottles are all very special. They all have their own story. So, when you say you feel like it’s a museum, it is a museum actually because you’re looking at history. Some of these bottles are over hundred years old. Each one has its own emblem of a seltzer man of the past.

So, when Mr Zaltman was delivering seltzer back in his day, he had all of his bottles with his name on them and they were all beautiful blue bottles with Zaltman’s top on it and he would deliver all those bottles. Of course, over hundreds of years, either he passed his way or sold his lot to somebody else, so now, over time, these bottles dispersed among many different seltzer men and now you’re at the point today where you’re getting a case of ten bottles delivered to your house and they are all different . They all have a different emblem on them, with a different top on the bottle. So, they are all history. They are all original bottles that we deliver, nothing is new, and they are all using old parts.

[06:37]

JP: And you’re saying this with a lot of passion. However, you also talk a lot about dying out, literally. So, what made you want to enter a business that seems to be dying out?

AG: I was born always with seltzer in my house. Even when I was born the business was on its decline. Many seltzer plants including Gomberg Seltzer were declining and I don’t want to see it go. Neither did my father, Kenny Gomberg, and uncle Irwin Resnick, they kept this business going through many years .Now we’re the last ones and we’re still keeping it going because it’s a piece of us, it’s our family business and we don’t want to see it go. We want to keep it around for many years to come.

JP commentary: I think another stepping back is warranted at this point, just to look back at this beautiful story Alex was telling. It has all the structure of a classic, almost mythical, kind of story with generation of people fighting against the odds to keep this business alive, to have the seltzer boys continue their rounds and in particular, our young hero here who’s looking for ways to revive this business. Who wouldn’t want to root for them? Help him and help yourself reinvigorate and resuscitate traditions that help us reconnect with our neighbourhood, with what we eat and consume. These kinds of mythical stories are certainly a key ingredient to ueberbrand building, not that necessarily Brooklyn seltzer boys is already an ueberbrand, but it certainly has some key ingredients that could get it there.

JP: I read that you’re father also started a soda distributorship to actually keep the operation going and to make money. So, is there no money in seltzer right now?

AG: Well, I wouldn’t say that. Back in the day, we were mainly doing seltzer. That’s what the business was about. However, they opened, an addition to the building where they were distributing soft drinks and beer, and over the years, that became the main operation. But now, with the rise of seltzer we are hoping that seltzer will be our main hub again, and that’s going to be the bulk of our business.

[09.27]

JP: So, this is the interesting part which intrigued me when I read about the ‘Brooklyn Seltzer Boys’ , which I guess, is a new label , a new brand that you gave it when you came into the business three years ago.

Seltzer is growing again but hand delivered seltzer that costs a lot more than the seltzer that’s freely available and at a very low price in the supermarket seems to be growing as well. In fact, hand delivered seltzer seems to be growing more than the seltzer in the supermarket if from a lower base.

Why do you think that is? Why do people almost go back in history to get hand delivered seltzer from you?

AG: Aside from the fact that it is a far superior product, let me just say our seltzer is different. We have New York City tap water that we triple filter through sand charcoal paper. New York City tap water is already clean as it is and we triple filter it.

JP: And it’s supposed to be one of the best public waters in the world or the best tasting, I hear.

AG: That’s what is said. And we actually go even further. We triple filter the water and mix it with CO2. There’s no salt, no color and no additives. So, the taste is better, the water is cleaner and you get a lot more fizz. And you’re basically drinking from an antique bottle.

JP: Something like history in a bottle.  

AG: It’s a beautiful bottle that you want to display on your table in your house, a beautiful centrepiece. When people come over for dinner, they start talking about the seltzer bottle, it’s a conversation starter. People really enjoy the history and the taste. So, a lot of people drink for that reason.

[11.35]

JP: And as we chatted before this interview, you were showing me an article from a German newspaper. Can you briefly talk about how this German journalist came to write about you? And do you see certain common traits in your customers, like, where are they coming from? Maybe in mind-set?

AG: Well, I have a lot of customers from all over the place now. Felix and Christina, they were in Manhattan, and they told me for several months that they wanted to write an article about seltzer. She reports all of the news of New York back to Germany. So, she writes articles on what’s going on in America, in New York , sends it back to the hub and many different news sources go back to their hub and then they decide which articles they want to put in their papers.

So, she wrote an article which I can’t understand because it’s written in German, but she told me that it’s a very nice piece, and now I have people from Germany writing to me, asking if they can get delivery in Germany. Now, obviously that’s impossible, we only deliver to New York and parts of New Jersey. So, we can’t really ship overseas, but it’s cool to have a lot of exposure, and it’s obviously interesting because people email me all the time even just to talk about seltzer.

[13: 15]

JP: Quite literally, in this German article mixes nostalgia with taste with knowing where things come from. When you think about your local customer, why do they come to you? What do they use the seltzer for?

AG: Well, now there are only a handful of seltzer men left. They are all sixty, seventy or even eighty years old. They all come here to Gomberg seltzer to fill their bottles and they have their own routes. Those customers have been with them for several years. They are working for two or even three generations of customers.

We didn’t want to step on their toes and take over their market. So, we decided to really concentrate on bars and restaurants, which the seltzer men weren’t covering. Most of their deliveries were residential. So, we decided that wanted to do some higher volume, so we contacted some bars and restaurants in New York and they fell in love with the beautiful bottles of seltzer.

JP: And falling in love…  Could you capture the moment? When was it? Like, when you told them about it or put a bottle on the table or when they tasted it?

AG: It’s more of a presentation. You bring this bottle and you pour them glasses of seltzer and it’s the smells from that nozzle. It is so cool just to see for the first time or maybe they even remember it from their past. “You guys still exist?”

JP: So, here you get a product to behold that makes an impressive entry as it jets out of that heavy bottle, a piece of history, that has a real kick to it when you drink it, and hand delivered from a guy you just have to like for what he does and want to root for.

I think great ingredients for an ueberbrand and as we will hear next, and have already heard, the word is spreading with the help of modern technology, namely social media and the internet.

AG: Not to put them down, but these seltzer men were all pen and paper businesses. And we launched a website, that’s crazy in the seltzer business. We use Facebook, social media, emails – that’s unimaginable to them. These older gentlemen are lucky to be on their cell phones.

[16.03]

JP: What kind of restaurants do you deliver to? Some names or a particular type?

AG: One of my first big customers is the Arlington club and that’s interesting because they named their restaurant after a seltzer bottle. In fact, I have a bottle right here.

*JP takes picture of the bottle *

JP: So, tell me the story about the Arlington?

AG: They got their hands on a bottle that said the ‘Arlington Club’ and they designed their restaurant around this idea. They put it on their tables and serve sparkling water in them.

JP: I guess, the customers are pretty surprised and excited about this as well.

AG: They are, it’s a conversation piece. Normally, you’re expecting a pale green bottle but now you have this beautiful clearer blue or green seltzer bottle and you can talk about it over dinner.

[17:30]

JP: So, you talk about social media, Facebook and so on. So, many fans go there? Do you get fan mail? What does the fan mail say?

AG: I get posts all the time, people with their stories, how they lived in Brooklyn many years ago and they had seltzer delivery. People find us on Facebook, and every now and again I look on my phone, and I see more people liking my page. We do events now, so we post about that on our page.

JP: What kind of events do you do?

AG: Right now we do bar mitzvahs, weddings. We have an egg-cream booth that we bring to the events and we make egg-creams.

JP: Very classic.

AG: Very old-fashioned. Most of the times the adults are the ones getting more excited, they come up and sometimes even criticize saying, “That’s not the right way, I make it this way!” There are actually many ways to make an egg-cream. But I do it the way I feel is the right way.

[18:36]

JP: How do make this beverage? I have no idea!

*AG demonstrates, JP snaps away*

AG: We have a glass.

JP: There’s a glass with a recipe on it!

AG:   We have the lines where to fill the Fox’s u-bet syrup and we have line up to which we fill up with milk and then we top it off with seltzer.

JP: Wonderful! An interesting thing that you said, which was very determined, was “I have the right way to do it”. We often find that the ueberbrands, as we call them, know very clearly in their head what they are and what they want to be. Is there a ‘Brooklyn Seltzer Boy’ way? What are some ways where you say you’re different from seltzer or even general beverages that you can buy in the market?

AG: I guess it’s just the process. It’s essentially the same drink and has the same ingredients as that of a store bought drink, but the whole process of getting the seltzer makes it different. We are a service business. So, we deliver these wood crates, which have our logo on them, right to your door. There’s no other seltzer company which does that.

[20.07]

JP commentary: Beyond thinking of what Alex does as a process or a service, we should think of it also as a ritual, as a symbolic action that reminds people of where their food, or in this case their drink, comes from. It gives them comfort in knowing that it comes from a source that they know personally.

JP: Do you have personal connection to some of the customers?

AG: Everyone! I speak to every single customer. Either online or via email or phone, I have relationship with every one of them.

JP: Now you indicated earlier that you want to look in to the future and expand, particularly with this growing market of seltzer. So, what kind of expansion do you have in mind?

AG: At this point we are trying to keep up with the amount of customers that we are getting. We don’t have an unlimited supply of bottles, so we are working on the bottles that we have.

JP: Do you acquire new-‘old’ bottles?

AG: We do. Say, if somebody calls me and says that they have a hundred cases in their basement, I’m running there and I’m picking up those bottles.

JP: And that has happened?

AG: That has happened a handful of times in the last three years.

[21:43]

JP: The seltzer bottles, aren’t they made of special think glass? They could explode.

*JP checks out the bottle*

JP: This is very heavy, I can tell.

AG: They are quarter of an inch thick. Most of the bottles are really hand blown in Czechoslovakia in the early 1900s.

JP commentary: One last comment here to point out all these iconic product and experience related elements of the seltzer proposition. You have the egg-cream that has a special recipe that people can get all wound up about and you have these bottles with their incredible stories that everyone gathers around .It is an art to even maintain these bottles, and also a tension, the need and the longing to grow, and at the same time the limitation of these historic bottles, and potential for needing what the luxury industry would call a diffusion line with some newer bottles.

Very interesting future ahead, and we would be curious to continue observing the ongoing story of the seltzer boys.

JP: And the tops… Is there a way for you to source new tops and bottles?

AG: So, we actually have moulds to make the tops. We could melt down the current heads that are no longer working, we can reuse the same material.

JP: So, there’s the rebirth of the nozzle.

AG: However, we are still trying to perfect it. We are having a little issue with the moulds.

JP: So, it was an art, historically, to make these heads and make them work well.

AG: Absolutely! It was an art to make the glass bottles and the heads. The process of making seltzer bottles is a lost art. Nobody is hand blowing the seltzer bottles anymore. People do hand blowing, but to make hand blown seltzer bottles in America would cost a fortune. So, we are probably going to have American made bottles

JP: It seems like a danger to me that there might be a danger in having too many bottles and too many customers, because, isn’t there something special about the idea that your bottle is very old? That you only have it on consignment? That you’re kind of a guardian of it, if it was destroyed it would be history because there aren’t many ‘Czech-made’ 19th century bottles around?

Don’t you feel that there might be seltzer bottles inflation and it would be too much at one point?

AG: Well, there will never be seltzer bottle inflation of the old seltzer bottles. I could label these new ones ‘Brooklyn Seltzer Boys’ and I wouldn’t have so much sentimental value to these as I would have to the original bottles.

[25:11]

JP: But as I interrupted you earlier…  Your expansion is all about trying to get more customers and more bottles. Is there a horizon beyond that or is that it for now, in terms of thinking about the service business and the product?

AG: No, in near future we are looking to infiltrate the New York area. Like I said, there are only four bottling plants left in the country. There’s us, one in San Francisco, one in Florida and last one in Pittsburgh. So, sky is the limit here.

JP: Are you in contact with them?

AG: We talk to ‘seltzer sisters’.

JP: Oh, they are ‘seltzer sisters’!

AG: There’s no relation to ‘Brooklyn Seltzer Boys’, but ‘Seltzer Sisters’ are in California.

JP: Is it a similar story?

AG: I believe Catherine (owner of Seltzer Sisters) bought an existing business.

JP: So, you might be the only original among all?

AG: It’s possible.

JP: Excellent!

Well, thank you so much for the interview. It’s absolutely fascinating. For the listeners (readers), don’t miss the mind blowing pictures, they are really something to look at. The bottles, the making, even the clock hanging over the machine – looks absolutely antique but you’re still using it, right?

AG: It works, well, it’s correct twice a day.

JP Laughs out loud …

JP: Anyway, if people want to get in touch with you or if they want to see what’s going on with the ‘Brooklyn Seltzer Boys’ where should they go?

AG: You can call us on our business phone (718-649-0800) or you can go to our website www.brooklynseltzerboys.com