Friday, September 4 2009

What's In a Name?

Hey! I can see my house from here

The name we give to something shapes our attitude to it–Katherine Paterson

Kate Paterson may speak English as a second language, but she really hit the nail on the head with that quote. When I first started working at Winexpert it was called Brew King, as befitted its origins as a supply shop for home beermakers. Later, after the original founders (Doug and Ross Tocher) invented the first bag-in-box premium wine kit and Brew King became the world's largest supplier of consumer winemaking products the name didn't fit that well, but through inertia it stayed the same.

In the late 90's the company was acquired by Canada's largest winery, Andres Wines. They're a sharp bunch with an eye to names, and so we changed to 'Winexpert'. I like the name, as it's pithy and says what it is, but everytime I go through the US border they look at my stuff and as, 'Win Expert? You work for Microsoft?' Sigh.

Andres also owned Vineco, another consumer winemaking company in Ontario, and we happily co-existed under the umbrella of 'Andres Kit Division'. Another day, another name change, and the parent company became 'Andrew Peller Limited', which I also kind of like, which is good, because of structuring I'm actually directly employed by APL. But after a while we also acquired another consumer winemaking company and founded a fourth (they're like peanuts, really: you just can't stop once you start). APL also owns Granville Island Brewing, vineyards, wine importing/marketing companies, retail outlets and other related businesses. We like to keep busy.

After a while, however, announcing myself as 'Tim Vandergrift from Winexpert, an Andrew Peller Kit Division company' was getting to be a real mouthful, plus it contained the word 'kit', which we try to minimise. Consumer winemaking products is a little more work to say or type, but it more accurately reflects our view of ourselves as a channel of distribution for wine products. Kits are for building model cars, and wine is more fun with less glue, and goes better with steak.

Snappy logo!

In order to keep things clear APL has now put all the consumer winemaking companies in one basket called 'Global Vintners'. We still run as separate companies, with different management teams, production facilities and unique products that compete against one another (admittedly in as friendly a way as possible). It's fun when the senior management team hangs out (during planning meetings mostly, a couple of times per year) because while I'm convinced that Winexpert is the best, and our way of doing things is automatically the only sane an reasonable way to do it, I'm surprised how often there's someone else who thinks exactly the same thing about their company and their way. Not that I'm wrong (ever--ha ha), but it gives a shiny and fresh perspective on things.

Conditioner, by any other name, would taste as sweet . . .

So what does this mean to you the consumer? Not much, really: all of the consumer winemaking companies will continue to operate as before, independent and trying to out-do each other. But you may see tiny signs of it here and there. Because there are a few common products that it makes sense to share across all the companies, we're going to switch to pooling them to save costs. The one thing that's changed now is wine conditioner, a post-fermentation sweetening reserve for wine that folks find too dry. Because it's a commodity rather than a value-added item we are only making a single set of sizes and one label--the Global Vintners Label. This means that we don't have to pass on increased costs (or not as much: sugar, the main ingredient in wine conditioner, is at something like a 27-year high in price right now!). To quote my boss (Arnie Licas, Director of Marketing--hi Arnie!), 'Be assured that the product will be the same high quality as our customers have come to expect.'

He's right, and you've got my word on it too.

Everyone have a happy and safe Labour Day weekend! See you all on Tuesday!

Posted by Tim AT 9:56PM

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