SIME 2008

One year ago Vinfrihet (wine freedom) came to Sweden when I launched the direct sales business at a well received presentation at SIME 07, Scandinavia’s leading conference on internet and digital business www.sime.nu . Last night Australian Wine Club sponsored a pre-launch party for SIME 08 (Nov 12-13 in Stockholm) in association with Tre Kronor Media www.trekronormedia.se where we gave an update on how far our business has come in the past 12 months and it is fantastic to get some positive feedback from other enterpreneurs and online marketers. Ola Ahlvarsson revealed to us a new side to Ace of Base member Ulf Ekberg www.aceofbase.com  who spoke deeply and expertly on the power of the internet and reaching new audiences through new media. Thinking back to my time as a Director of Naxos (www.naxos.com) , the world’s leading classical music CD company, I shivered at how he described the death of the record business but was pleased to hear how vibrant the music industry continues to be.

The DNA of Change is the theme of SIME 08 and what Australian Wine Club is doing to the Swedish wine market fitted in well with the theme. By offering quality wine drinkers a great product and high level of service we have already captured a meaningful share of the quality wine market in Sweden. Coming from outside the wine industry and using technology and modern marketing techniques we have been able to identify what our customers want and satisfy the demands.

SIME is always a highly inspirational, motivational and stimulating two days. I like their slogan: “We would rather die than be boring or irrelevant.”

Cheers: Mark Majzner

The Local: Winter Survival Plan B

For those of you interested in the news on Sweden in English, you can not find a better site than www.thelocal.se and you can read my regular column: http://www.thelocal.se/14942/20081014/

Cheap wine expensive

Thanks for all the comments on my blog, keep up the emails to mark@antipodeswines.com but could more of you also be brave enough to post some comments on the blog? If you are looking for which wines to buy next or the list of the top 10 cheapest best wines this autumn then I hope you have found another site on the web. I think a lot about wine, drink a bit, taste quite a lot and fortunately we sell even more than that. By all accounts our total sales of wine over 100kr is now a sizable percentage of the total Swedish market.

Since you are reading this blog then you won’t be offended if I waste a few bytes of cyberspace on the ills of cheap wine.  Generally people are interested in quality. Most of us drive quality fairly new cars, dress fashionably, prefer to buy organic and fair trade food and drinks and buy quality consumer products like mobile phones and televisions. Wine however has become commoditized where quantity rules over quality and appreciation takes the back seat to over-participation.

Being a wine journalist tasting the entire assortment of the national retailer each month must be a depressing and harrowing task. 60% of wine sold in Sweden is not in a bottle – think bag in box, tetra pack, little plastic cushions – the type of products you are grateful to have those funny plastic bags of shame to hide your purchase in.

The source of this obsession with quantity over quality, low price over good value stems from the myths surrounding the national retailers’ existence. I often ask people why the national retailer is good and two answers are always offered: the huge range of wines available and that due to its buying power the national retailer can get the lowest prices. 

If you live in the city then there is a large range of wines, but if you live near a normal store there wll be 5 white wines and 7 red wines in the base assortment over 100kr. To the next argument then. Yes, they do get the lowest prices and price is where the national retailer can use its power most. It creates a tremendously competitive environment amongst wine importers in this country so it does get low prices, which to my mind is a contradiction when trying to discourage alcohol consumption. However, as alcohol consumers have become hooked on a cultural mindset that “alcohol is bad” but “cheap is good” there has been a race to the bottom of the market so your conscience and wallet are both not hurt too much. The way the wine is displayed in the stores, by price, also encourages a price only mindset.

Many consumers will pay 500kr for a bottle of wine in a restaurant that costs 120kr in the retail store. But less than 1% of people would pay that much for a bottle in the retail store. The national retailer should encourage more expensive wines to be consumed - quality over quantity!

But is cheap wine really cheap? A purchasing mindset has developed that revolves around the total SEK paid not the value of the wine in the bottle.

3L bag in box wines are seldom found outside of Sweden. 5L is the most common format. While I do not encourage the consumption of 3L or let alone 5L of the same wine in a plastic bag, it is not a very economic size due to the high cost of the packaging. On a per liter basis it is more economic to buy a 5L box and you get more value for the wine in the bag.

Similarly with a bottle of wine. Under 100kr a bottle you end up paying more for everything else than the wine itself (in taxes (alcohol tax is 16,185kr per bottle), the national retailer and the importer’s margin, packaging and transport costs etc). 69kr is cheap for a bottle of wine but how much is the wine itself costing? Less than 10kr and you dont get much quality fermented grape juice for that. Buy wine over 100kr and the wine itself makes up a greater portion of the product and for that money you can get a significantly better wine.

Consumers should start looking at the value of the product they are buying, not the total price. As my wise old grandmother used to say: “two things you should never buy based upon price – sushi and brain surgery.” We can add wine to her words of wisdom.

Cheers: Mark Majzner

Free Trade Sweden

Missed posting yesterday, but had a good reason. Still pondering on the decision of Posten not to deliver wine to our 22.000 members in Sweden. Spoke to a very smart journalist today about this and if I was a conspiracy theorist this blog would be full of speculation. Posten enjoys good business shipping brown packages with pornographic materials and sex aids to customers that must be over 18 years of age and they ship medicine from Apoteket but a good bottle of Shiraz is forbidden (perhaps the combination of wine, porn and medicines is not a good one!).

Our customers all over Sweden deserve free access to quality wine and we will take this argument further. I will send Lars G. Nordström, the new Managing Director of Posten a letter and see what other avenues of appeal we have to open up their ombud delivery network to wine lovers in this long and wonderful country.

Cheers: Mark Majzner

Wine not in the Post

Posten does not want to handle wine packages: after 10 months of waiting for a decision the Swedish Posten (soon to be Swedish-Danish) informed us that they can not afford to set up the ID age checking systems required to handle wine orders via their 1800 strong ombud collection network, the largest in the country. Posten already requires all customers to show their ID before collecting a package and the personal number is recorded. If I collected a flat screen TV from Posten they would check that my ID matched the name on the TV package. The problem, it seems, is training the Postal workers to calculate if the person collecting the wine is over 20  years of age. The maths to me is quite simple, 2008 – 20 = ? and then what month is it anyway?

To order wine online from our wine club you have to put in your ID number so we check that we only sell to people who are older than 20. And of course the person collecting the order must be over 20 years of age too, which our drivers check at the door.

Our company ships thousands of bottles of wine around Sweden every week and it works very well. Our customers who live in areas that do not get home delivery collect the wine from Bussgods depots and it it runs like clockwork. Bus depot workers obviously have higher math skills than postal workers.  

Is Posten scared to handle wine, are they being pressured by anti-competitive forces to deny Swedish wine drinkers the opportunity to use the postal service to get access to their wine? Or do they just have such low expectations for their postal agents and workers that checking if someone if 20 years of age or not is beyond their skill level?

Since the April Fools day announcement that the Swedish and Danish postal services are merging the talk about town has been on the clash of cultures.  Maybe we will try again when the more relaxed Danes start calling the shots.

Downward pointing line graphs

Another day of headlines of world financial markets plummeting, crisis of confidence and all these graphs showing zig zagging lines pointing south. I don’t know about you but these graphs always make me thirsty as it reminds me of wine pouring out of a glass into a mouth!

We have been thinking about how this crisis will impact on quality wine sales. The very top of the wine market, the €1200  bottles of Ch. Latour has seen the price of its wines come down a bit recently (perhaps more to do with Robert Parker Jnr re-rating some of the wines of the 2005 vintage) but how robust is the relatively new food and wine movement in Sweden?  As we all feel poorer (whether we are indeed actually really poorer or not) will the meals of wild deer and a bottle of Ch. Neuf du Pape be swapped for Scan meatballs and Chill Out bag in box?

Or are these small luxuries in life now entrenched eating and drinking habits that we will all give up very reluctantly?  What do you think?

When the going gets tough I usually head to the cellar and take out a great bottle of wine. The sound and smell of the first glass being poured creates a wave of anticipation like a conductor standing before a world class symphony orchestra. The ritual swirl of the glass and the first sip stirs the senses, washes away the stress and ignites the taste buds for the awaiting meal. The power of a glass of good wine should not be ignored. A small luxury that I hope many of us will very reluctantly give up and better to drink wine and gain the health benefits than drink beer or spirits.

Note: The blog only promotes responsible drinking, is against any driving under the influence of alcohol and recommends that wine be always consumed in moderation with food. One, maximum two glasses of wine per day can promote health benefits while more than that can have harmful effects.

4 years of w(h)ine

4 years ago James Overall, my wife Johanna and I were sitting waiting for the container of wine to arrive from Australia so we could share some of it at the launch party for Australian Wine Club. A wonderful winemaker from Australia, Judi Cullam from Frankland Estate had flown over and the Arkitecture Museum booked for the party. The ship was late arriving in Stockholm and the wine was only available for collection the morning of the party. I awoke to one of the biggest snow storms Stockholm has experienced in October and was the only car on the freeway down to Jordbro to collect the wine. Judi had never seen snow in her well traveled life and fortunately a few hundred guests braved the weather to try our wines. 

That was 4 years ago – 1 container of wine, 1 website, 1 member (my mother, who does not count as she lives in Australia). While we have grown considerably since then, I should have known that the day the heavens opened and snow poured down, this was not going to be a smooth ride.  But we are here to celebrate 4 years and we hope to celebrate with a bottle of Sparkling Aussie Shiraz later this month!

We have tasted lots of good wine over the past 4 years with the occasional whine but getting comments and feedback from our members and meeting them during the many tasting events we do each year has been a major motivating factor. Having thousands of people each year tell us how much they enjoy our products gives us less reason to whine!

Cheers: Mark Majzner

Vinfrihet – Wine Freedom

Welcome to my blogg or is that blog, Blogg or, well, as you can see I am new to this instant online publishing tool. Since starting Australian Wine Club in 2004 I have pondered having my own blog-thing and creating a window to the new world of direct sales of quality wine in Sweden.

In the early years we were so busy buying and selling wine there was not much time and perhaps insufficient audience for one. Now, with more than 20,000 members we have the audience and now more than ever, the need to communicate our views.

In January of 2008 history was made when several hundred winelovers throughout Sweden received home or direct delivery of a case of 12 bottles of wine specially selected by our Sommeliers. When the Rosengren decision of June 2007 by the EU Court of Justice opened up the market for legal imports of alcohol into Sweden, we were the first to offer a national service that effectively saw Systembolaget face competition for the fine wine market.

Our goal has always been to offer winelovers a choice of where and how to buy their quality wine. We are passionate about freedom of choice and the responsibilty that comes with it.

I hope my new blog will given some insight into our wine business, how we select the wines, the challenges we face and when those untrusting forces try to stop us, we will keep you informed and expose their activities. Our great team will also make regular entries to the blog so you can get to know more about what they do too.

The last Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, said that he had to try and give Hong Kong citizens a taste of democracy before the Territory was returned to Chinese rule in 1997. People, he said, would not fight for something that they had not experienced themselves, only for something that they risked losing. So I hope this blog, and our wine, will give you a taste of freedom, and be part of our fight to give Swedish winelovers a legal and simple, fun to use alternative soucre of quality wine.

Please participate in this blog in Swedish or English (I can read Swedish) and create a lively, interesting debate. I respect everyone’s comments as long as they are respectful of others.

Feel free to mention and recommend other direct wine services, the more legal choices wine consumers have the better and easier it is for us to enjoy our pleasurable wine interest.

Cheers: Mark Majzner