Key Question:
A: Don't let just anybody sell your products.
Fess decided his wine should be sold in white tablecloth restaurants and has focused on that market. When Fess discovered his wine in a grocery store, his blood started to boil.
Q: Why doesn't Fess want his wine sold everywhere as long as he makes the same margin?
A: He has been a businessman for over 40 years and he has learned that doing things right means saying "no" sometimes. He doesn't want his wine in grocery stores, he wants it in white table cloth restaurants and select wine shops.
Call it the snob factor or scarcity marketing or simply target marketing, Fess had to fire a distributor and find a new one who would deal with him honestly. The first distributor unloaded the Fess Parker wine on grocery stores when it was unable to sell it all to restaurants. By nipping this tactic in the bud, Fess didn't feel his reputation was damaged too much.
Not only does Fess want his wine associated with quality restaurants and shops, he believes that over the long term, diners who are accustomed to drinking his product with lovely meals will become conditioned and when they don't see it on a menu, they will ask for it. This is creating demand at the grassroots. This causes restaurants to call him rather than him have to call on restaurants. That's a beautiful thing!
At Renegade Animation the founders say "No" as much or more than they say "Yes." This keeps them focused on doing just what they want to do at the price they want to charge.
At Altoon + Porter we learned how one architect re-invented his company by saying "no."
Think about it
When was the last time you said "no" to a customer? What should you say "no" to so you can focus your business on its long term future?
Clip from: Fess Parker Winery and Vineyard: Brand Matters
Los Olivos, California: Way back in the 1950s a young Texan by the name of Fess Parker took a job with Walt Disney. He became an actor and the incarnation of two American heroes, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. With so much exposure on television, this man truly became an American icon in our time.
We caught up with Fess in beautiful Santa Barbara wine country to continue our studies of the first principles of branding and storytelling. Fess left Hollywood and bought land then built a hotel. Here you'll also discover that he believes in real estate and in helping his customers create memorable experiences.
The Fess Parker Winery and Vineyard is located 32 miles north of Santa Barbara on the Foxen Canyon Wine Trail.
Go to all the key ideas and video of this episode...
Go to the homepage for this episode of the show...
Fess Parker Winery
Fess Parker, founder
6200 Foxen Canyon Road
Los Olivos, CA 93441
805-688-1545
Visit our web site: http://fessparker.com
Office: 805-688-1545
Business Classification:
Advertising
Year Founded:
Play Hard To Get
FESS: I have been in business now -- other than the acting side -- for close to 40 years. And I'm local. And we have tried to do the quality that we've talked about. Now what I'm finding is that there is an acceptance of the expectation of quality but there is also a grocery store viability of Fess Parker as a name.
HATTIE: You didn't want that.
FESS: I didn't want that, but we found out along the way that that's the way the big distributor was disposing of our product. They could sell it to the grocery store. Once we sold it to them, we lost total control. So they could take a truckload right from the warehouse and go right to large grocery chains and put it out there, and we couldn't do nothing about it. Eventually we figured out that we needed to be with a distributor who concentrated on premise, or restaurants and shops.
HATTIE: With the fine shops.
FESS: The fine shops.
HATTIE: Now you just hit on something here. If you priced your wine the way you want to price it, and that distributor sells it at a warehouse discount, as long as you're getting your margin, why do you care?
FESS: This is a long-term business. I think in some businesses you could say, `This is our first year, our second year, our third year.' But I think this is a business of decades and we're about to complete our first decade. And, we're thinking not now, but 10 years, 20 years, 30 years down the line because this Parker family will soon have eleven grandchildren. And we hope that some of them will find this a fascinating enterprise and will keep it going. What we really want it to be is in fine dining circumstances.
HATTIE: How long did it take you to get to that conclusion, that where we belong is the fine restaurant? I think that's a--that is such a niche. Don't you think that's a real, thin, finely carved niche, the restaurant business?
FESS: Well, it is. But if you can present your wine and it becomes a staple on their wine list, then while it's not a huge sale--but it is a sale that builds.
HATTIE: Continuous.
FESS: But if you find the wine and you like it at this restaurant, the customer goes to another restaurant and it's not there. `Do you have Fess Parker wine?' `Well, no, but we can get it.' So we - it is exponential.
HATTIE: OK, so you feel you have greater growth opportunity and continuity opportunity?
FESS: Exactly.
HATTIE: That's what you're after. You're after the continuity.
