Rally postscript – rain, mud and soaked customers

Selkirk Rally a washout but a success despite this.

Well, it was a great plan until the weather altered just a bit. Saturday turned out to have Sunday’s weather so Sunday was wet, blast of sun then wet again, all day.

What this meant was that large numbers of car owners did not turn up – why put your lovely polished car into a quagmire? I wouldn’t, so I was amazed that any turned up at all. Despite the consequent drop in attendee numbers and the terrible weather, I still did okay after all. I didn’t really have much of an opportunity to do any Risk Reversal work but did focus on the two key aspects of our liqueurs.

The first point was that all my liqueurs are freshly made. What this means is that it is similar to when you bake a cake-the fresher it is, the nicer the taste. So it is with liqueurs. Other liqueurs are fine, but it is sometimes hard to work out how old they are when you buy them. To get the best tastes, the newer the liqueur the better.

The second point was that all the ingredients that I use are as pure as I can get. This is particularly important with the water that goes into each brand – only soft water is used, so that there is no mineral taste that you sometimes get in hard water areas of the UK. Soft water is available where I make the liqueurs, as rain does not flow through limestone rock, but over granite, so does not pick up any minerals.

An unexpected benefit of doing the Selkirk Rally was that I found out about other events coming up in the area. This usually happens when I go to a new area and have a chance to chat to other business owners and customers too – they often have good ideas for events that would suit me.

Enjoy the last of the summer this weekend.

Kind regards, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

Selkirk Car Rally 2011

Trying a new risk reversal strategy this weekend….

Hello again.

About a year ago I took a Trade stand at the above event in the Scottish Borders. I had never been to an event like this so was intrigued as to how it would go. After a rather damp and gloomy start, it picked up well and in the end, it was a good day with lots of sales.

This year I have applied to attend this Show again. The reason is that I am going to try out a new Customer Risk Reversal plan. The reason is this. Quite often when customers are tasting my liqueurs, they seem interested, but something stops them committing themselves to a purchase. What I am looking to do is to remove the barriers to buying.

What I am going to do is to offer customers the opportunity to return the goods on the day if they change their mind.  In addition, if they take to goods home and for any reason, decide they want to return them to me, they will have a year to do so. All they need to do is pack the liqueurs and send them to me, as long as the bottles are unopened and can be resold.

Now as I did the same event last year and have the sales records to see what I sold, it will be easy to compare the effect of the guarantee. Watch out for another Blog on the results. I am really looking forward to the show as the attendees were very friendly and relaxed. I suppose the kind of people who can afford a spare car to show off at Car Rally’s probably would be fairly laid back – just the kind of person who has time to come along and chat about which of my liqueurs they like best.

Have a good weekend. Kind regards, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

 

YouTube video of Hebridean Whisky Liqueur being made.

Watch Hebridean Whisky Liqueur being bottled on YouTube

Hello,

I am often asked where our brand, Hebridean Whisky Liqueur is made and who does it. As most things we buy appear to be made in China, it is quite a surprise to our customers to discover that the liqueur is not only made in Scotland but also, the filling, labelling and finishing are all carried out by hand.

During the last batch of Hebridean Whisky Liqueur, I made a short video of the process as it happened and you can view it now by clicking on the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/theliqueurman?blend=5&ob=5

It was good fun making the video and even better when I discovered that YouTube would add some music and stitch the video clips together.

All my liqueurs are made in small batches to ensure freshness and all are bottled by hand. It’s a bit like a cottage industry really and each mix of liqueur is tasted by me to maintain taste consistency prior to bottling commencing. It’s a hard job, but someone has to do it.

The same process applies to all the liqueurs that I produce – first the basic mixture is prepared. Then I spend some time at the bottling plant adding various flavours and comparing the result with previous batches. It’s one of these rather imprecise measures, but after nearly 15 years at it, I can tell fairly quickly what needs to be added and in what quantity to get the flavour I am looking for.

If you have any similar experiences or stories like this, please get in touch as I am always interested in how others do this kind of thing.

Have a great weekend and bye for now.

Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk