Tag: whisky

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

 

 

 

 

Are you a Creature of the Web?

Getting to grips with the new ways of finding and keeping customers

Hello again,

What on earth is all this about? Listened to part of a program last night on 21 year olds and what they all thought of thing specific and general.

One of them said ‘Us 21 year olds are Creatures of the Web’. They do everything via the Web – they were born at the same time as the www got going so know nothing else. What this means is that an entire generation expect to use the Web for all their needs. What an opportunity this is, as was the opportunities in the past:

1930-1950 – Silver Screen Age

1960-1990 – TV Age

1990 to now  – PC screen and now Smart Phone Age

With Social Media expanding at a rate of knots, what are you doing about it?

It is now easier to reach your target audience, survey your customers to find out what they want and for you to be able to provide goods and services to them to satisfy their needs. A majority of employment comes in the UK from smaller companies – these are well suited to taking advantage of the new opportunities coming along.

In the recent past, to reach a large audience, vast expenditure was needed for TV and newspaper advertising – now you can join a group on Facebook and interact with current and prospective customers without the expenditure previously required to do this.

To cap it all, there are amazing new ways to sell thing – Ebay and Amazon are thinking up new ways to assist sellers and buyers constantly and Facebook and Google are not far behind.

Is there a really good reason why you are not at least having a go at these new routes to market?

Don’t know where to start? Send me a message and I’ll see if I can help you.

All the best, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too many things to do? Have fewer, better customers?

Have a plan for less things to do, and looking after your best customers and ditch the rest – they cost you money.

Hi there again,

A lot of small businesses from time to time are overwhelmed by too many things to do. When this happens, customer service and general ‘looking after customers’ suffers. I have had this issue recently and decided the solution was to have fewer and better customers.

Really paying attention to our customers does help. It certainly gives a focus so that everyone knows what to do all the time. In the middle of an administrative task-fine, but let’s get this customer issue sorted out right now before it really eats up our time and gets very complicated. Sorting these out right away is always better than leaving it to fester.

Who is your best customer and why are they? Do they buy often from you? Would you like more like them? If so, what can you do to move some of your others customers closer to the best one you have?

How about treating them as if they are already your best customer and tell them that they are really important to you.

At the same time, why not ditch some of your worst ones? You know who I mean – the ones who won’t pay, complain all the time, have unrealistic expectations of you and your company or just want to try to bully you into giving in to their demands. Imagine how much easier it would be if you didn’t have them at all? Getting rid of them and just dealing with the best customers can be one of the most profitable things you will ever do in your business.

All this is not about giving a poor service but simply focusing on the customers who make you 80% of your profits. You might as well forget the rest, which means you have more time to get to know the goods ones better.

Why not give it a go and let me know how you get on.

have a good weekend. Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

 

 

 

Our liqueurs and all made by hand – video now on Youtube

Proof that our liqueurs are handmade – it’s on YouTube now.

Hello,

Over the years, whenever I have been selling our liqueurs either at a consumer show or over the phone, it is always been a bit of a struggle convincing customers that our liqueurs really are made and bottled by hand.

You would think that this should be easy.

I do not have a large company, but most people think we are owned by Diageo or Seagram’s and that all our brands must be made in a giant factory on a high speed line.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but if you can’t actually show customers what we do, they just don’t believe it.

Well at last I have filmed a video of Hebridean Whisky Liqueur being made. This is the best one to show as it is the most complicated and you can see all the stages involved.

The amazing part of getting the video on to YouTube is that the software that comes with the Flip meno camera I have, also has a Movie magic option that joins together the clips and sets them to music – I chose a nice acoustic guitar tune. I had set aside a day to do this – it took less than 20 minutes, so winners all round there.

Have a look at the video: my profile name is ‘theliqueurman’ and choose ‘Making Hebridean Whisky Liqueur’

Following this one, I am now looking at what else I can film – I am amending our Online Survey too so that I can find out what customers would like to see. Nothing like asking the customers what they want. Novel idea that.

At this time of year, I am besieged by Show organisers wanting us to attend their events. They all say that the events will be great for us but when I find out the costs involved, the only ones to benefit are them, not us or our customers, who have to pay too much to get into the event.

My new policy is that a new event to us will have to be free for us to attend or it will not be considered. If it is a good one, then it is likely that we will do it again and pay for it. To make these events a success, the organisers need to take into account that the businesses attending need to make money and the public need to be sure they are not paying too high a price to buy a ticket for the show. The successful shows have this about right: most don’t.

More fun and games to come-bye for now.

Roy Lewis

 

 

I wonder what would happen if…..?

Finding out that customer want free delivery and how I found out that is what they wanted.

Hello everyone and welcome to another Blog.

This week I have have thinking about how to move our Liqueur business into new areas.

Considering that I manufacture liqueurs, it may come as a surprise to find out that I do not consider that I am in the Drinks business.

Rather, I am in the Gift business.

This means that all new products and initiatives have to be seen through the prism of the Gift market and our customers. I do not supply supermarkets, pubs or hotels – I sell direct via our website, at consumer shows and via specialist drinks retailers.

What this means is that I do not have a high overhead company unlike some of the companies that are in the Drinks business. They have factories to keep open so they need to shift the products to make room for the next lot coming down the line. What this means is that particularly at Christmas, it is a great time for consumers to buy Malt Whisky – you’ll never see it so cheap. The stocks have to be shifted as there is another warehouse-full about to be bottled and then sent to the supermarkets.

In the Gift business, customer service is more of an issue and one that has to be taken seriously. One change that I am about to move to is to offer our mail order customers ‘Free delivery’ for all orders.

Up to now, they had to spend @ £50-60 to get free delivery – now it will be free for all orders. Obviously, our prices will have to alter a bit, but not by as much as you would imagine as most of our customers tend to buy over 3 bottles at a time anyway.

How did I work out if this was what customers wanted? Well, I started asking them to fill in a simple surevy last Autumn at a few large shows and then sent an invitation to our online customers to fill in an online survey – in return for doing this for me, they and anyone they know, get 10% off any of our liqueurs for the rest of 2011.

The number one service that our survey respondents wanted was ‘Free delivery’ – and now they are going to have it. I shall write another blog after this sales season to let you know if the move to ‘Free delivery’ was successful

All the best-Roy Lewis

 

When suppliers drop a massive price hike on you.

How not to be a supplier and what a price shock does to me, their customer – I look for a new supplier right away.

Hi there again,

Writing this while I am still reeling from the shock of a massive price hike by another of our suppliers. Unfortunately for us, all our price lists have been printed so as they cannot be altered now for this year, I will just have to take a margin hit.

So what happens next? The search is on for a new, more reliable source of goods. When prices just creep up, there is never enough impetus to find another supplier but when the shock is big enough, it is worth the effort to do something about it and quickly, so at least there is a back up plan in place.

Happily, this event is unusual, as I have a good set of steady suppliers who do not dump price hikes on me without any warning. Those that do, rarely stay suppliers with me for long.

Most of the time I focus on looking after our customers, but paying attention to suppliers is vital too. Just the fact that I do not have to keep researching and then changing suppliers, saves a large amount of time and effort. In addition, a new supplier may end up being worse than the last, despite the promises.

For a change, I took a cold call from a Card service company and despite having to postpone my meeting with their salesman several times, we eventually met up this week. I am always a bit wary of these types of companies as once they have you as a customer, that’s when the surprise charges start to appear. I ditched Pitney Bowes for that reason years ago – every few months they thought up a new way to fleece me. In addition, I had to pay a ridiculous fee just to have the benefit of their machine that was very costly to run. No winners there apart from Pitney Bowes. Not for me.

With this new supplier, so farI have been impressed by their ognanisation – they do what they promise. This is a massive issue for us, as we rely on other companies delivering the service we have paid for. Most don’t do it and we often have to check that they have collected goods, delivered them to the right address and even that they have read their emails or checked their fax machine. All this hassle does is persuade us not to use them.

If you have any either good or bad experiences with suppliers, please let me know and I will publish a selection in future Blogs.

Sunny weekend coming-Great! Roy Lewis

 

 

 

 

How not be a supplier. Read on….

How a supplier successfully won and then lost my business before I even got started.

Hi everyone again. I’ve been out of the loop for a while but am now back for more.

Lots has happened since the last post and over the next few weeks I will be writing about real business experiences that just so happen to have crossed my path.

This Blog is all about how not to help your customers and the classic example of this is Royal Mail. They contacted me  several months ago about taking advantage of their small parcel service.

The idea is that, if a customer sends out lots of similar parcels, instead of trudging over to the Post office and waiting for ages to be served, the postage could be printed out on a label and the whole lot just handed in to the local Royal Mail office. The alternative is to have Royal Mail collect the bags each day, for a charge of about £500 a year.

Well, as I have started another business that indeed ends up sending out lots of parcels, I thought this service was made for me.

I duly signed up. then everything stopped.

Various staff got in touch with me, made promises and were never heard from again. At last after several calls to the original sales person, I have at last been able to log into our account. I  watched the Demo on the site and it appeared to miss out the crucial part of how to print out the labels.

I really want to do business with Royal Mail with their Packet Service but it seems overly complicated and tricky to use. Perhaps it will be easier once I get going with it. Only 3 months have passed with no progress whatsoever.

I have used this experience to look again at how we look after our customers. I am getting back to them much faster and sorting things out for them as much as I can. The result is that the customers do not keep calling us and the issue gets dealt with. Sometimes we have to wait for another company to come back to us which is very frustrating. In the end it always get sorted out.

Postscript: I have decided not to use the Royal Mail Packet Service. If they can’t help me get started, i have no chance whatsoever in them helping me once I get going. As I am spending £50-150 per week on freight that they could have carried, this is a bad move for them and a good move for me – at least I can keep the business moving along.

More real life business stories next week-all the best, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

What is stopping you? Fear is the key.

New ventures, overcoming the element of fear and using it to your advantage.

Hello again,

Driving along the other day, I was musing on why I have not gone for certain opportunities that have come my way and why I did for others.

It’s not that the opportunities were not good. Or that I couldn’t work out the risk element and how to mitigate it. I think it was mainly to do with fear of failure and fear of not knowing if I could do it.

Fear of failure is all part of all business enterprises – it takes you to the edge, where simultaneously there is the feeling of fear mixed with the excitement of getting it right. This is the part that entrepreneurs seem to love – the uncertainty of it all. Once you get past this, then the actual day to day stuff is dull. That’s where another opportunity comes along and off you go again.

If you are an employee, there is some degree of this feeling to with new projects etc, but there is usually a safety net, and of course you can always blame the process. If you’re on your own facing it, if it fails, the blame comes right back to you and there is no escape. Not everyone can handle this.

The other way of looking at all this is that to learn anything, you have to make mistakes. Thousands of small businesses close up because they make mistakes that they cannot recover from.  The benefit if having kept a business going for several years is that by that time, you will have worked out what the dangers are and how to avoid a catastrophic mistake.

Getting going early has a terrific benefit of giving you the opportunity to mess things up at an age where you are able to take it. Once you have a good job, mortgage and responsibilities, it is harder to give a new project a go, just in case it doesn’t work. You have too much to lose.

Once you have experience (messed up lots of times) you then have the confidence to go after opportunities and you become better at spotting them, working out how much can be made and how to set up a system to run the new venture.

So, what’s stopping you? Fear? Great, that’s the key.

Have a good weekend. All the best, Roy Lewis