Transcription
mattered. I started painting pictures, and what picture painting allowed me to do was split up the business. I sold everything everybody knew about at cost. I literally sold Budweiser, Schaefer, you know, Dewar's White Label Scotch, Santa Margherita, everything that people drank that they knew that everybody knew.
Every brand I sold at dead cost, and then I spent every single cent of my energy, life that you would walk in cuz you knew we sold Budweiser at cost or more importantly, specifically to wine. You knew that we sold Kendall Jackson and Santa Margherita at dead cost. They were the two most important items, and I would intercept you through my merchandising or actually being on the floor at first cuz we were small company, and I would try to storytell to you why Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio at $12.99 was overpriced, which it was, which having truth on your side was great, and why you needed to try this $9.99 Pinot Grigio, but oh by the way, I was making $4 a bottle on that versus zero on the $12.99.
And then when you tasted it and you and you liked it better or at least in the same ballpark, I started building trust. You're in a commodity business, you have to create a differentiator.