When Your Brand Stops Being Yours: Following the Market After Fifteen Years
From The MAFFEO DRINKS Podcast: the brand you launch is not the brand you end up with. The market writes the serve, the occasion, and eventually the portfolio. Mark Ward on fifteen years of following Regal Rogue instead of fighting it.
The brand you launch is never the brand you end up with.
The day you go to market, everything up to that point was your assumption: this is what it is, this is how it behaves. Then bartenders and drinkers get hold of it, and they tell you what it actually is.
Mark Ward founded Regal Rogue and has spent fifteen years inside that handover. He launched Hendrick's into Australia in 2005, hit 2,000 cases against a 500-case target, and has watched his own vermouth get redefined by the venues that pour it.
He puts the whole thing in one line.
The minute you launch these brands, they're not yours anymore. You're the pilot making sure the supply hits the market, but the behaviour, the interpretation of what works well, is the bartender who gives you that feedback.
Most founders hear that and keep flying the original plan anyway. That is where the budget burns.
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