Why Brits Don't Drink Boxed Wine, When The French Do? #31

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome back to Yume and cpg. Um, we've got Laura Riches here, founder of Lele Wines. Lovely to see you. Thanks for coming on. Great to have you. Um, we're gonna start at quite an odd place for Yume and cpg, which is Rivals, the television series just to show how culturally relevant we are. You know, who doesn't want to see Aidan Turner riding a horse with his chest out? Right?

Speaker A: I. Every woman's dream.

Speaker B: Everyone's dream, I'd say. You know, um, now, Waitrose did a really interesting kind of partnership, uh, with Rivals, when I think it was the. The final of one of their releases last week, which was a kind of RTD and bits and pieces and flavors from the 80s, wasn't it? Uh, and I thought to myself when I spoke to you and you mentioned you'd been to a Rivals party and I hosted. Hosted, sorry, a Rivals party. Superfan over here. I thought, why can't wine do that? And I thought to myself, actually, wine can't do that. And I was going to ask, why do I have that feeling that wine as a category, couldn't be as nimble or culturally relevant, if that is cultural relevance as something like RTD's?

Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think firstly, um, wine generally, and I'm not talking about Leno here, but wine generally is quite well behaved. So, you know, the obvious partnership would have been like Bollinger.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, but I don't think Bollinger is ever going to do something in partnership with Rivals. I might be wrong. I might be wrong, but I can't see it. Now, Lelo actually did do. Not this series, but we did do something Rivals related, which was, I thought that Gilly would be a great fan of Lelo because, you know, she. She loves, well, famously loved champagne, but also a glass of wine.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and, you know, she loved the 80s. Boxed wine is a kind of 80s throwback. So I went to see Gilly Cooper speak at the South bank center and took a box of our Sauvignon Blanc with me, Right. And, um, you know, I'd say one of the main skills that every startup founder needs to learn is like, how to talk your way into a room, a conversation, whatever. Um, so I managed to get backstage and leave for her in her dressing room, um, a box of Lelo Sauvignon Blanc. I didn't really know where it was going to go. And I made a nice Instagram reel. And it was, you know, me breaking into, uh, dressing room, which. Which was amusing in itself, but a few weeks Later I got an email and it was from Gilly's assistant saying can I have your address? And I got this handwritten note from Gilly in which she thanked me for the box of wine and described it as ravishing.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: And she said everyone should be drinking boxed win. It is underlined. So cool. And I actually have this letter framed in my downstairs Lou.

Speaker B: Surely that is front of pack, you know, testimonial Jilly Cooper. Ravishing.

Speaker A: Ravishing. Yeah. Yeah. So in. I do, I do occasionally roll it out in our uh, in our marketing but for, for my rivals party we had in honor of Gilly a lot of Les Leau Sauvignon Blanc. And I had my. I uh, took it out of the downstairs Lou and had it on display by the, by the wine, you know, geely approved.

Speaker B: Yeah, excellent. It's a very good story actually. But in, in general your point about well, behave old fashioned is a good one. The, the thought of something like RTD being able to do it does feel more kind of natural, doesn't it? In rtd they find it easier to do that sort of thing. Is that, you know, do you, do you see a uh, world in which Lelo's does do that sort of thing? Can be nimble, can be agile, can do quick partnerships and feel like the right place to do it? Is that thinking, ambition and where you want to get to is that kind of would be a, would be a good place to aim for?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, we said that the wine can be um, perhaps not brave enough to do that. I think part of that is because it carries with it this huge heritage. You know, it's, it's many generations of building and creating something that is premium and prestige and there's this nervousness to do something different. Lelo doesn't have that. You know, in fact we are choosing to leave behind perhaps the most prestige part of the wine, most prestigious part of the wine, which is the glass bottle, you know, hallowed 200 year old packaging that everyone associates with quality. Exactly. So I think we've already kind of ditched the um, most revered part of the experience other than the liquid itself. So you know, it's easier for us to, to go something a bit different.

Speaker B: We're about, you know, a small stone's throw away from Berry Brothers here. So keep your voice down, you know, or don't. You know, I did think that as

Speaker A: I walked past I thought, I wonder what Barry Brothers would think of this.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, they should start thinking about it. And I Guess that's the, uh, you know, looking at this from a strategic kind of building point of view, what you're trying to do, it feels like Lelo's is intelligently, strategically stripping back the frictions that the wine category has, which is many. And as you say, some of those frictions make it great and revered and sought after, but at the same time they are a barrier to, uh, a lot of people. Is that kind of how you frame the business, what you're trying to do kind of create growth through removing friction?

Speaker A: Well, firstly, we are asking people to do something different. So we are asking them to abandon the format that they're used to, the way that they've always drunk wine and um, to try something new. And that is in itself, you know, a big ask for people and I'm sure we'll talk about that more. Um, so in terms of how we therefore remove other friction, we are really intentional about, um, choosing wine styles we know people will love. So if we're having a white wine, let's make it a Sauvignon, um, Blanc. If it's a, let's make it Provence Rose. So we're not asking people to, you know, do a double kind of is

Speaker B: that data backed stuff. You just, you kind of understand what are the most popular choices of wine and therefore, simple enough, most popular white wine. Sauvignon Blanc. Let's make a Sauvignon Blanc.

Speaker A: Absolutely. So there are, there are various kind of data points that come from like my time in wine. So I used to run the marketing for Naked Wines, which is the UK's largest direct to consumer wine brand. Um, and one of the things you learn, I suppose, when you've got a big database of customers, you know, hundreds of thousands of customers, is that everyone thinks they're very unique. But oftentimes you're, you're, you're the same as everyone else.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So, you know, we would, um, look at what are the wine styles people buy. Sauvignon Blanc overwhelmingly is the most popular white wine in the uk. Red is a little bit more kind of fragmented, but it's still, it's one of Malbec, Merlot, Pinot Noir. Like people are quite rigid in their habits and you know, furthermore, what we saw was that once, you know, people can buy an entry level wine, they're never that wedded to it. People can buy a fine wine, but that's a treat and you know, repeat purchase on both ends of the spectrum is, is, it can be variable, but there's this sweet spot and it's around £12 per bottle where people can taste the difference between the wine they're drinking and, you know, some cheap blanc.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But it's not so bank breaking that they can't justify drinking it. Um, and so when designing Lelo, the thought process was for already asking people to make this leap. Let's go with what we know. The popular wine styles, the price point. We know that they love, you know, the, the words that they can pronounce, you know, not having something too strange because we've all been there. You look at the wine list, you're

Speaker B: like, oh, that's the one I can say. Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker A: So just making everything else about the experience easy.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The point there, just as, uh, a provocation, really. Although they may not be unique in terms of the choices they make. There's a feeling of wanting to be unique, though, and the feeling that a Sauvignon Blanc from a different region or in a different bottle and a different feeling gives that person right. You know, buying French wine, it's all about the. Where it comes from as much as anything, and the house it may come from or whatever. How do you kind of navigate that? Because that must be quite prominent in wine. How does it make me feel? Yeah, I want to choose that bottle. It may not be different as a liquid to all the other stuff I've ever chosen, but it today it feels like the right one. And that gives me a sense of, of kind of uniqueness in my choice.

Speaker A: Well, I completely agree with you. And I, I think the kind of build on that is that what people love is the, the sound bite. They love the, the one line that they can say when they go to, I don't know, a, um, you know, they're, they're inviting friends over. I chose this wine because. And you know, that might be because I've been to the winery. We went there a couple of years ago. I drunk this wine on holiday, or, um, I tasted it at insert, you know, event. Um, so I guess with Lelo, what we're trying to do is to give people those sound bites about the packaging. And there are certain ones that, um, you know, we know, work and we know this because people have told us so when we bring customers. What did you like about it? Well, I took it to a friend and I told them it was from a female family brand.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I told them that their wine will generate 90% less carbon. It's more sustainable. I told them this is how people drink in the Nordics. This is, this is really Popular in France. So giving people those little sound bites that aren't about the wine itself, but that are about the packaging and kind of turning on its head. You know, this isn't something to be ashamed of, having it in an alt format, whether that's the boxes or the cans. But actually it's a talking point. It's a dinner party kind of.

Speaker B: It's a bit different and it's smarter and.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And therefore the packaging becomes, you know, the wine itself is accessible and is, um, you know, frictionless. Ah, the packaging becomes a talking point in a positive way.

Speaker B: Let's dwell there a little bit on the packaging and the format. As you say, you know, box wine is not new.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Throwback. Ah, to the 80s and beyond. And it's in some countries it's much more established as a, as a routine. But traditionally in the uk, it's bottles. And that's, uh, a kind of fairly entrenched behavior. Without seeing data, I imagine it's fairly entrenched as a behavior. The challenge for you guys must be, which is a very different, difficult brand and marketing challenge, is how do we therefore change behavior and how do you tackle something like that? How do you break it down and think about it and talk to your team and say, this is the challenge that we're trying to conquer?

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think, first of all, I was a management consultant in my past life and therefore, when I was even thinking about embarking on this challenge, question number one is, is it possible? And, um, you've touched upon it. But internationally, boxed wine in particular is accepted as a legitimate waste drink. So in the Nordics, they have an alcohol monopoly. So the government plays a role in what people buy. But in the Nordics, it's over 50% of the market. In France, over 30% of the wine sold in a supermarket is in a box. So this was kind of validation number one. Like, is, is this an impossible task? No, you know, that's that we know that internationally it can be done. So then that was important, obviously, if you're going to quit your job and go all in.

Speaker B: So that was, uh, enough for you, was it saying, this can be done because it's being done elsewhere, we can do it here.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think it was validation where there was a bit of uncertainty. I think the other point is that the ask the switch is compromise free. So I think if you were asking people to switch for a worthy reason. So I'm going to say, you know, sustainability. You can choose what it might be, waste or sustainability. But if we just choose one of those, we're not saying to people, hey, there's a more sustainable way to drink. It might not taste as good, but hey, you know, it's good for the planet and you'll feel good about it. Yeah, that's not enough. So it needs to be something where there is a kind of discernible improvement. And that's where the timing and the kind of wine trends come in. So, you know, the big trend in wine that, that, you know, people will have seen in the headlines is, is people are drinking less or they're moderating their drinking. And so boxed wine stays fresh for six weeks. It means you can have. Once opened. So it means you can have the odd glass, obviously, cans of single serve. So what we're saying to people is, hey, we know that you like to have a glass of wine on a Tuesday night, and that's not really possible with a bottle because you'll, you know, leave it in the fridge door and you'll be trying to taste it and

Speaker B: you get that tangy feeling. And I'll say, no, it's fine. We need to drink it.

Speaker A: Exactly. So we've all been there. Yeah. So we're saying, well, actually, in Lelo, with Lelo, you can drink that. That same quality wine. There's no impact on the quality, but it's. It's better for you because when you have your. Your Tuesday night glass, it's delicious. And then when you have your glass on a Friday, you don't have that question mark, that tanginess.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So I think, you know, asking people to switch can't be on a sort of, um, compromised basis. It's got to be able to give them something that they couldn't otherwise have from the status quo. And, you know, that for me has been about timing, um, and about the right product for the right time.

Speaker B: Would you say that. Is that you had that intuition from the beginning, as in you started it just before COVID did you. Or during COVID Yeah. And people were drinking less then, I guess. Uh, and although I think there was a sort of mini boom in Covid in terms of consumption, not just in my house. So did those trends point in the direction of less kind of, uh, I guess more in control, moderation? Did that play a big role in the. The starting of it as well, or is that kind of come a little bit later?

Speaker A: Yeah, so, I mean, it was very much there at the beginning. So I think, you know, the, the kind of chronology of thinking and how the brand came about was, I mean, I'll be honest. Firstly, because for lots of like, personal reasons, it being Covid, I had been thinking for a while, as many people do, like, I'd like to start my own thing. And for me, I love the wine industry. I feel like it's somewhere where I have real credibility, um, or at least a few people think so. Um, and um, it's something that I understand and it's a product I love. But at naked and um, you know, working in wine you do have this sense, you know, like I imagine people did when perhaps working in a printing press where there's, there's sort of like these, these big existential potential threats. Um, so you think, well, you know, if I'm going to go all in, if I'm going to start my own thing, I need to, to an extent future proof this by not just hoping these things go away or do it

Speaker B: and doing what everyone else is doing.

Speaker A: Exactly. But to start to kind of address those. And it was actually through a conversation with a friend who's a master of wine, um, starting to think about, you know, well, what is it? How can we, you know, is it mini bottles, is it caravan? And none of these solutions are great for everyday drinking. And um, then he actually said to me, well, you know, we should, you know, we should be all drinking boxed wine. And at this point, you know, I'm ashamed to say this and I'd worked in wine for quite a while at this point, like, I'm sorry but no, I'm not going to drink boxed wine, I'm not going to start boxed wine business. And he said to me this line, which I should, you know, it's ingrained in my mind, changed my life. There is no wine making reason why you can't put a great wine in a box.

Speaker B: Ye. And it's just dwelling. So there's no technical reason why it's not in a box. Right. Like traditionally, like that's.

Speaker A: Well, there are two, there are two kind of reasons why that preconception exists. One remains, which is wine doesn't age in a box. So if you buy a bottle of fine wine, you might lay it down. I don't. But you might lay it down in your cellar. Um, and there might be an optimum time, 5, 10 years in the future when you open that wine. That's not this. But then that's also not how most people drink. Like most people, 98 of wine is bought and consumed within two weeks. So, you know, that's.

Speaker B: Sorry, 98 wine is bought and consumed in two weeks. Yeah, that's a good start.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, it's. And I think you can see it in the way we live our life. I mean, perhaps people are a lot more organized than me, but, you know, I've got couple of bottles that we've picked up over the years. Perhaps they've been gifts. Occasionally I'm organized enough to put in a. You know, I don't anymore. I run a wine company, but, you know, one might have put in an order, um, from a wine subscription or something. But. But actually, most of the time you're rushing into insert whatever supermarket and grabbing.

Speaker B: So 98% of wine is drunk within two weeks or consumed within two weeks. I guess you're. What you're saying is, but the whole bottle is not drunk. Right. Like, that's. That's what you're saying. You may buy it, but it will have a glass and it'll sit on your countertop with some sort of caulking makeshift cork.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then you'll pour it away.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And that's the. Do you kind of have an idea of then what the. The market then is for for those people?

Speaker A: There's some outdated stats m. That, uh, talk about pouring wine away. I think what's more compelling to me is the number of people who said, you know, when I was thinking about this concept, you know, I fancy a glass of wine.

Speaker B: I'm.

Speaker A: I'm a wine person. I fancy a glass of wine on Tuesday, but I can't justify it. So I'll have a GNT or, you know, so I'll have an rtd. Yeah, exactly. You know, choosing not to drink wine because there was an operational constraint, um, which can be easily unlocked with. With a change in format.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, and then, you know, there's. There's also a kind of, I guess, heritage reason why people assume that boxed wine needs to be cheap blanc and that it's entirely legitimate, which is that the, um, boxes themselves used to be lined with aluminium. And I guess the role that the lining plays is to stop oxygen from getting to the wine. If you think of oxygen as being the enemy of the wine, um, and in a completely sterile environment, that aluminium lining would work perfectly. But if you pick it up, put it in your car boot, it gets knocked around, you might not be able to see them, but these tiny little hairline cracks would appear in the. In the aluminium, and it meant the wine would oxidize very quickly. And therefore, winemakers were very reluctant to put their wine into box because they're like, well, wait a Second, I've just spent a year picking the grapes harvest. I don't want to put it in and for it to taste like vinegar. So you have this kind of race to the bottom where the only wines in boxes were the cheap gunk. Now the packaging technology feels very funny. Using the word technology is, you know, hardly high tech, but the packaging technology has improved significantly. So now you're in a situation where the lining itself is completely malleable, so it protects the wine and furthermore the tap creates a vacuum. So that's what means that boxed wine is no longer, you know, at risk of oxidizing before you open it. And furthermore, when you do open it, you've got this six weeks. So it's kind of reversed, but there's

Speaker B: this heritage so that the uh, effectively the, a lot of the population was almost trained to uh, think that box wine was poor because it actually was poor. Right. And, and do you look at adjacent categories? Yeah, rtd, you talked about them and you know, not long ago, four or five years ago, you know, it felt a bit of a compromise to pick up a Marks and Spencer D and T and, and drink that instead of having one at home or, or whatever. But the quality, you know, you look at something like moth and Rob, we've had a lot, uh, a couple of times on the pod. Yeah, it's fantastic. Quality product in a, uh, canned format.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And is that the inspiration that you take and say, well, yeah, that was a deeply entrenched behavior that the alcohol in cans was no good unless it was a beer and therefore consumer perception has changed and therefore behavior has changed. Is that the kind of model that you think? Yep, that's what we're doing here.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think you use a really good example with the rtds and cocktails in particular. Rob knows I'm a big moth fan. That is certainly helpful, particularly helpful in the trade actually where, um, venues have tried out having canned cocktails because there's a really compelling operational reason. You know, if you think how long it takes to mix a cocktail and you're in a fast serve, um, environment, it makes total sense. And so there's been this rapid adoption and now the idea that you can put a quality wine in a can is, is now sort of seeded and that makes way for wine. I think there's also within our category, although, um, adoption of things is slower. It's not that long ago that screw tops were considered, you know, unthinkable. And if you think now I'm actually relieved if it's a Screw top that, I have to dig out a corkscrew. So I think there is this, um, this movement in the category also. You know, it's slow moving. It's. Like I said, it's a traditional category, but people will adopt new things.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think it's a really interesting, you know, obviously, I think from a strategic point of view, but the framing of it is very, very interesting. When you look at adjacent examples and you're going after. You know, we all talked about jobs to be done and innovation, jobs to be done, and what are you solving, et cetera. You'll know the lingo well, but this is a real functional, uh, job to solve, isn't it? And you're removing barriers to allow people to do it. I guess, just from a. An emotional point of view.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: How are you then layering that on top? How do you make. You know, we talked about making people feel unique about choosing their wine, making people feel good. How are you giving them that feeling of feeling good about picking Lelos?

Speaker A: Yeah. So I, uh, love telling stories. Like, you know, it's. It's important that I can tell the story about the format and I can tell the story about, you know, internationally xyz, um, when selling to buyers or talking to investors. But actual customer stories are, uh, slightly different. And. And I think that's where wine has a real untapped, um, opportunity. So at, uh, Naked Wines, one of the brilliant things about that job was I got to meet loads of winemakers to travel some quite nice places. And it struck me that, you know, people talk about the. The romance of a bottle of wine, but in most instances, the label is following a set of conventions from that region, whether that's Burgundy, Bordeaux, or the New World. And you sort of have a bit of blindness to it. You know, you might recognize it, it will give some. Some signals, but it doesn't really tell a story. And, um, you know, if you see labels from across, let's say, like Burgundy with the swirly writing, you don't know anything about Producer A or producer B or what makes their wine special.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So what we've tried to do with Lelo is to say, well, you know, we've got this extra space on a. On a box, you've got five visible faces, and on a can, you've got still probably like, twice as much, possibly more space than you do on a wine label. So let's use design to try to articulate some more interesting and special things about these wines. So our Sauvignon Blanc, which is white with the kind of blue pattern that's a little snippet of wallpaper from the winemaker's home. It's not inspired by. It's an actual piece of wallpaper from his home. Um, with the, um, the mother and daughter, Anne Marie and Camille, they make the wine the. But the dad is a painter. He loves to paint. So we asked him to send a photograph of his favorite scene from the Luberon region where they live. Um, and we have created something that looks like a discarded paint palette. So I guess design is a really important part of our brand and our story.

Speaker B: Um, and are you trying to create intricacy and depth onto a format which traditionally doesn't often have that? Is that, is that the design ambition?

Speaker A: I would say we're trying to create theatre through the format. We're trying to say this isn't, um, apologizing for not being a bottle. This is a can, this is a box. And it feels great and it looks great and it says something that that bottle over there doesn't say. And for that to be. Again, we've spoken about, you know, removing friction, um, and, you know, not compromising, I think, and our customers think the design on our boxes and cans is better than the design that they get on their, you know, average bottle of Saply. Um, and yeah, it's not apologizing for what it's not. It's proudly what it is, definitely.

Speaker B: And. And the. How do you manage the on trade conversation? So I guess, you know, you from naked, you probably have some very good, uh, I guess, relationships with, with people across wine. Is that, I guess, entrenchment of, uh, the negativity against box wine? Does that, does that, does that come up a lot across the trade, or is that changing? I guess you've got two big jobs, don't you, from a consumer and a customer point of view?

Speaker A: Yeah, on that. So I think one of the, um, big turning points at Lelo was we'd always been D2C, and the boxes have been the hero. And we, um, started to get asked by restaurants and bars who wanted to offer more wines by the glass. Um, you know, could, could we take your boxes? And this kind of led quite organically into. Okay, the on trade. That sounds interesting. Um, honestly, I didn't know anything about the on trade. I was completely naive as to, you know, the role of wholesalers, how the buying tender processes worked. You know, I really was making up as I went along. Um, but what we found was we, we were the only people doing what we were doing with box. So we would go into the tender processes and people would love the concept and they would love, you know, the liquid. And we'd actually get quite far through sales processes. And then at the very last minute someone would have a little wobbly about boxes and it, it might be they, what they would say would be something like, it doesn't quite fit in our fridge, it doesn't quite fit on our, uh, trolley. But what they were really saying was there's some, there's something, there's something about this. And this was challenging because really through those processes we had to sell two things. We had to sell the concept of boxed wine, um, but we also had to sell our brand Lelo and our wine. Um, so through a kind of series of conversations, lots, um, of people would say to us, look, we love what Leila is doing, but we're really looking for cans. And there was a point in 2024 where I honestly, I was like, enough, enough is enough, let's see what we can do. Um, and I rung up one customer who'd said this to us and said, look, if I get these made, will you be our first customer? I don't want to have egg on my face if I've said like, we absolutely need to do this and then no one buys it. So we had a customer. Um, and you know what's been really interesting is I think people assume that having no competitors is a, that having wide open space is an advantage as a startup. I would say the opposite, actually. Many of the accounts that we've won have been accounts that are totally sold on the concept of canned wine. Um, they perhaps had an entry level brand in there before, but they're looking now for how can we do this in a way that is more aligned with us as a brand that's perhaps more premium or more design, design led. So actually I can go into a sales conversation or someone in our team can, and it's, it's not about the format and that's really refreshing. Now, obviously there are, um, more accounts, more venues that you still have glass bottles and you still have to do that dual job. But it is quite exciting when you can just go in and sell your brand.

Speaker B: What sort of the sales split between cans and, and box?

Speaker A: I mean, 90% of what we do in the. On traders cans is that. Yeah, yeah. And, and having, you know, we'd been sor. Working for years on having um, boxes in the, on trade and having these great conversations and these warm leads and it really was the Unlock was, was introducing the cans to the range.

Speaker B: That's a huge kind of flex or twist, isn't it, to the story? Because it was a boxed wine business. It still is a boxed wine business, but 90% of the volume goes through cans.

Speaker A: 90% of our on trade volume. On trade volumes direct to consumer. The box is still the hero.

Speaker B: Ah, okay. Got it. So total business. What would you say? What's the split?

Speaker A: Oh, gosh, no. So, I mean the on trade is, is a now much larger part of our business. So I guess the split is probably like 70% can, 30%, um, uh, boxes.

Speaker B: And that's all predominantly through DTC.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And what's, what's important about this, I think, is it is a, uh, deviation from the original idea, which was, you know, wine and boxes, dtc. But I'd say in, in other ways it's a natural evolution, which is, you know, the job to be done. The, the pain point was being able to have the old glass.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And for that to be in a format that makes that really easy for every glass to be fresh. So actually the formats might be different, but the, uh, the very essence of what Lelo is great wines. £12 per bottle equivalent. It's something that looks great, that you can feel proud of, that, you know, tells a story. It's, it's the same. It's just to the specific occasion.

Speaker B: What's the kind of learning there? Because you said it kind of being fed up being asked to produce a can format. And I guess maybe that's is the learning is, is to say, well, you know, make sure there's demand there before you make a big shift or, or, or anything like. But did it take quite a lot of conviction and courage to, to change that and to move kind of the mission slightly towards cads.

Speaker A: I think that the learning is to follow the demand. Now I'd say there's a big caveat there, which is we get asked new things all the time. You have to have, you have to filter out every customer email. I think you should do a Pinot Noir. I think you should do an aged Mercer. Whatever. I think it was when you have to start pattern matching, which is like, is this a demand? Is this a genuine demand? Is this something that is going to move the dial for the business? Or is this. You're not quite right for us. So I'm going to hurl a suggestion. Um, but I think, you know, actually asking someone to put them money where the mouth was and to say, like, if I make this, will you Buy it was the validation that we needed. I think, you know, it's also really easy with hindsight to say, should have done it sooner. And I, I wish, I wish we'd done it sooner. But, you know, there's. You only know what you know in that moment and you have to, you know, there are many more things that we've said no to and that's been the right call. So. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. Just a question, and we kind of dovetailed it earlier. The, the conversation about building brands in wine is seemingly pretty difficult to do.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because a lot, you know, a lot of the variation and the detail and the provenance story. Whispering angel did manage to do that. And as we mentioned before, the Cool got, uh, bought by uh, lvmh and they. I don't know this category particularly well, but that looks like, when you look across the category that, ah, looks like a bit of an outlier, you know, in terms of how they built that brand quickly with pace, how they created a name which was. Was easy at a bar and easy to talk about how they tapped into a category which was flying at the time. Actually read an article last week that people are buying chilled reds over rose these days. But looking adjacent to Whispering angel, what do you see in that story? You think, yeah, okay, they got some really big things right that we can maybe try and replicate.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I, uh, think that the. You're, you're totally right. The idea of, of brand in wine is quite a new thing. You know, prior to Whispering angel, there were a few, a few brands, um, but they tended to sit right at the bottom of the market. So I mean, interestingly, the biggest wine brand in the entire world is Franzia, um, which is a boxed wine brand number, um, one on volume and value. So I think what they tapped into was using some of the kind of tactics, strategies outside of wine to create something that is memorable. And I think for me that's having, as you said, a name people remember. It's genius name as such. What's it even mean? No one knows. But it sounds cool and you can say it. You don't have to like, you know, ask someone how it's pronounced. Having some sort of visual cue, which for them was this pale rose. That's what everyone drinks now. But it wasn't at the time, you know, people were drinking this sort of electricity, like pink sort of zinfandel. And so having something really unique and memorable. And then, you know, from what I understand the way Sasha built it, you know, real sort of founder led before founder led was a buzzword, you know, out there, you know, in the entree, selling the story and uh, selling the dream. And so I think that that proved in wine that it could be done. And I guess you've got this visionary founder who made that possible. Um, I would argue now with wine, the idea of brand is now becoming a bit more accepted. Um, I'm going to use the example of the chicken wine. No one could say the name, so they've now Lavio, um, has become the chicken wine. Um, there's quite a lot of data around, um, wine labels with animals because people can say the chicken wine or the porcupine wine or whatever they want to say. Um, and I think now the industry is kind of waking up to the fact that like, oh, you can, you can create uh, this thing called a brand, like, and people will remember what that is and they'll be sticky to it rather than this domain, this vineyard

Speaker B: or whatever kind of.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and you know, for us we wanted to, when we were naming Lelo, we wanted it to be something that felt like a startup brand, that felt cool, that felt innovative, that wasn't vinda whatever or like, you know, had like tied. Yeah, exactly. Tied to a particular product format wine.

Speaker B: It's interesting isn't it, because we work across total beverages a lot and liquid pack format activation, every touch point is scrutinized and debated and how do we tweak and improve and iterate, uh, to get an advantage, meet that job to be done better constantly. And it feels like wine is sort of just waking up to the fact that it has different levers to pull than providence and liquid and a bit of legacy. So yeah, it's really interesting. It's great, great, um, energy really that could potentially come from wine in this kind of next next few phases. Um, which gets us on to kind of thinking a little bit about the future with, you know, moderation being a big thing. Although, uh, as we talked about uh, earlier with Stephen Bartlett's comment on a podcast, there's about drinking wine. There's backlash around the self optimization. So who knows what, what that will mean. But with the idea of control and moderation, uh, which is certainly here, do you get those sort of questions from investors, from customers questioning that and saying, hang on, have you seen the amount of consumers drinking less or moving away or switching to non alk.

Speaker A: One thing the wine industry could do better is to debunk the sort of headline data is incredibly sexy to imply that people aren't drinking wine anymore. It's you know, sensational, easy headline. Yeah. Thousands of wine, thousands of years of drinking wine and suddenly in this, in this last five years we've all changed our mind and you know, a lot of data is cherry picked on this front. It remains that the wine industry dwarfs low and no. Um, that a lot of growth in low alcohol wines is being cannibalized by 0%. That there's a sort of like, you know, like I guess exchange of market.

Speaker B: Have you ever tasted a nice non alcohol?

Speaker A: I think what the guys are doing at Wednesdays to Men is brilliant.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: For me, I love wine.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's um, I think that the fermentation process is what wine is.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Like that the, the creation of alcohol is what wine is. So while I love brand and if I had to, if I had to drink a non elk, it would be Wednesdays to Men. I, I just don't think that you get that same, that same experience in mouth.

Speaker B: Yeah, sorry.

Speaker A: No, but I, you know, I think we don't like. It's. I'll tell you what it is when, when you see these headlines that are uh, you know, perhaps cherry pick data about how no one's going to be drinking Gen Z aren't drinking, which I've got views on, it's almost like it feels a bit taboo to challenge it. It feels a bit like puns, like pun pun, but like a bit sour grapes to say. Oh, is that true? So you know.

Speaker B: Yeah. From your perspective.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So I mean uh, I've seen you know, lots of, lots of data that kind of counters that and you know it's, I think it's now becoming a little bit more accepted to say, oh hey, wait one second. You know, using Gen Z as the example. Well, you know, people were saying Gen Z aren't drinking as much as previous generations. Well that was true to an extent. I mean Gen Z are very young in terms of like drinking age for starters. They had formative years during COVID where no one was going out socializing and drinking and have you know, saddled with loads of student debt in a cost of living crisis. So you know, has adoption of wine been slower than previous generations? Yes, but actually the data is showing that, that you know, as fingers crossed, things are starting to kind of ease off and there's a bit more optimism. They're adopting wine at the same pace. So I think, you know, uh. Am I, am I asked about it a lot? Yes. Am I worried about it? I think, I think it's about creating a, A product that is relevant to the world we live in now that allows people to moderate their drinking. That looks cool, that is a brand. You know, the fact is that boxed and canned wines are growing at a, a 24% CAGR and that doesn't seem to be slowing down. If anything is accelerating.

Speaker B: I, I think, you know, we speak to a lot of uh, people founders, but also a lot of people within the industry and I think it's the people who understand the nuance of the, or the brands that understand the nuance that are going to win. Um, you hear evangelical founders go on and on about how people have stopped drinking. Alcohol's dead. And, and people, I mean it's just total rubbish. And you get, get brilliant founders like M. Mam Gaston at Bativa who just gets. It just gets. It's uh, we're creating great drinks and sometimes I drink and sometimes we don't and that's okay. And, and the control and moderation is a thing, but it's just that, you know, exactly. To your point is understanding the bigger picture, understanding that Gen Z have had a, uh, a ridiculously impactful time with COVID and, and cost of living and things are a little bit different and things are slower. But as you say, if box wine's growing at 24% CAGR and uh, there are lots of pockets of growth across alcohol. Yeah, consumption has changed, but it's brands that can understand how and why and when that they're going to win versus a black and white take and saying, well the world is going to go no low or whatever. So it's a really smart take. And the data, we've got reams of data on it. The data that we see every day just demonstrates a totally different picture to what the Daily Mail all the time say every day. So yeah, you're spot on.

Speaker A: I think it's like all things data and advice. The skill isn't to be blinkered, that doesn't help anyone. But it's actually to be able to kind of filter. Not cherry pick, but filter. Uh, what's relevant here? What's the actual message? What, what do I need to incorporate into the way that I communicate or the brand that I create? And what's just noise? And I, I think there is a lot of noise around alcohol and we perhaps as an industry don't do a great job of presenting the counterfactual.

Speaker B: Yeah, last question because we're out of time. What is the ambition for Leila? Where do you want to, where do you want to take it? Where do you see it going, um, what would kind of what you look back in five, 10 years and you see a headline about Lelo, what would it say?

Speaker A: Well, we've spoken about Whispering Angel.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I would love to do for all format what Whispering angel did for Rose.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And by that I mean create a brand that is memorable, that people associate with quality, and if they don't buy it themselves, they're looking for something as similar to be considered the premium aspirational brand in our category and a category that we have created. And I think what Sasha did at Whispering angel, he created that category. He made Pale Provence in a very heavy bottle, which is very bad for the environment. And I would like to be, you know, Lelo. We are. We prove that drinking in all format is not just, you know, a sustainable swap, it's an aspirational swap.

Speaker B: Aspirational, easier, more convenient, all of it. And, yeah, I think that's very powerful. I think the concept of category kings or category queens is spot on there, isn't it? Is create your own category and become the head of it or become the driver of it. And, yeah, it feels like Lelo is certainly doing that. So, Laura, thank you so much for coming on. It's been really good to have you. We started with Aidan Turner with his chest out. We won't finish with him. Um, but, yeah, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker A: Pleasure.

Speaker B: Cheers.