A man with his own brand

[Bryam Cardona]

Two years ago I met a man who was doing very well in the wine business. He owned a vineyard in Colombia, and on a few occasions I had the chance to talk with him about entrepreneurship. I really liked his way of thinking.


I remember very clearly that he talked about the importance of having your own brand. He had his own wine brand, and he told me that in the beginning it was very difficult. In fact, his whole family had to work extremely hard to get the business off the ground.


Over time, he managed to build a network of distributors across different sectors. Interestingly, those distributors were the ones competing with each other on price.


At one point I asked him:
“Do you compete on price too?”


He told me no. He explained that when you have your own brand, you can justify higher prices by emphasizing value perception. For example, if someone asked why his wine was more expensive than the competition, he could highlight differentiating factors:
“My wine has ten more years of aging,” or “our wine comes from some of the purest natural springs,” and similar arguments that increase perceived value.


On the other hand, if you’re selling a brand that you don’t own, sooner or later you will end up competing on price. The only real exception is if you have territorial exclusivity, but in many markets that’s difficult to get because the brand owner may prefer having multiple distributors within the same geographic area.


Of course, many businesses sell brands they don’t own. However, from a business control perspective, this creates certain limitations.


All of this became clear to me while observing a wine business whose brand has managed to remain strong in the market for four generations.

 

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