Hello everyone,
I'd like some honest advice - and don't hesitate to be brutally honest - on whether or not I should continue this business activity. (OTOH, please set aside your personal beliefs about the product that I'm selling.)
First, some background info: I sell wine as an important side hustle, but nonetheless a side hustle; it could never supplement my main income, which is, unfortunately, a 9-5 office job as an accountant.
(I hate boring 9-5 work, and I want to become free of employers, managers, alarm clocks, and public transport one day, and I know that I will have to create a real Fastlane business to achieve that, so I'm already researching industries and opportunities to that end. But that's a subject for another thread.)
Still, I've been pursuing this wine-selling side hustle since 2019 (except during the Corona pandemic lockdowns), because :
1) It does bring some side income, which is always good.
2) And, at the same time, I gain priceless, real-world, field experience as a salesman, and in a very competitive industry at that. And that experience can ONLY be learned in the field, not through books, seminars, or online training sessions.
Nonetheless, it's not going well, because:
1) I began in the autumn of 2019 - just a few months before the 2020-2021 Coronavirus pandemic began.
2) The Lyon metro area, where I live and work, is a mid-sized, yet ultra-competitive market, so sales volumes (and commission paychecks) have never been high, and obviously nowhere near Fastlane levels. As I said at the beginning, it's only a side hustle.
3) I began prospecting my native country (Poland), which was initially a very promising export market (an ocean, compared to the small lake that is the Lyon metro area) only in 2021, after the Covid lockdowns ended, and Germany only since 2024, whereas I should've started prospecting both of these countries right after I graduated from the Strasbourg Business School in 2018.
Still, even as a latecomer, I've made some respectable sales in Poland, even this year - even though some importers have said that I'm 5-10 years late to the market.
4) Since the end of the Coronavirus pandemic, most French people seem to have become very stingy. They want everything that's good, and at a high quality, yet, they also want it for free, or failing that, at the lowest price possible. (Search for the most popular keywords for any product's French name, and it's highly likely that the French word "gratuit" ("free") will be part of the most popular keywords.)
Numerous wine store and restaurant owners in the Lyon metro area have told me that, since 2021, they've seen a) steadily declining customer numbers and b) people now only buying the absolutely cheapest wines possible, and at restaurants, only ordering the cheapest dishes available and no drinks.) I've received similar news from Polish and German wine importers.
5) The inflation caused by the pandemic and by Russia's invasion of Ukraine (the war is still raging) have hit Polish and German customers' wallets hard. Since 2020, the Polish currency (the Polish zloty or PLN) has already lost 50% of its value.
6) And to top it all, there's now a steady anti-alcohol government-sponsored propaganda ongoing in France, Germany, and worst of all, Poland, where the lower house of Parliament has just passed a stringent anti-alcohol law prohibiting any kind of promotion or advertisement of any alcoholic drinks anywhere, including on social media. As one Polish wine importer (an important prospect of mine) has put it, this law is worthy of an Islamic republic, not of a European country.
So, in short, market trends, consumer habits, macroeconomic factors, and a steady stream of moralist, purist, government propaganda against the product I sell is driving sales steadily downwards.
So my question to you is simple:
1) Should I consider the above-listed problems as merely potential excuses to quit, like a polar bear complaining that the tundra is cold (to borrow words from @MJ DeMarco ) ?
2) Or should I conclude that the market is indeed shrinking, that governments are in the process of killing them (or at least shrinking them further), and start selling something completely different?
Thank you in advance, and have a great weekend everyone!
I'd like some honest advice - and don't hesitate to be brutally honest - on whether or not I should continue this business activity. (OTOH, please set aside your personal beliefs about the product that I'm selling.)
First, some background info: I sell wine as an important side hustle, but nonetheless a side hustle; it could never supplement my main income, which is, unfortunately, a 9-5 office job as an accountant.
(I hate boring 9-5 work, and I want to become free of employers, managers, alarm clocks, and public transport one day, and I know that I will have to create a real Fastlane business to achieve that, so I'm already researching industries and opportunities to that end. But that's a subject for another thread.)
Still, I've been pursuing this wine-selling side hustle since 2019 (except during the Corona pandemic lockdowns), because :
1) It does bring some side income, which is always good.
2) And, at the same time, I gain priceless, real-world, field experience as a salesman, and in a very competitive industry at that. And that experience can ONLY be learned in the field, not through books, seminars, or online training sessions.
Nonetheless, it's not going well, because:
1) I began in the autumn of 2019 - just a few months before the 2020-2021 Coronavirus pandemic began.
2) The Lyon metro area, where I live and work, is a mid-sized, yet ultra-competitive market, so sales volumes (and commission paychecks) have never been high, and obviously nowhere near Fastlane levels. As I said at the beginning, it's only a side hustle.
3) I began prospecting my native country (Poland), which was initially a very promising export market (an ocean, compared to the small lake that is the Lyon metro area) only in 2021, after the Covid lockdowns ended, and Germany only since 2024, whereas I should've started prospecting both of these countries right after I graduated from the Strasbourg Business School in 2018.
Still, even as a latecomer, I've made some respectable sales in Poland, even this year - even though some importers have said that I'm 5-10 years late to the market.
4) Since the end of the Coronavirus pandemic, most French people seem to have become very stingy. They want everything that's good, and at a high quality, yet, they also want it for free, or failing that, at the lowest price possible. (Search for the most popular keywords for any product's French name, and it's highly likely that the French word "gratuit" ("free") will be part of the most popular keywords.)
Numerous wine store and restaurant owners in the Lyon metro area have told me that, since 2021, they've seen a) steadily declining customer numbers and b) people now only buying the absolutely cheapest wines possible, and at restaurants, only ordering the cheapest dishes available and no drinks.) I've received similar news from Polish and German wine importers.
5) The inflation caused by the pandemic and by Russia's invasion of Ukraine (the war is still raging) have hit Polish and German customers' wallets hard. Since 2020, the Polish currency (the Polish zloty or PLN) has already lost 50% of its value.
6) And to top it all, there's now a steady anti-alcohol government-sponsored propaganda ongoing in France, Germany, and worst of all, Poland, where the lower house of Parliament has just passed a stringent anti-alcohol law prohibiting any kind of promotion or advertisement of any alcoholic drinks anywhere, including on social media. As one Polish wine importer (an important prospect of mine) has put it, this law is worthy of an Islamic republic, not of a European country.
So, in short, market trends, consumer habits, macroeconomic factors, and a steady stream of moralist, purist, government propaganda against the product I sell is driving sales steadily downwards.
So my question to you is simple:
1) Should I consider the above-listed problems as merely potential excuses to quit, like a polar bear complaining that the tundra is cold (to borrow words from @MJ DeMarco ) ?
2) Or should I conclude that the market is indeed shrinking, that governments are in the process of killing them (or at least shrinking them further), and start selling something completely different?
Thank you in advance, and have a great weekend everyone!
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