Handpicked Wines The Handpicked brand came about when a wine consumer wanted to have the confusion taken out of wine. Unlike other wine companies the Handpicked philosophy is based on the wishes of the wine drinker, not the wine industry 'experts'. This underlying philosophical standing is the overriding principle of the Handpicked brand. The story behind Handpicked begins as follows: |
"My background is in Marketing & Advertising. Some years ago I had Tyrrells Wines as a client, one of the oldest Family owned wine companies. I had not been involved in marketing wine before and so got to learn about the challenges of selling bottles of wine to consumers. The client seemed to place great importance on things like oak barrels, vintage, aged vines, how many years to lay down wine before drinking etc as a selling point however they didn’t spend much on advertising their wines to the consumer but did to the trade so how was I to help consumers buy their wines. They also seemed to not place as much importance on their label. It appeared to me that most wine companies had a name of a creek or hill or something that was on their vines and land which didn't help a consumer judge easily whether it was good or average and so was probably judged on price. The only other indicator was if it had a medal on the bottle, however there are so many wine fairs that just about any brand would eventually win one otherwise they wouldn't be in business long. In a way they didn’t see that a label was in a sense their only advertisement if they didn’t spend money on advertising to the consumer. Their labels didn’t have any meaning or gave me a reason to pick their bottle off the shelf rather than the one next to it.
Well, I enjoyed drinking wine and like 95% of consumers knew little about which wine to drink unless it was a well known brand that had been around a long time. So when I went into a liquor store, like most people, I was a bit intimidated as to which wine to select from the shelves of hundreds of different wines. There was also the fact that if I was buying a wine to take to a dinner party, I would probably buy a wine based on its price assuming the price was an indicator of quality. In a way people would judge me on the wine I was bringing. There has always been a cache attached to a person's knowledge of wine as an indicator of being well educated. So I imagined that if a consumer was wanting to buy a French, Italian, South African, American Spanish or wine from Chile they would be even more lost in their ability to make a purchase decision. I though that it would be wonderful if people I could trust, like well-known wine makers could hand select different wines for me, then it would make my decision to buy really easy.
Thus came the Handpicked concept. I painted my own hand and made an imprint to be the graphic on the label as I know that it is a powerful symbol that everyone in the world relates to and probably the first one make they made as a child. In fact on the bottom of the door of our bedroom there is still a hand print that one of the twins made when they were babies that I have not washed off as it makes me smile every morning. It is also an image that portrays craftsmanship and care. The wine industry had never seen a concept like this. It was soon apparent that there was great potential. At that time there was not a global brand that sold wine from all wine making regions. Wine was either from Australia or France or Italy etc and there was no company that sold wine from all these countries. The other strength of the concept was that it was a virtual wine concept and that you didn’t have to have all your money tied up in vineyards and so could invest in advertising and promoting the wines instead. There would be no ‘bad’ years as you could select the best wines from each country or region each year and not be tied down to the harvest of owned vineyards like most wine companies".
Andrew Mills |
