Jim Koch, the founder of Boston Beer Company, joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) after obtaining a degree in law and MBA from Harvard. A few years later, tired of the business world, Koch quit his job and came to his kitchen with his great-great grandfather's recipe to brew the first batch of samuel adams beer. Today, the market value of Boston beer has grown to $2 billion.
Innovation: Only by doing what you like can you be more creative. Jim Koch combined the rich taste of imported beer with the fresh quality of local beer to create a brand-new "craft" beer.
1. Give full play to the flexible advantages of small enterprises and aim at niche markets with vacant demand.
In the 1990s, the American beer market was like the undeveloped west. There are only two choices on the bar shelf: local commercial beer and imported beer from Europe.
In order to cater to the appetite of most consumers, local manufacturers choose to produce plain public tastes; Coupled with cost considerations, the brewing procedures and materials are also based on the principle of quickness and simplicity, and the "manufactured" beer lacks distinctive features.
On the other hand, imported beer has a strong flavor, but in the process of crossing the ocean from Europe, the bad preservation environment has long lost the flavor of beer and failed to bring a pleasant taste experience.
Therefore, in the face of huge competitors in the market, Koch chose to aim at the gap between local and imported beer, providing another choice with both flavor and quality: brewing the flavor of imported beer with various raw materials, ensuring the freshness of beer with the advantage of localization, and opening up a new blue ocean market with the "craft beer" interwoven with the two.
Getting rid of the burden of big companies, Koch plunged into the world of wine-making with $240,000 raised from relatives and friends, despite his extreme lack of knowledge about wine-making.
2. Helping customers achieve their goals is the guarantee of sales success.
With the shining signs of Harvard MBA and Boston Consulting Group, Koch didn't even know the basic sales channels and employee compensation system at first, nor did he know how to design trademarks and promote his own beer. So start from scratch and explore slowly.
After a period of trying, Koch finally brewed the first batch of samuel adams craft beer. He immediately drove his van to a nearby bar to promote his products. Unfortunately, all the bar owners turned away from the former elite in the mall.
Prior to this, all brewers had only one marketing strategy: spending a lot of budget on advertising to attract consumers to buy their own beer. Nobody cares what ingredients are used in beer. How to brew? What's the difference with other brands? Only a few "famous" beers will appear on the wine rack.
"Although failure is frustrating, you still have to pull yourself together and start over, and learn from it. So Koch thought about it for a few days, and then he took his business partner and a few bottles of cold samuel adams beer into the bar, poured a few glasses and invited someone to taste them there.
"Once people drink the first sip of craft beer and feel the huge difference in the middle, they can never go back. Koch smiled and recalled the scene that day: the bar owners happily signed several orders with Koch, and customers also asked where else to buy craft beer.
Koch now understands that "the purpose of sales is to help customers achieve their goals, not your own." The bar owner wants to know whether craft beer can attract more guests. The bartender wants to know if recommending craft beer will ruin his taste. The guest wants to know if the craft beer tastes good. All kinds of questions, after tasting samuel adams beer, the answers naturally emerge.
Grasping the key points that customers really care about and proposing targeted solutions are the key to successful sales.
After successfully selling the first case of beer, Koch wanted to know: how to expand the scale and let more people know how great the craft beer is?
3. Create a fine brewing culture from the inside out, and let creativity sprout in every corner.
Koch believes that only by letting employees realize from the deep heart that they are an indispensable part of the process and letting consumers know the story behind each glass of beer can the budding craft beer take root and thrive in the soil of culture, instead of a meteor-like craze that disappears in a blink of an eye.
Internally, give every employee of Boston Beer a set of brewing equipment, encourage them to exert their personal creativity at home, brew their own unique beer and participate in the annual internal selection. The best formula that stood out in that year will be made into beer named after the employee and sold throughout the United States.
Interestingly, most of the champions come from sales, customer service and other units rather than the brewing department-when the enterprise creates a culture that encourages innovation, every member may come up with amazing ideas.
Externally, Koch's only early sales were local radio programs. In each program, Koch and the host drank beer and introduced some knowledge of craft beer to the audience, such as the influence of hops on the taste, the differences of beer culture in different countries and so on. Let consumers enjoy beer, but also deepen their understanding of craft beer through these short stories.
Over the years, consumers' acceptance of craft beer has gradually increased, and small breweries with local flavor have emerged in many areas. Koch's efforts have achieved initial results, but the pace of Boston beer has not stopped.
There is no end to progress and no end to quality.
Before 1988, the bottling date of beer was printed on the bottle label with the unique coding method of each manufacturer, which was convenient for retailers to check the shelf life. However, complicated labels make it difficult for consumers to confirm the freshness of beer, and they often buy expired beer that begins to deteriorate.
Caption: Traditional shelf life code (left), new code (right)
Koch believes that if we continue to follow the tradition, the same situation will happen again and again, and a bad experience of consumers is enough to hurt the hard-built foundation of the whole craft brewing industry. Therefore, Boston Beer decided to break away from tradition and clearly mark the taste appreciation period of its own products on the bottles in an easy-to-understand format, so as to ensure that every bottle of beer that consumers buy home is as fresh and full of flavor as when they first left the factory.
In addition, Koch also observed that it is difficult to keep beer cups in the market at low temperature, and the aroma and taste will be lost with the increase of temperature. So he began to think about how to solve this problem and prolong the good time after the beer was opened.
With the help of several experts in taste science, Boston Beer has introduced a special cup specially designed for beer: the outer rim of the cup allows the entrance of beer to fall on the taste buds on the tip of the tongue, the proper thickness of the cup wall can isolate the palm temperature, and the notch at the bottom of the cup allows bubbles to release slowly, bringing out more aroma.
Description: "samuel adams Perfect Pint Glass" is specially designed for drinking beer.
From the moment when beer is bottled to the moment when consumers drink it, every detail is spared. Koch's insistence on quality made Boston Beer grow rapidly.
5. "Recruitment should be slow, but dismissal should be quick." It is better to have a talent standard that is not excessive.
In terms of talent selection, Koch's standards are as strict as the quality requirements of beer. There is a sales vacancy, which has been vacant for a year and a half, waiting for the best candidate.
When I come to Boston for a beer interview, Koch will spend the whole day letting job seekers know the reality of the job. Take the salesperson as an example, Koch will take the candidate to experience a day's sales life: loading boxes of beer into trucks, selling his own beer to strange bars, and checking the shelf life of each barrel of beer in a stuffy basement.
In this process, the employer can observe whether the applicant is competent for the job, and the job seeker can also recognize the reality of the job application and avoid misunderstanding caused by different cognition.
What is even more rare is that Koch, who was born in an Ivy League school and worked for Boston Consulting Group, chose employees without the myth of elite. Choosing "characteristics" is more important than screening "education".
Take Rhonda Kallman, an entrepreneurial partner, as an example-Kallman was the secretary of Koch when he worked for Boston Consulting Group. He has no outstanding academic experience, but he is a key figure for Boston Beer to gain a foothold in its early business.
Koch recalled that the outgoing and lively Kalman always easily mingled with bar owners, waiters and customers. Part-time bartender experience also Jeancard Mann clearly know the real needs of customers. After establishing the initial trust, customers began to be willing to try samuel adams beer, which was completely unknown at that time, and the next sales could proceed smoothly.
According to Koch's standard: "We only admit people who can improve the average level. Enterprises are committed to finding the best talents, putting him in the right position and letting him do what he is good at; As an employee, you should always check your status and keep it in the right position. Do the right thing?
6. Yeast philosophy of "sharing weal and woe"
In 2008, the poor harvest of hops, a key raw material, led to a shortage of supply. Because Boston Beer signed a futures contract early, it avoided the pain of stopping production, so it maintained an adequate supply of raw materials. However, many small breweries can't bear the soaring prices of raw materials, and face the difficulties of insufficient production and difficult capital turnover.
At this critical moment, Koch generously resold some hops to other small breweries at the cost price to help them tide over the difficulties and maintain diversified choices in today's craft beer market.
In addition to sharing weal and woe, Boston Beer Company also adheres to the principle of "sharing weal and woe" and generously shares the research and development achievements they have invested a lot of time and money, including patented beer cups, brewing technology and so on. As long as qualified brewing related industries apply, they can obtain authorization to produce beer or brewing equipment.
After the business was on the right track, Koch began to think about how to fulfill corporate social responsibility. "At the beginning of the founding of Boston Beer Company, what was the assistance he needed most? 」
The answers came up quickly: "money" and "advice".
Thus, the project "Brewing the American Dream, BTAD" was born. Provide small loans and business consulting for people who want to start a business in the field of catering or sightseeing, and solve the troubles that startups are short of funds at first or have problems that they don't know how to solve.
Since the "Brewing the American Dream" program was launched in 2008, it has completed 1.200 loans with a total amount of 1.5 million US dollars; * * * There are 7,000 small business owners who have received counseling, and the average repayment rate is over 90%. It only takes two or three years to recover the funds, which is a very outstanding achievement.
Why should we support or even cultivate possible "competitors"?
Koch compared the process of beer fermentation: "When all yeasts are healthy, the beer brewed by Qi Xin is the best. Once some yeasts lose their vitality, the environment will deteriorate, all the partners will die together, and the whole barrel of beer will be destroyed. 」
In an interview, Koch was asked how to plan his career development. His answer is: "find out what you are happy and meaningful to do, and then do it better or cheaper than others." But for me, the pursuit of "better" is more interesting and creative. 」
At the same time, Koch also reminded self-made entrepreneurs: "A self-made small business will consume all your time and energy and occupy your whole life for a period of time. Therefore, it is best to devote yourself to the field that makes you happy. If you start a business just for the pursuit of wealth, you are likely to lose yourself. 」
Finally, let's have a glass of chilled craft beer on a hot summer day and enjoy Jim Koch's business wisdom together.