YOUR SPECIALIST Interview from SWR Edition 13 - Spring 2000 The February/March issue of Whisky Magazine featured an interview between WM Editor Charlie MacLean and Loch Fyne Whiskies boss, Richard Joynson. With a little encouragement from our customers, we offer the unexpurgated version of that long lunch. CM: Why have a shop in mid-Argyll? The shop provides us with the means to live in the most beautiful part of the British Isles. My family bought a holiday house here 30 years ago and I became fully resident in 1985 when, as a fish farm manager, I raised venture capital to create Atlantic Freshwater plc. I built and managed a large salmon hatchery on the shore of Loch Fyne. I loved it! It had dams, mill-lades, large water heaters and exchangers, tanks—just like a distillery! I still regard myself as a fish farmer in real life! Lyndsay joined me in 1990 and when the writing appeared on the wall for salmon farms—a poor market and major disease problems—we cast around for an alternative occupation which in this area mostly involves either a fishing net, a chain saw, or the least likely for me at that time, the tourist dollar. While considering a shop for sale in Inveraray, eight miles from home, we thought that if we were to sell anything it should be: portable, top quality, Scottish made, well packaged, high value, desirable, non-perishable (fish farmer, remember), doesn’t depreciate, have no creditors and have a good profit margin. With the exception of the profit, Scotch, and very little else, fits all the criteria. I knew very little about whisky then except that I enjoyed drinking the stuff, but I was aware of the increasing interest in malts and was surprised to discover that there were only two specialist whisky shops listed in Yellow Pages at that time. I remember handing Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Whisky to Lyndsay and asking her to count the number of available malts and bottlings while I took the dogs for a walk. We decided that the 170 or so malts that she had noted would be enough to stock a small shop, so we bought it. I then started ‘mugging-up’ and only then realised that whisky was such a wide and stimulating subject. Of the two specialists in the yellow pages, one had gone bust—‘oh no!’ we thought! The other was Frank Clark’s Cairngorm Whisky Centre. When I phoned Frank to discuss our plans, he invited us to Aviemore and gave us buckets of good advice and encouragement. Frank’s friendship has been a great asset to our business, particularly if you consider we could be competitors although Frank and I don’t see it that way. We had a ridiculous and unnecessary struggle to get a licence in Inveraray and in the interim we opened a tasting room and shop within a hotel on Loch Lomond—we opened our second shop before our first! That tasting room was the best education I could hope for. Without much outlay I learned what the customers wanted, what I could sell and what was dead stock. We kept the tasting room for a further year but gave it up as it was a time consuming and expensive diversion. The seasonal nature of west coast tourism is why we began the mail order side. Visitor trade and mail order fit well, a busy summer and a quiet pre-Christmas in the shop permit smooth mail order processing. We opened our main shop in Autumn 1993 and started advertising our nascent mail order business. CM: How do you attract customers. I suspect I am addicted to advertising. It is like a drug; it creates paranoia, is expensive and there are plenty of pushers about. But like Tommy Dewar said, advertise or fossilise. The positive PR is very satisfying because that has to be earned rather than paid for. Initially the lesson was very expensive. There was no whisky magazine or direct way of reaching enthusiasts. We spent a considerable sum in the Sunday broad-sheets in the weeks running up to Christmas and while plenty of people requested our list they then disappeared! We realised that merely sending out a list of weird Scottish words with prices was inadequate, so to try and recover some income from our expensive list of names we had to educate. That’s why I began to write the Scotch Whisky Review. CM: Why has the SWR such a good reputation? It beats me! For me it is just the vehicle through which I communicate my own love of whisky in our own way. Lyndsay is a very important factor in its creation which is entirely in-house; we take a disk to a printer and he outputs it. The SWR has generated a great deal of respect within the industry, some of whom call it the Scotch Private Eye, an undeserved handle and I wish I could do more along those lines. In truth I wish I had never started it—while it has contributed to our success it is a real rod for my back—for a month twice a year I turn into an irritable, neurotic ‘editor’ in the run up to printing! Thankfully there are plenty of wise people willing to contribute and assist. The interview is the most respected part and we are very greatful to the ‘victims’, all of whom have been very supportive—to date we have had only one refusal. We were spoiled with the first interviewee [UD’s Alan Rutherford] and thought it would always be easy but it can be hard to report unique information without alienating the contributor, a difficult balance that requires considerable persuasion at times! CM: I enjoy your editorials. I get the most comments about that first column. I wish I knew who writes it! The day before I drive to the printers, we proof read and typeset everything and by midnight it’s ready—except for the first column for which I haven’t a clue what it is going to be about! Sometimes I start a rant about one thing and it turns into a completely different subject, deleting the initial story. The first column is where I let off steam. I’m very proud of some, they have very well structured arguments—not at all like me! CM: What is your stocking policy? Whisky only—we’re specialists. We try to stock everything of interest to us and our customers, an impossible task given the unsupportable injustice of duty-free exclusives and similar scams. I carry all of the proprietary malts of quality or realistic value and where available an independent and a cask strength alternative. We also offer unusual blends of different ages and styles, including our own Loch Fyne, my pride and joy. Finally we have a variety of whisky-ware from whisky marmalade to whisky toothpaste, in case an infidel comes in who doesn’t want to buy a bottle. CM: How many lines do you stock? I don’t know. By the time we get to number six or seven we’re too intoxicated to count any further with accuracy! I refuse to get into the numbers game, it is not relevant and one specialist offering so many more than another makes them no better. I see these guys now boasting over 1,000 malts to choose from—that’s not great, that’s confusing to the customer and indicates to me someone who has lost control of his stock and his business! I can get more if required but it never is; everyone seems happy with our offering. Apart from those in our stock list, we have a stash of bin-ends that never get listed (or sold!) and the ‘collector’s loft’, an arrangement of copper pipes above our heads in the shop supporting a number of oddities and discontinued bottles for our more enthusiastic collectors. CM: Do you collect whiskies? No, I don’t collect anything really—whisky books perhaps, but there is nothing I can’t do without, the definition of a collector I suppose. Life is too short and besides I’m a great guzzler and believe that is why whisky was given to us, not to revere. But that’s just me, collectors are a very important part of our business and it is important to work hard on their behalf. One of my jobs is to try and communicate to the producers what is wanted. The whole show is customer driven, it has to be. We try to anticipate what people will want and will like and not to get sidetracked by the insignificant. CM: Who are your customers and what do they want? Tourists, collectors and consumers. I really enjoy the tourists, those who come in for curiosity and in the best of cases we get the chance to talk to them about whisky and invariably sell them a bottle. We all get great pleasure taking on someone who claims they don’t like whisky; we argue that most people who drink a few shots of Long John when they are fifteen have every right to believe that Scotch is not their tipple. We then coax them with our tasting cupboard and in the majority of instances persuade them that they do like whisky, confirmed with a sale! CM: Which whiskies do you use for this conversion? It usually only takes one, the trick is knowing which one for which person. The sure fire hit is Springbank 21yo and we make a lot of noise about selling a non-whisky drinker a forty-five pound bottle! Just as successful is our first house malt, Inverarity 10yo, and believe it or not the Loch Fyne, further confirmation that we have a very successful drink there. CM: And the collectors and consumers? Collectors look for nicely packaged, and often limited edition, variations of mainstream malts, malts which are a real alternative to the original, not just a marketing wheeze or at least the wise ones are a bit more cynical. Collectors buy to keep, for decoration and in the hope of an increase in value. Consumers can legitimately be called connoisseurs, they look for good or exceptional whiskies to enjoy now. Their needs are far more wide ranging and draw equally from the producers and independent bottlers. The dram is important, not the package. From the consumer’s perspective, the official and independent bottlers are mutually supportive and compatible. I know there are several producers who throw a fit at the very idea of independent bottlers but I don’t think they have thought it through properly. Loyalty to one brand just doesn’t exist among malt whisky drinkers. I’m a Rolling Stones fan but it’s not as if I’ll only listen to the Stones; the same with the ‘Laphroaig man’. Single Malt Scotch Whisky drinkers seek expressions and not distilleries. It is the ability of those distilleries and the independent bottlers to make available the variety of expressions that confounds the marketing men who are used to the sanctity of the branded trade mark, fine with petrol or cola but not malts. Often customers will phone and say “Have you tried this new release? What’s it like?” I will open a bottle that I expect will have promise and test it over the counter, gauge the reaction. If good it goes in the tasting cupboard and is a pleasure to sell but I do have a very large number of ‘rejects’. Its a sad fact that our customers keep us much better informed about new and limited edition bottlings than the whisky companies do. Connoisseurs have their favourites to which they return, but they do like to explore and experiment. Producers have to spend some of the extra profit generated from malts wooing these roving consumers to make sure they get their bite of the cherry. CM: Spending profits—the shareholders won’t appreciate that! I believe that throughout business in the world, inadequate managers are blaming shareholders for their unpopular decisions. I’ve had very serious, successful institutional shareholders at the fish farm AGMs and they were never so obsessed with their profits that they would not support something more esoteric. CM: What is your view of the whisky market at the moment? The passions which whisky arouses in the consumer are, in my view, not sufficiently catered to by many whisky companies. There is a monstrous imbalance. Although they pay lip service to putting the consumers first and supplying what they need, this is not done. Few companies seem to be listening. They see what the others are doing and, like sheep, they follow. There is not enough innovation or imagination. It’s not about yet more wood finishes but finding or creating market niches, and genuinely new products. Our Living Cask for example. For a while and before the take over, United Distillers wacked out a bunch of innovative variations such as Bell’s ready-mixed with Irn Bru, Bell’s and chillies (Red Devil) and Loch Dhu—which gained no support from me, a poor spirit too closely aligned with single malts and it defamed Mannochmore Distillery. But I did applaud Red Devil (and made no comment about the ready mixes). But now they are all gone! They gave up! You must persevere, if you launch something you should have thought it out. There’s too much caution and too much me-too-ism. And portfolio streamlining, the lazy only want to promote one product for each sector and so they dump great brands without regard for their heritage or potential. There are managers who are exceptions to this of course, many as passionate as me or my customers but they are getting the ‘squeeze’. CM: Now we are on the third bottle, any more comments? Yes, this one’s for the collectors, I alluded to it earlier. Why is the international traveller given access to the duty-free exclusive while the stay-at-home collector is deprived? Why can’t retailers like me have access to the same stock, never mind the price, to supply those who don’t travel the world on a frequent basis? At least that way the collector can fulfil his collection without trying to find some one travelling through Rio or wherever. CM: Keep going... (Cheers!) This nonsense of not supplying 75cl bottles to the home market—Europe requires 70cl (thanks France!), the rest of the world (and duty free), 75cl. “Oh Richard I’d like to sell you some—but it’s 75cl stock”. So what? Ask the trading standards people and they say the 70cl rule is only a European technicality and they would only be concerned if there were several complaints that we were supplying 75s and, unless there was an attempt to deceive they would not take it any further—sounds reasonable given that it is 7% over the norm. Ask the feeble minded managers and they say they have asked their legal people and been told ‘no’. Lawyers have no interest in imagination, customer requirements or profits even. It’s much easier to say no and then forget it! To top all that, some of those that have refused me for this reason have then sold 75s through their distillery—hypocrisy! Fine if they want to cut out the retailer, but let’s be honest about it! CM: How do you account for LFW’s success? Simple, treating our customers as we would wish to be treated ourselves. Understanding the importance of the suppliers, (despite my rants), and I must applaud Andy and Laura who work with me in the shop—thanks guys, now get back to work! CM: Before you part, what’s your desert island dram? I’m a beer drinker, a pint of heavy. CM: Alright! What’s your favourite whisky? The (award winning) Loch Fyne. CM: Richard! Play the game! It’s true! Otherwise a well-matured blend.If your offering,Whyte & Mackay 21yo; if I’m paying, Johnnie Walker Black Label’s fine—in spirits I prefer the symphony rather than the screaming guitar solo!