A few months ago, leading up to Drink Better’s fifth anniversary, I asked an old friend — a wonderful designer named Jun — to help me come up with a new identity to represent the future of the company (more on that in a future post). Drink Better’s first logo was like the early days of the business… an embodiment of our foundation and philosophy but not representative of who we are now. We’d outgrown it, like companies do. It was clunky, grey, boring, and easy to forget (and easy to copy by another local business, as it happens!) and I just wasn’t proud of it. Our new identity, with a cute cartoon ‘me’ leading the charge from my aerodynamic bubble canopy cockpit, and with just the right amount of whimsy on display, is just about as Kari as a graphic can get. We get a lot of comments about it (even our accountant loves it) and I could not be prouder of what it says to the world. Drink Better is not only the product of my personal philosophy about the right way to do business and what we believe is a better way to drink, but we’re out here having the best time.
Drink Better logo designed by Jun Kahng.
The ensuing years since I started Drink Better, in January 2019, have changed not only my little corner of the drinks business, but the whole world. While we started strong and introduced a number of great brands and products to the market that first year (thanks in large part to buyers who believed really strongly in what we were doing), much of that momentum would, like it did for so many businesses, grind to a virtual halt in mid-March of 2020. No restaurants open meant no buyers — just in time for our first big round of new shipments of the year to arrive.
As a former advertising production professional of 20+ years, there is precious little that sets me to panic — not a missing vehicle on the day of an expensive and important photo shoot, not a weather delay costing the client thousands, not an ill celebrity brand spokesperson the day of a big event, and not even a spelling error on a huge print run while I am on vacation. In my former career I was notoriously unflappable and unpanickable… but in March of 2020 with hundreds of cases arriving and many of my own dollars out there in the wind, I was freaking out in a very unfamiliar way. I told nobody — I calmed and carried on like I was as good at this as I had been at my old career. Keeping this stress to myself was among the worst business decisions I’ve ever made. I can’t unrecommend it enough.
I won’t bore you with the next bit of the story, most of which anyone reading this blog will know if they were on earth at the time. Bottle shops became a thing, summer came, patios opened, people were happy to be out and anyone who could bought whatever they could to keep business going. Oh, and know I exhaled at some point. The good ship Drink Better too had weathered the storm (albeit with rips in her sails, scratches and dents on her hull and a seasick captain at the helm) but she knew like a Canadian summer those warm perfect days weren’t going to last. Winter was on its way and, with it, the gales of more closures, shipping delays, and… more panic. Icebergs, and a sinking feeling. This might be where I lose the nautical theme.
During the ebb and flow (nope, we’re still on the water) of pandemic small biz finances when you don’t qualify for government grants/assistance, Drink Better expanded slowly and organically most years but not all, the aim being never to grow beyond what we could manage or maintain with a small team. This isn’t the way most wine agencies do things or what the LCBO structure rewards (LE sigh), but it’s right for me. I still believe that’s important today, having contracted the business to manageable levels when needed (or forced by circumstance) so I have the resources and energy to grow it when I’m able. Drink Better is only ever going to be probably 250-300% the size it is now. On purpose and despite what others in the industry are doing. I’m not in business for other wine agents and I don’t measure my success against theirs. To quote a comment I read on Instagram the other day written by a celebrated French vigneron on his American distributor’s post: Long live the small importer. Perfect. I could not agree more. To paraphrase: Long live the one who’s got time to know you and love your brand like their own and nurture it while not also trying to sell 14 other brands from the same region. Long live great buyers with great palates and sense of adventure, love live relationships, long live independent restaurants and bars, and long live small family-run wineries and distilleries.
Being small and independent we only work with brands and people we like, and we still only sell things we actually love to drink. Our partners are always small independent businesses like us — scrappy, resourceful, and principled. It’s, well, better that way. And all those things I never panicked about in the #adlife days? It took me a while to figure it out but I now know why: I did my job but I never actually CARED about those clients’ businesses most of the time. I always cared deeply about the ideas and bringing them to life, and about my colleagues and my supplier partners, and that motivated me to work for the team, but to CARE about the giant car makers, banks, phone companies, drug manufacturers and packaged goods conglomerates whose ads we made? No, so truly caring for the brands I put my name on now means everything to me as a result. I panic a bit now because I care. I care about how to do the best job for that incredible gin we have coming into the LCBO (soon!), or for that wine that is really great but isn’t already Insta-famous enough for some buyers. All of it.
What I’ve learned in business over the past five years is really only how to do some of what I do better and more efficiently, while the regulator seems to make it less efficient for me to be in business. I loathe the hard sell so I’ve learned to be a better salesperson by showing buyers how much I care about their business, not telling them. I hate the bullshit (every industry has some) so I actively avoid the people who thrive on it. I do, however, love the community in wine so I nurture it over competition. I’m curious but unmoved by most trends so I champion things that others may not, knowing I’m not the only importer who truly cares that we drink better and more ethically and ecologically in Ontario. I’ve learned that I can be 100% who I am in my business and be rewarded for it, and that Drink Better isn’t for the people who don’t understand me or it. Drink Better is in many ways exactly what it was when I decided to build it.
It didn’t take me five years to figure all this out, just five years to tell you about it. Here’s to the next five, and beyond. Cheers to everyone who works with us, buys from us, and reads what we have to say, and thank you for drinking better.
— Kari