White spirits: A cautionary tale
There has been a healthy smattering of luxurious excess during the lifespan of premium vodka company Solidarnosc.
It has flown Chinese wholesalers with whom it was negotiating deals to the tropical beaches of Hainan Island. Prince Harry was once pictured with a crowd enjoying one of its products at a party sponsored by Solidarnosc at an exclusive Cartier Polo event. Its Solid XS brand was once on sale for £300 a bottle in nightclubs.
Clearly a niche brand operating at the very top end of the white spirits category, its recent withdrawal is a sign of the market's saturation. The problem is that over the past few years there have been many vodkas in Solidarnosc's position, and only so much demand from the on-trade for such select spirits. Solidarnosc now concentrates on exporting to China, where there is a burgeoning middle class that sees Western brands as glamour worth paying for.
This story is one in which a drinks company overestimated the opportunities for premium white spirits in the UK. In many cases, there has been a scaling back of ambition over just how upmarket consumers are prepared to go.
"It was a case of seeing a market that we thought was there," says Solidarnosc operations director Anthony Agnew (pictured above, centre). "It was, but it was over-saturated."
Agnew started the company in 2003, when he signed a deal with a Warsaw distillery. Solidarnosc entered the UK market with a house-pour brand of the same name but, Agnew explains, "that backfired against us because people thought we were low quality because of the price point". Instead, Solidarnosc started concentrating on the 'super premium' Solid XS. The problem here was exactly the reverse - its positioning as an extremely luxurious, high quality brand at a matching price point appealed to too few people. It faced tough competition in a booming premium vodka market, up against brands such as 42Below and Grey Goose.
"In any wave of products, if you're the first in, you always have a marketing advantage," Agnew says. "We were definitely not the first in to premium or super-premium vodka. It was a market that was growing, but ballooned very, very quickly. In China, we were the first in, and we are leading that market."
He explains the stark realities of trying to make the company a success in the UK: "You either need a huge marketing team behind you, or a high-quality-looking product but a poor-quality liquid so you can make high margins. Unless you have either of those, it's tough.
"We had a high-quality product in Solidarnosc, which cost us a lot of money - margins were small. Solid XS was an attempt to get higher margins, albeit with lower volumes, but the marketing costs had to be so much more."
Things didn't work out for Solidarnosc in the UK, and the company found out that there is only so much demand for premium white spirits.
Other super-premium gin and vodkas that struggled
Diva - Vodka filtered through Nordic birch charcoal and gems. Featured a removable column of crystals running through the centre of the bottle. Its distiller Blackwood recently went into administration.
Beefeater Wet - "We decided to carry it no further," says Pernod Ricard's Pat Venning of this gin brand extension. He has higher hopes for recent launch Beefeater 24.
