Friday's blog and email prompted two things; a lot customers switching their orders to Chilean wine - good, and considerable upset about me just doing it as a sales gimmick - not good.
I can see our gesture could be misinterpreted. But if you are told that a friend's house (and in this case winery) is now just a pile of rubble what do you do? Ignore it?
No, you try to help. Both Becca and I had the same idea. We decided to send something to our customers.
The big thing our Chilean friends wanted was for us not to cancel orders. (Something we were looking at doing). We have instead upped our buying and will some more, if we can. We are committed to our Chilean producers.
To help a bit more, we decided to give 5% of all sales to the Chilean Embassy Earthquake appeal. So far that's over £10,000. This seemed the most obvious way to help. Many of our customers have been very positive about this and have changed the wine they're buying this month. I recognise, in hindsight, that our positioning could have been mis-interpreted, but there was only good intention behind it.
It's not something I broadcast but Barbara and I helped set up the Institute of Hazard and Risk at Durham University. There is a laboratory there, bearing our name which assesses landslides and other risks in a variety of places. It was, I know looking at the Maule Valley south of Santiago. Please accept my apologies for any offence caused, it was unintentional.
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Thank you for the clarification Tony. The initiative is a great response; it's the execution that could have been better.
ReplyDeletePS even better that its 5% of all sales as per your note above as opposed to 5% of just Chilean sales as per Beccas email.
ReplyDeleteI took it as a good intention, explained as such. I'm all for trade rather than charity where it's sensible
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