Vinexpo Daily - Day 1

REGIONAL SPOTLIGHT: FRANCE
France’s Best Kept Secret is Out!
The nation’s biggest winemaker @ Vinexpo on a mission of educating
and informing the market
Having taken the helm of Vinadeis five years ago, taking the
company from 130-million to around 300-million Euro turnover,
Bertrand Girard is somewhat atypical in the business, having
spent many years in his past marketing career in Asia, living
in Singapore, Hong Kong and Mainland China, and speaking
fluent Mandarin. Given this special vision of the market, we asked
what his key mission will be at Vinexpo Hong Kong.
Our key goal is to make the wine
business community in Asia know
that Vinadeis is the biggest French
winery, because no-body seems
to know that. It’s a big showcase
for us to show what makes the
difference – that we have around
20,000 hectares of vineyards.
We are totally vertically integrated.
We control the maturity and
harvest, we crush our own grapes,
we bottle them and market them
and we go and see the customers
ourselves. Nobody else in France
can claim to have a similar
structure on this kind of scale. We
have been building this over the
past four years, so Vinadeis is a
newcomer in the industry, but it
has many “old roots”, and the way
we have built it in the past four
years has made us the number one
winery in France, and we want to
say that.
In Asia, Vinexpo Hong Kong is the
good showcase for us, because
the job of tracking the professionals
is done, it’s at the right time of the
year, and the quality of the show
is good. It’s the cornerstone of
our regional strategy. It’s a good
opportunity to meet most of our
customers and new prospects in
one place. In fact the show has
two objectives for us. On the one
hand, it showcases our global
evolution – from 130-million
Euros to 300-million Euros in just
four years time. And the second
objective is a team building and
image-building process for our
own team. More than 20 people
from our team are attending
Vinexpo, and the global relaunch
evening for the Cordier brand saw
about a hundred people gathered
together.
What’s changing in the way wine
is being marketed today and how
are you adapting to this?
In different countries and zones,
changes happen in different ways,
however overall we are very
motivated. We are putting a lot
of resources into market studies,
consumer understanding and
getting close to our customers.
To market wine, you first have to
understand the consumers, and
they differ greatly from Central
China to Singapore. We are also
investing a lot in our network in
Asia. Four years ago we had
nobody here taking care of our
product or brand. Today we have
more than 25 people – mostly
from China, Japan and Singapore
– pushing our brands through our
own subsidiary companies, and
we have grown the business from
a couple of million Euros in 2010
to almost 30 million in 2016 •
Bertrand Girard
CEO, Vinadeis
Level 3, Stand MN-24
TO MARKET WINE, YOU FIRST HAVE
TO UNDERSTAND THE CONSUMERS, AND
THEY DIFFER GREATLY FROM CENTRAL
CHINA TO SINGAPORE.
vinexpodaily.com
VINEXPO DAILY / DAY 1 / TUESDAY 24 TH MAY 2016 11