"Go out and play soccer!"

We are not interested in praising the well-known Schneider winery and its brand. Rather, we want to make it clear that a CEO with courage, a sense of responsibility and assertiveness must live his values in the truest sense of the word and unite all the characteristics of the brand in his person in order to be successful.

OUTPUT SITUATION

The Business of Brand Management: There was a time when the Palatinate was considered to be a very productive wine-growing region, but one whose quality was lagging behind. True to the motto: quantity instead of quality. In the meantime, there has been a positive change in image towards more quality. What has happened? And what was the reason for this? And in relation to your "Schneider" winery: How do you see the connection between the product and its quality on the one hand and the brand and entrepreneurial success on the other?

Markus Schneider: Towards the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the Palatinate and also Rheinhessen were in many respects the poorhouse of Germany. For better or worse, we were therefore forced to change. To make matters worse, globalization also brought wines from the "new world" onto the market, and so competition intensified for us. What should we do, what could we do? Marketing, design or even new labels on the bottles were not the solution. Our only chance of survival was quality. The winegrowers of the Palatinate were under extreme pressure. They had to rise to the challenge, break new ground and look for new solutions. I tried to do that too.

VISION

The Business of Brand Management: You are considered a visionary in professional circles. What was the reason for your vision? How and where did you describe your vision? How difficult was it to take the family business into your own hands? What hurdles had to be overcome?

Markus Schneider: The reason was simply that I had to decide what I wanted to do in the future. Many people today think that being a winemaker is a dream. For me, it wasn't a dream - it was about the worst thing I could have imagined. The only thing worse would have been to be a fruit grower like my father. Nevertheless, it was my father who became the driving force behind my career. He urged me to look around a vineyard at least once. He thought I could support myself and a family with 80,000 bottles of wine. Out of convenience, I decided on the traditional Dr. Bürklin-Wolf winery in Wachenheim. I could get there by bike and I thought I could manage a few weeks. In the end, I not only found one of the best wineries in Germany there, but also met some wonderful people. It's their fault that I'm sitting here today. For me, it was the greatest luck to come to this house. The people were open, they always had time for me and explained everything to me. And in Fritz Knorr, I found a cellar master who got me excited about winemaking over the next three years and who taught me everything I do today. This is where I got my idea, or vision if you like, for the Markus Schneider winery.

Even though it was a big risk, my family supported me from day one. But they gave me a free hand in all important decisions. At the time, the search for new customers seemed hopeless. So how should I proceed? Recreating several hundred years of Bürklin-Wolf off the cuff didn't seem feasible to me. In addition, prices were in the cellar, the zeitgeist had changed and it was clear that it was no longer just German wines that were hip. So the chances of success were poor. But I still wanted to try. My motto was: quality, quality and more quality.

MUT

The Business of Brand Management: What ultimately prompted you to break with the region's established tradition and break new ground? For example, deciding to build an elaborate new building? What were the risks? Were you really aware of these risks? What surprises did you encounter over time?

Markus Schneider: My little cosmos has shaped me. It all goes back to the fact that I was a cheerful, sweet, completely naïve Palatinate boy. Nevertheless, I was full of creativity and a love of experimentation. Crazy and brave enough to break new ground. And even back then I was an aesthete who was interested in everything - especially art, design and architecture. I only found out what the world looked like in reality later, but my interest in change and my curiosity ultimately caught up with everything.

After my apprenticeship, I was influenced by various winemaking personalities. A very important one was and is Dirk Niepoort - the great winemaker from the Douro in Portugal. He is "partly to blame", so to speak, for the fact that I was so determined to realize my visions. Fortunately, my parents simply let me do it, true to the motto "Go out and play soccer!". For them, a new start was out of the question. Continuing to tread well-trodden paths was not my thing, and that would never have worked. The total trust of my parents - I was only 18 years old at the time - and my conservative but at the same time very open-minded parents with their motto "Always see the other side" had a decisive influence on me and my path. What's more: My first customers had fun with me, which gave me an additional boost.

SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY

The Business of Brand Management: How quickly did you realize that you, and only you, had to take the rap for everything? That you are the sole driver of your project? Did you have to make decisions for areas that were not so clear to you? What role did your "gut" play in such decisions? What did you decide emotionally and what purely rationally?

What role, what significance did the new brand have in your decision-making processes? Was "architecture", for example, a component of the brand?

Markus Schneider: The pressure to be successful quickly made it clear that everything revolved exclusively around production, quality on the one hand and creativity on the other. Tradition can act like a straitjacket. It manifests itself in sayings such as: "What the farmer doesn't know, he won't eat" and "If he can't swim, it's his swimming trunks' fault". I tried not to be impressed by this and started experimenting. I experimented a lot - and discarded many things. As a chef, it's easier than a winemaker - you take a pan, you do something, and then it works or maybe it doesn't work. It's very different in viticulture. As a rule, you only have one shot a year, and it has to work. One small mistake in the vineyard or cellar and it's over. One result of my experiments was to opt for cuvées. I didn't just make friends with that. In Germany, my cuvées were referred to as "mishmash", although they have always been commonplace in the Champagne and Bordeaux regions.

The fact that I had to "stick my neck out" had been on my mind since the first loan application. I never applied for subsidies from any source whatsoever. Ultimately, this was my decision, because influence of any kind is an abomination to me and I would never have accepted it. And then there were always my parents, who reassured me with statements like "if it doesn't work out, we'll just sell everything".

We've been looking at plans for a new building since 2000. I laid the financial foundations with small investments in my parents' old business in 2003. The building application for the first construction phase was submitted in 2006. People keep asking me where the ideas came from. No, not from California, I haven't been there yet. I also didn't have time to do much research. My interest in architecture as part of a brand, information about beautiful buildings and hotel architecture from books and magazines had to suffice.

In any case, there was never a consultant who said: Do this and this for your brand, that was completely uninteresting to me. Of course, there are always projects and people that fascinate me. For example, the Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron, or Dominus Estate in Napa Valley. Here, Christian Mouieux, who also owns the legendary Chateau Petrus, had the idea of filling metal cages with stones from his vineyards and integrating them into the façade of the estate buildings. Such things have always inspired me. When I discovered Marcel Breuer chairs at Kolja Kleeberg's Vau restaurant in Berlin in 1999, I absolutely had to have them, even though I could have afforded ten pairs of jeans for one. I'm also a passionate collector of lamps. To come back to your question: I didn't follow any kind of strategy when developing my brand. I just wanted it to look nice. In addition, I had no money for consultants, agencies or designers. I invented all the brand names for my wines myself. The Nutella jar in our kitchen was the inspiration to think about a suitable typographic solution. I sat down at the computer with Ute Trinkaus from Bad Dürkheim (a friend of many years) and started to play with the typography that characterizes Weingut Schneider today: I didn't usually involve my family before - so I was freer in the design! With my unusual product names and the labels I designed myself - after all, every good brand needs beautiful packaging - I finally caused a sensation. The Schneider lettering was developed as a deliberate counterpoint to my labels. It is intended to convey trust and perhaps also build a little bridge to old visual habits. I realized relatively quickly, even though I never had any training in this direction, that we could continue to develop through the brand. And that it would be much easier with it later on, even without me. The brand will live on.

After six years of trial and error and experimentation, Herbert Seckler became the rocket fuel for our brand. A chance meeting in June 2000 showed that two people had sought and found each other and, full of sympathy, entered into a partnership without any price or delivery negotiations. "I was missing someone like you," Seckler said to me. The Schneider wines surprised him like the guests at his "Sansibar" on Sylt and made both sides happy. Our unique collaboration has now lasted over 18 years.

Another notable event was the meeting with Joachim Hunold from Air Berlin in 2007, which led to Schneider wines on all routes. And then there was a TV program by Günter Jauch, which led to 30-40 calls per hour after the end of the show, as well as an article by Oliver Bock in the business section of the FAZ. All of this helped us to gain a solid reputation. In the early days after founding our new winery, I was on the road 150 days a year; as a brand ambassador in restaurants, on cruise ships, at every conceivable wine event. Somehow it was always inspiring and enjoyable, and I still take the time to share my stories with others now and again. I can really tell a lot of stories, because I have experienced a lot. Shall I tell you about the barrels I've had in my head for over 20 years?

Instead of a grandiose strategy, defining target groups (which are ultimately always influenced by the zeitgeist) and so on and so forth, I seem to have succeeded in achieving my goal of simply making people happy with wine. In my opinion, far too many words are spoken about wine. Wine simply has to be fun. With the relaxed attitude that I now know from South Africa, I want to break down fears of contact and simply convey sympathy. That is, if you like, the core of the Markus Schneider brand.

HOW TO CONTINUE?

The Business of Brand Management: What is your plan for the further development of your brand? "Service design and brand experience are key differentiators and success factors today. Where do you think you stand here, what is still planned, where do you want to go?

Markus Schneider: Where do you want to go from here? That's a good question. Our company is now in a really good position and I am lucky to have the best possible support from my family and my team. I don't want to change much in sales. I will continue to build on the network I have built up over the years, on customers I have met personally on my many travels, for example, and on the Mondavi system from the 1980s with one depot dealer per German city. And I attach particular importance to only having nice people to talk to. For example, there is a large wine merchant with whose buyer I got on really well straight away. He came to me and said: I'd like to do something with you! And didn't start presenting any calculations, figures and philosophies. I said to him: That's exactly to my taste. With this attitude, I have ensured that our business is doing well. We have been selling exclusively via allocation lists for a number of years now and have practically every bottle planned directly after the harvest. Almost all of our customers are still on board. As a result, we are not under any pressure to export more. Everyone wants to deliver to London, but the English are definitely the ones who prefer to drink cheap wine. Everyone wants to go to the USA, although only the east and west coasts would be relevant here. Everyone wants to go to Norway, although the average price here is also comparatively low. The gateway for all three locations is the restaurant scene, but this is very small in terms of quantity, and the (wine) money is not on the street.

Perhaps another new idea: in the next few weeks I will be launching "Schneider Collection". Building on the experience I have gained in Stellenbosch since 2009, I will be working with wine estate friends on the Mosel, in the Douro in Portugal and of course in Stellenbosch to create wines in a style that is not possible in the Palatinate. These are exclusively small batches, each bottle of which will be numbered. The requests already far exceed the available quantities, although my project is not yet widely known. But word has obviously already got around. And my vision? Perhaps in the coming years, after my work here in the Palatinate, I will concentrate on my "projects".

Thank you, I enjoyed our conversation. I'm about to drive to the neighboring community and, as a true Palatinate soccer fan, watch a game in the 3rd league.