Two Niche Opportunities in Mead Production
Monday, February 28th, 2011
My attention has been focused on the pursuit of a niche opportunity that hasn’t panned out and it struck me as worthwhile sharing an overview of the venture and why it fell over. All good ideas don’t fly, it’s just a fact about doing business.
The Shaping of the Mead Market in Tasmania
Mead is a honey wine that I enjoy fermenting in my office for personal consumption (it has an alcohol content of around 13%). This is a relatively new phase of my relationship with alcohol and currently I have around 25 litres of fermenting mead within six feet of this keyboard and monitor. Mead can incorporate a large number of variations but I currently produce a plain mead and a sweeter orange, cinnamon and raisin mead.
My involvement with mead stems from an experience I had at Salamanca Market eight months ago when a guy from the Hartzview Vineyard stall called me over. He handed me a warmed plain mead liqueur (absolutely fell in love with it) and a spiced mead (really didn’t much go on that one). Then by happenstance in an entrepreneurship elective at the end of my MBA course I spent the semester doing group work with someone who produces mead and other wines on her property.
At the same time I noticed several local wine producers working in the background to raise the profile of mead in consumers minds. It’s a beverage with quite a large cult following but there is a lot of market ignorance even among hardened wine consumers – exactly why Hartzview were offering free tastes on that wintery day. Several smaller players have entered the market with award winning mead at relatively low prices.
Niche Opportunities with Mead Production
The real trick is being able to look at what everybody else is doing and figure out where you can develop a niche… a slice of the market that nobody else has thought to service. If you do that well and you’re the only business jumping into that niche early the possibility to achieve really strong returns exists because you own the niche outright. That means you’re in business without competitors.
It’s easy to understand how profitable a niche can be if it’s pursued with vigour using the appropriate resources but luck and how well that niche has been primed play a large part in how successful the entrepreneur can operate there.
