Confessions of a retailer: World Wide Spirits

With gin booming in Germany, World Wide Spirits’ sales and marketing director Dominik Maier discusses how companies can get their brands noticed.

Dominik Maier, sales and marketing director for Germany’s World Wide Spirits

Gin is the spirit in Germany at the moment – it seems like there are a few new gins coming out every day. It was such an underrated spirit for so many years, which was a shame, and now there are so many new and different expressions coming out. It’s a great example of what we look for in new products – they have to be innovative, unique and fulfil the needs of our customers.

We currently have more than 2,700 different products in our portfolio, which is a challenge to maintain and keep updated, but that certainly doesn’t mean our door is closed to new products. It just means producers need to convince us their product is worth taking on. The easiest way to do this is to send us samples – let the taste do the work and win us over.

There isn’t really a number one best seller, more a selection of brands that perform well. The Macallan whisky sells pretty well all year round and a few fruit-flavoured products such as Fassbind, a Swiss-made spirit, also sell very well. It really all depends on the demand of our customers.

Our customers are looking for high quality products they cannot find in local stores due to one reason or another. They appreciate the vast selection of different spirits and price ranges, and quite often look for small brands, new products or limited editions. As we have an online site and retail store, we are in a good position to be able to cater for those needs.

Online, it is much more important to be competitive and offer good prices – much more than it is in a retail store.

It is quite exhausting at times. We constantly have to compare our prices and negotiate deals with our suppliers in order to offer our customers the best deals. But we are extremely happy to do so and certainly feel no pressure to be the cheapest provider. The quality of our products and the standard of service are the most important factors for us.

Our employees have a high standard of knowledge about our products and provide excellent customer consultations as a result. We also get a lot of foreign customers who visit Germany looking for something they sampled on their trip that they would like to take back with them.

My job can be incredibly creative and I enjoy the privileges that come with it. I love trying new things to see if they work and I meet new, interesting and passionate people almost every day.

As sales and marketing manager, I always need to know what’s going on in the market. I need to know what the main customer demands are and then figure out how we can satisfy them.

Customers really vary a great deal, from wealthy businessmen looking for a missing bottle in their collection of rare whiskies, husbands and wives searching for the perfect gift, those after a really good brand to share with their friends, or students looking for something exciting to enjoy at the weekend.

What everyone seems to have in common is a desire for quality, a personalised service and a large range of products at a fair price.

Special offers are of course a great way to encourage consumers to buy particular products and adverts are an effective way to tempt consumers to buy a new spirit; but I think the biggest factor that leads a consumer to buy a product is simply that it fulfils their needs and desires.