A 77-year-old who made Jägermeister famous in America launched Grey Goose vodka by rejecting Russian vodka for French, designing a tall distinctive bottle, and pricing it 30% above competitors. The bet on premium positioning turned it into a $2 billion business.
Do you guys know the Grey Goose story? Yeah, the taller bottles.
The taller bottles. But also the guy who started Grey Goose started it when he was in his, like, 70s. Before that, he had brought Jägermeister to the US and made it popular. He created the Jägerbomb and got, like, Jägerettes, the girls who would go around bars pouring the stuff down college kids' throats. And he made it the party drink. Now he's in his 70s and he's like, all right, I want to start a vodka company. I'm going to do two things differently. We need to source the vodka. Great. We're on our next flight out to Moscow. No, no, no. We're not doing Russian vodka. Go to France and find me vodka. They go, there's no vodka in France. He goes, go to France and find me vodka, because if I told you this is French vodka, it just makes that dirty Russian vodka look like crap. And he tells the other group, go to the bar right now and buy the most expensive vodka that there is. Bring all the bottles here. Lines them all up. Uh, we're gonna be 30% more expensive than whatever the most expensive one is. Okay, it's this fat bottle. We're gonna be a tall bottle. I have a friend who started a vodka brand. The bottle cost more than the vodka.
