Now that 2024 is over, nearly all staff are on their compulsory restorative break – before resuming with renewed rigor, commitment, perseverance, resilience, and passion (my strengths). We reflect on the people that have left the embrace of Stoney Goose Ridge, having failed to meet their KPIs. It’s my way, or out the window. We are alert to any attempts to deviate from their non-compete periods and/or NDAs. I also welcome the new hires to our lean headcount. Their CVs will now be more impressive, thanks to the rigorous development and mentoring provided OTJ. Reviewing the piles of discarded multi-media EOIs provided plenty of entertainment and befuddlement before most went straight into the virtual wastebasket. Hint – be concise, and check grammar and spelling- UGH!

Despite double digit sales growth, and even better profitability, my restless nature views 2024 as a year of consolidation of our core capabilities. All our brands performed across wines, beers, spirits, RTD mixers and so on, from budget to ultra-luxe. Indeed, several performed so well, that sourcing additional materials will require exceptional diligence, creativity and cunning. Our global footprint expanded, with innovative cross-border blending, and sales now in thirty countries. Our social metrics, CSAT and NPS are phenomenal and envied. But there is much more to come in my timeframe horizon.

Another outstanding wine success for Stoney Goose Ridge was the launch of the Pub Test™ range (PT white aromatic, PT white full-flavoured, PT rosé. PT mellow red, and PT robust red). Yet another of my winning ideas, it solves the conundrum by providing quality and exceptional VFM at a pub. If any pub doesn’t stock the range, their premises should be avoided as they have failed the test. And of course, bonus QR codes on the bottles provide access to hundreds of sets of trivia questions! Truly, the Pub Test™ brand is an optimised high-margin generator that secures further bottom-line profit and value growth creation.

Other triumphs include our low-tech orangesque wine Limbo, and the Essential Cookbook for Humans, which has garnered literary and culinary acclaim, plus massive sales.

Once more, our legal team has tirelessly prosecuted breaches of our ironclad contracts, trademark infringements, garnering bountiful punitive damages and fulsome grovelling apologies. Allied to their valiant structural efforts to minimise taxation, my incisive negotiating prowess has ensured numerous outrageous bargains accumulating our proactive synergies and led to many favourable legislative tweaks and judicial interpretations across varied jurisdictions.

The virtual trophy cabinet has been extended to cater for the deluge of awards for marketing, packaging, innovation etc, but of course of legions of fanatical Stoney Goose Ridge customers are our true glory.

My personal staff have supported me heroically, responding to my calls, emails and so on even while I have been on essential conferences in Rio de Janeiro, Geneva, Singapore, Port Douglas etc plus while holidaying with my family at Hakuba and Telluride, with short stays at Broome, Hobart and Dunedin.

Impressively, several team members achieved a bonus, and while the quantum was not as fulsome as mine, they deserve recognition.

With my intuitive customer insights and stewardship, I have rescued neglected brands from competitors and realised scale, diversification, and operational leverage. Renowned for our resonating value proposition, unique offers personalise customer experience in the omni-channel environment, seamlessly folding new generations into our compelling e-commerce ecosystem.

Our assets have increased massively with certified revaluations of our IP and brand valuation metrics.

I am a proud HIPPO (Highest Paid Persons’ Opinion) with my incredible extreme hardcore creative abrasion challenging my minions. I have no time for the WOLF (Working On the Latest Fire) and their ignorance of strategy, nor the ZEBRA (Zero Evidence But Really Arrogant). Our data-mining team has been laser-focused to extract material that supports my multitudinous initiatives.

The Stoney Goose Ridge wine fashionistas have managed to avoid frosts, fires, and other agricultural tribulations, and as ever, our network is adept at sourcing distressed assets with myself as the final sensory and financial arbiter.

Another of my ongoing issues is talent development. I will be taking a one-month sabbatical in 2025 for a personal entrepreneurial project, and the aptitude of my hand- picked executive team is not yet up to the task of “minding the store”. But there is time, and I have options up my sleeve to manage the temporary transition. I’m sure the selected person or team will perform adequately in my absence, and there always the Batphone hotline. I expect copious tidying when I return. Plus, all critical decisions will be deferred.

I can characterise our rivals’ long-winded, asinine and self-congratulatory announcements as untrue in parts, evasive, disingenuous, and entirely unsatisfactory. Then there are their egregious greenwashing eco-ceptions. It’s no wonder customers vote with their wallets, migrate – and stay with the better quality, better value, better sensory offerings from Stoney Goose Ridge! There are people in commerce that I know and respect, but thankfully we run in different lanes, and types of business.

Plenty of our accomplishments are due to the derisive inadequacy of our competitors, their masterly inactivity and willingness to embrace the strategy of “cross our fingers,” all while waiting to be stabbed in the back after their next foot-in-mouth episode. Throw in aimless rebrandings, desperate “campaigns”, fixation with outside consultants, massive stock writedowns and a culture of indolence. What a blessed luxury to be a vital part of an industry riddled with such extraordinary incompetence! We forensically analyse their accounts, always alert to related-party transactions, “Director loans”, dubious and gratuitous sponsorships and we are adept at highlighting and publicising contemptable personal moral lapses of executives. And there are so many!

After such a year of positive momentum, all staff can look forward to thrills, triumphs, and creative tension.

Your magisterial, acclaimed innovator – Hector A Lannible