When Worlds Collide: Sometimes It's Cool!

A few months ago, our crack business team (actual crack use varies) decided that rather than just replicate our wine inventory in both stores, we should allow the inventories to naturally diverge through a series of mutations and adaptations, sort of like Evolution (or Adaptation Over Time, depending upon where your textbooks are printed).

Why pursue this apparently insane idea, which flies in the face of brand continuity? Well, for one thing, instead of hiring moronic clerks who frequently drool, we wasted money by bringing in two wine professionals. Philip and Jane, unlike those idiots Joe and umm....that would be me, actually know what they're doing. So we would be ever stupider than usual to waste their talents.

Secondly, we've noticed that wines sell differently at the two stores. At Elliott Road, we sell a lot more New World wines - stuff from the Americas, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. At the Marlboro store, we tend to sell more Old World wine from Europe.

We could write a dissertation about this for a diploma mill, and probably get a Ph.D., but who cares? As Rudyard Kipling wrote, "Ours is not to reason why. Ours is but to do and die." Okay, that's depressing. Let's change it to "...ours is but to do and thrive!" There, much better. Kipling was a real buzzkill.

Anyhoo, Jane had a great idea today, which I will hereby steal credit for. We should make sure that the top-selling wines at each store are available at BOTH STORES! So we're going to do that, thanks to my fabulous idea.

We'll still have different selections at the two stores, but we'll make sure that the most popular wines are at both. Brand continuity? BORRRRINNNGGG. When it comes to wine, we say "Vive La Difference!"

By the way, a free bottle of wine to whoever can name the dude in the photo.