Crowd Sourced Brewing

We brainstormed a new business plan, then provisioned the required technology. We developed a crowdsourcing system for users to vote on recipes, labeling, art etc. of (concurrent) batches of beer. This caused them to invite friends onto the platform to vote and debate, causing increased feelings of ownership and brand loyalty, resulting in above market sales and retention per customer, while avoiding the need for market research, A/B testing of designs etc.

Within a year of implementation, the new approach increased total sales by over 600%, brought the repeat customer rate to 72% and net promoter score to 63. As the client’s core competency lied outside of the tech space, we were further engaged to maintain and host the system. We handled maitenance and expanded functionality when necessary, including more secure authentification, necessary vulnerability patching, optimizations to decrease server load etc.

Strategy

Holistically analyzing the brewery’s entire business, we determined that they had a much brewing higher capacity than current sales justified. The original goal was to increase sales by a modest amount, but it wouldn’t go far enough. Looking at their finances, were the project to succeed as originally envisioned, it would still not result in long term success. We therefore worked on a more ambitious plan. We ideated a few different models: a) They could segue from purely consumer based and also bottle for other companies, gaining revenue from others in the space - allowing them to circumvent an advertisement campaign and brand development. b) they could size down, sell the brewing equipment and move to a smaller location, lowering expenses enough to thrive within the bounds of traditional business growth, aimed at restaurants, using word of mouth etc. c) the approach we ultimately went with, using cutting edge methodologies and social dynamics like virtual reality, crowdsourcing, social media engagement (that is, being a platform, increasing engagement times, instead of trying to gain conversions through social media) to harness word of mouth in a great way.

Modeling the approach off of voting platforms, we sought to get each customer to bring up to 10 friends on the platform to vote, order and eventually come up with their own proposals for new brews - causing them to bring more friends onto the platform to vote. A won election in this case isn’t determined by how many current and previous customers want this, but by the network sizes of those people. The election result is an analogue of vocal social leaders’ and organizers’ ability to convert friends to outlay the time needed to vote - and therefore their social proof. The same dynamic leads to their ability to broadcast the desirability of specific status-building goods. If they can get people to vote for something, they can get people to buy it. The brew run doesn’t just sell out - but it becomes a collectible, like an innovative streetwear brand. As a hard to get item, it can go for high prices in auctions…