Pepsi

"Moutai wine uses only three ingredients: sorghum, wheat, and water. So why has wine brewed from these ingredients become a legend in contemporary product history? This question has three keywords. Complex and rich: Without Moutai, the world would lack a flavor known as “sauce aroma.” From the birth of the first bottle to its finalized form, it took 147 years, a result of continuous relay by several generations. This was not an inevitable process but one filled with all the twists and drama of product creation. Super single product: Moutai is in the first tier of Chinese baijiu, and its single product’s annual revenue exceeds 100 billion yuan. Globally, there are three similar “super single products”: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and iPhones, but Moutai is very different in product characteristics. Highest market value: This is a company with a product gross margin of 93%, whose market value surpasses all factories, banks, and energy companies in China, making it a maverick in the capital market. Even today, some see it as a “disgrace,” while others consider it a glory."

"Within a year of selling to Pepsi and setting up Bravo, we controlled half of the Russian market for alcopops and the venture was profitable. However, the volumes were small, there was a lot of competition on…"

"Then my father was hired to run a soft drinks and brewery company which had a Pepsi franchise. It had just won a contract to give a massive push to Lowenbrau, whose market share in Iceland had dropped from 40 per cent to 10 per cent. I took a four-month job there and got to know Magnus Thorsteinsson, the head of the brewery, who was from the north of Iceland. An odd couple with a complementary skill set, we went on to work together closely over the following ten years."

"Then my father told me he was thinking of doing something really off the wall. He had sold the Pepsi franchise and was left with just the brewery, an old soft drinks factory and a non-compete clause that prohibited it from making soft drinks for sale in Iceland."

"The advertising law in Iceland was very strict and you could not advertise alcohol. We needed something innovative, so I created a travelling beer festival. We did a lot of camouflaged advertising, obtained a lot of media coverage and sold a lot of beer. Then my father told me he was thinking of doing something really off the wall. He had sold the Pepsi franchise and was left with just the brewery, an old soft drinks factory and a non-compete clause that prohibited it from making soft drinks for sale in Iceland. He had met up with an old friend, Ingimar Haukur Ingimarsson, and they decided to set up a joint venture in Russia, which was just opening up to external capital. They would ship to Russia bottling equipment formerly owned by Pharmaco, a listed Icelandic pharmaceutical company, and make soft drinks for sale locally. The two old friends would eventually fall out spectacularly over this venture."