Wine Freedom - Vinfrihet

Yesterday we started selling for our 2012 sales budget. 2011 is closed, and a great year it was. Thank you to our thousands of customers for your support, comments, business and for sharing our passion for wine and food!

It has been amazingly fun to meet you at the fairs, read your emails and hear from you first hand how our wine clubs have become an important part of your life, lead you on an exciting adventure discovering new wine and food combinations and saved you a few hours a month standing in queue at the monopoly.

The family and I are taking two weeks off, no work, just good food, great wines and special time with family and friends.

In January we will have batteries fully charged and a lot of new and exciting things will happen!

Happy New Year and seasons greeetings for whatever holiday you celebrate!
Mark

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No one likes a bully, be they a teacher, student, colleague at work or employer. And the law has zero tolerance for corporate bullies too. That is why today our company reported Systembolaget to the Swedish Competition Authority.

I explain how they have bullied us and why it is illegal in this article in SVD today: SVD Brännpunkt

No one likes to be bullied either and as every parent tells their child when they are subjected to bullying – the fault is not with you, it is the bully who has something wrong with them!

Systembolaget wants to start home delivery of spirits which everyone knows will have serious health implications. To divert the politicians’ and media attention from their risk-filled plans Magdalena Gerger, the monopoly’s CEO, lobbied the government heavily with incorrect information about wine clubs and encouraged them to kill us. They duped IOGT-NTO to submit a bogus police complaint against us which their lawyers prepared. This is a clear breach of their market dominant position.

Systembolaget is trying to kill something good so they can do something which everyone knows is going to lead to two terrible things – increased alcohol consumption by those in the highest risk groups and the fall of the monopoly. Why is Gerger doing this?

But as parents also tell their kids about bullies – they aren’t always the smartest kids in the class either.

To Vinfrihet and Freedom from bullies.
Mark

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We Aussies are not particularly clannish. In the many countries I have lived expat Aussies have always mixed with a wide range of nationalities. In Hong Kong the Americans usually hung out together, so did the French while the Dutch, Aussies, Kiwis, Brits, Germans and Scandinavians made up a mixed soup of social gatherings.

In Sweden Aussies do not really hung out together either. Most other major countries have their Chamber of Commerce or Business Association. But not us Antipodeans.

Until now!

Last night Jonathan Hannam kicked off a dinner for Professional Aussies working in Stockholm. He formed a LinkedIn group and 40 of us crawled out of the woodwork to meet each other. Most of us were love refugees imported to vary the Swedish genetic pool, but there were a few voluntary immigrants including two smart young lawyers who have done really well for themselves here.

Many of us had started our own business, were country or European manager for foreign companies or had found their way in to exciting local companies such as NASDAQ OMX, Spotify, Prima Consulting, Swedbank and Nordic Kitchen Group.

Well done Jono! If there are other Australians working in Sweden who would like to become involved drop me a line or find the group on LinkedIn.

Cheers
Mark

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It is one thing to be right, it is another to have your voice heard. A lonely voice for quality wine in a sea of bag in box is one thing which we are used to. A bullied and illegally threatened company can find it hard to reach the right ears.

Over the past few weeks a number of very senior politicians have contacted us to discover the truth behind Systembolaget and IOGT-NTO’s lies.

Maria Abrahamsson is a lawyer, formed SVD leader writer and now Moderat politician who, with a prestigious group of colleagues, came to hear the truth behind the PR spin. Read what she has to say on her blog.

Professor Ulf Bernitz’s article iin SVD is quoted by Maria and has caused a significant amount of hand wringing and consternation on Kungsträgården the past few days.

Adding to our 300 000 members is a group of intelligent thinkers who base their decisions on the law, principles of fair play and with Sweden’s best interests at heart.

Our voice may not have the magnification of SVT as Gerger has but when you have the truth as your echo, you know it will eventually find its way to the right ears.

Another exciting day tomorrow. Stay tuned!
Mark

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When the former dairy queen now rabid lådvin monopolist Magdalena Gerger started her illegal and morally indefensible campaign against legal operators of wine clubs, she must had one too many glasses of Chill Out. Because she either ignored or failed to realise one thing.

I have mentioned this before on this blog but I am not an EU law Professor. While Gerger and IOGT-NTO are encouraging children to act fraudelently and searching for TV exposure, they are inadvertently doing the work of the anti-monopolists.

For all the people in Sweden who would like to end the alcohol monopoly, no one has done more than the highly paid Systembolaget CEO Gerger.

In today’s Svenska Dagbladet national newspaper, Sweden’s leading EU Law Professor Ulf Bernitz (Stockholm & Oxford Universities) wrote what can best be called the “pre” obituary of the monopoly. Or at least a stark warning for Systembolaget’s owners and board of directors that their renegade CEO has a self destructive agenda.

Under the headline “E-commerce can bring down the monopoly” Professor Bernitz explained what I had been claiming – the right to have a monopoly exists because it restricts access to the alcohol. If Gerger makes it so readily available the reason for having a monopoly disappears.

This has been tested in the EU Courts twice. Gerger obviously wants to use the tax payers’ money to test it again and this time, according to Professor Bernitz, could be the last song for the bag in box monopolists.

Gerger has called in a lot of favours to get respectable people to support her campaign and has the anti-alcohol group IOGT-NTO following her around carrying her Blackberry. I wonder how many of these will be her friend if she is the final CEO of the monopoly? She may need her old contacts at the dairy so they have something to drink at the wake!

Finally Friday!
Mark

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Sunday night on SVT’s Agenda program, finally the spotlight was put on the serious consequences of Systembolaget offering booze, bag in box and beer delivered home. (see the interview on SVT Play, 27 November)

Why it took so long for this issue to be taken up demonstrates the power of the monopoly PR machine and how effective they have been silencing their usual critics, such as IOGT-NTO.

Professor Anders Romelsjö from Karolinska Institute and SoRAD is a leading researcher in the field of alcohol’s health effects and clearly explained why home delivery will significantly increase alcohol abuse and also be the first spade in digging the grave for the monopoly.

Magdalena Gerger, head of the monopoly, was interviewed at the end of their pre-prepared segment and had nothing to say. Well, she dodged answering the questions and sounded very sympathetic to the concerns of people living with alcohol abuse but gave not one single vodka shot full of reasons why they should start home delivery despite the obvious serious community health implications.

Gerger mentioned that price is the main preventative measure for alcohol consumption. But that was not Sweden’s argument when it asked for the monopoly in 1995. Restricting access to alcohol has been proven to be #1 and price #2. As governments set the alcohol tax and VAT levels (and Sweden has lower alcohol prices than UK, Norway, Ireland and Iceland), Systembolaget’s responsibility is to make it harder to get access to booze, beer and bag in box (among other things in their range).

If Gerger throws out the restrictive access argument she is abandoning the legal reason for the monopoly’s existence.

So, fast forward a few years and Gerger is going to have the EU High Court knocking on her door along with her bag in box home delivery! Hello home delivery, goodbye monopoly!

Cheers
Mark

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