Unsupervised in Lidl

Ideas for blogs rarely arrive when I’m sitting nobly at a desk, pen in hand, waiting for the Muse to alight on my shoulder like a culturally literate pigeon.

They usually descend during moments of mild ennui, when the brain has wandered off because the body is doing something dull. Trying to find the right washer in a tin of apparently identical washers. Standing in a queue. Waiting for paint to dry. Wondering why the thing that fitted perfectly five minutes ago now appears to have been designed for a different car.

Or, in this case, after inspecting the Middle of Lidl and finding it wanting. Hay was off buying vittles in another aisle, so I was left unattended, which is usually when the trouble starts.

I was browsing the serried ranks of quaintly named ciders when the thunderbolt landed.

Not a political insight. Not a profound reflection on modern Britain. Not even a useful thought about what we’d gone in to buy.

A cider brand.

Stoma Cider.

There it is. You can see it already, can’t you?

A brown glass bottle. Slightly distressed label. A woodcut apple. Possibly a badger. Some sepia nonsense about traditional methods, small batch pressing, and an old Somerset family who’ve been making cider since before the invention of trousers.

I mentioned it to Hay when she returned, which is where all the great brands are born. Not in a converted barn full of people in gilets muttering about market positioning, but under fluorescent lighting, next to bottles with names like Old Root Bastard and a suspiciously cheap pear cider.

At which point Hay didn’t merely laugh. She went off like a fire alarm. The sort of laugh that makes people two aisles away stop comparing washing powder and quietly wonder whether security should be informed.

That is the entire business plan, really. If a name can make your wife become a public disturbance in the cider aisle of Lidl, it has market traction. Forget focus groups. Forget brand analysis. The Lidl Laugh Test is far more reliable.

At this point, of course, the thing should have been left alone. A sensible man would have enjoyed the laugh, bought the cider, and moved on. But no. I then improved it, in the way that a man improves a small chip in a windscreen by hitting it with a hammer.

Stoma Cider.

By Colostomy Breweries.

Now it wasn’t merely a bad cider name. It had a parent company. A backstory. A visitor centre. A tasting room. A gift shop. Possibly a loyalty card. Perhaps even a laminated sign near the handwash. The whole enterprise had gone from regrettable pun to fully incorporated rural nightmare.

And then, because no bad idea is complete until it has a commercial strategy, I realised I had solved the supply chain problem as well.

This is where so many small brands go wrong. They make something people like, demand rises, and they immediately start thinking about new premises, bigger vats, distribution contracts, forklifts, payroll, compliance, and a factory estate somewhere just outside Swindon. Before long the whole thing has gone from charming cottage enterprise to a meeting about palletisation.

Then, inevitably, the novelty wears off. The people who were desperate to buy it when they couldn’t get it have now got a cupboard full of the stuff, the early adopters have moved on to fermented nettle cordial, and the manufacturer is sitting in a unit full of lease payments, stainless steel tanks and unsold stock. Demand collapses, cash flow goes through the floor, and the whole brave enterprise ends with an administrator wondering what to do with 14,000 branded coasters and a pallet of tasting glasses nobody has the heart to open.

No. That is amateur thinking.

The proper answer is much simpler. You don’t keep expanding production every time demand rises. You keep supply tight, let demand exceed it, and then allow the price to do what prices do when people want more of something than you’re prepared to make.

That way supply remains comfortably within the limits of one shed, two pressings, and a man called Brian who comes in on Tuesdays. Meanwhile, the price rises, the margin improves, and the inability to buy the stuff becomes part of the appeal. Scarcity is not a problem. Scarcity is branding with a waiting list.

Several brands have learned this, usually after discovering that the public will pay extra for inconvenience if you describe it as exclusivity.

And this is where my friend Simon comes in, because Simon actually presses apples and makes small batches. This is dangerous, because it means the whole thing is not entirely theoretical. There is a man within shouting distance of reality who owns the sort of equipment that could turn a joke in Lidl into a liquid regrettable decision.

Better still, Simon is a pathologist, so he would probably get the idea immediately. There are not many cider ventures where prior familiarity with human plumbing counts as relevant market insight, but here we are.

I could offer him the idea.

Simon, are you listening?

This is how empires begin. One man has apples. Another man has a stupid name and experience in sales and marketing. Between them lies opportunity, disgrace, and possibly a label best not examined too closely before lunch.

So Stoma Cider would never be available everywhere. Absolutely not. That would be vulgar. You’d have to know someone. Or have once met someone who knew someone. Perhaps a waiting list at the village shop in Black Pockrington. Three bottles per household, unless Simon has had a heavy pressing week, in which case two.

People would complain, obviously, but only in the way people complain about things they secretly want more.

“I tried to get some Stoma, but it’s sold out again.”

Exactly. That’s not failure. That’s premium positioning.

For those not blessed with a working knowledge of medical plumbing, a stoma is not normally associated with a refreshing drink on a summer afternoon. It has surgical implications. It suggests not so much an orchard as a discharge plan. It doesn’t make you think of hay bales, wassailing, and a cheerful man in a flat cap. It makes you think of leaflets in a hospital corridor and someone saying, “The nurse will be along in a minute.”

But that is probably why it works.

Modern drinks branding is so painfully over-managed that every bottle sounds as if it has been named in a room with beanbags and a man saying “journey” too often. Every cider is something like Orchard Mist, Twisted Root, or Thirsty Badger. They all claim to be bold, authentic and handcrafted, usually by apples that have enjoyed a richer emotional life than most people.

Stoma cuts through all that.

It doesn’t flirt. It doesn’t whisper. It doesn’t arrive wearing tweed and pretending to know the farmer. It walks into the bar, sits down heavily, and says, “You’ll remember me.”

And you would.

Nobody forgets ordering a pint of Stoma.

“Two lagers, a Guinness and a Stoma, please.”

The pub would fall silent. The barman would look up slowly. Somewhere in the snug, an old boy would put down his Racing Post. Even the dog would sense that a line had been crossed.

Then there is the corporate slogan, because once you’ve created Colostomy Breweries you might as well go down with the ship.

Colostomy Breweries - putting the output back into hospitality.

That one would probably need testing with a less hysterical focus group than Hay in Lidl.

And in fairness, some words have luggage. You can’t just slap them on a bottle and pretend people won’t notice. A cider called Aneurysm would struggle, however crisp the finish. Thrombosis Pale Ale probably has limited festival appeal. Colonoscopy Gin might be beautifully botanical, but it’s still going to face resistance at Waitrose.

But Stoma has that strange, ugly strength that proper old names sometimes have. It’s short. It’s memorable. It sounds almost agricultural if you don’t know what it means. You could imagine it being a village near Taunton.

“Lovely place, Stoma. Good pub. Bit damp in winter. Terrible waiting list.”

That’s the problem with language. One person hears a crisp, modern cider brand. Another hears a consultant explaining life after surgery. Which is probably what marketing is, once you strip away the lanyards and the expensive biscuits.

So I think Stoma Cider deserves a chance.

Not a large chance. That would defeat the entire pricing strategy. Not a supermarket listing and a celebrity endorsement. Just a cautious trial run at a village fete, preferably one with limited internet access and a first-aid tent. Put it on a trestle table next to the chutney, price it at three quid a bottle, sell out in twenty minutes, then bring it back next year at seven quid with a numbered label and a small card saying allocation only.

In practice, which is usually where British life ends up, three men in waxed jackets would buy a bottle each for a joke, drink it behind the tombola stall, and spend the rest of the afternoon saying, “Actually, it’s not bad.”

And that, frankly, is how most successful British products should begin. Not with a launch strategy, not with influencers, and certainly not with a brand consultant called Ollie.

Just a bad idea, a good apple, Simon possibly checking whether his press is free next weekend, and Hay still somewhere near the perry trying to breathe.