After making missteps, is Moa headed for extinction?



Reaction to the news that Moa brewery is in a "bit of hole" was fast and damning.



The brewery, which launched on the stockmarket last year amid a lot of hoopla and hype, saw its share price crash by over 30 per cent after chief executive Geoff Ross announced sales shortfalls of approximately the same level.



Mad selling ensued after analysts Andy Bowley and James Bascand at sharebroker Forsyth Barr downgraded the stock from "hold" to "sell" after the announcement. "We expect that increased competition in the consumer-defined craft beer segment as well as below-par distribution volumes have been instrumental in the disappointing sales thus far," they said.

Ross blamed the distribution system but I think it's the first part of Forsyth's Barr statement that matters the most - and even then the analysts missed the mark. It's not the increased competition that has pushed Moa downhill, it's Moa's inability to read the market.

Moa has made misstep after misstep, constantly disenfranchising consumers. In my view, it treated intelligent beer consumers with disdain. It talked down to people, when it should have been immersing itself in the brotherhood, and sisterhood, of craft beer.

It's been my experience over the past few years that the entire craft category is a flat hierarchy of brewers, distributors, drinkers, bar staff, writers ... it feels like a collegial group where anyone can talk to anyone and no-one thinks they are above the rest.

Moa put itself above the rest. It behaved like a 1980s-style corporate full of brand puffery and put out marketing that was flippant, sexist and arrogant. Then it did silly things like appointing itself some kind of arbiter for what defined craft beer.

To me, Moa was the man in the suit sitting in his glassed office looking out at a pub across the road where everyone was getting on well and drinking nice beer.

End result: The consumers it most needed to buy its beer in New Zealand chose other brands. Even if they quite like Moa - and some of the beer is outstanding - if faced with a choice they will go for something else. It's certainly how I approach my purchases.

It may still work out for Moa - the long-term plan is based on exporting and if it can reach countries where its brand isn't quite so tarnished then the beer might speak for itself.

In the interim, it needs New Zealand's relatively small craft beer community to buy its beer - but convincing people to come back will need a better marketing approach than the noise-making nonsense we've seen so far.

Footnote: I've won a few trophies in my life: Best goalkeeper in the Upper Hutt under-15 grade; a prize for original writing at high school (which proved really useful when studying physics and maths at university); Christchurch soccer writer of the year in 1993; a couple of "best sport section" awards when I was sports editor of the Sunday Star-Times this esteemed journal ... but nothing matched the feeling of being named Beer Writer of the Year at the annual Brewers Guild awards the other week. To anyone who's read anything I've written, thanks for making it possible - because you're who I write for.

michael.donaldson@star-times.co.nz

Twitter:@mjwd



