How Henry Discovered that Wine Bricks are the Perfect Product to sell to Doomsday Preppers
“Buy or die.“
No, this isn’t the tagline for Martin Shkreli’s AIDs medication, it’s a neat way of expressing how high impending apocalypses have raised consumer stakes.
Welcome to the niche form of kleptomania-come-stupid-fantasy-realisation of Doomsday Prepping. It’s a burgeoning market in the United States, uplifting demand for AK47s, chastity belts and cable ties. But I’ve figured something out – it’s a really immature market (in at least three ways – can you guess them?).
This market consists of millions of ‘well-informed consumers‘ (gullible idiots) panic buying canned wieners and toilet paper (no, they think the bidet is a fancy urinal). Spending their evenings pinning all the local hotties’ houses onto paper maps. Well, what else are they going to do when peak paranoia hits? Slink down into their bunkers?
While less inspired people would call this lunacy, I call it opportunity. Survival Sullian (a crazy person named after Warner Bros’ cartoon characters) claims there are 3.6 million REAL gullible Americans preparing for the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s a lot of money diverted from Taylor Swift Real Dolls & Only Fans subscriptions.
That’s exactly why I have a fantastic business proposal for you. It’s time to start selling wine bricks to doomsday preppers.
Why It Matters To You
This great idea’s free. Why? Because if you’re thinking about starting your own private label coffee brand, or want to import cheap personal fitness products from China, you need all the help you can get.
That’s right. I’m trying to save the British economy by encouraging you to start a proper business instead of giving your money to the sellers of snake oil. More, I’m fed up of private label businesses tricking me into buying absolute shit on Amazon. (No, you can’t start a nonsense writing agency, I’ve already established impenetrable market dominance).
So let’s get to the product.
What The Hell Is A Wine Brick?
Wine bricks *were* cuboids of grape concentrate, developed and pushed by Fruit Industries Ltd in the first half of the Twentieth Century. They allowed buyers to home brew their own multiple gallon vats of ‘wine’, while circumventing nationwide bans on the sale of alcohol during the Prohibition (1920-1933).
They were really easy to use. So easy that someone with absolutely no survival training who thinks they’re going to star in a real life version of First Blood, could probably manage to not kill themselves while using them. Here’s how they work:
- Step 1 – Drop the wine brick into 5-10 gallons of water
- Step 2 – Let the brick dissolve and ferment for two weeks (without any supervision)
- Step 3 – Say “Lizard People”
- Step 4 – BAM! You’ve got a fermented liquid to pair with boiled shoes (this was Great Depression era America)
Great concept. Here’s the clincher – Fruit Industries Ltd don’t make Vino-Glo anymore. I’ve found absolutely no evidence that anyone does.
The wine brick market is begging, nay, whimpering to be seized.
What Is A Doomsday Prepper?
But who would buy a wine brick when you could buy a perfectly good £3.99 bottle of shiraz instead?
Crazy people with cult fetishes, obsessed with recreating the final hours of the Seventh Day Adventists’ 1993 Siege. Aka, Doomsday Preppers.
Our prospective customers live in a universe where they’re so enamoured with unrealistic fantasies, they’ve convinced their spouses that Cybergedden is imminent.
Meteor strikes, alien invasions, zombie apocalypses, whatever.
They’re planning to exploit humanity’s downfall by hoarding a load of weapons, food and other crap. Driven mad by the dream that they could finally become the type of cult leaders that they didn’t have the charisma to become in the real world.
The thing that distinguishes them from normal people, beyond the crazy, is that they’re so arrogant, they actually think they’d survive and thrive in this kind of situation. When in reality, they’d die.
Has there ever been a better customer than a ‘delusional customer‘?
Doomsday Prepping Market ‘Essentials’
Even better, let’s take a look at the state of the actual market. What do Doomsday Preppers consider to be essential bunker companions?
Tactical watches? Roller Skates? Bin Liners?
According to Inverse, a crapshoot website I just discovered, these are Doomsday Prepping essentials. However, as a non-doomsday prepper, I can tell you that these are not what you will need during the apocalypse. You’re going to need a strong stomach, thick rope and a belief that there will still be enough trees with branches that can support your bodyweight.
Take the tactical watch. I understand the importance of accessorising your Doomsday getups, while communicating to the surviving women that you’re really well endowed, but is anyone really going to be arranging apocalypse appointments? Do cannibals only prowl between 3:00 & 7:49 am? Are you worried that you’re going to miss the latest episode of Strictly Come Dancing with the Dead?
Or Roller Skates? Have you skated on unmaintained pavement? Have you cycled on a well maintained road? I’ve done both and fallen over a lot. Now imagine that there aren’t any refuse collectors, or Rod Stewarts to fill the potholes. Unless your Doomsday fantasy is to break your ankle and lie helplessly on the ground while dogs ravish you, roller skates aren’t a great idea.
Bin liners? Ok, I understand that. Clothes will obviously be scarce. You know. Everyone won’t be dead and not wearing their own clothes.
Like Shooting Zombies In A Swimming Pool
These items are obviously not essentials. So, through little to no research I’ve established that Doomsday Preppers base their assumptions on Zombieland: Double Tap, which is cliche-ridden crap.
Great, we understand the audience – No class. No taste. No imagination.
If they’re sold something that’s actually marketed by someone willing to do a very basic amount of research, they will buy it.
Why Doomsday Preppers Need Wine Bricks
Ok, it’s time to get the propeller on your expert marketer hat spinning. What are the main things Doomsday Preppers are worried about? How can wine bricks solve their problems?
1. Wine Bricks are MADE for stashing, stacking and living in the bottom of your bag
Carrying a bottle of wine in your rucksack? It glugs, throws balance off centre and hogs way too much space. Worse, a normal rucksack can only fit two to three bottles.
Imagine – a mutant, cannibal, or your ex husband is chasing you:
Glug, glug, clank, moan, “Tasty morsel,” “Cindy, you bitch, I’m going to fucking flay your leather hide.“
The last memory you have of your pride
What’s that sinking feeling in your stomach? Is it knowing that three bottles of wine isn’t going to be enough to forget about your lost humanity, foot or pride? Or is it all the sloshing around that’s holding you back?
A single wine brick makes a gallon of wine (6 bottles!), it’s a third of the size of a bottle and they apparently come in eight disgusting flavours.
Carry more, faster, better, while living to actually drink your investment.
2. Wine Bricks Don’t Break (meaningfully)
Glass is designed to break. What does normal wine come in? Glass. You’re going to break it and have a bad time.
But like fingers, wine bricks can break and remain completely usable. What are you going to stick your fingers into?
3. Six Months Into The Apocalypse, Wine Becomes A Reproductive Necessity
In the midst of a real apocalypse, modern life probably looks comparatively great. Most of us remain reasonably attractive until our late thirties.
But the hard living of the apocalypse is made to break you. Within the first year, you’ll barely recognise the women / men you kidnapped and keep chained to your now very cold radiator.
The only way you’re going to manage to have relations with any of these captives is if you’re blind drunk. And how are you going to keep that up? That wine cellar and whiskey cabinet you carefully built in your bunker is already running dry. Damn, if only you’d bought wine bricks instead.
You can store five gallons worth of wine bricks in the same space as a bottle. That’s 30 bottles of wine! 30x more booze that you could have otherwise had.
It’s literally the only way to delay the inevitable decline of your supplies. It’s also the only way of avoiding the embarrassment of all the people you now socially engage with knowing that you can no longer physically get it up.
4. Call Yourself A Professional Vintner
Grapes no longer grow. The process of plopping your wine bricks into a jug of water you collected as runoff from a former refuse site is the only way people can now remember that wine was made.
You’re a master craftsperson. All of your favourite sexes and animals love you.
Finally, your parents are smiling down from heaven, proud, knowing that their child achieved more than collecting useless junk for an imaginary apocalypse. Because you’re the master vintner.
Pre-fermented wine never offered that kind of class.
5. Operation Dry Heave – “There’s A Secret Government Conspiracy To Confiscate All Of The Alcohol Before The Apocalypse.”
Right – we know Doomsday Preppers are morons who probably believe in Pizza Hut Paedophile Rings.
What does that mean to us as the sellers of Wine Bricks?
Making up a stupid rumour about how *the Man* is going to steal all the alcohol will encourage Doomsday Preppers to buy wine bricks.
I mean, they’re not alcoholic until you drop them in water, so, the Government can’t confiscate them during Operation Dry Heave.
Why Wine Bricks Make Sense To Sellers
Right, so there are four pretty exceptional reasons why Wine Bricks are probably a great product to sell:
- Wine Bricks Are Easy To Post. Wine Bricks are bricks. You can post them to people in little boxes. They can be stacked economically and stuck in the back of a lorry. This makes them ideal for a direct to order business.
- Wine Bricks Don’t Incur Duty. The average bottle of wine incurs 297.57 pence per litre duty in the UK. In real person money, that’s a markup of almost £2.20 per bottle. So, if someone can sell a bottle of wine for £3.99 and still make a profit (even though they’re putting it into a super expensive glass bottle), if you’re not paying any duty on Wine Bricks you could totally sell each one for like, £2.00 and still make money.
- Wine Bricks Don’t Need Quality Control. Each year, winemakers are estimated to produce 11 million tonnes of pomace. That’s grape waste. It’s a mixture of seeds, stalks, grape skin and bits of fish (because it’s not wine unless it has gills). Nothing happens to this junk. It just gets thrown away. What if you were to take this waste and sculpt it into a brick? It’ll smell like wine and be the right colour. Real winemakers will probably pay you to take the stuff.
- Unless It’s The Apocalypse, Wine Bricks Don’t Need To Work. Think about it. Do you believe in the apocalypse? If it did happen, what’s going to happen to you if your wine bricks don’t work? Nothing, that’s what. Return policies don’t cover post-civilization scenarios. And no one’s going to ferment their precious wine bricks before the apocalypse. That’d be stupid.
What Are You Waiting For?
So, now you know your life’s calling – making and selling wine bricks to idiots.
Start calling up vineyards and see if you can produce a modern wine brick.
I’ve pretty much sorted out the marketing strategy for you though, so if it works, send me a few so I can show my friends how great I am at encouraging people to do stupid things. I’m sure we can all agree to raise a glass to that.
Henry Says 