After a night spent in a nice guest house, which belongs to the winery, we all met over breakfast in the shared kitchen and embarked on a workshop. The cooperation that we decided to establish with the winery was an exception from the beginning, from which our Peter always has blood in his veins. Martin had the condition that only he would participate in the process, without the active involvement of his parents, who are still active in the winery.

Projects in which we do not have the opportunity to work with the entire company team, or at least with her closer management, and on the other hand is only the owner/CEO, we refuse. We can draw bosses into the process together with their employees, thereby erasing hierarchical differences and also bringing new services or products to the world and inventing creative concepts behind the entire company.

But there was a very good energy coming out of Martin from the beginning, we had a lot of confidence in him, so we agreed to cooperate. Moreover, the reason why Martin wanted it that way was understandable for us - parents were skeptical about investing in the brand and the changes we were going to make.

Martin therefore decided to take the whole thing on himself and show them the sub-steps, which he would discuss with them carefully and sensitively. He believed that in the end they would be happy for the change and would participate in it. It was Martin's courage that entertained us from the start. Of course, we also met my parents, but only Martin participated in the workshops.

The introductory workshop was intense even in such a small number. After 7 hours, we went through Expectations, Jobs, Pains & Gains and defined our Focus Question. We carefully disassembled each sticky note and discussed the competition, what it's like to build a winery, what customers they have, how much they know them and what their goals are for the future.

Of all the stimuli that were heard in the kitchen of the guest house, we were most intrigued by the following:

• Every year the winery sells out almost all the bottles just by selling from the cellar, without any marketing or presence on the web.
• They don't want to go over 40,000 bottles a year, that's a notional ceiling that will allow them to stay small.
• They have never consciously paid attention to the brand, yet they have customers who come back every year.
• Martin adds about how he makes wine: “I actually program the wine, but the family and the tradition of making it come first.”
• UX & Design Website Concept
• What about the name? AP winery? We leave for later.

The winery now produces about half of what it will be able to produce in the future and Martin suspects that their loyal customers will no longer be enough to sell everything, selling only from the cellar in Dolní Dunajovice. It is necessary to be seen.

Everything makes sense and we confirm after the workshop that we can help the family business and give it added value.

We return to our base camp in Prague and wait about 10 to 14 days before we go to Dolní Dunajovice again to discuss creative concepts. In the meantime, of course, we call each other several times, inquire and discuss different options and routes to go.

But first you need to define the basics of the brand. A strategy of how to be unique and distinct. An integral part of such work is search or market research. And so we investigate and investigate. In addition to the wineries we know, we supplement our education with a number of others. We are especially interested in those with a family concept. We find that not everyone has a well-thought-out brand concept, but the word family is used by almost everyone. Distinguishing seems hard and easy at the same time.

We know the Pitros want to be seen as a family winery, but at the same time we reckon we want to look different from everyone else. We want to find a path that will be characteristic of this family.

Family wineries, even those that don't put the word family on the label, have a frequent naming key. Family name, surname of the family. And we are thinking about that.

The family is supposed to stick together. And that's what Pitrovic really holds, even working together. No one who is not a family member works in the winery. Pathetic as it may sound, the Pitres are incredibly ordinary and honest. Without Alois, they would not have started with wine, without the female hand of their mother they would not have reached where their family and the winery are now located, and without their son Martin and daughter Radka, they would not have been able to do it alone in time. They did not inherit the winery from noble ancestors, but simply bought the first cellar, and then the second and third. No “magic”, just hard and dedicated work of the whole family. Modesty and humility, too.

Solution:

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  And that's why their winery can't be called AP Winery - Alois Pitra Winery.

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  Their winery will be called Pitra Winery from now on.

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  Therefore, there cannot be only one family member on the label, or only the name of the family.

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  All the names will appear in the communication of their brand.

Labels, websites, marketing materials and campaigns must display not only the name of the Pitra Winery, but also the names of all family members who work on the wine. First of all, we suggested that it be all its members, including the youngest ones. However, there were more than ten names, and we would not have worked with them in the best way.

Finally, we agreed that there are three names behind the Pitra Winery - Alois, Radmila and Martin. Martin managed to tell the whole concept himself and pass it on to his parents, and they agreed with him. It meant that he was understandable to them, clear, and all three identified with him. We had our first great success.

We started with bottles, as the main product. The task for the designers was clear - to get on the labels in addition to the name and logo of the winery, vintage, varieties, etc. also three names: Alois, Radmila and Martin. In addition, so that it looks good, distinguishable and design-clean. A complete toy, isn't it? :)

Remembering the tasting, it occurred to us that the winery might not actually need labels at all. Bottles that people bought directly from the cellar often did not even have labels - they were only described with felt-tip pens. Taking a bottle with the hand written by the person who made the wine in it is a great idea, but with today's prices of permanent markers, a large number of bottles and taking into account the fact that Martin programs during the day, we had to reject it. In addition, the idea with names would perish, which we did not want.

We went to Dolní Dunajovice again after 14 days with already developed proposals. For Martin the main idea was no surprise as to how to materialize it however he had not yet suspected. He saw label designs for the first time.

After a whole day of debate over all the proposals laid out, again in the common kitchen of the guesthouse, we cut the ones we do not want to go through and on the contrary we move the ones that seem to us to be the best together. We choose a claim winery, we prefer cleaner designs over bold ones and for the logo we choose a monogram consisting of three initial letters of the names Alois, Radmila and Martin.

After clicking, you can look at all the proposals and see how far the first draft is from the final one. How long does it take for everything to be refined and that even an experienced designer will give it a while to draw. Well yeah, nothing goes by itself.:)

We continue to reach the final. Martin sends us handwritten names of each of the wineries and we then try to match them into one style. Finally, we slightly modify the manuscript and redraw it ourselves. The final form of the handwritten names and the monogram is looming. The monogram really goes through a lot of variations before we get to a design that we are happy with.

We draw everything on the tablet and print any version we are happy with as well. We are gradually upgrading the version, which our chief designer and founder Martin Kozák is pleased with. We are already a long way in the process, so we also choose the type of bottles. We finish with dark ones, as this is the best for wine.

After 10 rounds of designing, we end up surprisingly not only with dark bottles, but also with black labels. We originally designed the dark design just for the “caps”, but because of how good the black color looked and how little the caps will do in the winery, we decided to choose it as the primary color scheme, along with the golden accent.

The Pitra winery is a small winery, so it is important for them to calculate the cost. We promised Martin that we would think about it and that we would try to design labels so that they were price reasonable. Together we chose the Etiflex printer and set out to consult prints and technology right there. In the printer, we dealt not only with the thickness of the lines in the design, but also the special effects and shades of metallic colors for white, red and rosé wines. The printer was perfect and suited us in many things. Thanks to them, we finally came up with a nice price for one label, even with a new design. We didn't cut significantly from the margin and yet it was such a difference.

We add the last detail on the bottle - the so-called capsule. According to the sample list of the company that supplies the capsule, we choose the shade and finish and we propose to Martin to supplement the capsule with a small detail in the form of the text: Cheers! We also do not forget about corks and send printing data for cork printing to Portugal. In the first wave, we also propose printing boxes. Even here, we did not significantly increase the price per piece compared to the boxes without printing. We designed a simple black and white print, but it works - thanks to it the box is distinguishable and carries elements of our brand.

Martin originally had the idea that we would build a simple website, and since we do not do e-shops, he was going to reach out to individual portals that resell wines from different winemakers. We were ready to help him with the presentation to get these portals interested. However, in the course of our work there was an opportunity to build a simple e-shop on the platform Webflowwhere we've been building sites for a while - not only the design and UX part (we do this for much larger sites as well), but also the “live” part, that is, the one that is normally made up by a programming team that we don't have. Webflow finally launches integration with payment gateway Stripe also for the Czech Republic and we were able to build a simple e-shop in addition to the presentation website. You can look at the winery website, which we did all in our studio (UX, Design, Copywriting and web deployment), as well as with the integration of the e-commerce module, and get started here.

Our journey with Pitra Winery definitely does not end. We are working on a lot of other outputs, including loyalty program, mailing, performance advertising. Soon we will start with the presentation boarding houseto which it is his turn right now. We are very happy that we were able to welcome Pitra Winery to our #friendsnotclients and once again prove that the closest and closest cooperation is the best way.