A KEDGE Alumnus and Youtuber, Loïc is making oenology accessible to all!

I followed the MVS – Management of Wines and Spirts at KEDGE in Bordeaux. However, that wasn't an obvious choice at first! I don't come from a family of winemakers or wine amateurs for that matter. Instead, the Geoffrey family has a history in the industrial sector. That is why, after obtaining my BAC, I started out with a BTS in Technical-Business. However, I quickly realised it wasn't the right fit for me. In 2010, I went on to pursue a Masters in Management at ESC in Clermont. That is when I joined the school's oenology association:  Cuvée Spéciale. My main motivation was to learn about wine in case I ended up at an international business dinner. I know it is cliché, but I figured that as the only French person at the table, I would likely end up being responsible for choosing the wine. That is how I got caught up in the field and little by little I started to build my professional experience around wine and e-commerce. As the end of my studies in Clermont approached, I made a simple observation: there are tons of talented people with a Masters in Management that are interested in wine! I needed to differentiate myself and strengthen my knowledge of the market. The MVS programme at KEDGE in Bordeaux was an obvious choice. I joined the school in 2014. 

 

After obtaining my diploma, I continued to work in the same company in which I had done a work-study programme (the MVS programme is conducted as a work-study programme): Plugwine. Initially, I was in charge of a marketing project. Under the supervision on the Sales Director, I was in charge of implementing the company's marketing policy: recruiting new clients, retaining older clients. After the Sales Director left, I took over the company's sales/B2C marketing strategy: developing the business plan, piloting several revenue streams. It was an incredible experience! It's not everywhere that you will find yourself overseeing budgets, setting objectives, and managing an intern at only 28. Additionally, it taught me that I was able to manage a never ending commercial pressure (e-commerce is a 24/7 business), which also showed that I was capable of being an entrepreneur. I left the company in May 2017 due to a sense of weariness and a disagreement regarding the strategy to implement. That's life in a company. 

 

 

 

Today, I am taking advantage of a transition period in my career to move forward on a project that I have been working on for a little why and that I really care about, my YouTube channel: Vin’Stache, the show about wines, hosted by a guy with a mustache. Although I only launched the channel in August 2017, I had had the idea in the back of my head since I was in the MVS programme. A former classmate and I are both huge fans of videos that popularise scientific concepts on YouTube. At the end of 2013/2014, a lot of really great YouTube channels were launched on a variety of subjects: e-penser for general science, dirtybiology on biology, Crossed on cinema and video games, Nota Bene on History. But there wasn't anything on wine, most videos were about tastings! However, I have always found these videos to be rather uninteresting. Describing a taste sensation is really difficult, it's like describing the scent of a perfume to someone who has never smelled it. Nonetheless, there is a lot to say about wine, you can talk about it from an economic, historical, scientific, or environmental standpoint. After doing a few tests and receiving positive feedback from a diverse panel of around 20 people, I posted the first episode online on August 17th, on: "What are Bordeaux wines so famous?" Kind of an hommage to my KEDGE years! 

 

 

Making videos is great, you learn about new fields you didn't know anything about: popularisation, creation, sound recording, editing... but it is also very time-consuming. And, no matter how passionate I am, it is a little demotivating to spend 10 days working on a video to get only 200 views. My first objective is therefore to create an audience for the show. However, Vin'Stache, doesn't just have a purely commercial purpose. Of course, we talk about wine, so a mass consumption product. But, mainly we want to share knowledge and help people that know nothing about wine learn more about it. Because today, the wine world is extremely codified and even somewhat uptight. The goal therefor is to also talk about wines in a simple, accessible and relaxed way. 

  

KEDGE was an incredibly humbling experience. When you join such a prestigious program, you always have a tendency to see yourself as more beautiful than you are. And then you meet with lecturers-researchers in wine economics, oenologists-advisers that know the molecular composition of our wines, or even winemakers from the most well-known Châteaux in Bordeaux, who at 70+ years old, explain to you that there are still learning. So you take a deep breathe, and you go back to your and open your ears to soak it all in. Then, it's also learning to concretely apply a theory. When you are in a general education Masters, you study, for example in marketing, Ford's marketing strategy, which is interesting, but rarely applies to your field. However, in the Masters at KEDGE everything is entered around your professional field. Lots of examples that we cite in Vin’Stache come directly from things I learned at KEDGE. Finally, my professional thesis, which was on "How much does a brand weigh in B2C wine sales online?" was crucial for my show. The theoretical research based on scholarly articles is a tremendous help when I need to find reliable sources to ensure the credibility of my show. 

 

Pay attention to the sound. It may sound stupid, but when you want to make videos, you often think about the subjects, the image, the frame, the lighting... But in reality, the most important and complicated thing, is the sound recording! Ah, and mostly have fun with it, someone who only has commercial motives in mind will give up pretty quickly. Finally, work your network: that's something I probably neglected a little too much when I got started. 

Thank you for watching this video, I hoped you liked it... oh oops, this is a written interview, I had forgotten. More seriously, the success of a YouTube channel depends on its virality. Dear KEDGE Alumni friends, if you have some time to visit and share my YouTube channel, you make me the happiest guy around.