Tag: export

  • Why a modern Greek should feel like Achilles at sea

    While everyone gets used to what most of us saw (and wrote) all along and the Greek debt sooner or later gets restructured, the road ahead is pretty clear: we have to actually produce something!   While the media and most of the population rolls over slowly, fat and lazy from so many years of a bloated public sector, someone has to go to Troy to fight.   Much like the Greeks back then though:

    1. We are naturally skeptical. When I first saw the press release about a Greek company in the Innovation Parc I automatically assumed it is yet another scam.   So many years of seeing pseudo-business ventures makes a genuinely world standard effort hard to believe.

    2. Most just don’t want to fight, quite happy in their own villages.    Trying to talk a Greek brand name like Loumidis to turn himself into something with a proven success record like http://www.thegreekdeli.com/ is a task for …Ulysses’ cunning!

    3. We get emotional and miss the point.   Helen was probably not very happy in Sparta anyway.   Who cares if Paris loved her?    Business is business.   I see this now while monitoring worldwide media regarding ouzo, one of those products that is considered so Greek it hurts.  Like feta cheese, some people get too caught up in history to face the real enemy; anyone selling our history better than us!

    Much like Achilles, modern Greeks have a decision to make:   They can stay home and die poor and unknown, or they can venture forth to try and conquer the world like their ship faring ancestors have always done in the past.   It is written that Achilles beat the main force and landed with his handful of faithful warriors to take on the entire Trojan defenses before anyone else.   They could hardly keep him in the ship as it approached the well defended shore.   His enthusiasm for battle and immortality was impossible to hold back.

    Hand me that spear.

  • Is the ouzo industry too small to survive?

    One of the problems facing ouzo is that it is generally produced by companies too small to help properly promote it.  It is indicative that at the recent ProWein international spirits trade show, there were only two companies with ouzo to show!   And of those, only ouzo Plomari the market leader in Greece, actually showed something new, the premium, triple distilled, “Adolo” brand of ouzo and a new brandy, (or whatever they are allowed to call it!), Pantheo.

    As Andreas Mathidis, president of the Greek spirits association said, it is important that a major Greek brand represents the positive side of Greece, despite the bad publicity due to the economic climate.

    Hey, just drink more ouzo and everything will seem great!