Winning Brands Corporation (WNBD)

[Serenity]

FROM ERIC RE: CLEVELAND

Hello Moderator Team,



A post has been brought to my attention concerning a Cleveland store visitation that was unsatisfactory. A quick note for context:



· We do not post an address in the Local 100 program without first having received a distributor photograph of the product in the store, installed. In the case of the first Cleveland group, the photos are being reformatted so that they are compatible with the Store Locator software. That takes a bit longer than entering the addresses. In this case we entered the addresses immediately. The photos should be up Monday or Tuesday. Our office will review the situation of any store in which there appears to be a discrepancy between a placement address and absence of product. I felt that you should know, as an ethical matter, that in the Local 100 program absolutely no store address is posted without us first having photographic evidence prior to entering the store address.



· In the Cleveland program, we had already scheduled our additional on-site physical internal audit to commence next week. In other words, a representative from head office is already scheduled to be in Cleveland next week carrying out inspections regardless



· It is in the nature of convenience stores that some are in “rougher” areas, however a universal product like Winning Colours Stain Remover (and Coca Cola, Mars chocolate bars and Dentyne chewing gum to name only a few) will be of use to a broad cross section of the population. The intuitive assumption that only the upper middle class would remove stains is understandable from the perspective of our usual social biases, and no doubt based on a kernel of truth, but is also probably not absolutely correct either, like most stereotypes. We are fortunate that Winning Colours Stain Remover has a contribution to make in every household. Even within families in “rougher” neighbourhoods, there are differing personalities within these families, including some who are more concerned about being tidy and moving out of such circumstances.



· Whenever dealing with retail, especially certain categories such as C-Store, there is a process to go through before staff become familiar with what’s in the store. Most staff today is part-time, poorly paid, and subject to high turnover. This is why, unlike some of my peers, I am consistently conservative in the time frames which I ascribe to the development of a brand. We are realists at Winning Brands. We don’t go over the top in projections, but instead focus on doing the grunt work with the basics. We get the product out there; we see which retailers are more effective than others with a better attitude than others; we focus on supporting the natural winners in order to build a critical mass that eventually becomes a tipping point of awareness amongst the public and the stores that serve them.



· We have for reasons of the same realism, also not been pre-mature in starting the marketing campaign to support the C-store placements in the two cities until we are satisfied that the fit of the stores to the program is right and that consumers will have a good experience.





Bottom line – you are witnessing the growth of a brand through real time, not time-lapse photography. It’s not as exciting, but it is revealing of just how much work is involved. This is particularly evident with a firm like Winning Brands where we do not conceal this fact. The good news is that no brand is exempt from this hard work. When our brand has emerged through this process, fit and strong, other small start-up brands that wish to become peers to us will have to go through the same process. In economics, we call this vetting process a “barrier to entry”. It’s what prevents just any firm from being successful in a field overnight and limits success to the most qualified and determined – with special emphasis on the word determined. That’s why the largest companies get larger, and most of the small firms fail. In the case of Winning Brands, we are clearly beating the odds by surviving longer than most start-ups and making verifiable progress in the hard word of building our destiny.



Cheers,



Eric Lehner

CEO

Winning Brands Corporation