Fundraising the Trappist way
The Abbey of Saint Sixtus in Westvleteren, one of the smaller brewing establishments of the Trappist monks in Belgium, is famous for its beers. It is generally not possible to buy the Westvleteren beers in shops. If they are available in specialty beer bars, it's because someone has gone to the trouble of personally picking them up at the monastery by the crate at a pre-given time.
As with other Trappist breweries, demand exceeds supply. The Westvleteren monks only brew 4,750 hl beer a year as producing higher volumes would counteract their contemplative life which follows the rules of "ora et labora" ("pray and work") set up by St Benedict some 1,500 years ago.
This posed a dilemma when the monks discovered that one wing of their abbey, which housed their cells, was subsiding. They needed to raise quite a bit of money to build new quarters.
Initially, the logical solution to their problem – sell more beer and make more money – was off. But following the recent financial crisis, donations only trickled in slowly. That's when Theo Vervloet, President of the Belgian Brewers' Association, managed to convince them that selling extra beer was the way forward.
The obstacles to his plan were massive: not only would the higher production volume affect the monks' lives, it could also potentially harm the image of their beer if it were pushed into the market without much ado.
So the brewery's pro bono project team, consisting of marketers Jan Callebaut, Piet Jaspaert, Luc Struyf and Krishan Maudgal, came up with the idea of a one-time offer.
Mr Vervloet then worked out that, in order to raise a few million euros, the monks would have to brew an extra 1,300 hl beer, or an extra batch per month for ten months. Why just ten months? Simple. If the stock-building had taken any longer, it would have seriously reduced the shelf-life of this beer, which is three years.
While the monks were busy brewing extra stock, the marketing team determined that each of the 93,000 Bouwsteenboxes ("brick boxes" to underline that the proceeds would exclusively contribute to the new building) were to contain six 330 ml bottles of the Westvleteren XII beer (10.2% ABV) and two degustation glasses by Ritzenhoff. The asking price was set at EUR 25 (USD 34) per box.
The next challenge was to find a single national distribution partner. Giving the beer to all of Belgium's 1,500 or so beer wholesalers was not deemed feasible as it would have bogged down the monks for weeks with invoicing alone.
Fortunately, the Belgian discount retailer Colruyt offered itself. Its logistics partners picked up the beer when it was ready at no charge and took it to all of Colruyt's 213 outlets where the boxes were made available to punters on 3 November 2011.
To prevent the boxes from being snatched up by resourceful internet auctioneers, the marketing team had also launched a newspaper campaign which included coupons. Only Colruyt shoppers with coupons would be able to purchase one box per person.
The marketers had thought that it would probably take a week to sell all the beer. But, to their great surprise, on 3 November 2011 early in the morning long queues were forming outside Colruyt stores. Within 48 hours 98 percent of the Bouwsteenboxes were gone.
What's more, Colruyt delivered on its promise to return EUR 25 per box sold to the monastery.
The Bouwsteenbox campaign will be continued in 2012 in order not to exclude Westvleteren's international wholesalers from this once-in-a-lifetime offer. Wanting to give all their partners a fair chance, the marketing team devised an auction, whereby wholesalers obtained a contingent of certain batches. If all goes to plan, the last batch will be shipped in August 2012.
As could be expected, some of the Bouwsteenboxes have already appeared on ebay. When I checked on 13 November 2011, the starting offer for one was USD 150 plus USD 47 for shipping.
