made Cîroc a household name in the early 2010s, and according to him, he turned things around for the entire company in the process.
On Tuesday (September 5), financial literary platform Earn Your Leisure published their recent conversation with the Bad Boy mogul, who shared some of the ins and outs of his business deals.
“I was called to have a meeting with Diageo. They knew that I was kind of killing things in the culture and they were trying to fix their diversity problem and through that, a meeting was set up,” Diddy began. “I told them, you know: ‘I want to be an owner and that I have these ideas from promoting parties at Howard’ – just remembering that I would always get the door and never get the bar. So I said: ‘I have aspirations to have Black-owned brands owned by Black people behind the bar and a part of your organization.’
“I’m looking at their portfolio and they said we could start something from scratch. But I’m looking at their portfolio and I remember one night I was having a great, great time with Cîroc. I had some Cîroc, it was made by grapes and I remember the light bulb went off in my head. I said: ‘I don’t want to wait and develop nothing. Let me show you what I could do with Cîroc. Let me show you how I could turn your revenue around.'”
He continued: “They were losing $40million a year and I went and turned it around and took it to 2.6 million cases from 40,000 cases. This is something that’s never been done! And so 15 years later, even though I had that success, I was always fighting for Cîroc not to be pigeonholed – not to be pigeonholed as a Black brand, not to be pigeonholed as an urban brand. I already went through that!
“I went through that with Sean John. They put me in the urban section. I had to go and disrupt the fashion industry, pull up on Fashion Week showing what that Black Excellence swag is about and that’s what we did with Sean John.
“And so with Cîroc, it was the same thing getting into the spirits industry. No matter what industry I went into, I always came up against this ceiling that they just wanted to keep me in the color section.”
hiphopdx.com
On Tuesday (September 5), financial literary platform Earn Your Leisure published their recent conversation with the Bad Boy mogul, who shared some of the ins and outs of his business deals.
“I was called to have a meeting with Diageo. They knew that I was kind of killing things in the culture and they were trying to fix their diversity problem and through that, a meeting was set up,” Diddy began. “I told them, you know: ‘I want to be an owner and that I have these ideas from promoting parties at Howard’ – just remembering that I would always get the door and never get the bar. So I said: ‘I have aspirations to have Black-owned brands owned by Black people behind the bar and a part of your organization.’
“I’m looking at their portfolio and they said we could start something from scratch. But I’m looking at their portfolio and I remember one night I was having a great, great time with Cîroc. I had some Cîroc, it was made by grapes and I remember the light bulb went off in my head. I said: ‘I don’t want to wait and develop nothing. Let me show you what I could do with Cîroc. Let me show you how I could turn your revenue around.'”
He continued: “They were losing $40million a year and I went and turned it around and took it to 2.6 million cases from 40,000 cases. This is something that’s never been done! And so 15 years later, even though I had that success, I was always fighting for Cîroc not to be pigeonholed – not to be pigeonholed as a Black brand, not to be pigeonholed as an urban brand. I already went through that!
“I went through that with Sean John. They put me in the urban section. I had to go and disrupt the fashion industry, pull up on Fashion Week showing what that Black Excellence swag is about and that’s what we did with Sean John.
“And so with Cîroc, it was the same thing getting into the spirits industry. No matter what industry I went into, I always came up against this ceiling that they just wanted to keep me in the color section.”
Diddy Recalls ‘Lightbulb’ Moment That Turned Cîroc’s Fortunes Around: ‘They Were Losing $40M’
Diddy has shared the backstory to how he turned vodka company Cîroc's profits around and made it a household name by getting behind them.
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