It hits me a bit harder than most because I put months and months of hard work into making that packaging line work. It took an enormous amount of effort for us to bring the efficiency high enough to meet consumer demand, but by that stage it was too late.
Like many other corporate woes, the Tapking was doomed to failure by the fact that Lion prioritises marketing over making beer. The marketing department had decided on a release date and insisted on this date despite the operations team continually telling them that this date was far too early. What then happened is that the whole brand spanking packaging line was rushed through tender, design, installation and commissioning and surprise surprise - it performed like shit and consequently didn't meet (initial) consumer demand. Quality issues plagued the line and unsurprisingly this pissed off punters, many of whom stopped buying the product.
I then got involved in the line to try and improve the efficiency. With a few investments and adjustments, we did indeed improve the line efficiency. We looked at a $6 million project to further increase the capacity of the line to meet sales forecasts from marketing. Halfway through the project, the huge sales forecasts never materialised (who would have thought) and the capacity expansion was scrapped with hundreds of thousands of $ wasted.
So by this stage in the saga, we have a one-of-a-kind bottling line working well, but no one to buy the product. Lion didn't really know what to do at this stage, because their usual method of fancy marketing didn't work. A few half-hearted attempts at changing the products in the Tapking didn't make a difference and here we are today.
The reasons why it failed, I believe, are:
- Lion missed their market and pulled the gimmick angle and never clearly explained why the beer was better than bottle beer, since it was substantially more expensive
There is a significant flavour advantage because Tapking beer is flash pasteurised rather than tunnel pasteurised, and this was never mentioned
- I could clearly see this as the demand matched typical gimmick products - sales peaks at Father's day, Christmas and sometimes NRL grand finals
[*]The bottling line was rushed through design, tender, installation and commissioning which meant that the first product to market were of poor quality
[*]The design of the cap/dispenser system is astoundingly bad.
- The caps are so complicated that they must be made by hand - $$. The overall design places the CO2 bulb in the cap, meaning that the punter cannot get a sodastream bottle or the like to plug in - $$.
- The worst thing, however, is the dispenser. Like anyone with kegs will know, a foam-free pour relies on low turbulence and a gradual pressure drop (all about keeping that CO2 in solution). A 20mm long, 5mm tube is woefully insufficient. There is no way to change "kegs" without completely losing all the CO2 from one.
If I were Lion I would have resdesigned the whole arrangement a long time ago so that consumers could just buy beer in 3.2L bottles. The dispenser would allow external CO2 cylinders to be attached (eg sodastream or other very small ones) and have a controllable back pressure. The beer line would be balanced to stop excessive foaming. Then, the beer itself would be cheaper (very basic cap) but the dispenser more expensive. At least the product would actually work AND consumers could put any beer they want in there.
It's rather saddening for me.