BrewDog CEO James Watt On His Biggest Mistakes

BrewDog’s James Watt, who founded the now global craft brewery along with Martin Dickie, is an outspoken man…A man willing to own his past mistakes.

Here’s the deal…

Although BrewDog began as a Scottish garage brewery in 2007, it has grown into an international drinks maker that in addition to brewing, owns a cidery, a distilling operation, now employs over 2,000 team members and has over 100 bars all over the planet.

With his trademark bravado, Watt’s quick to celebrate the company’s many successes, but on November 27, he took to Linkedin to own up to his biggest mistakes.

And we found five of the “mistakes’ Watt admitted to, particularly resonant for anyone growing a business.

Pink IPA

In 2017 BrewDog released Pink IPA in the UK a female targeted take on its flagship Punk IPA that the brewery positioned as a marketing initiative to raise awareness about gender pay inequality and the rampant sexist advertising in the beer biz. But according to Watt his campaign didn’t go over all that well…

“Despite the good intentions, our execution was terrible. The whole thing was meant as an overt parody on sexist marketing, but no one realized it actually was a parody. So, in effect, we just ended up looking like exactly the thing we were trying to protest against. The backlash was justified.”

Lone Wolf Trademark Dispute

In 2016 BrewDog launched LoneWolf its distilling arm. And in March 2017 the company entered into a trademark dispute with a bar called Lone Wolf, a legal action he now deeply regrets….

“This was a mistake on my behalf: there was never going to be any confusion between their bar and our gin, and I was completely wrong to take action. I very quickly and publicly admitted the mistake, stopped the legal action and covered their costs and in addition we invited them to Ellon to make a special batch of gin together as an apology.”

Oversized Overworks

In 2017 BrewDog committed to building Overworks, a sour beer division with its own separate facility in Ellon, Scotland helmed by ex-Wicked Weed’s, Richard Kilcullen. An endeavor that Watt now admits was t0o big and couldn’t possibly scale…

 “We mistakenly misread the market for sour beers and put together an amazing facility that was simply far too big. Consequently, we were under pressure from the outset and ended up making far too many different sour beers than we could hardly even keep up with what was going on.”

Costly Executive Hires

In 2018 BrewDog beefed up its executive team with some big name hirings that didn’t pan out…

“I very mistakenly believed the only way to take BrewDog to the next level was to hire an experienced and expensive senior management team. I assembled an all-star cast with impressive resumes and hearty paychecks but within 12 months we had parted company with of all 7 of them.”

How Not To Do An Acquisition

In 2018, BrewDog purchased Hawkes, an immensely successful London-based artisan cidery founded by Stephen Wright, and according to Watt promptly “ripped the soul out of the brand.”

“Hawkes main 2 selling points were that is was made in London and the fresh apples were pressed on site. After almost 18 months of making the cider in Ellon, we are in the process of expanding the London Cidery so that within 4 weeks all Hawkes ciders will once again be made in London from freshly pressed apples.”