What's coming, what can I anticipate that other people don't see?
And then you must have the courage of your convictions to execute the strategy.
Every decision is different, and certain people have different insight and
different skills.
And in the book, I write about some things that I decided on my own that were wrong
and that were catastrophic in some ways.
I don't always have the right decision.
Now, when we brought in a new team,
this is a world class group of people who have skills and insight well beyond me.
The decisions we're making today are more skewed towards consensus than they were in
the past, because of the trust of the team.
However, I will make the final decision, and I-
>> You reserve that right.
>> And I also, I will take the responsibility if that decision is wrong.
>> Well, that's just happened with,
at least the way you describe it, with VIA, the.
So you have a team working for, well, for a very, very long time,
but as the product launch comes near, >> Yes.
>> VIA the instant coffee product.
And you've got these, a lot of great people working on it,
maybe these very same people you're describing.
But at some point, at some point it ends up, again, in your living room
with a couple of old consultants that you had worked with in the past,
where you say, let's get this right.
>> Well, I think this is a great case study.
The instant coffee category is a $24 billion category globally,
has not had any innovation for over 50 years, and is dominated by one company.
But for a company like Starbucks whose image is based on high quality,
especially coffee, to go into the instant coffee category,
one could assume would be a death sentence.
And when we announced we were doing this,
the media and Wall Street just basically wanted to destroy me.
And the headlines were terrible.
But again, I felt we saw something that other people didn't see.
But the litmus test for
this is, we had to replicate taste of Starbucks coffee in an instant form.
Once we cracked the code with technology,
I knew right away that this would be a success.
Via's been a runaway hit for the company,
it'd probably be $250 million as we sit today, and
we haven't really begun to introduce it globally, where 81% of the market is.
So this is a major hit for the company.
And it also did something, and I think this is important.
You know, not everything should be measured on its own merit.
This again was an opportunity to rekindle and
remind the organization about the entrepreneurial spirit and
the courage of the company to take the road less traveled.
And our people where so proud of the fact that we were about to do something
that was against the grain that was going to succeed.
And I don't believe there's any coffee company that could've done
this other than us, not because we're better than anyone else,
but because of the way in which it was positioned, and
obviously, the passion we have to bring this to market in a very unique way.
