One taste of maple syrup immediately launches some of my best memories. I’ve always enjoyed it – whether it’s sitting down to a big plate of pancakes dripping with it or hiking through late winter forest snow with my grandfather and drinking the sweet sap directly from buckets on the trees.
But this morning, looking out on a sunny March day in my maple forest, I come back to a puzzle that has been bothering me since I started professional marketing many years ago.
How can such a wonderful end product, still made using only traditional techniques, vast amounts of labour (and love) from a purely natural ingredient have failed so utterly to develop a premium niche and brand? Similar products the world over have proliferated with brands, applications, innovations and, most of all, margins to the great benefit of their respective industries. Maple syrup continues to be the distant cousin. It had so much potential and never amounted to much. Let’s look at what might have been.
Wine is an obvious parallel. Artisanal wines compete side by side with those from mass producers. Perhaps it’s that the wine industry is too global and too historically well established to be truly comparable. But a small segment, little known 30 years ago, was ice wine, a relatively irregular offshoot of weather calamities in the mainstream wine industry. Well, if Canada has an abundant supply of anything, it is cold weather, and in couple decades we have created the preeminent position as the largest, most consistent producer of a restricted supply, very premium priced, multi branded wine segment. Other product examples come to mind. How about olive oils, balsamic vinegars and craft brewers? These are all relatively simple products where individual product experimentation, new applications and brand innovations have driven both demand and profits. So why not maple syrup?
I will go out on a limb here (pun intended) and start with the focus point of the supply chain. A major central agency managing supply quotas and sales demand is centred in Quebec and, I believe, manages more than half the world supply of maple syrup. (A bit like OPEC, you don’t need to control the entire supply in order to control the entire market). Their strategic planning includes managing the world maple syrup reserves in some 45 gallon drums that managed to get stolen a couple of years ago creating the biggest news story about the product in recent memory – a reflection on the sad state of their innovation news. Actually, it seems to be managed much like milk and eggs, agricultural staples that go to market through central supply agencies intended to stabilize supply, demand and costs in categories that don’t seem to want or need much innovation. But even egg and dairy processors engage in product branding and differentiation. Alas with maple syrup, the entire industry is extremely fragmented across Quebec, Ontario and New England, with no one producer large enough to create their own real brands. Just think about the ubiquitous dominant maple syrup packaging, dull tones of grey and white reminiscent of the bland spring forest with a patch of red (well, this is Canada.) Hardly evocative of unique and subtle brand differences suggesting an air of mystique, fun or excitement. On the contrary, everything about the maple syrup “go to market” strategy seems intended to turn everyone’s individual craftsmanship and distinctive forests into a bland homogeneous commodity. It makes me mad to say this, but water bottlers have done a hundredfold better job of creating distinctions in WATER than maple syrup has.
Bottom line – there is no way a central agency has the ability or incentive to create all the individual brands because they are measured on lowest cost to market, not highest price at market.
Maple syrup is a product sitting on the cusp between an agricultural commodity and an agricultural specialty niche. The default has been to treat it as a commodity, without even the benefit of economies of scale and sophistication that usually come to commodities. It remains both undervalued by the customer and inefficiently fragmented in the production. But why should it be a commodity? Say what you will about the effectiveness (or not) of a milk marketing board, there is a valid argument for the benefits of ensuring a steady supply of milk and other staples to our society. But maple syrup? Like wine or beer or fancy olive oil, nobody’s life would be upended if there was an occasional over or under supply passing through each of those marketplaces. Then, in exchange for a free market responding to supply and demand, each of those non-commodity agricultural specialties have exploded with innovation, brands, new uses, research, health benefits (real or perceived), flavour variations, novel packaging, the list is endless. Even more intriguing, is that the best products for specialty market development have some fixed supply restrictions. Arguably, there is no real limit on how much beer could be produced, but olive oil comes from a relatively fixed supply source. Once demand grows, getting more supply is difficult (think diamonds or gold) so the prices go up, up, up and the producers benefit exponentially.
Meanwhile, maple syrup languishes at the bottom with flat market boredom.
So, what do I suggest?
First, eliminate the central supply control in the industry and open the doors to individual producers making as much or as little as they desire and to alternative channels to market (especially in Quebec.) Second, I would like to see a modest government investment in some studies about health, purity, organic, local sourced, sustainability or whatever other benefits maple syrup has versus competitive sweeteners and other luxury goods. There have been some limited efforts to come up with new uses (because a stack of flapjacks is just not a growth category for today’s modern gourmet diner) but I expect individual producers along with innovative chefs and restaurants will conduct hundreds of development projects that will yield new markets on their own. Third, I’d like to see some consolidation to at least medium size companies in production to drive some brand development. It does not need to become a conglomerate. Think about Ocean Spray in the cranberry industry. They are a co-op of still individual producers, but they turned their commodity into a branded premium high quality beverage, added new consumption uses, extended the line with blend mixes and all the while nurtured a perception (though never really proven) of a number of health benefits.
How great would it be if maple syrup could follow a similar path? Right now, there is no interest in outside investment or consolidation, because that costs money, and if the majority of supply is dominated by commodity pricing there is no return on investment in innovation or expansion. They have created their own barriers to growth in exchange for stable pricing at the bottom end of potential market.
There is a final barrier to marketing growth for maple syrup. More than two thirds of the world supply comes from rural French Quebec, while the majority of consumers are in English North America (perhaps later followed by around the world if they can get the niches right.) Marketing to another cultural/language group is always tough, so bridging this gap will require talented marketing skills, that could come from Montreal or dare I say France. The industry might also enlist successful leaders from other luxury food and beverage categories where the French (among others) have excelled in creating premium brands that are recognized around the world along with substantial profits.
The world is full of oversold products that have marginal value and qualities, so it truly pains me to see such a genuinely great product like maple syrup with so much to commend it, relegated by its own industry to obscurity – especially since it grows in our own back yard!
