
In 1973, I invented Baileys - johnny313
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/in-1973-i-invented-a-girly-drink-called-baileys-1.3240945?mode=amp
======
hyperpallium
> We mixed the two ingredients in our kitchen, tasted the result and it was
> certainly intriguing, but in reality bloody awful. Undaunted, we threw in
> some sugar and it got better, but it still missed something.

> We went back to the store, searching the shelves for something else, found
> our salvation in Cadbury’s Powdered Drinking Chocolate and added it to our
> formula. Hugh and I were taken by surprise. It tasted really good. Not only
> this, but the cream seemed to have the effect of making the drink taste
> stronger, like full-strength spirit. It was extraordinary.

They iterated, but not because they thought the product would taste great, but
because it fitted nicely with business and marketing considerations: tax
breaks and diary connotations. I guess it's serendipity that they found the
combination so quickly, and would have otherwise given up after a while.

 _Quitters never win and winners never quit, but those who never win and never
quit are idiots._

~~~
rxhernandez
Some people only win big in the last few years of their long life. Were they
idiots for not quitting?

~~~
esrauch
In some cases, definitely. Some people play the lottery their entire lives and
win in the last few years of their long lives. They were still wrong for not
quitting, even though they happened to get their pay out.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "They were still wrong for not quitting, even though they happened to get
> their pay out."

That makes no sense. When someone plays the lottery they don't put their life
on hold until they win. Nobody seriously plans their life around a big lottery
win, most people just play it for fun, the feeling of anticipation just before
the draw. After a draw takes place and they've not won, they just go back to
whatever plans they had before. Gambling addiction is more serious, but many
people are casual gamblers, including those that play the lottery every week.
I don't play the lottery often, but I can see for most people it's a harmless
activity.

~~~
stormbrew
There are definitely people out there who spend large sums of money on lottery
tickets or scratch cards they probably shouldn't be buying and consider it
their retirement plan. Many of them have no other viable path to an actual
retirement, many just don't know any better. But they do exist.

------
veb
> Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the real heroes of ideas
> are not the people who have them – they are the people who buy them.

I love this quote. That was a great read.

~~~
gt_
As a person with a lot of ideas and very little money, I don't like it as
much.

NOTE: This isn't about what makes money. It's about what makes heroes.

~~~
bigiain
You don't have to like it (most ideas guys" wont).But you do need to
acknowledge it's inevitable financial truth.

If you don't have ideas that someone else buys, you'll remain the person with
all the ideas and none of the money.

(And if your ideas are "heroic", it will 100% take a hero to fund them...)

I really like that phrase, because it takes the "conventional startup wisdom"
that "ideas without execution are worthless" to the next and obvious-to-
outsiders step - even a well executed idea than nobody will pay for - is, by
definition, worthless.

~~~
rtpg
Even without the money angle, you still need to convince people that your idea
is good in order for it to have "real" value (as in: be used).

Ideas are mostly worthless without proponents.

~~~
gt_
All fair points here; nothing I don't agree with. I'm not sure they counter
what I said, though.

As an artist, most of my ideas are artistic and don't require money for the
translation to value, but they still require time and skill. I constantly face
the reality that I still have to _make_ the art.

However we downplay ideas, it remains diappointing how many people lack them,
and how often money undermines them.

------
Larrikin
>People nowadays often ask me how much money we get per bottle sold. My answer
is that we were paid about £3,000 all-in for the development

This is an awful part of a great read.

~~~
sogen
It’s the same for graphic designers, make a logo and get paid once, no matter
how large the company...

~~~
WalterBright
I was an engineer at Boeing, designing airplane parts. Was I ripped off
because I don't get an ongoing royalty for every 757 sold? Engineering is
creative work, too.

~~~
archagon
I honestly think that in a just society, you would deserve a fraction of the
profits, yes. Even if it's some percentage of a cent.

~~~
WalterBright
I was paid for my time spent there, an amount freely agreed upon by myself and
Boeing. How is that not just in every way?

I did want a piece of Boeing, though, and I did it the usual way - I bought BA
stock. It's now worth something like, 100x what I paid for it.

Anyone can get a "piece of the action" of any public corporation by buying
shares of it. It'll cost you less than $10 in commission if you use one of the
online brokers.

Many corporations will also sell employees stock at a discount (usually called
an "employee stock purchase plan"). Or they may grant you some stock options.

~~~
archagon
You made a thing that is now part of someone's capital. That person is getting
exorbitantly rich far out of proportion both to the effort you put in and to
the risk they took in bringing you on. In what ways would the world _not_ be a
better place if some of that capital defaulted to its creator? Would this
arrangement be any stranger than some of the Byzantine corporate laws we
already have to deal with? I'd say that a great number of our societal ills
are caused by the top 1% hoarding over 40% of the wealth, and it would be
great if we could take steps to correct this injustice systemically. Maybe not
even with new laws. Maybe by simply incentivizing more companies to organize
as cooperatives. I dunno! But the current system seems unfair, and even if
some employees make bank, most of that bank is only human scale — not
corporate profit scale, which is what the executives see.

Shares aren't really the same thing since they don't grant you royalties;
they're really more like supplemental income.

IMO.

~~~
WalterBright
Shares give you a cut of the profits.

> That person is getting exorbitantly rich far out of proportion both to the
> effort you put in and to the risk they took in bringing you on.

Investors are always looking everywhere for deals like that, which means in
reality they are pretty rare.

If you believe you are unfairly compensated for your efforts, you can:

1\. quit and get a better deal elsewhere

2\. negotiate for a better deal

3\. borrow money from a bank/friends/relatives and exploit the opportunity
yourself

4\. join a workers' collective/cooperative/commune

All those are perfectly legal and possible in the US, and people do it all the
time.

------
ams6110
My cousin convinced his wife that once you open a bottle of Baileys you have
to drink it all or the cream will spoil.

~~~
rrauenza
Oh it goes bad. Even closed. Found an old bottle (unopened if I recall) and
poured out clumps of clotted cream...

~~~
nkrisc
We once found a bottle of Baileys in my grandmother's basement. It was
probably 20 years old and had completely solidified into Baileys Irish Cheese.

------
fcbrooklyn
"Hugh looked at me with an almost earnest stare. “What would happen if we
mixed Irish whiskey and cream?” he said. “That might be interesting.” He sat
back and waited for a response.

“Let’s try it,” I replied. Where Hugh was more likely to intellectualise and
think through the appalling consequences of dropping cream into Ireland’s
beloved whiskey, I was all for doing it there and then."

Now, I ain't no lawyer, but to me this sounds like Hugh invented it, no?

~~~
ProAm
"Idea's are worth a nickel, execution is worth..."

~~~
0xbear
That’s what people who never have any decent ideas like to say to those who
do.

~~~
ProAm
Ive never seen anyone make a dollar off an idea. Its always execution

~~~
0xbear
I’ve seen plenty of people lose hundreds of millions because their ideas were
garbage.

~~~
ProAm
They lost millions trying to execute on a bad idea, the idea is still worth a
nickel.

~~~
0xbear
The idea in those cases was worth a negative hundred million dollars.

~~~
ProAm
Doesn't change the fact the idea itself is worthless, if no one acted on the
idea they wouldn't have lost any money. Just as if the idea is brilliant, it's
the execution that makes the money. It's quite possible bad execution ruins a
good idea as well.

~~~
0xbear
What you’re saying is that without good execution ideas are worthless. What
I’m saying is without good ideas execution is worthless. Often good ideas are
not really this momentary and ephemeral thing. They’re a culmination of
significant insight and experience. Kind of like that old engineer who charged
a company “$4995 for knowing where to tap”. Overnight success takes decades of
work.

~~~
ProAm
Pet Rocks

------
bambax
> _He sipped at the muddy brown liquid with absolutely no enthusiasm. And
> then, it is said, he pronounced the immortal words “That shit will never
> sell!” Nevertheless, he launched it into the US later that year..._

Love this. I too find Baileys disgusting, and in that position I would
probably would never have launched it. What a big mistake that would have
been!

Would be interesting to know more about this particular guy: did he come to
like it eventually, or did he listen to somebody else, or did sales numbers in
other parts of the world change his mind?

~~~
sevensor
> I too find Baileys disgusting

I clicked the link hoping for an apology for having invented Bailey's. At
least now I have an explanation.

~~~
zimpenfish
If you mix it with, e.g., toffee Frijj[1], then you can't taste the Baileys at
all. But you will wake up 36 hours later wondering what happened to your
weekend and the rest of the Baileys.

[1] Thick milkshake kind of stuff in the UK

------
LeifCarrotson
> _We needed what they called an “Anglo-Irish” name. We were sure that a
> family name might be better than a “thing” or a place name. That was the
> popular convention of the business in those days. After all, many drinks
> were named after the people who made them._

> _We were still struggling to find a name for our revolutionary new drink and
> there it was; above the door. Baileys. Was it really right in front of my
> face? It was certainly Anglo-Irish and in a flurry of post-rationalisation I
> managed to dredge up from my memory a dairy of that name in the Port
> Elizabeth of my youth in South Africa. This gave it a kind of relevance in
> my head._

> _Another “Baileys moment” was the discovery of an attractive, traditional
> restaurant in Dublin called The Bailey. I could imagine our drink being
> enjoyed there a long time ago. It gave a gentle nudge of support to our off-
> the-wall idea._

> _The headline mentioned R &A, golf’s governing body, and I instantly blurted
> “How about two initials? How do you like the sound of R&A Bailey? ... Yet as
> I thought about it after our conversation, a fantasy began to form in my
> mind. I could see them: R & A Bailey were two brothers, one a distiller and
> the other a dairy farmer. They had disliked each other for decades. Their
> father looked to bring them together..._

He begins with "many drinks were named after the people who made them", and
proceeds to follow up with works of complete fiction when creating the Baileys
brand. Perhaps I'm a bit too left-brained to understand this creative work,
but how does imagining something that didn't happen lend a gentle nudge of
support to an idea?

------
kagamine
IN this podcast there is an interview with one of the creators from the ad
agency. It's short and worthwhile.

[http://www.modernmann.co.uk/new/2017/2/28/43-the-
impossible-...](http://www.modernmann.co.uk/new/2017/2/28/43-the-impossible-
cream)

------
mks
It intrigues me that the experts and their market research told them it will
fail. Did they just do a lousy research or was the idea too innovative? How is
it possible to distinguish between those cases (bad research vs no one will
buy it vs innovative idea people don't understand yet)?

~~~
patrickk
He also mentions that it took several years to really take off. If it was a
product launched today, it would probably be killed if it took 3+ years to
take off. Look at Hollywood movies judged by their opening weekend or the
career of Alex Ferguson, who almost got fired early in his tenure at
Manchester United, then went on to become one of the greatest managers in any
sport, ever.

~~~
mks
Maybe the times are different now than in the past or the food industry works
on different timescales before they kill off something. Possibly because the
investment is much bigger than software - they mention building a whole new
factory for an untested product - that made me shiver. I might be just spoilt
by ease of pivoting in software, but what led them to believing into the new
drink - were they acting just on a hunch and feeling it tasted good?

~~~
patrickk
> Possibly because the investment is much bigger than software - they mention
> building a whole new factory for an untested product - that made me shiver.

But if businesses are not willing to take on risks in the world of
atoms/hardware, not just in the world of software, things stagnate. This is
why the world of software moves so quickly and is much more exciting than the
world of atoms in general. It's also why someone like Elon Musk is so
remarkable - he is willing to take enormous risks in the world of atoms
(Tesla, Solar City and especially SpaceX). Almost _nobody_ is innovating like
this in the western world at least, and of course Wall Street (or at least
some parts) hate him for it. More examples of the lack of innovation in the
world of atoms - sectors like construction have been really anti-innovation
for a long time, at least until the proverbial wrecking ball in the form of
software-powered bricklaying robots come along and disrupt everything. I was
at a motor show recently, and I was struck by how unremarkable all the new
models from the premium manufacturers are. A button that closes the boot lid
automatically is not innovation, neither are interior panels that the customer
can customise with their own design. Again, no wonder they are nervous about
Tesla.

> but what led them to believing into the new drink - were they acting just on
> a hunch and feeling it tasted good?

Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. Focus groups and customer
acceptance testing won't give you a full picture. There's a reason why by
'design by committee' and 'analysis paralysis' are considered negatives, not
positives. 1970s Ireland was a totally different business climate to the
quarter to quarter, Wall-Street driven thinking today which kills any long
term horizons for taking on new ideas or projects. Having a clubby business
environment where "everyone knew everyone" probably allowed for more breathing
space to run with a new idea.

------
bmmayer1
> A decade of experience kicked in and delivered a great idea.

This reminds me of that quote from Monty Hall about it taking twenty years to
become an overnight success. Great read.

------
eapen
This was the first alcohol that my mom let me have and I still cherish it and
often have stock at home — although now I have the Costco version.

------
nartz
I would be curious to know when "Bailey's + Coffee" became a thing (i.e.
drinking it warm versus cold)

~~~
alexasmyths
Because they are a perfect combination.

Coffee usually needs sweetener + cream. The thick cream + sweetener + special
taste + alcohol of Baileys make it a perfect for coffee.

It's the easiest, dumbest, best drink possible in a Canadian winter.

~~~
aedron
Does the alcohol evaporate?

~~~
samfriedman
Based on USDA research [0], it seems like an alcoholic spirit will retain 85%
alcohol content after being heated by stirring into a hot liquid.

[0]
[https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400525/Data/retn/ret...](https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/80400525/Data/retn/retn06.pdf)

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lawlessone
Hmmm im not used to seeing articles this interesting in the Irish Times, good
read.

