Unfair to Stoli! Gay boycott gets the story all wrong - it's Russia not us!
Russian vodka is being pulled from shelves in gay bars from Hollywood to London in protest at the country’s anti-gay laws.
Stoli boss lays it on the line!
It all started with Onion columnist Dan Savage publishing a story last Wednesday titled “Why I’m Boycotting Russian Vodka.
He rallied supporters on Twitter using the hashtag #DumpStoli, a reference to the popular vodka brand Stolichnaya.
But Bloomberg Business Week points out something not known by many boycotters: Two companies produce that vodka. One is state-owned company FKP Soyuzplodoimport, which makes and sells Stoli in Russia and a handful of other markets.
The other is Luxembourg-based SPI Group, a private company that makes and sells Stoli in more than 100 countries, including the U.S., U.K., and Canada.
SPI Group claims it’s being wrongly targeted. CEO Val Mendeleev told Bloomberg Businessweek that his company supports LGBT causes and the Stoli boycott is “totally unfair.”
He has not spoken to Savage. Since the controversy, Stoli’s home page and Facebook page have gone "full-on rainbow" says BBW . Stoli is the 12th-best-selling vodka brand in the U.S. and 14th in the world, according to data fro researcher Euromonitor International.
The gay community “is one of the active consumers of Stoli,” Mendeleev says. To reach this group, Stoli, under SPI, produced a documentary series called “Be Real: Stories From Queer America” in 2006, for instance.
And in search of LGBT ambassadors for the brand, Stoli has been holding a series of events in U.S. cities since July 9 called the Most Original Stoli Guy.
SPI, founded in 1997, does not want to be “unfairly associated with the Russian government” generally, or “the shameful laws of the Russian government and the resulting violence” related to its stance on gays, Mendeleev says.
In a statement issued last week, the CEO explained that some ingredients used to make Stoli do come from Russia, but “the Russian government has no ownership interest or control over the Stoli brand that is privately owned by SPI Group.”
Mendeleev went on: “We fully support and endorse your objectives to fight against prejudice in Russia. In the past decade, SPI has been actively advocating in favor of freedom, tolerance and openness in society, standing very passionately on the side of the LGBT community and will continue to support any effective initiative in that direction.”
In response to Mendeleev’s statement, Savage demanded in a follow-up story that SPI take a more active role in promoting gay rights in Russia.