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The Mindset of The Widow Clicquot (part one)

The Mindset of The Widow Clicquot (part one)

Deep Dive N°4, Part 1

LaToya Allen
August 02, 2025

Welcome to The Strategy Files—a newsletter about history's most ambitious people in fashion, beauty, and culture. I study the icons, you apply their strategies; you win.

This month’s deep dive comes from the book The Widow Clicquot: The Story Of A Champagne Empire And The Woman Who Ruled It.

Before we get started, I’m building out an AI Agent that allows you to ask business questions, and then give’s you back answers based on the deep dives I’ve written in the newsletter!

Give it a try, and lmk what you think!

Let’s get into it.

14 Lessons From This Month’s Deep Dive:

Don’t quit; keep going. Too many people quit after a few bad months or years. But sometimes it takes a decade of losing to win.
You have to care deeply about the quality of your product. If somebody can beat you in quality, they can beat you in anything.
If you wanna win, you have to develop the mindset of someone who is going to sacrifice the things they want now for the future they want later.
Second-time founders are often the biggest winners because they learn from the mistakes they made in their first business.
Focus on one thing at a time. If your business has too many arms, or too many features, you’re gonna fail.
Pay attention to the competition. The Widow had Jean-Rémy Moët. Who is your competition? And how can you start doing the thing that they will have to do in the future, but haven’t considered doing yet?
Sometimes the underdog wins.
It's all risky. Just make sure you pick the risk that has the bigger reward.
You always have to act like the game has just begun. You can’t sit around wallowing in yesterday's failure.
Hire experts, not friends. Unless your friend also happens to be an expert. Then lock them down before the competition does.
Starting a business in a bad economy is a blessing. You get to fail while everybody else is failing too.
Success is when hard work meets luck.
Too many people pretend that they’re competing against themselves. Then they are surprised when the competition wipes the floor with them.
You have to care deeply about the quality of your product. If somebody can beat you in quality, they can beat you in anything.

Photo Credit: WIKIPEDIA

In 1805, after her husband's mysterious death, Barbe-Nicole Clicquot took over the family’s failing business.

Five years later, the business shut down. The Widow launched a new one: Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin.

Since then, The Widow has accomplished things that only a person with a talent for business could do. She disrupted the wine industry by creating the first known vintage champagne. She innovated it by inventing riddling, a process still used today.

But most importantly, she bounced back from failure over and over again.

And it worked, because 200 years later, Veuve Clicquot is a household name. It’s owned and operated by LVMH. Netflix made a movie about her, which I will watch as soon as I finish writing the deep dive. The brand collaborates with luxury brands like The Four Seasons, The Waldorf Astoria, and Polo Classic. If you want, you can book a Veuve Clicquot tour.But the real question is, what did she do to create such long-lasting success?

She did many things we can replicate. But the first thing on her to-do list? Bounce back from failure over and over again.

And that requires a killer mindset.

See you next week for part two,

LaToya