Month: October 2016

  • A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore…..

    Around 1980, Albert Cramer, managing director and owner of Warsteiner decided to build an international export department targeting business in North America.  At the time, Germany was still divided into two factions: east and west.  Albert knew that for the brewery’s long term survival, he had to expand Warsteiner’s international footprint. What helped Albert make […]

  • Only you can control your future…

    Fifty percent of my career in the beer industry has been working with or selling Coors in one way or another.  Initially, as a helper on a Coors truck in Dallas while in college, to stints at the brewery in Distributor Development, running the Coors branch in Ogden, Utah, to leading three Coors distributorships.  These […]

  • Quality is not an act, it is a habit..

    When Coors expanded into South Texas in the mid-1970s, the brewery required each distributor to refrigerate their warehouse and, at a minimum, insulate or refrigerate every delivery truck.  Coors was delivered to each warehouse from Colorado on refrigerated trucks or heavily insulated railcars.  The beer was immediately put into the cold storage warehouse. In those […]

  • I learnt the hard way about positioning in business, about catering to the right segments.

    At last week’s NBWA convention in Chicago, much of the talk among distributors and speakers centered around the current performance of the craft segment.  Both the scan numbers and data show a slowdown in craft volume sales and, the numbers show that the slow down seems to be accelerating during this second half of the […]