{"id":107,"date":"2012-08-21T15:25:39","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T20:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=107"},"modified":"2012-08-21T15:25:39","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T20:25:39","slug":"what-we-have-here-is-a-failure-to-communicate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=107","title":{"rendered":"What we have here is a failure to communicate!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The best definition of growing old, I believe,\u00a0is when “the past means more than the future!”\u00a0 You can see that in the writings of the famous Dan Jenkins when he talks about golf.\u00a0 Jenkins, recently elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame, can’t seem to write an article without reference to the great Ben Hogan.\u00a0 This is somewhat understandable as Jenkins played golf with Hogan in the 50’s and has attended 50 Master’s tournaments and over 200 majors, so he, if you will,\u00a0tends to live more in\u00a0the past.<\/p>\n

I can remember when price increases from breweries were 10 cents a case and when they happened, as it sometimes didn’t come often, made all of us very concerned as to the impact on our sales.\u00a0 From a dime the increases went to a quarter, then fifty cents, on to a dollar, and now to several dollars.\u00a0 And now the impact on sales?<\/p>\n

Back in the summer of 2008 while at Warsteiner, the brewery decided to raise the transfer price up to what then was four price points in the market.\u00a0 At the same time I was directed to eliminate 12 sales people and cut millions from the marketing budget.\u00a0 The result?\u00a0 After 6 months, Warsteiner had lost 39% of it’s US volume.\u00a0 The CFO, after admitting a mistake had been made said that “we needed to communicate better!”\u00a0I don’t believe communications was the issue, I\u00a0believe our\u00a0fears and concerns\u00a0fell on deaf ears.\u00a0 Since European companies either own or heavily influence the majority of the US\u00a0business now I decided to show their\u00a0CPI on beer for some key European countries (see below).\u00a0 You can see clearly why we are experiencing these increases and why.\u00a0 Understand in some of these countries, as you have read, unemployment is over 20%!\u00a0 Maybe higher.\u00a0 Interesting, when you look at the German CPI and wonder why\u00a0the increases are\u00a0not as dramatic as the other countries, one major reason is that the largest brewery in Germany sells only “price beers”.\u00a0 There is no advertising, support, p-o-s, promotions, etc.\u00a0 Cheap price for a case of cans.\u00a0 The other guys can’t raise without seeing these guys in their rear view mirror.\u00a0 In other words, competition.<\/p>\n

In the post “You\u00a0Are What You Are” I\u00a0mentioned that ABI, in their efforts to control GP in all segments,\u00a0could focus on pricing as a tool to drain the GP of the middle tier.\u00a0In fact the DoJ is now looking into the ABI\/Modelo deal and pricing\u00a0could be a key component\u00a0in their decision. \u00a0\u00a0I see\u00a0it more and more as referenced by the current price increases.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If you are even wondering for a moment about the future, look again at the chart below.\u00a0 It clearly indicates what you can expect regarding the future of your pricing.\u00a0 So just what does it mean?\u00a0 Well while you think about it, I’ll go and fix me a scotch.<\/p>\n

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The best definition of growing old, I believe,\u00a0is when “the past means more than the future!”\u00a0 You can see that in the writings of the famous Dan Jenkins when he talks about golf.\u00a0 Jenkins, recently elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame, can’t seem to write an article without reference to the great Ben […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-1J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}