I used to love getting certified letters from a lawyer representing one of our distributors informing me of a pending sale to a new distributor.\u00a0 The letters always asked for my signature “approving” the transaction and had little to no details.\u00a0 What is really frustrating was that the transaction was to take place at the end of the current month.\u00a0 Sometimes that was in just 10 days!\u00a0 Really?<\/p>\n
Short notice aside, in the past 7 years or so, I was probably involved in about 40 to 50 distributor changes, mostly due to a buy\/sell or a swap of brands.\u00a0 These covered all types including, small selling to a bigger house, a big house dividing up to many smaller ones, and even some statewide selling the brand up to many others and keeping some markets.\u00a0 Of course, in some circumstances, we had asked to be sold and the distributor was willing to do so.<\/p>\n
As I saw it, most of the acquiring\u00a0distributors were not prepared for the brands.\u00a0 Either they didn’t have the internal skill sets to manage imports\/crafts and were unwilling to go outside and find the talent, or they determined which of the new brands got the focus, and the others were just added to the pad.\u00a0 The impact of this on the vendor is dramatic, in fact, so much so, that the distributor really has little to no idea of the impact.\u00a0 The importer\/brewery has financial and sales numbers to achieve, goals to meet, employees to support, and of course, ROI to its owners.\u00a0 I can recall\u00a0four major changes, all of which appeared to be for the best, (e.g. moving into a “better distribution system”) that turned into a disaster.\u00a0In one major market, when the brand\u00a0was sold from a wine and spirit house to\u00a0an ABI house, sales dropped 70%\u00a0over the previous year.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The brand left a large W&S distriutor due to termination and was\u00a0acquired by\u00a0the ABI network.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In\u00a0less than a year, it was swapped out for other ABI brands.\u00a0 Three networks within\u00a0one year.\u00a0 The brand is just now<\/em> recovering and finally growing after\u00a0four years.<\/p>\n The\u00a0worst scenario\u00a0any vendor can have occurs when a distributor is appointed, then at some point shortly after introduction, decides to DQ the brand and there is no other distributor or option in the market.\u00a0 It does occur, more frequently than you know.<\/p>\n Today, small vendors, both importers and especially crafts, should really consider a system which provides statewide coverage.\u00a0 This is well documented.\u00a0\u00a0By following this practice, you have consistent pricing, critical mass in volume, better focus and inventory control.\u00a0 In Texas, for instance, Ben E. Keith and L&F (Favorite Brands) now offer statewide distribution.\u00a0 Of course the downside to this system\u00a0is the potential of one distributor becoming a large percentage of your business.<\/p>\n When the brand moves, regardless of the situation, with the loss of volume, revenue and market share\u00a0you\u00a0can anticipate\u00a0supplier pull backs, budget cuts, employee layoffs, a reduction in marketing spend, and strained relationships.\u00a0 Collteral damage, everyone loses.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I used to love getting certified letters from a lawyer representing one of our distributors informing me of a pending sale to a new distributor.\u00a0 The letters always asked for my signature “approving” the transaction and had little to no details.\u00a0 What is really frustrating was that the transaction was to take place at the […]<\/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-20","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124"}],"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=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}