{"id":3860,"date":"2017-01-17T06:00:54","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=3860"},"modified":"2017-01-16T09:37:16","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T14:37:16","slug":"experience-is-simply-the-name-we-give-our-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=3860","title":{"rendered":"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes…."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"swinckels\"<\/a>It will be a couple of months before the final 2016 numbers on both shipments and depletions are announced, however, we do have the 11 months of import shipments to review. \u00a0While the industry buzz is about the slow-down in the grow rate for crafts, the numbers indicate that imports are surging at an increasing rate.<\/p>\n

No doubt, we all are aware of the remarkable growth of the Mexican beers. \u00a0In fact, both Constellation Brands and the Heineken Mexican beers are accelerating in sales. \u00a0The growth we are seeing in a number of European countries is quite interesting.<\/p>\n

Thru November, German beers are up +30%, followed by the Irish up +20%. \u00a0Several countries are still negative, including the Netherlands down -7%; Belgium down -8%; and at the bottom, the UK down -27%. \u00a0Canada is also slow at -19%.<\/p>\n

Part of this trend must be attributed to the growth of the high end, but, why all of sudden, is there a surge in imports? \u00a0With the exception of Stella, imports from Europe have not had much success in decades. So why now?<\/p>\n

Past posts have discussed\u00a0decisions made by successful European brewers who, mostly due to the exchange rate, reduced or eliminated their U.S. business model during the early 2000s. \u00a0Now with a change of administrations and a different U.S. monetary policy, the exchange rate with the Euro is almost one to one. \u00a0The breweries that left, now want to come back.<\/p>\n

The personification might be Bavaria. \u00a0Bavaria, just over 10 years ago, was a very successful importer. \u00a0They had their own importing agency and shipped over 100K HLs. per year. \u00a0Their three largest states were New Jersey, Florida and Texas. Considering that Bavaria might have been the first popular priced import, with a pricing model $2.00 per six-pack under Heineken. \u00a0Bavaria had set their standards to be placed in the well next to Heineken. \u00a0It worked.<\/p>\n

Because of this model, Bavaria’s sales skewed to 99% off-premise. \u00a0They basically had almost no on- premise business. \u00a0They shipped no kegs. \u00a0As the Euro grew stronger, because of their pricing, Bavaria had to increase front-line pricing to offset the exchange rates. \u00a0The consumer no longer saw any value in buying Bavaria as the beer’s price edged closer to that of Heineken.<\/p>\n

With declining sales, Bavaria closed their U.S. importer and assigned rights to a California importer. \u00a0For all practical purposes, Bavaria disappeared\u2026until now.<\/p>\n

The owner of Bavaria, Swinckel’s, has recently purchased the U.S. importer Latis Imports. \u00a0Obviously this purchase is to reestablish Swinckel’s beer sales and grow them in the U.S. \u00a0You can almost be assured that someday Bavaria will be part of Latis Imports, along with Swinckel’s and Holandia.<\/p>\n

If the exchange rate drops lower than one to one in favor of the dollar, expect a return to the 1980s when European and Canadian imports invested heavily in the U.S.\u00a0 This time, however, with the high-end segment growing and expanding, the importers will not back out. \u00a0This expansion could put a damper on the craft segment with the millennials. \u00a0Only time will tell.<\/p>\n

It makes one wonder where a brand like Bavaria would be today had the Swinkel\u2019s not pulled out years ago? \u00a0Experience is simple, it is the name we give our mistakes….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It will be a couple of months before the final 2016 numbers on both shipments and depletions are announced, however, we do have the 11 months of import shipments to review. \u00a0While the industry buzz is about the slow-down in the grow rate for crafts, the numbers indicate that imports are surging at an increasing […]<\/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":"yes","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":true,"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-10g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3860"}],"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=3860"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3903,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3860\/revisions\/3903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}