{"id":4694,"date":"2018-04-10T06:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=4694"},"modified":"2018-04-08T18:38:33","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T23:38:33","slug":"i-drank-beer-and-i-had-a-career-year-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=4694","title":{"rendered":"I drank beer, and I had a career year.."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Constellation Beers\u2019 2018 numbers are nothing short of remarkable, especially considering the state of the rest of the beer industry.\u00a0\u00a0Constellation\u2019s beer business grew depletions by 9.8% for the year; shipments were a step behind, up 8.8%.; and net sales grew by double digits, up 10.1%. Overall, Constellation\u2019s operating income was up 19.8%.<\/p>\n

Beer Business Daily<\/em> reported the following statistics for Constellation Beers\u2019 Q4, the three months ending February 28th<\/sup>:\u00a0 depletions, shipments, net sales and operating income were all up double digits. Depletions were up 11%; shipments were up 10.2%, and net sales and operating income were both up 11.9%.<\/p>\n

What is even more remarkable is the fact that Constellation announced a long-term goal of 600 million cases in total, or the in-house defined goal of 2-2-1-1.\u00a0 This translates into 200 million cases of Corona and its line extensions, 200 million cases for Modelo, 100 million cases of Pacifico, and 100 million cases of their crafts and other beers.\u00a0 This includes growing 94 million cases in the next three years.<\/p>\n

Constellation was driven by traditional marketing as they increased their marketing spending, new product development, and expansion of their other breweries into Obregon, Sonora by $900 million dollars.<\/p>\n

All this growth has created 70 distributors in the Constellation gold network that have sold over one million cases of their brands!\u00a0 Constellation has eight distributors with over a 30% share.\u00a0 What is more remarkable is that ALL of the Constellation distributors grew in 2017 and half of the distributors grew at double digits!<\/p>\n

It is generally accepted that the industry has three distinct\u00a0networks: the red, or the AB network; the blue, or the MC network; and now the gold, or the Constellation network.\u00a0 The red and blue networks are struggling in comparison to the performance of the gold network.<\/p>\n

More distributors in the blue network also sell the gold portfolio. This is due to the fact that a great majority of the red network opted not to acquire the gold portfolio during the years when AB distributors were exclusive to AB.\u00a0 Hindsight is 20\/20.<\/p>\n

The question is: what will this gold network look like in the future?\u00a0 Consider what will happen if the gold network achieves its growth targets. Will those distributors who have the gold portfolio be known only as a gold distributor?\u00a0 Will their MC or AB portfolio be “just another vendor” if the gold brands represent 50%+ of the market or an even a higher percentage of the distributor’s overall volume?\u00a0 How will a much smaller AB or MC view and handle such a situation?<\/p>\n

What would occur in the MC and AB houses if Constellation\u2019s sales stall or slow dramatically in the upcoming years?\u00a0 Perhaps a more pressing question would be, if the above happens, how will Constellation handle the situation?\u00a0 Will Constellation approach their\u00a0distributors as Schlitz or AB did 50 years ago, ensuring the distributors make the decision to go exclusively with the\u00a0gold network and sell the other brands? Or will they sell Constellation to an exclusive distributor?<\/p>\n

Today the gold network and Constellation Brands will work toward these goals as their sales and profits continue to exceed expectations. As with all brands, however, there will come a time when the upward trend will come to an end.\u00a0 Those gold distributors should consider the future as it is just around the corner. Let\u2019s hope Constellation sees it, too.<\/p>\n

I drank beer and I had a career year\u2026<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

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Constellation Beers\u2019 2018 numbers are nothing short of remarkable, especially considering the state of the rest of the beer industry.\u00a0\u00a0Constellation\u2019s beer business grew depletions by 9.8% for the year; shipments were a step behind, up 8.8%.; and net sales grew by double digits, up 10.1%. Overall, Constellation\u2019s operating income was up 19.8%. Beer Business Daily […]<\/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-1dI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694"}],"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=4694"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4715,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4694\/revisions\/4715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}