{"id":677,"date":"2013-03-19T07:16:06","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T12:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=677"},"modified":"2013-03-20T09:51:31","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T14:51:31","slug":"the-buyer-always-knows-more-then-the-seller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=677","title":{"rendered":"The buyer always knows more than the seller…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"flavors\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Back in the mid 1970’s when Coors entered South Texas, San Antonio was awarded four distributorships.\u00a0 They as a group, had to compete against one Budweiser house, one Schlitz house, one Pearl house, one Lone Star house and one Falstaff house (true, still around then).\u00a0 Because Coors had divided up the market into the four houses, individually they were all smaller than their competitors making it difficult for them to compete.\u00a0 Obviously, it didn’t take many years to force the consolidation of the four into one house.\u00a0 Remember they were exclusive, too.<\/p>\n

At that time, most competing houses were exclusive, too.\u00a0 A Schlitz house might have an import or two, but no other domestics.\u00a0 In Texas, Pearl houses usually had Miller, or they had Falstaff, especially in small towns.\u00a0 Some distributors had Lone Star\/Pearl\/Jax, but that was in markets where sales weren’t great.\u00a0 Consolidation wasn’t an issue then and the “big” boys usually made things difficult if you were taking on additional brands.\u00a0 In fact, a number of established distributors\u00a0sold their line when Coors came in as a condition of appointment.\u00a0 Sometimes it worked out, and sometimes it didn’t.\u00a0 In fact, Barry Andrews of Andrews Distributing benefited\u00a0when\u00a0the Miller wholesaler in Corpus Christi sold\u00a0the brand\u00a0when he received the Coors brand.\u00a0 Coors never took off, but Barry was able to buy the Miller operation about the time the brand exploded.\u00a0 Timing is everything.<\/p>\n

Windy City, a craft\/import house in Chicago, recently sold out to Reyes after some dramatic growth. This is the latest example of a specialty house selling out for a premium.\u00a0 It wasn’t many years ago, that some of these failed just like the early craft brewers did.\u00a0 Some were very successful, including CR Goodman, Fresh, and Little Guy Distributing and, of course, Click.\u00a0 Just as there are many new craft breweries opening, you will see many new distributors opening soon, too.\u00a0 It’s where the opportunity abounds.<\/p>\n

Last week, at the Miller\/Coors convention, a comment was made regarding how the craft breweries are taking advantage of the MC distribution system,\u00a0by using the distribution system to get the\u00a0these brands delivered.\u00a0 These comments, along with ABI’s program of Anchor wholesalers,\u00a0could be the beginning of a push back on new brands and a return to exclusive houses now that both ABI and MC are offering products in hot categories that they did have in the past.<\/p>\n

Along with this thinking, is the movement of some\u00a0crafts to charge wholesalers for the rights for distribution.\u00a0 This would create a whole new approach.\u00a0 First, if this happened it would involve more government\u00a0restrictions. Selling these rights might be subject to franchising laws similar to those of \u00a0McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Subway, etc.\u00a0 In\u00a0theory, one would think that if the wholesaler paid for the rights said wholesaler would put more effort into selling the product.\u00a0 When I was running Warsteiner, in almost every case, when a wholesaler acquired the brand, it took years for the new wholesaler to show sales increases.<\/p>\n

Heavy investment by the wholesaler in incentives, promotions, truck paints, people, etc. could be considered in some ways\u00a0as buying a brand, however, the question really is, are we seeing a shift in the distribution model with the beginnings of a return to exclusivity of houses to selling distribution rights?\u00a0 If we are then, be careful, remember, the buyer always knows better than the seller.<\/p>\n

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

  Back in the mid 1970’s when Coors entered South Texas, San Antonio was awarded four distributorships.\u00a0 They as a group, had to compete against one Budweiser house, one Schlitz house, one Pearl house, one Lone Star house and one Falstaff house (true, still around then).\u00a0 Because Coors had divided up the market into 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-aV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677"}],"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=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":692,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}