{"id":965,"date":"2013-07-09T07:04:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T12:04:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=965"},"modified":"2013-07-09T07:04:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T12:04:56","slug":"if-you-dont-know-where-youre-going-you-might-end-up-some-place-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/?p=965","title":{"rendered":"“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up some place else.”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"spaten\"<\/a>\u00a0Some years ago, as Glazer’s stepped up its aggressive expansion into mid-western states, one of their primary targets was Illinois.\u00a0 Their opportunity to establish a footprint in Chicago came when they were offered a JV with National’s Union Distributors.\u00a0 Union, had been struggling for sometime and needed help in building a stronger portfolio, which Glazer’s could do for them.\u00a0 Glazer’s and National became partners, but Glazer’s management ran the operation.\u00a0 Before the JV, Union had been losing a great deal of money, however, shortly after Glazer’s joined this partnership, Brown Forman and other major suppliers bolted to join Union.\u00a0 As a result, Union went from losing money to being very profitable.\u00a0 A JV in a state where there is no franchise for wine and spirits created a profitable company for both Union and Glazer’s.<\/p>\n

Recently the WSJ<\/em> wrote an article entitled “Distillers Fighting to Overturn 1930s Wholesaler Rules.”<\/em>\u00a0 The Journal<\/i> called it “Missouri Liquor Wars” — a raging battle between the world’s largest liquor makers and a family-owned wholesaler. The \u201cliquor war\u201d started when Diageo decided to leave their distributor, Major Brands, and negotiated to move to Glazer’s.\u00a0 The court ruled against an injunction to stop Diageo from supplying product to Major Brands.\u00a0 In fact, the judge stated that “Glazer’s got a very sweet deal!”\u00a0 What is not being reported is that both Pernod Ricard and Constellation Brands terminated their relationship with Glazer’s and moved their brands out, without any compensation to Glazer\u2019s.<\/p>\n

You may remember a recent post concerning a situation in Louisiana. \u00a0Glazer’s was asking for a declaratory judgement from the state court against Paulaner USA which would enable them to sell Paulaner’s USA brands to the acquiring distributor, Southern Eagle.\u00a0 Paulaner USA has denied approval because Southern Eagle represents Spaten, Paulaner’s\u00a0 main competitor in Munich.\u00a0 Again, what was not explained was the fact that Glazer’s gave Paulaner time to find their wholesaler-of-choice and Glazer’s\u00a0would sell the brand to that preferred wholesaler of Paulaner’s.\u00a0 According to Glazer’s, Paulaner could not find a wholesaler that would pay the same rate as Southern Eagle.<\/p>\n

Much has been written about these two states, Louisiana and Missouri, and how their respective issues will affect vendors and wholesalers under franchise protection, and to some degree, how the courts interpret these laws.\u00a0 I do\u00a0know that more will be written, but before articles are written or opinions given, even by the WSJ<\/em>, it would be helpful to get all the facts concerning what actually\u00a0happened on all sides.<\/p>\n

Ultimately it is clear, that in any case, whether there is franchise protection or not, wholesalers and vendors will continue to evaluate each other and\u00a0their\u00a0respective performance.\u00a0 The industry can expect more cases like those in Missouri and Louisiana, while domestic sales continue to slip and wholesalers, in an effort to replace volume, will aggressively go after key brands to help them grow horizontally.\u00a0 While crafts\u2019 growing trends continue, their market share is still small and they\u00a0cannot replace the loss of domestic volume.<\/p>\n

The real point to ponder for vendors and wholesalers is: sometimes change\u00a0does not mean things are greener on the other side of the fence\u00a0because\u00a0“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up someplace else.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

\u00a0Some years ago, as Glazer’s stepped up its aggressive expansion into mid-western states, one of their primary targets was Illinois.\u00a0 Their opportunity to establish a footprint in Chicago came when they were offered a JV with National’s Union Distributors.\u00a0 Union, had been struggling for sometime and needed help in building a stronger portfolio, which Glazer’s […]<\/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-fz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965"}],"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=965"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1030,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965\/revisions\/1030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}