Sonja

We are not running any "ads" as we have no budget, we're just three distilleries who wanted to gather together and promote the craft and industry with some fun events. You can find the initial schedule on our new website - craftspiritweekchicago.com - and on Facebook. We've just sent out an initial press release as well, we've had a good amount of interest from the press so far. If you are interested in getting involved, please get in touch! Cheers, -Sonja

As many of you may know, there is an Independent Spirits Expo in Chicago on October 3rd. We are working with the folks at Few Spirits and Koval Distillery to create the first ever Craft Spirits Week in Chicago around the Expo, with cocktail dinners, spirit-specific tasting events, in-store tasting events, and a few other things. If you are planning to pour at the expo and want to spend some additional time here and participate in some events, or if you want to plan some of your own events that we can include in our schedule, please get in touch with us. You can send me a note through here, or go to our website and find my email (nortshoredistillery.com/contact.htm). Cheers. -Sonja Sonja Kassebaum North Shore Distillery, LLC

We have some artwork on our case boxes - it's what we've had since we started. For the most part, I do not think it is necessary, aside from the required stuff and a clear enough labeling so that store personnel and distributor personnel can easily identify your cases and distinguish one product from another. However, if you have retailers putting up stacks of your cases on the sales floor, you should really think about how you can capitalize on the billboarding opportunity there and artwork would be more important. Whether you'll get stacks depends on your pricepoint and how you negotiate with that particular retailer, in most (but not all) cases. We do most of our design work in-house. I imagine you'd find a range of approaches taken among craft distilleries, depending on aptitude/interest as well as budget and available funds.

And, consider what it is you are planning to make and who your audience will be - and ask people who are doing things similar to what you plan to do. If you are targeting something in the $10-15 range vs. something in the $40-50 range per bottle, your audience will be very different. Geography has an effect as well - in some areas, people are VERY supportive of the local guy, and in some areas, not as much - so I would talk to artisans in other industries in your area too.

I hadn't thought of that, Chuck - that makes sense as a possible explanation. But, you are right, we'd likely get more of them if it was in a book or something. I just can't imagine that anyone would actually send the guy something after that note?

I don't think there's a specific number to answer your question - for us, it got the point where the distances we were driving, and the amount of followup we were doing, etc., meant we could not take on any new customers and still maintain things as they were. So, we were either building a more robust distribution engine, or we were partnering with one. Since we didn't set out to be a distributor and we found an adequate partner, we went with the latter route. We were covering a geographic span that was up to 75 miles from our location in any direction, with concentrations of customers in certain areas, as you might expect. Pulling a number out of my you-know-what, I think it was around 75-100 accounts for us, but it's been awhile. There are geographic variances in what people order and what they expect - in northern California, for example, stores (even large ones) buy by the bottle, whereas in other states they buy by the case. Some of that depends on your pricing structure as well. Bars will often start with just a bottle or two to try it out, especially when it is a new product and a new supplier, which means you'll go there to sell it, to deliver the 1-2 bottles, and then to pick up the check 30 days later (often that is the expectation). You will want to consider having a minimum purchase requirement, but will want to be lenient with that at first because you are unknown to the customer and they won't want to take a huge risk on something unknown. Good luck!

Like the discussion awhile back about inquiries from Jim Skorupski racing (http://adiforums.com/index.php?showtopic=592&st=20), we got another strange letter in the mail today, so I'm figuring some others are going to get it as well. Here's how it goes, on a half sheet of paper that was cut, with no signature and computer produced: ----- JUAN ROJAS 20 SEYMOUR DRIVE SHIRLEY, NY 11967 U.S.A. Dear Sir or Madam: Hello, my name is Juan Rojas. Ia m a fan and supporter of your fine organization. I am presently in the process of building a bar/gameroom in the basement of my new house. This is very exciting to me because I would love to decorate it with some souvenirs from your organization. I was wondering if you could send me some memorabilia, posters, t-shirts, hats postcards, or anything else possible to decorate it with. Thank you very much for your time and courtesy. Sincerely, Juan Rojas ---- Um, no.

I would just echo what some others have said - keep clear records about what your employees were so you can report it separately if they do more than one type of work. Every year, you will likely get an audit request from the insurer asking for the total payroll amounts paid to each category of employees, and for a list of them, etc. I am in the middle of filling one of those out now. The rates for distillery workers are much higher than anything else we do - retail sales, admin, and "outside sales" are cheap in comparison. But, those are the riskiest jobs and the areas where they're more likely to get a claim. I agree that it's not something to mess around with much, here in IL it's very easy to report a company that doesn't have workers comp, and the penalties are pretty significant. There is an online database of all companies registered with the state for coverage, and they encourage people to make sure their employers, prospective employers, etc. are listed. Just takes one employee to trigger the need for coverage, and insurance companies will have a minimum premium amount. So even with one part-time employee, just a few hours a week, it would have been at least $1000 a year for the coverage. Not because of the wage-based rate, but because of their minimum premium amount. Good luck, and congrats on needing to hire - that's a great problem!

I very much appreciate the help, John, and your comments spurred some discussion on our side about whether that approach was something we wanted to incorporate. I totally see the value in it, but it does add a level of complexity that we want to avoid, based on what we have done thus far. Everyone's comments have been very helpful, just in thinking through all the various complexities about how to track everything that must be tracked. My impression is that you can move inventory between classes, and that the class functionality has been improved with the 2011 edition. That remains to be seen, as I am just about to embark on this project. I might be back and getting in touch if this doesn't work out! Thanks again, all. -Sonja

That is what we were thinking, as well, because we are not required to sell to the state here - you are correct on that point. I think we just essentially change the status on the items or transfer the inventory over to the retail store and trigger the tax, etc. that way. I will be working on setting it all up tomorrow, so I may have more updates as I work through it. Thanks again, all. -Sonja

Thanks Coop, it's helpful to hear how you're working it (and also how your tasting room is doing - so far, it's going great here, but we don't know what the long-term will look like yet - only open 2 weeks). Thanks also Rich, that is very helpful. That's kind of the route I was finding my way toward, so I appreciate you confirming that for me. We should be fine with using the classes for our two profit centers, so I'll be off to setup the items, etc. on my next date with Quickbooks. Thanks again! Now, off to get the bar ready for our visitors today. Cheers, -Sonja

It actually seems like it might be not so bad with classes, one for the distillery and one for the tasting room. We can transfer inventory between classes, as well as revenue, and each can have their own inventory/pricing, etc. So I was (as least in theory) thinking it will help. We just upgraded to 2011 Manufacturing Premiere, and it allows full reporting/analysis by class, too. Essentially, we are otherwise the same as you - we added a credit card swiper so we can do CC transactions. It just seems like we need to track inventory/costs separately for the tasting room to really understand what it costs to run. And, our tasting room is unbonded, so we need to transfer bottles to it and trigger the tax. How do you handle that recordkeeping, is it something else that I might be missing? Is the tasting room just a customer of the distillery? We were contemplating that too. Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it! And I know what you mean, each day we have our fingers crossed. So far, it's been great considering our small tasting room, but who knows? -Sonja

Thanks very much, gentlemen, and I'm sorry to have missed the call - I was out at a meeting with our distributors today and just got back. We are not going to implement a POS just yet. We are not sure how much activity we're going to have in the tasting room, and want to hold off making that kind of investment for now. So, we are putting together a system to keep track of things and trying to make it as straightforward as possible. For now, my biggest concern is within Quickbooks, how to track the inventories of the separate businesses, as well as transfers of revenue back & forth. Those would be issues even with a POS system, but perhaps easier since the system is built for that. Looks like we can use "classes" in Quickbooks to track two different businesses, or perhaps we can set up 2 businesses under one umbrella. Still researching, for now. Thanks again, I appreciate all the ideas and suggestions, as well as the offers of help. -Sonja

Yes, we're just not sure what our traffic will be like, so we've not yet made that kind of investment in software. I prefer to give it some time and see how it goes before we go with a formal POS system. We have set up to take credit cards, but are trying to figure out how to account for the transactions, and how to track inventory, etc. so that we can report properly at the end of the year. Maybe it's just a spreadsheet for now, or something, but I was trying to set it up so Quickbooks could hold at least some of the information, especially for sales tax reporting, etc. Edit: Thank you for the reply, I appreciate the input!

We don't, at least not yet. We have Quickbooks for manufacturing/wholesale only right now. Is that what you use?