Sonja

Have the details been sent to local press and local event listings, local food/drink bloggers, etc.? Now is the time, if it's not too late already, to do that if it hasn't been done. I'm happy to help if needed, just wasn't sure who has the ball - guess its you, Jonathan? :-)

Hi Gabriel, nice to see you here - welcome! I look forward to meeting you in person next month.

Hi Erik, Great to see you here - welcome! And looking forward to seeing you again next month - so glad to hear you'll be attending!

In addition to the Monday event, do we know how the marketing of the Sunday public tasting event is being handled? There isn't anything on the ADI website that I can find except in the schedule of events, and I'm wondering how we're going to "fill the hall" as it were. It might be good for all the participating distilleries to be asked to market the event to their own audiences, at least - perhaps a description sent around, along with info on how to get tickets.

Are the tickets for Sunday just available at the door, or can people purchase in advance?

We should definitely discuss this at the conference this year. The challenge in the past has been (and will continue to be) finding funding. It would be great if the ADI could take the lead on these kinds of things, but the group hasn't had enough funding to pay for all these things.

I just sent a note to the four others who expressed interest with more information - please post here or send me a note if you are interested. I hope we can make a decision this week and get our booth reserved, while there's still time to get a good one (hopefully).

Edit: I just realized I hadn't responded to Fay at Jelinek Cork Group - apologies for that. I don't think it would make sense for a cork supplier to join in our booth, since we're otherwise marketing our spirits to the restaurateurs in attendance. Other distillers, do let me know if you disagree.

Thanks all, for the interest - keep 'em coming. If just a few of us want to do it, we can evaluate if we think it's worth the fractional cost and come up with a fair way to split up the booth. If enough of us want to, perhaps we can do it under the ADI umbrella.

Todd, you're right, it's in May this year not April - my error. The IWSB (spirits/wine/beer show) is on May 17 and 18.

Don, are you interested in sharing your booth if we help share the cost, or are you planning to just have your own?

The annual National Restaurant Association Show, and it's International Wine Spirits & Beer Event are coming up in April, held here in Chicago. The event is huge, one of the largest if not the largest restaurant shows in the world, and it attracts industry people from all over the world. I have floated the idea in the past of an ADI booth, to promote our industry, distribute information on our members around the country, and pour samples of participating spirits. Now that we have more members and more active distilleries, perhaps this is the year to explore this further.

What your involvement would likely entail is sending marketing information about your company, and samples if you want them poured, as well as contributing something toward the cost of renting & staffing the booth and printing out a master listing for distribution to buyers. A booth costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $4000, and wouldn't necessarily make sense for any of us to do on our own, given the broad scope of the audience. Together, however, we could all get some promotion from the effort.

Anyone interested?

We've recently started distributing our products in San Francisco, and I've been talking to the folks at a couple of our accounts on some potential events while I'm there after the ADI conference. I was thinking it might be fun to plan an event with a small group of distillers who are actually distributed in that market, such as a cocktail pairing dinner, or cocktail party with food/cocktail pairings. Anyone interested in something like this? If we work together, we can share any costs, etc. and keep it more reasonable while giving us another avenue to introduce our products.

Some bottle companies ship the bottles ready to fill/use, no rinsing needed. It depends on how they're coming to and the source, but it's worth asking your glass supplier.

It's $3600 in Illinois.

When we started, we couldn't get any distributors to return our calls. Luckily we found a way so that we could self-distribute, or we would have been dead in the water. As we grew, it got to the point where we could not grow any further - we had such a wide area and enough accounts that we didn't have time to look for new business if we wanted to keep up with what we had. At that point, we figured we had the choice between partnering with a distributor and building a more robust internal distribution engine.

We decided that since we didn't set out to be distributors, we would look for a partner, and we settled on one. As Beast said, it's definitely true that the big distributors are giving away a lot of stuff, and beholden to the big brands. From our experience, so are many of the little guys - they either import their own stuff (and promote that because they make more money on it) or they have committed to quotas with a larger brand, or both. I'll be very interested to hear about the progress with the co-ops, and that might be a good option here, at least among the small distilleries with similar aspirations.

As for the question of giving samples/bottles, that is a difficult question because virtually all the big distributors/brands are routinely giving away product (how else do you think that new vodka shows up in every bar in town?). We don't give away product. The people who carry our products support what we're doing and what we're all about, and we offer them a great product at a good price. I always take sample bottles around with me, and I am happy to offer a taste - but that's it.

When we started, we were surprised to see how few trademarks there are in the spirits industry - it seems that many brands don't go to the trouble of filing for federal trademark protection. I guess they are relying on the common law protections - they could still sue, they would just have to first prove their usage of the mark was first and that they are harmed by the infriger's actions. As far as I know, filing for trademark protection puts others on notice, and also establishes the time frame of your use of the mark definitively so you wouldn't have to prove it in court. You'd still have to sue if someone were to infringe on your mark, and prove that they were infringing.

We decided to file for some, and they were granted. It costs several hundred dollars per trademark (more, depending on if you file in more than one category of trademark protection), and it's a lengthy process - ours took about 14 months to get issued, I think. Luckily, I was able to complete all the paperwork in-house - if you don't go that route, it will cost more. You do get a very nice certificate once the trademark has been issued.

Sorry for the lateness, we're certainly behind this - count us in.

North Shore Distillery, LLC

Lake Bluff, IL

Thanks Melkon for spearheading this.

I led a panel discussion at the ADI conference in April about working with distributors - it is a critical issue for most small distillers, and can be quite challenging to manage depending on where you are and who you're working with. While it's not a sample contract, the summary we used covers most of the points you would see in contracts with distributors, brokers, dealers, etc. In my experience, many of them prefer to work without a contract, although we have contracts with some. If we don't have a written contract, I've documented in writing (and sent to the distributor) my view of what has been agreed so I'll have something to point to if an issue arrives later.

Marketing strategy & collaboration

• Who does what, when, how
  
• Who pays for what
  
• Periodic meetings & reviews
  
• Expectations for both sides
  

Education and Information

• Everyone need information, and a sales pitch - agree on how you're going to communicate it
  
• Sales tools – flyers, POS, etc
  

Payment Rates and Terms

• Margin expectations vary significantly by state and role
  
• More money doesn’t always buy better results
  

Termination

• Where allowed, should specify timeframe, notice requirements
  
• May want to specify grounds to justify termination by either party
  

Other Areas to Address

• Product samples – who pays, who approves
  
• Decision-making and approval processes
  

Another subtopic to this, what has been a popular case size? 6 or 12 bottles? I've bounced that off of a few wholesalers and brokers and have got mixed responses.

We use both 6 and 12 bottle cases, depending on the product. From my experience, the case size is in some ways a reflection of the price point & volume sales of the product. Most higher end vodkas & gins, for example, come in 6-pack cases (to keep the cost/commitment down for the retailer), but some are in 12's. I think either is workable, it's just that a 12-pack case can be a bit of a barrier to sales if the pricing is tied to buying full cases. At the same time, it pushes more product out and is more economical for the distillery (we did our own distribution for a long time, so we went with 12-pack cases for our mainstream products).

Is it not possible to show that this term is not and cannot be unique to one particular distillery? It seems silly that they would even apply for such IP protection. Its like harley telling Victory that they cannot call themselves "American Motorcycles" because H-D was there first.

I don't disagree, but it'll be interesting to see how this issue plays out, as those folks are using the name "Craft Distillers" to market their portfolio of products now - someone was introduced to me as being "from Craft Distillers" last week (who was, in actuality, a rep from the distributor for them here in Chi-town). Not sure if/when the issue will come to a head, but I imagine it will at some point!

I've never seen any standardized ones, but we haven't used standard sized bottles either. I'm interested to hear if there's a source we might not know about - up til now, we've only done custom gift boxes, but they are very expensive when you're doing a small run.

I think this is a problem site for a few reasons, and it's troubling that I got no response on who is behind this. The registration on whois.com is to this company:

Registrant:

Ocean Consulting

P.O. Box 1151

Vancouver, WA 98666

US

Domain Name: BURNINGSTILL.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:

Ocean Consulting

M. Olson

P.O. Box 1151

Vancouver, WA 98666

US

503-701-7521

domainadmin@oceanconsulting.com

When you go to the website for ocean consulting, it is a vague website about IT consulting, really nothing at all to do with craft distilling.

There are a number of sites that borrow/steal content from sites as aggregators to sell ads and get rankings on the search engines, and this might be one of them - I have encountered a few in the blogosphere (I write a cocktail-focused blog too and sometimes people poach my content, etc.). I would recommend staying away from this site until someone says/claims responsibility that we actually know to be part of our community.

Greetings. We're glad to be registered here at the ADI Forums and look forward to being active contributors. We run Burning Still (http://www.burningstill.com/), a community site about distilling with blogs, news and more.

Stop by, have a look, say hello.

Cheers,

The Burning Still Team

Interesting site. Who's behind it?

Unfortunately the "easier" solution I'd hoped for did not materialize, so I've got nothing to post. I put in some calls and sent along what I found out, but it didn't do any good at all. It appears that Fedex has changed their process for granting the shipping privileges, or at least they are giving Guy a heck of a runaround.

All my guy said was that you need to get to an account executive for the geographic area you're in, and they can contact the right folks. Of course, once you contact them, if they're going to be unreasonable (as is the case with Guy, at least so far), there's not a lot you can do. What a pain!

If I find a better solution, I'll definitely post an update, as I'm sure Guy will do as well if he can find one (fingers crossed).

\

Please post as we have had the same problems. Coop

I'll email you my Fedex guy's name & number, hopefully he can connect you to the right folks (he handles IL, but hopefully can help us get someone in WI). I got that same run around initially, you have to get to the unit within Fedex that handles alcohol shipping. They have a different phone # I think, but sometimes you can get someone to transfer you. The legal dept has a contract you have to sign, then it's pretty simple. The key thing for us was finding someone who knew what we were talking about - not easy over there, unfortunately .

I've been trying to set up shipping spirits with Fedex for two months! Looks like I'll have to give up and send via unmarked boxes. In mid May I faxed a copy of our state permit, mid June someone called and said what I sent wasn't a permit. After educating them they told me they'd confirm and contact me again. As of July 1st I hadn't heard from them. Called and spoke to three "Customer Advocacy" reps all of whom told me they would get a hold of our sales rep to call me back. July 9th and I still get no response. I've gotten nowhere with this company and frankly haven't experienced this level of incompetence before. I'd love to play by their rules but they won't even let me in the ballpark.

I don't think I've ever posted an introduction, despite my lurking and occasional posting, so here goes. I'm the co-founder of North Shore Distillery just north of Chicago, along with my husband. We started our company about 4 years ago now or so, and have had products on the market since late 2005. We product vodka, gin, aquavit, and our newest product, absinthe. We are working on brown spirits now, but still in the experimental stage on those.

Happy to be here, and excited to see all the discussion and information sharing. This is a challenging (and fun) business, and it's in all our interest to work together to promote our industry and craft.

Cheers!

We ship through FedEx - its the only option we've found thus far for shipping spirits. It is a bit of a pain to get set up to ship spirits with them - you just have to find your way to the unit that handles alcohol shipments. They generate a form contract that you sign, and then they give you alcohol shipping labels, etc. and walk you through the specific process to send an alcohol shipment with them. Part of the contract is that you're certifying you'll only ship to lawful recipients.

I agree with Guy, the rules aren't entirely clear, but it seems reasonable to ship a sample for competition/review. I just take care to ensure we're marking it as alcohol, and requiring an adult signature, so we're complying with those rules. I think its a bit dangerous to ship spirits in an unmarked box with any of the shipping companies (USPS, UPS, DHL, whoever), but I know it happens out there from time to time.