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The right to time to engage distributors?


SilverLining

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I'm wondering how much lead time distributors typically need to roll out a new brand. We'd like to have our branding and our marketing strategy as finished as much as possible before talking with potential distribution partners. That said, we don't want to wait too long because that might not allow our eventual distributor enough time to form their own sales strategies for our products once production gets under way.

Any thoughts or experiences relating to this subject are welcome and greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

M.

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From my experience- Distributors are not interested in rolling out anything, unless you have big bucks and commit tens of thousands of dollars to market it. Simply put they are in business to deliver product to be sold. Period. They will invest little to nothing on an unknown, you have to sell, market, develop a need, drive the consumer to the retailer, advertise, do tastings and on and on. If you expect the distributor to do this for you, the reality is it aint happening, no matter how good your product is. I've been doing it for 3 years and if ignorance is bliss, I am no longer a happy person.

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If you're just starting out, worry about your tasting army, not your distributor. Tastings is what will drive sales for a new brand. You should have at least one person in every major city in your state that can do tastings every Friday night. Stores will take a chance on you if you can support your spirits with tastings. Sit down with the store owner and schedule the tastings for half a year or so. Build your tasting army now, you'll be thankful you did once you have product ready for market. Distributors will become interested once they see there is a large demand for your spirits.

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Every state is different. Control states you will get zero support from the state distributors. In 3 tier states it really depends on the distributor you are working with. Some are great and work with you. Others just want to be order takers and won't do anything to help.

I would not could on any distributors doing this for a new craft distillery as you wrote, "form their own sales strategies for our products once production gets under way".

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