Direct Consumer Sales
State laws that govern whether or not distilleries can sell bottles directly to consumers have a dramatic affect on a distillery’s ability to stay in business. Nowhere is this more evident than in the state where the craft revolution...
Running with the Big Boys
Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Diageo, Bacardi and Stolichnaya.
If these names stir up feelings of any kind, it is no accident.
These brands will spend more money on incentives for distributors in the second half of 2015 than the whole craft...
Protecting Your Brands Through Trademark Law
Craft distillers are passionate about their spirits. But having the most innovative, flavorful, hand-crafted spirit in the country will not itself prompt a consumer to buy it. This requires branding: a memorable name and package design that piques a...
Branding:Distilled A Guide to Package Design for Craft Spirits
THE BRANDING AND PACKAGING DESIGN PROCESS
STEP BY STEP
A good design partner will help you clarify your brand vision, and then bring it into tangible form. Unfortunately, few startup distillers have experience finding a design partner and managing the design...
Secrets to Swimming with the (Financial) Sharks
First, do this: go online and search “Balcones whiskey and its investors.”
The Balcones lesson is this: once you take investor money, your company changes. It is no longer purely a vehicle for your art. Investor money puts you on...
Reading the label — The Basics
Product labels are among the many critical items in the distillery start-up process, and they are just as important in the growth of the distiller’s product line in the marketplace. Whether simple and direct, or complex and wordy, the...
Exporting Craft Spirits to the United Kingdom
Allison Evanow had been eyeing Europe’s burgeoning market in organic goods when she sent her first load of spirits to the UK. It did not go well. The founder of Square One Organic Spirits explains that the problem wasn’t...
