The silent minority…

When imports started to come to the US market in a big way around 1980, and expand as distributors picked them up, distributors only carried a hand full of cases.  Truck loads were usually one case of these and two cases of those.  In fact, you could not sell a layer of Corona in a month, much less a pallet, before Modelo changed the bottle to the current clear one.   Things soon changed.

The largest issue we hear and read about today in the beer industry has to do with wholesaler franchise protection, but perhaps the second topic, which is almost as big as franchise protection, is suppliers complaints about wholesalers’ lack of focus on their brands, which, of course comes back to franchise protection.

Either way, it all is coming from the craft segment through industry conferences; publications, including books now written by successful craft brewers; media; and even bloggers.  As we all know, the craft segment growth is nothing short of amazing, and it even seems that it is accelerating.

So the question with imports is what about the silent minority, those long-established imports that still are hanging in there?  A number of these are independent and owned by their brewery such as Moosehead USA, Warsteiner Importers Agency, or Paulaner USA.  There are many others that fly under today’s radar, many very small, but relevant to a number of small consumers.

Most of these brands or companies focus on a specific marketing foothold with which their brands are associated.  For example, the German beers plan their marketing calendar around the third quarter which is Oktoberfest.  The Oktoberfest celebration now has become a major beer selling event across the country.  Typically the third quarter for the German beers generates over 50% of their annual sales.  The Oktoberfest season is what motivates distributors to focus on their German portfolio.

Japanese beers have sushi bars and Pan Asian restaurants targeted as their primary trade channels.  Canadian beers, like independent Moosehead, have the spill over from Canada to help them, but in recent years some breweries have pulled the plug on their US operations.

Bavaria Brewing, which had a viable US operation, closed down their US operation and assigned the brands to a California importer.  Carlsberg, after years with AB, tried to go it alone, then tried an independent operation, and finally went back to a multi brand importer.  Both were unwilling to continue to invest in the US, mostly due to the exchange rate.

At conventions such as the NBWA, or even the one-day seminars held by the industry publications, it is all about the crafts.  The speakers, the panel discussions, and even the retail stat presentations are crafts and the decline of the US domestics.  There is, however, nothing about these small importers.

These importers today struggle to make their financial and sales goals, they have small sales teams, but believe in their brands and goals.  Many of the importers think they are off distributors radars given the high velocity of crafts….this doesn’t make sense to me.

Maybe the industry now looks at these small breweries as the current “bolt-ons” for their trucks with annual volume coming during the “Oktoberfest” time period for each one.  Either way, after all these years, these small but independent importers of beer have become the silent minority.