The Wholesaler & Importer Roadmap
From Rejected to In-Demand: a 5-step System To Get Your Drinks Brand Listed By Wholesalers and Importers.
The MAFFEO DRINKS Guides is a bi-weekly email newsletter. With a systematized approach, it helps drink builders grow their brand from 10 to 10k cases. Each edition solves one clear challenge for subscribers. Some editions are free, and others are paid. Sign up here
Dear Drinks Builder,
In today's issue, I’ll share my 5-step system to crack wholesalers' rejections for your brand.
By adopting this process, you’ll focus on the right steps to raise attention. You’ll likely increase your strike rate in the right outlets and land a deal with the right distributor.
Unfortunately, most people lack a pragmatic system. They are getting rejected by distributors as they can't show proof of concept for their brand.
Months ago, I wrote a guide addressing this issue.
The guide ended with a series of steps. In this article, I will address each step. Let's get started.
By now, you probably know my love for a bottom-up approach, but let's clarify what I mean:
- top-down: you push the brand, enter via an importer, and ask them to buy and resell your product.
- bottom-up: the market pulls the brand, meaning that you start from the bars in which there's demand for your brand, and you build your route-to-market backward from the glass.
Usually, brands enter a market with an importer but get stuck in their warehouse. That is the first underestimated challenge. Brands think the job is done once they appoint an importer and pallets start flowing. They assume importers will sell to the bars they want, so they ask them to get listed in the best outlets in town.
They often fail because it's not about getting into the best bars but the best ones for your brand.
Most often, importers have small field teams and must re-sell brands again to wholesalers with field teams.
The thing is that it's very tough to get listed by wholesalers because they already have many brands in the same category in their offering. They want to see some effort from brands before taking them on board. They want at least one of these efforts:
Boots on the ground: they want to know that there is a person actively selling the brand to bars in that city (without stepping on their toes)
A&P (Advertising and Promotion) budget to support brand-building efforts and rotation to afford a dedicated person in that city
How to understand the right bar for your brand: