Pricing Architecture
Your FOB is the first signal your brand sends into the market. Before the label. Before the story. Before the rep walks into an account. Most founders set it by marking up production cost. Here's why that's the wrong question.
Brand Positioning
Most founders can tell you what their wine is. Very few can tell you what it’s for. Here’s how to find the specific consumer job your wine actually does — and why that answer is the foundation everything else gets built on.
Pricing Architecture
The $20–$25 price band wasn't built for consumers. It was built for the trade. If you can't describe the exact human choosing your $22 wine and the job it does in their life, you don't have a brand. You have inventory waiting to be marked down.
Distributor Strategy
You can have the best story in the category and still lose the shelf. This isn't a knock on brand building. A compelling story gets you meetings. It gets buyers to take the sample. It gets a distributor to add you to the book. Narrative has real value
Route to Market
Nice is the most dangerous word in the beverage trade. A wine everyone thinks is fine is a wine no one goes looking for — and no one fights for on the shelf, in the portfolio, or in the account. Here's what to build instead.
Distributor Strategy
Founders don't experience ego as ego. They experience it as conviction, taste, and stewardship. Here's how those protective instincts create friction inside the distribution system — and what to do about it.
Distributor Strategy
Distributor reps don't prioritize the brands they believe in most. They prioritize the brands that are easiest to move. Here's what actually drives rep attention — and how to design a brand that earns it consistently.
Route to Market
Most emerging brands choose channels. Very few think about the order they enter them. Here's why channel sequencing is one of the most important strategic decisions an emerging brand can make — and how to get it right.
Route to Market
Most brands that stall in year two didn't see it coming — because placement counts were climbing while the numbers underneath were quietly deteriorating. Here's what's actually happening when a brand loses momentum, and how to engineer your way out before the window closes.
Route to Market
Most brands that stall in year three didn't fail because the wine got worse. They failed because they built a product and mistook it for a strategy. Here's what a real system looks like — and why building it early is the only thing that creates permanence in the trade.
Distributor Strategy
A first placement is not product-market fit. It's an invitation to prove it. Here's how to read the difference between a support problem and a placement problem — and what to do when reorders aren't coming.
Distributor Strategy
Most emerging brands think signing with a distributor means gaining a sales force. It doesn't. Here's what distributor reps are actually optimizing for — and what it means for how you build your brand.