Your Distributor Is Not Your Sales Team

One of the biggest misconceptions we see with growing beverage brands is the idea that once you sign with a distributor, you have a sales team. You don’t. You have a distributor, and understanding the difference will save you a lot of frustration and probably a lot of money.

Distributors play an incredibly important role in this industry. They manage inventory, logistics, orders, deliveries, collections, account relationships, compliance, and a massive amount of infrastructure that suppliers would have a very difficult time replicating themselves. Their sales teams can also be incredibly valuable. But those teams may represent hundreds or even thousands of products, and your brand is one of them. If you are expecting a distributor rep to wake up every morning thinking about how to grow your brand, you are probably going to be disappointed.

This gets especially dangerous when a brand celebrates getting distribution as though the hard part is over. Product gets shipped into a warehouse, everyone gets excited about the new market, and then a few months later the supplier is wondering why depletion numbers aren't moving. Usually the answer isn't particularly complicated. Someone still has to sell the shit.

Someone has to identify the right accounts, get in front of buyers, explain why the product belongs there, get bartenders excited about it, build programs, support menus, run tastings, follow up on placements, watch inventory, and figure out why an account that bought three cases two months ago hasn't reordered. A distributor can be an important part of all of that, but an independent brand can't assume the distributor is going to own all of it.

The brands that tend to have better distributor relationships understand this. They create demand instead of waiting for it. They give distributor reps a reason to care about the brand because there are accounts asking for it, programs happening in market, supplier people showing up, and actual business being created. It is a lot easier for a distributor to get behind something when the supplier is giving them something to work with.

It also changes the way we think brands should evaluate distribution. Getting accepted by the biggest distributor in a market doesn't automatically mean you picked the best route to market. You have to understand how the portfolio is structured, who will actually touch your brand, what the distributor expects from you, what you expect from them, and whether you have enough resources on your side to make the relationship productive.

We love good distributors. We work with them every day, and a strong distributor relationship can completely change the trajectory of a brand. We just don't think founders should hand someone a price book, ship them a few pallets, and expect the market to magically appear.

Distribution gets your product where it needs to go. Building the business around it is still your job.