Europe Visit | Talking US Market Aspirations
Big picture professional mission: to support wine & spirits brands with their US market aspirations
Are you exploring how someone might help you with your US market aspirations?
This is the question that drove me to meet with some select brands this summer in Europe. With some clients, we were well into the project; with other contacts we were just getting started.
As noted on LinkedIn, this visit included France (Bordeaux), Spain (Castilla y León), and Portugal (Douro Valley), and left many places on the table for next time.
Imported brands have unique needs.
This particular trip reminded me of the unique needs of premium wine & spirits brands, especially imported brands (or those looking for distribution) in the United States. While it’s impossible to sum things up in one blog, the experience reaffirmed the following mindset for working with wine & spirits brands:
Meeting people in their “place” brings inspiration and perspective.
There are some small and yet-to-be-known brands that are doing some amazing things.
Proper distribution paired with strong communication is essential to leverage these unique brand differentiators.
Brands have needs that are vast and wide-ranging. This is why custom planning and personalization are priorities for all projects with Clarity & Co.
When I represent brands, I represent people (and hence, why I am very selective).
As a side note, Spanish proficiency is a skill that had been “dormant” for a while but I revived it for this trip and even snuck in an intensive advanced course while abroad. We can communicate in Spanish if you prefer.
Find the right allies.
There are many ways to drive your mission in the US Market, and it starts with having the right allies. Feel free to reach out if you would like to explore this more. You may simply want to make the connection while you have future ambitions on the horizon.
Note: If you’d like to read more about the principles that guide Clarity & Co, this is addressed throughout earlier blogs, and you’ll hear me speak about it in a recent podcast as well.
About Clarity & Co
Clarity & Co’s mission is to offer marketing consulting, trade relations, and project management services to the premium wine industry, and to do so with clarity and collaboration, or Clarity & Co. For more information, please visit www.clarityandco.com.