Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I took a trip to Europe for work. One bit of that trip was a meeting with people who studied the pharmaceutical industry from the vantages of London, Tokyo, New York, and so on. We spoke of many things, seemingly interminably, but one item we discussed was the case of pharmaceutical sales reps, how many of them there were, how many doctors they were to call on, particularly in the US, the ratio of sale reps to docs, and so on. We concluded that despite the reputation the industry had then for being able to sell anything to anyone if they put their minds to it, that they were totally overrepresented. That the X salesfolk were each expected to have Y meetings per day with doctors, and that if the docs actually cooperated, they would be doing nothing each day but taking back to back meetings with the pharma reps, and that this wasn’t going to happen. Our back of the envelope calculation pretty accurately predicted the subsequent firing of many of said reps, and the contraction of the sales forces for almost all the big companies. One interesting item in an otherwise tedious couple of days.
I was prompted to think of these ancient events this week when Comrade Levi wrote a bit for Eater.com on the subject of boutique importers. The piece has wounded tender feelings around town, generated much social network rhubarb, and so on, but I’d like to step gently away from people’s motives to consider the underlying economic situation.
If you cast your mind back to the mists of the Triassic, young Kermit Lynch was bombing around France visiting such obscure villages as Hermitage, where he met a nice family named Chave, or Cornas, where there was a guy named Clape, or Meursault, where some dude had a winery called Coche-Dury. These people had some pretty good wines that were available to export to the US, and soon Kermit had an interesting business and a nice shop on San Pablo Ave in the northern reaches of Berkeley. A bit later on, Joe Dressner and David Lillie would hop in a car and meet the likes of Catherine Roussel, Marc Ollivier, Pierre Overnoy, or even a guy like Robert Denis. M. Denis had been making wine for decades in Azay-le-Rideau, and AFAIK no one had made any effort to sell his old-fashioned beverages to the US until LDM came along near the end of his days. In summary, even 20 years ago there were many high quality, long-established vignerons who were unknown to the world even in places that were only a couple of hours’ drive from Paris.
I’m not in that biz, but it seems different to me today. A decade ago, the Dive Bouteille was not mobbed with importers from the US. The 22 y.o. vigneron who had just taken over the domain or was on her first vintage did not face a scrum of people on the other side of the table trying to line up the wines for the NYC market. That is more what I see in recent years.
It is common these days to run into a friend ITB who says, “Yes, I’m bailing on my bar/restaurant/schnook biz and am devoting myself to finding the finest wines of [Montmartre, Swabia, Serbia, Thurbia, Thuringia, Ruritania] for the deserving NYC market, and beyond!” This happens even with folks who looked pretty successful in their strictly 100XX lives, without all the glamorous travel and extra risk of starting a new small business.
But it seems tough from the outside—how do they make a go of it? Chave has already been discovered, as noted above, and Doug and Tina and David are pretty good at the game themselves, just as examples. Not to mention, they already have the boots on the ground.
And if there are really 200 different companies calling on Pascaline, Patrick and Arnaud, it must be awfully tough for some of them to get an appointment, to refer to my pharma calculation above.
But this does raise another question for me. If you consolidated the portfolios of 100 of those importer/distributors into 5 big companies, would that work better? It would still be the same number of wines in front of the same buyers, though they would not have to go to the trouble of establishing a relationship with each seller, which would surely count for something. Is there an opportunity for the artisanal investment banker here? Probably not. But 200 different identities requires some pretty heavy lifting on the social network/marketing side, does it not? How does number 201 get in the door? Hookers and cocaine? Seems expensive until the business is well established.
I ask as an interested observer, and also a guy who is curious about how different corners of the economy run. I imagine my Comrades have some insights into these matters.
I was prompted to think of these ancient events this week when Comrade Levi wrote a bit for Eater.com on the subject of boutique importers. The piece has wounded tender feelings around town, generated much social network rhubarb, and so on, but I’d like to step gently away from people’s motives to consider the underlying economic situation.
If you cast your mind back to the mists of the Triassic, young Kermit Lynch was bombing around France visiting such obscure villages as Hermitage, where he met a nice family named Chave, or Cornas, where there was a guy named Clape, or Meursault, where some dude had a winery called Coche-Dury. These people had some pretty good wines that were available to export to the US, and soon Kermit had an interesting business and a nice shop on San Pablo Ave in the northern reaches of Berkeley. A bit later on, Joe Dressner and David Lillie would hop in a car and meet the likes of Catherine Roussel, Marc Ollivier, Pierre Overnoy, or even a guy like Robert Denis. M. Denis had been making wine for decades in Azay-le-Rideau, and AFAIK no one had made any effort to sell his old-fashioned beverages to the US until LDM came along near the end of his days. In summary, even 20 years ago there were many high quality, long-established vignerons who were unknown to the world even in places that were only a couple of hours’ drive from Paris.
I’m not in that biz, but it seems different to me today. A decade ago, the Dive Bouteille was not mobbed with importers from the US. The 22 y.o. vigneron who had just taken over the domain or was on her first vintage did not face a scrum of people on the other side of the table trying to line up the wines for the NYC market. That is more what I see in recent years.
It is common these days to run into a friend ITB who says, “Yes, I’m bailing on my bar/restaurant/schnook biz and am devoting myself to finding the finest wines of [Montmartre, Swabia, Serbia, Thurbia, Thuringia, Ruritania] for the deserving NYC market, and beyond!” This happens even with folks who looked pretty successful in their strictly 100XX lives, without all the glamorous travel and extra risk of starting a new small business.
But it seems tough from the outside—how do they make a go of it? Chave has already been discovered, as noted above, and Doug and Tina and David are pretty good at the game themselves, just as examples. Not to mention, they already have the boots on the ground.
And if there are really 200 different companies calling on Pascaline, Patrick and Arnaud, it must be awfully tough for some of them to get an appointment, to refer to my pharma calculation above.
But this does raise another question for me. If you consolidated the portfolios of 100 of those importer/distributors into 5 big companies, would that work better? It would still be the same number of wines in front of the same buyers, though they would not have to go to the trouble of establishing a relationship with each seller, which would surely count for something. Is there an opportunity for the artisanal investment banker here? Probably not. But 200 different identities requires some pretty heavy lifting on the social network/marketing side, does it not? How does number 201 get in the door? Hookers and cocaine? Seems expensive until the business is well established.
I ask as an interested observer, and also a guy who is curious about how different corners of the economy run. I imagine my Comrades have some insights into these matters.