By David MacDonald J ohn, how did you go about market research in such a young industry? JP: I think we had more of an advantage there than most people entering into this field. You’re right; this is a very young industry. So there isn’t a whole bunch of people running around that have expertise in distilling or brewing or for that matter even making a bottle of wine – although the vineyards are ahead of the curve in BC. The brewers are ahead of the distillers and the distillers are just following in their footsteps, making their way into the market place. The vintners have done really well; the brewers have done really well; there is no reason not to think the spirit manufacturers
are not going to do well. But there isn’t a pool of suppliers or local knowledge when you’re just starting off. So for us, the advantage was that before the attractive licencing was in place, we were actually contracting our product out. In other words, someone would make our product for us and someone would bottle it and get all the component parts and assemble it in Chicago. We’d import it into BC and then sell it to our clients ourselves and those clients would be in the restaurant, bar, or club scene – or retail stores. Having done that for a few years from 2006 to 2012, we started learning a little bit about production; we learned a little bit about distribution; we learned a little bit about client preferences and establishing a reputation and credi- bility. Unfortunately we didn’t make a lot of money because
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DECEMBER 2017 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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