Turning The Page

by ,

It is time again to welcome a new year full of expectations, hope, planning and the accompanying rewards we hope to earn in 2025.

During 2024 we saw a lot of craft distilleries shutting down, but we also saw a lot of new players come into the market.

Wholesalers in the USA are making adjustments to their strategies, to avoid the problems that caused them so many headaches last year.

Opportunities are always lurking around, but you must prepare financially in order to take advantage of them.  Being able to acquire used distillation/bottling equipment at a great price, for example, is no good if we don’t have the financial resources to consider the purchase.

I am looking forward to seeing how trends that started during the past few years are morphed by the current financial conditions.  I am particularly keen to see how consumers react to environmentally conscious items that are priced higher than their less-green counterparts.

I am also keeping a close eye on low sugar, low-alcohol (including no-alcohol) alternatives, THC-infused drinks, RTD (Ready To Drink) and DTC (Direct To Consumer) trends.

I hope that many craft distilleries took advantage of the RTD boom last year.  For those that didn’t, there might still be time to do so this year, but I suggest researching the field and looking for the right opportunities, so that the volume associated with RTD production does not limit the bottling of higher-profit retail units later on, especially if the RTD products are well-received by consumers.

Author C. S. Lewis famously wrote:

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”

Regardless of which trends emerge in the market, I hope that all producers reading these lines will be able to take advantage of them.I want to end this month’s editorial by congratulating the staff at Artisan Spirit Magazine for their upcoming 50th edition.  

A fantastic magazine by a fantastic team!

Cheers!

Luis Ayala,

Editor and Publisher        

http://www.linkedin.com/in/rumconsultant