How to Win in Off-Premise Wine & Spirits Retail | Ryan Gill, Three Chord Bourbon

On this episode, we’re joined by Ryan Gill, the Director of Marketing at Three Chord Bourbon, and a spirits industry veteran with deep roots in off-premise retail.

Before joining the team at Three Chord, Ryan spent over a decade running top-tier off-premise locations across the South, managing $XXM+ stores and building high-performance teams. That front-line retail experience gave him a rare lens on what really moves bottles - insights he now brings to one of the fastest-growing bourbon brands in the U.S.

Ryan unpacks how his time on the floor shaped his philosophy on brand building, distributor management, and the power of field marketing. He shares tactical advice for emerging brands trying to stand out on crowded shelves, plus his playbook for training retail staff, building local market awareness, and executing limited drops that actually drive velocity.

We also dive into Three Chord’s unique origin story, why music plays into their blending process, and how they’re scaling into 40+ states while staying connected to the whiskey community.

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Episode Highlights:

🏪 What 10 years in off-premise retail taught Ryan about winning in spirits
 📊 Why so many brands misunderstand the off-premise buyer
 🛒 Tactical tips for activating in retail without huge budgets
 🏀 How spirits distribution has become like the NBA
 🥃 How Three Chord Bourbon trains retailers to become brand evangelists
 🎸 From guitar riffs to mash bills: Three Chord’s musical roots
 📍 Building a national brand with limited resources
 🔁 Navigating the 3-tier system from the brand side
 🧃 Lessons in merchandising, demos, and field marketing

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Table of Contents:

00:00 – Intro & Retail Background
05:00 – Lessons from Off-Premise Retail & Frontline Sales
12:00 – Joining Three Chord & Shifting to Brand Side
18:30 – Field Marketing & Retail Training
25:00 – Limited Drops & Community Building
30:00 – Scaling Distribution with Focus
40:00 – Final Thoughts & Industry Advice

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Links:

Three Chord Bourbon – https://www.threechordbourbon.com
Follow Ryan on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-gill-3chord/
Follow me on LinkedIn – Adam Steinberg
 

For help with CPG production design - packaging and label design, product renders, POS assets, retail media assets, quick-turn sales and marketing assets and all the other work that bogs down creative teams - check out KitPrint.

Shout out to my friends over at Glimpse, the go-to partner for automating retail-related back-office operations and unlocking margin trapped in invalid fees and manual processes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Shelf Help. Today we're speaking with Ryan Gill, who is the director of marketing at Three Chord Bourbon, who's uh joining us from Memphis. Launched in 2017 by what I think Ryan would call a musician's musician, which we'll talk to we'll dive into here in a second, uh, along with a pretty longtime whiskey maker, three-chord bourbon focuses on producing spirits with a perfectly tuned taste. And then prior to three-chord, uh, Ryan spent a good chunk of his career on the on-pre off-premise retail side of things, which I think is gonna make for a pretty interesting conversation here. Just first off, for the listeners, Ryan, that aren't that familiar with three-chord bourbon, maybe just give us a quick lay of the land, just in terms of kind of the origin story, the why behind the brand, some of the chord products you guys offer, and and some of the main places that listeners can currently get their hands on them, and we'll start there.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah, so three-chord uh started by a musician named Neil Geraldo, and he's producer, soundwriter, guitar player. Basically, growing up, he he saw he saw spirits as a a communal thing that was within his family. Sicilian grew up in in the Sicilian home where his granddad was making drapa in the basement and stuff like that. And you know, it was they had their big family meals and he would he would learn to play guitar and sing as part of that. And uh it was just kind of this big communal thing, and then he got into music and bands and performing, and he loved the communal part of that as well. And so, you know, a few years ago he decided to slow down on the touring and decided to start up a new company, and when he did, said, Well, let's let's get into spirits, because that was always the connection to him was that that communal element, and whiskey definitely has that that element, you know. That's one of my favorite things in working whiskey is meeting all the other people that are the big whiskey people or even people in other companies. There's so much camaraderie in this in this little industry, you know, bottle shares of allocated things and hard to find things, and you know, other brands just helping each other all the time. Um it's it that that's like I said, one of my favorite things about this this industry. Um, as far as three chord right now, uh three chord is uh always available online, three chordbourbon.com. We work with a retail partner that ships to 43 states currently, so uh you can be fine found just about anywhere there. And then uh also there's a store located on threecordburbon.com where you can find it in your area. We do have distribution through about 40 states currently. Um, but we've got you know solid distribution in probably 25 states or so. Um we're pretty widespread. But uh you know, online you can find a lot of our limited releases and things. I know we're gonna talk about those a little bit later.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

Yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, I think that's a great intro. One thing I wanted to dive into first, I know you've got a bit of a unique and what I assume to be pretty valuable background, and then in that you spent, I think, more than 10 years, you know, running some of the top off-premise wine and spirits retailers in Tennessee before shifting over the brand side. So I'm just curious, and what way have you found that your pretty extensive retail background has just been pretty valuable in in running marketing for a brand selling into those same kinds of stores?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, it's uh it's honestly giving me such a great perspective that has helped me on a daily basis. I was the first guy within our company that was hired that was from the retail side. And so we have people that have been longtime bar people, long time supplier reps, distributor reps. You know, I worked in retail for 14 years and was running, you know, one or two stores for most of that time. And you know, I also got really into retail science and marketing. And you know, I always would you know on a daily basis look at my stores and say, okay, how could these products be marketed better? How do these, you know, how can we encourage people to pick them up off the shelf? And it really made me think what brands were doing things right, what brands were doing things wrong, and um be able to see, okay, if I were to have a brand, this is what I would do. Yeah. And uh, and so with Three Court, I was lucky enough to join it at the right time where each year I've been with a company, I've been with there for five and a half years now. I think each year my role has been different. So it uh you know started off in sales just in Tennessee and then expanded to regional sales and then moved over to single barrel sales and working with a lot of whiskey clubs and things like that, and then you know, evolved to the marketing and brand development side, which is really my passion.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Is there a I'm sure once you're running you know multiple stores, I I imagine you may not have been in the buying room on a day-to-day basis, but at some point you're probably that was uh at least a part of your job at some point, at least hearing some of the you know, the pitches and new brands coming in trying to get on the shelf. Is there a specific pitch tactic or two that you found often worked when you're on that side of the table and or your team members on that side table? And have you found are you guys implementing a similar strategy when you're trying to get on the shelf?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah, what's really interesting about that is it you know, I think adding to my perspective was when I did start doing regional sales as well, because I started to realize that the way that retailers take in products and and pitches is different around the country. And so, you know, for me, you know, when I joined the company, the company was mostly in the north and northeast, and then we expanded down south and came into Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia. But you know, me and our Kentucky rep used to talk all the time about how the the questions we got from retailers were totally different than the questions that the retailers up north were asking.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Uh, you know, you would I mean flavor profiles were different, um, preferences were different, but just the pitches were different. It was really interesting. So for me, what you know I always really I mean, I kind of drilled people when they came in, yeah, when suppliers came in, and uh, you know, I would I would give honest opinions and tell them, you know, look, this is what you should be doing, and this is what you shouldn't be doing, and um, you know, this is what works in my store. And um you know, I would want to know, and this is from coming from a wine background as well, you know, wine was a big focus for my store for a long time, and with wine, you can really add up the value with tangible things. Oh, was this in oak? How long was it in oak? Was it a new oak or used oak? You know, you could you could understand why the cost increased. You know, was it from one small vineyard, one lot? Was it from you know a giant area that's just a blend of a lot of stuff? You could you could ask the right questions and understand what the value should be, and that would help you understand is this product overpriced or is this a good value? And so, you know, with whiskey, I would do the same. I would be asking, you know, I need to understand more about this product, what's going into it, what makes it worth this price to the customer. And uh, you know, it was it was definitely interesting because, like I said, there was some questions like that that weren't necessarily being asked in the company before uh we expanded down south. And uh, you know, Kentucky and Tennessee people really get into their bourbon. So so that was uh yeah, that was definitely an interesting part of it.

SPEAKER_02 8:11

And I never really thought about that, like the different you know, regions, parts of the country would have that different of palettes and like and taste preferences. If you think about food and beverage categories, it's pretty pretty consistent across you know whether you're on west coast, east coast to a large extent.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

You know, we were doing uh so I was running the single barrel program for a long time, and with the single barrel program, you really could start to tell the price, the the taste differences, because in the south, uh you know, we like our sweet tea and coke and stuff like that, and you would actually have people that chose whiskies that have sweeter finishes down here as opposed to up north. It was really, I mean, it was it was an interesting learning experience just to see like, wow, like it really does make a difference. You know, these people do have totally different palettes based off of the culture around them.

SPEAKER_02 9:10

Moving down the supply chain a bit, does brands they have a successful pitch, they get on the shelf. What were some of the biggest mistakes that you saw brands make in terms of how are they actually marketing themselves in store or supporting sell through and any lessons in that area that are now guiding your team's retail support playbook, let's say?

SPEAKER_01 9:31

You know, honestly, I think the pen the biggest thing is not having follow-through on anything. You know, there's a lot of brands that think you just get onto the shelf and you expect it to move. You know, whether it's I think there's a big disconnect between digital marketing and in-store marketing. You know, there's a lot of brands that think, okay, I I'm going to do lots of Facebook ads and I'm going to build this unique story online and this cool look, cool website. None of that matters if the person is just walking into a retail store and seeing your brand for the first time. You know, that's I feel like that gets missed so often. Um, you know, things like shelf talkers that either are eye-catching or just have a score or something quick that can grab somebody's attention, interesting displays that don't just blend into everything else.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Having displays that fit the store. So different display options, for example. So I ran one store that was, you know, only a few thousand square feet, but it was connected to a Costco. This was before Costco was selling wine and spirits in the state, and um, you know, it was tight for space. So displays, you know, they really had to be compact display areas. And um, you know, the net store that was running, we had 10,000 square feet, and we wanted it to be really nice and open and have these cool open interactive displays. We wanted it to be an experience when you came to the store, whether it was sights or sounds or smells. Um, you know, and so we were constantly looking for things like that, and it was amazing how few brands offered anything that would fit those things. I mean, it was a monthly we had these two giant displays in the front of our store right in the window front, and I mean it was a monthly challenge to find a new brand to build out a large display for that area. Yeah. Um you know, it should have been a great opportunity, but it was basically you know, only the guys with the budgets of Brown Foreman and Constellation and Diaggio, they were the only ones that were doing anything unique. And I said, I think it really just goes back to people focusing too much on everything outside of the store when it comes to marketing, and not necessarily once that person walks into the store that has not heard of you, you know, how do you get them to look at you for the first time and pick up your bottle?

SPEAKER_02 12:16

And building on that a little bit, I'm thinking, are there any ways that you might be thinking differently about these are three kind of broad categories, but let's just say like trade promotion, sampling, or limited drops, anything that you maybe might think differently about just thanks to seeing firsthand how these tactics actually played out as the person on the other side?

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yeah, um, you know, tastings is a really interesting one because a lot of brands spend a lot of money on tastings. And you know, you hear the phrase liquid to lips all the time. And you know, I can't tell you how many times people buy a bottle because they're seeing a tasting and trying it right there on the spot, but then they end up just going back to whatever they normally get, the net sum that they're at the store. You know, it's there's they need to be judged on more than just how many bottles they sell that day. Yeah, and it needs to turn into conversions to loyal customers. Yeah, I think that there's a a bit of a disconnect with that for a lot of people. Just because somebody tastes your product for the first time, you know, taste is only part of the overall sale, you know. People need to actually connect with your brand in some way, um, especially in the whiskey category. You know, there's there is not as drastic of differences in the taste of whiskey from one to another as there are in flavored vodkas or wine, you know, different wine varietals or things like that. It is something where you really have to make an actual connection with the people through your brand's story in general.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

That that definitely resonates. A bit of a similar track based on that retail experience that you had when you're now analyzing performance at retail. Are there any metrics or signals that you pay close attention to, especially ones that maybe most brand marketers don't, just because you're on that other side, understand what's actually important to the retailers?

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Yeah, so you know I'm I've recognized over the last several years being on this side, talking to other brands and with even within our own company sometimes, you know, your focus is always on either cases leaving, you know, leaving our our warehouse or like shipments or depletions at distributor level, right? That stuff matters the first time, but then you gotta start paying attention to the reorders, the the pull-through on the shelf. I can't tell you how many times I see Diagio used to do a really interesting job of they knew that their products, if they wanted their bump in sales each year, they would just put out a new product, right? They would put out a new flavor of vodka, a new flavor of crown, something, some new interesting drop that would bump their sales up for the year because everything else, you know, they just gotta maintain, and then they drop something new and it increases. Yeah. I think a lot of people try to do that, but that's instead of just bumping up in their sales, what ends up happening is their core products are dwindling because they're not getting pull-through, and they try to replace it with a new product. And so what ends up happening is you're constantly losing sales, and you're losing sales in states and you know, potential or SKUs, and you're just replacing them by opening up new accounts, new states, uh putting out new products, and you're not paying attention to the fact that your product's not actually moving. I I think that so many people don't even stop to realize that until it's too late, you know, until it gets to a point where you're like, oh, I've now hit as many states as I'm going to grow to. Now my sales are dwindling. Right. It's it's just I've I've run out of, you know, I've run out of shells. You know, it's it's really a shell game, you know? Yeah. And uh, I think that that's been really one of the most interesting things to see. Uh just talking about metrics, people not paying close enough attention to, okay, on a product-by-product basis, how many reorders are you getting?

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

How often? And that's what you really need to be looking at to determine the health of your brand and your products.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Yeah, I seem it sounds like it's a bit of like that saying robbing Peter to pay Paul, but almost worse than that because I, you know, from what I know, you know, it costs a lot more to keep launching a new product or new flavor because you've got to spend all the money to kind of get attention on it versus continue to push the existing products already on the shelf, right?

unknown 17:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Yeah, definitely. It's uh it's it's uh you know almost like a Ponzi scheme that you don't even realize that you're you know that you're the one doing it. Yeah, you're the head of it and you don't even realize it because you're not paying attention to what's happening below.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah, totally. This is a bit more of a broad question, but how would you say you're just thinking about the this off-premise retail channel landscape and bit holistically like thinking about over the past five to ten years? What are things like you know, top I don't know, a few two to three things that really come to mind as like the most biggest changes you've seen, focusing on ones that you feel like have had the biggest impact on how they actually affect brands?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

I think the biggest change has been on the distributor level. And that's been the biggest impact on the off-premise side of things and how we interact with them because distributors, their jobs have changed a lot. And I think that the more centralized these large or consolidated these large companies have become, the more weight they pull. And you know, you're seeing them do things like you know, Sazrat pulling out of you know the big guys and saying, you know, you don't give us what we want, we're going to pull all of our products from you. You know, or you know, these guys putting putting their products solely with one distributor across, you know, 10 to 20 states, things like that. Um it's made it to where the brand th those big conglomerates have more power than the distributors, and they know it. And uh and they're able to, you know, for a long time they were trying to compete with the smaller brands by saying, Well, we're just going to do what they're doing and do it better, and we're going to squeeze them out on the shelf. We're going to, you know, I remember it was we're doing they're going to come out with new products all the time and you know make sure there's not enough room on the shelf for the little guys, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

Then it turned into, well, we're now doing surveys and doing allocations, and you have to give us this much space or buy this much stuff of this product to get this. Um, you know, that's really changed over the years. And you know, it's it's been interesting because now if you're not one of the big guys, you really you can't depend on the distributors as much as you could a decade ago. Um even pre-COVID. You know, it's uh and it's not their fault, it's just they now have to prioritize you know who's paying their bills and you know who can pull out and the drop of a hat and you know really make them have to have layoffs and things like that. I I spoke to one distributor that was telling me you know they had they had incentive programs for you know lots of brands, and one of them was a hundred bucks a placement. I mean, really big number. And they didn't even tell their team about it because they were like, it doesn't matter. Like I it used to be the salespeople would look at the distributor salespeople would look at their monthly calendar, see okay, what are my incentives? How do I hit these goals? Now it's okay, I just gotta keep my job because I have to hit the goals that are put in place by these top five companies. Yeah. And everything else is just you know gravy, but you know, it I really need to only focus on these guys. And everybody else needs to take care of themselves. And uh, you know, it's it's made it a lot harder for for you know other brands across uh across all spirits.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

You have to spend more money now to uh to have a sales team because you can't depend on the distributors as much as you could previously.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

That's really been the biggest change in the industry, I think, over the last decade. I I'm a big sports fan and uh it it it's I always think of the analogy of how like the NBA has turned into a a players league. You know, it's all about the stars and they're able to demand trades and things like that. And um that's that's how the spirits industry has turned. Uh you know, the stars are now in in control. You know, it used to be you know the distributors were in control, and uh not anymore.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Yeah, that's really interesting. Expanding a bit, and now you've got now you've been on this brand side for a bit. What have you found that's really key to winning in this on-premise channel versus off-premise channel?

SPEAKER_01 22:57

You know, I think a big part of it is the change um in how to look at the on-premise over the last day. When I was a buyer, yeah, this is pre-COVID in particular. One of the questions that you would ask a brand manager when they came into your store or salesperson when they came into your store was where what restaurants or bars around me can I find the product in? Because the idea was people are going to try it first at a bar or restaurant, and then they're going to spill over to your store to pick up the product, right? Yeah. That's not the case anymore. That's that's just not the case anymore at all. And I think a lot of brands are still playing the old playbook a lot of times, but that's you know, I've done a bunch of surveys that show it. People don't care about that anymore. That's not the first place they're trying stuff.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

It is so rarely the first place they're trying stuff now. Um you know, people would rather go if they're going to a restaurant and they're going to order something, they're going to you know order a call brand, or they're going to order just something from the well, which they don't care what it is. They're not going to then turn around and go look for it somewhere. Yeah. You know, you basically have to build your following through you know your brand outside of on-premise, whether it's retail, whether it's reviewers, you know, whether it's you know, I mean, one of the surveys that we had done was just finding out exactly that. Just you know, where are people learning about products for the first time? Yeah. What's encouraging the first purchase? And it was strongly weighted by um reviewers and liquor store employees. And those are those are the top two by far. And way at the bottom of the list was I tried it at a bar or restaurant. You know, and we realized that's not where you should be putting your resources, you know. Now you look at a lot of that that bar and restaurant scene, and it's so price-driven now. Because people are people have their handful of call brands, and and now there's so many brands that have allocated stuff that'll be just allocated to the on-premise, you know, top tier people so that they have those those things. And then everything else, it's about price. You know, it's you know, how do I get the the cheapest thing for our customers so that we can make the highest margins? Yeah. You know, they realize it doesn't matter if it's four roses small batch or four roses yellow label that's going into your cocktail. Yeah. So why would you, as a bar owner, why would you buy the more expensive one? Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Um yeah, that's that's been the most interesting, or those have been the most interesting level elevations.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

You mentioned like the the importance of the liquor store employees in terms of impacting purchase decisions, and you know, I spent a lot of time in the have spent a lot of time in the cannabis space, and similarly, you know, they're called bud tenders at dispensaries and uh and that space, and brands have you know realized long ago that investing a lot of time and resources in them is really important, especially in the cannabis space where it's still there's a lot of lack of knowledge. And so when someone walks in and asks the bud tender, what should I buy? If your brand's the first thing that comes out of their mouth, like you're gonna win. Is that based on what you said that in terms of the liquor store employees, the the research you've done has a big impact? Do brands invest a fair amount of time and resources in those liquor employees in terms of education, or I don't know if incentives are even allowed, but or is that still, even though the data shows that they're important, is are do brands like give them as much attention as maybe they should based on what your data shows?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

The toughest part of that has been the post-COVID turnover. So the data shows that's where you should be focusing your time and but you spend time you know educating the staff, and a month later it's all different staff. Yeah, totally. And so it's it's really you know, that's why I think a lot of it has become finding ways to not only make yourself stand out on a shelf to the customers and tell your brand story through your displays and your shelf talkers and things like that, you have to interest the liquor store employees now. Like you have to have a product that makes them also be your first customer. You know, they they need to be the ones that are seeing they're walking by the shelves every day. They should be the ones that are the first ones going, oh, this is new, this is different. I like this. Let me ask questions about it. You know, the one thing that's as far as budget and and ways to focus on that side of things is tasting bottles. You know, in markets where you can have open tasting bottles, whether it's for the staff or the public, do it. Spend the money. You know, that's that's uh because that can stay beyond just turnover. You know, there could be uh you know new employee, new shifts, whatever it is. You have a bottle back there for people to taste, that's that's super helpful.

SPEAKER_02 28:08

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So we talked about like the off-premise, on-premise a bit. Now that you've had some experience in both, like if let's just say you decided, hey, I'm gonna I'm gonna launch my own Spirits brand next year based on what you've learned so far, which of those channels do you think you would focus on first, or would you try to focus on both from the start? I'm just kind of curious like what that what that playbook would look like, go to market in terms of deciding between those two channels if if not both.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah, so I mean strongly off-premise. Off-premise and and e-premise. Yeah. So those are those are kind of the two now. Um, you know, on-premise, um, you know, it's you almost have to have people asking for you on the on-premise side now. The the alternative, and and this is more of just a volume play, you have all of your off-premise stuff and your e-premise stuff, and you can come out with a low-priced, you know, targeted product that is going to be on-premise almost exclusively. Um, I've seen some brands doing a good job with that recently, where it's you know, it you don't even have it on on your website sometimes. Like you know, it's uh it's a promise, it's a product that you're not promoting on social media. It may not even fit in with all of your your branding elements. It could be a different bottle shape, it could be you know, whatever it is, because what you're shooting for is number one volume, but number two, having your name of your brand on a menu. So like I said earlier, people see on a menu four roses, but they don't necessarily ask, is it four roses small batch or is it four roses yellow label?

SPEAKER_00 29:49

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Um if you can have that name on that name recognition through those drink menus and things, that's helpful. So yeah, that's that's kind of I think that's why I'm leaning towards these days. Is you know start off with that and then focus your your work on the on-prem or off-premise and e-premise. Yeah, that strategy makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Shifting gears a bit. I know the the um the backstage series has been a big part of the brand, especially lately. For for those that don't know what even what that is, give us just kind of like a quick lowdown on the series.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yeah, so backstage series, so three chord always been about music and whiskey and putting those things together and creating this community. A few years ago, so my background before I got into liquor stores and and running retail and all of that, um, I was a concert promoter for a long time. So, you know, music has been a big passion of mine forever. You know, I wanted to find a way to connect it to the brand more. So, you know, we were previously doing things like working with local musicians and local venues and you know, donating to charities like Blues Foundations and things like that, but we weren't connecting directly with you know the fans, I guess is the best way to say it. So we started doing these collaborations. I started reaching out to people that I knew in the industry from you know way back when. And uh, you know, we started working, doing these collaborations, and the benefit of three chord and and where it is as a company is because we've been successful, uh you know, we've gotten some great reviews, we've gotten some some chain pickups. It's made it where we've really spread into a lot of markets and we have a strong e-commerce side these days.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:44

But we're also small enough still that we can do custom projects. Yeah. And so, you know, I put together a program where we could do these custom blends and custom labels with artists. Um, you know, whether it's a one-off release or something that takes off and you start doing one or two a year, uh, you know, we can kind of run the gamut depending on the artist and what their fans are doing. So we've now worked with uh I believe 17 artists. It ranges from you know the Alderman Brothers band and the Hailstorm to you know Dinosaur Jr. and Lucero. You know, we've had punk artists, metal artists, rock, country, a little bit of everything. So um, you know, uh it's it's been fun and it's also really helped in that e-commerce side for us, just helping to really focus on that and and get the get the product in front of people that are passionate about and use it. Because if you're if you're going out and buying merchandise from a band, you're passionate about that band. You know, you're you're not doing it just because.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

It's it's not just another t-shirt, you know, it's that band's t-shirt. So um, you know, we wanted to connect with those people that are the most passionate. And so it's it's been a really fun thing. And honestly, it's taught us a lot about our brand and our customer. That's great.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

That sounds like it's been a win-win in a lot of ways. What are these collaborations with the musicians look like in terms of what they're responsible for? And then, you know, if you're comfortable sharing it, I'm just kind of curious from like an actual like deal structure standpoint. What do these partnerships look like?

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Yeah, so so what we do is we try to make it as easy as possible on the artists. We try to put together kind of a turnkey program. So what we do is we uh ask them, you know, depends on the artist how how whiskey knowledgeable they are. We say, look, we want to uh you can either tell us what like we have a conversation, you tell us what you like or don't like about different brands, different whiskeys, and we can come up with a handful of blends and send them to you based on that conversation you pick from that, or we can send you some components and actually sit with you and do a blending session. And so it's uh it's been fun just seeing how different artists want to interact with that process. And then we've got a graphic designer that's great. That he came from designing concert posters. That's how I found this guy. Did some amazing concert posters and said, you know, well, our brand is all about music and we want to connect with those people. Let's bring in somebody that does does this for a living. So uh we brought him in, and he's he's actually become our our graphic designer for everything we've done since. Um you know, it's it's been fun. Uh the the artist does they help with the whiskey, and then we you know they give us some uh artwork to play with, whether it's a a piece of merch or an album cover or something that they want our our designer to use. And then we'll put that together. Uh the deal structure is you know, it's typically a split. Okay, just a profit share basically. So it is it is not something that you know, and I tell people this up front, like this isn't anybody anything that anybody's gonna get rich off of. Um, you know, this is not something that these artists are doing it just for the money, you know. We're not doing it for the money. We and this is how we keep our these collaborations inexpensive as well. Um, you know, a lot of times you see collaborations or licensing deals that they're not the product's not worth the price. Reason for that, you typically take your price and then you add on the royalty fee. Uh that's what a lot of people do. So what we do though, we look at that that money that's going to the artist, we look at that as our marketing budget. You know, we say if if this product is a $50 product and has Hailstorm's name on it, it's because it's a $50 product. Like it's, you know, it it that's that's how it should be, and that's that's you know, we want people to taste it and be like, this was worth what I paid for it. Not this is not just a product that I paid for Hailstorm's name on it. So I think that you know the artists that we worked with, they appreciate that. They they get what we're trying to accomplish, they get that we're passionate about their fans and the music industry as a whole. And you know, that's why they worked with us. You know, we're not for this this type of deal stretcher, isn't for everyone. You know, we're we're not out there throwing out you know half a million dollars to go get you know some arena artist or something like that. We're doing this because we just want to connect with fans that are really passionate. And uh it's been interesting even seeing that, seeing how passionate some face fan bases are versus others. Um it's we learned very quickly, it is not about how many Spotify plays per month you have or how many Facebook followers you have. It is how many people are coming to your shows and spending money, and how many people are you know actively engaging with you all the time? How many fans do you have to have their you know have your logo tattooed on them? Yeah, those are the those are the types of fans and types of artists.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

What's been in terms of like operational standpoint, what's been the hardest or like most complicated part about this project from like a yeah, operational logistical standpoint, whether it's the artist collaborations or ski-specific packaging and label work or you know, producing all the supporting content assets and any like that tweaks you've made along the way to make it easier?

SPEAKER_01 37:53

There's a few things. Yeah, I think one is finding a template for the label, being able, you know, we started off and it kind of evolved and was we're making tweets and changes as we went with each artist, and then we realized, okay, let's if we can create a template, uh then you don't have to it's just a lot easier in general.

SPEAKER_00 38:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

And then, you know, it's already such a pain dealing with the TTP, they're so inconsistent with everything, and I can't begin to tell you how inconsistent they are on uh on on labels. And so if we're submitting, you know, 10 new labels with different artists, we get totally different responses on different things. But being able to templatize that process has really helped. And then on the distribution side, so we started off with okay, we're going to offer these products across the country, but these are small production, these are one-off things, like timing-wise, was we're spending so much time getting them registered and getting them set up in the distributor system and all that kind of stuff, to then do a one-off product that you're going to sell a handful of cases. It didn't make much sense. And so what we've done now is we pick, you know, we start off things through D2C and give it a couple months with that and see what's really doing well. And then we we have the data of when where those sales are coming from, and um we can then go to those markets and say, okay, yeah, this band has a strong following in these four markets. Yeah. We're going to then take the product into distribution, into retail in those markets. Yeah. That's been a much much cleaner way of doing it. Yeah, and and then the bands can grow their number of markets as they have a second release and third release and things like that. But there's infinite possibility with that. Starting off, it's definitely you know focusing uh just just for the sake of everyone's time.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

Yeah. You touch on the packaging and label templates and whatnot a little bit on a bit of a similar track. I think when we when you talk a few weeks ago, you mentioned you guys have been working on a rebrand. I don't think you guys have watched it yet. So as much as you're like comfortable talking about what's been the kind of thought process or our main goal behind what why you guys decided to do a rebrand in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Two things. One was, you know, I mentioned the Bad Sage series and how we learned a lot about the company uh through the Bad Sage series. We started to realize who our customer was and and who we wanted it to be. Um we realized that our current packaging didn't appeal to those people. You know, the we wanted something that was more music-centric and really told who we were through our label, through our bottle. If you look at our current design, it doesn't do that so much. And honestly, you know, what we've talked about a lot internally is we spent the first few years of the brand kind of doing what we needed to do, doing what you have to do to fit in in the whiskey category. But when we came out, you know, when the brand was created eight years ago at the very beginning, I mean, I can tell you from the retail side of things, when I was in retail back then, everyone was just chasing the legacy brands. You know, everyone was at that time was still trying to say, okay, these are the brands that are successful. How do we go take market share from them? And it wasn't about creating your own avenue and your own fan base, and it was it was just focused on that. I mean, everyone was just trying to fit into the bourbon market instead of stand out from it. So now over the last few years, that's changed. Yeah, now there's so much competition and so many different brands, and people are much more willing to go out of their way to try new stuff in the whiskey industry than they were eight years ago. Yeah. You know, it was a lot. I mean, I always say it, it it's kind of followed like the craft beer timeline, you know, where I saw it back when that boom was happening, where people went from always buying the same beer to I'm trying a new beer every time I'm coming in. The bourbon category became that way. Uh, people were looking to try new stuff, and so you didn't have to fit the mold anymore. And so we've been kind of discussing it for a while, and then the success of the Bad Stage series over the last two years kind of confirmed it for us. Yeah. You know, we we said it's it's like our brand is having the same journey as a person, which is you do what you need to do to fit in, and then at some point you realize, you know what, I can just be myself.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:55

And uh I want to do what what's passionate to me. And so myself and our uh Michael Nanoula, he's our uh chief commercial officer right now, and then uh Ari Sussman, our whiskey maker, the three of us kind of formed this little coalition uh where we've kind of been putting out what would make a brand that we would enjoy. The three of us are all passionate about music, but we have totally different tastes and styles, and so it was coming up with something that fit all of us that we could all get behind, and something that was kind of more universal. Yeah. And um, you know, we're just we're so passionate about it now, and the ideas are just flowing. It's it's crazy. I mean, every single day we are sending each other messages, ideas, like this is what about this? What about this? Like, we gotta do these kinds of buttons and giveaways, these kinds of shirts, and this would be really cool. Yeah. Um, you know, it's I had I had somebody that uh told me a great analogy recently. They said, you know, it's like when you know uh when you're going out with a group of friends and one of them's not there yet, and you're trying to decide on where to eat, and somebody goes, Well, let's go to this Italian place, and you go, No, you know, my friend, you know, so-and-so, he doesn't like that kind of food. You know, you know them so well that you know what their preference is. Right. So it's the same with a brand. Like if you create a brand that you know it so inherently well that you can then start making choices that fit with that, it's it's enlightening. It's uh you know, I like I said, it's really been an amazing journey to just see how easy the ideas flow now as opposed to before, because we were trying so hard to fit into a box that it was never meant for us, you know. And so now we're we've broken out of that and in July we'll be debuting into the world. And uh yeah, I can't wait because it's it's been such a fun time, honestly, just building this entire brand universe around it.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

So you had that three team that was kind of the behind the strategy from an actual execution standpoint, like doing the actual design pieces and also whatever kind of brand you know repositioning work that was done. Was that done with that internal designer or did you guys go with an external agency that you felt like could have more firepower to kind of holistic capabilities on that front?

SPEAKER_01 45:35

So we ended up working with so that designer that did concert posters that I talked about earlier. Yeah. He's with an agency. And so we just brought in his agency that he's with and said, you know, look, this is what we're going for. And um it was just it was funny though because the three of us we understood what we were going for so much that it was very specific what we were looking for and and it became us just saying okay we want this. Yeah. Yeah. We want it to be very much like this. You know, take this and bring it to life. And they they did a great job with it. Yeah you know and and now they've been so involved in everything that they now understand the brand in a way that they can now create graphits for us quickly that fit our our new aesthetic overall and that's been nice too just having somebody else that's you know it's so tough with an outside agency sometimes to have them understand like your brand vision and honestly the vibe the culture you know that's so tough you can try to put it into words on a on a brand guide but you know somebody's just gotta get it and they gotta be around you enough to understand it and be in that culture. And you know this guy having you know he's I he used to go to concerts back when I was put promoting concerts 20 years ago and he's still going to concerts and he you know he does these concert posters and he he's in the same scene. He gets the the whole feel to it which uh I think makes a lot a lot of this a lot easier. And then right now we we're we're definitely uh you know we're bringing out some bringing in some outside help for things like setting up the new look for social media just trying to get trying to get that tone and that cadence of when to post what to post before we were just throwing stuff against the wall you know it was uh alright we like music we like whiskey anytime we see something cruel we're just gonna post it yeah it was there was no specific rhyme or reason behind anything and so just helping us to get more organized with with that we did a little uh social media blanking of the word evaluation but and we just comped ourselves to other brands and we were posting like four times as much as the other brands and it was just because we were just throwing stuff out there constantly and uh you know we weren't getting as good engagement and it was because it was just all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:29

So we're we're bringing in somebody to help with that for for a few months and um and then right now bring in somebody to help with uh just getting the initial POS and giveaways and you know that kind of stuff getting all that stuff ordered and you know there's so many vendors you have to deal with and it's uh it's a lot you know I one big thing and this is why you know the this relaunch we were calling it our volume two just playing off the music theme. Yeah you know this this whole volume two you know we could have tried to start it you know launch it months ago but uh we really really want to come out of the date with everything lined up like we want to come out of the date with you know I I keep saying this is our second chance at a first impression you know this is you know we want to to go out there the first time that we're going into stores and say all right these are our different display levels that we have these are our shelf talkers these are our boxes which is another thing that we didn't talk about but um you know boxes uh that's that should be eye catching for retailers um you know if you have a really cool box uh it can make people want to stack it up because it just looks good in their store yeah um you know I I want to have those things right out of the gate I want to have an ad campaign I want to have uh takeaways for consumers when they're doing when they're at a tasting you know um I want to have the website built and the social media you know the sub website the online ads I want that whole collectively to be this one vision and aesthetic um so that's that's what we're doing right now just trying to get all of that built out yeah I'm inside for everybody to kind of step into our our new brand universe yeah it's awesome but super exciting I mean yeah it sounds like you said a very clear vision in terms of you know why you wanted to go through this rebrand process.

SPEAKER_02 50:36

It seemed like others may not be as clear. So I'm just curious if I was running a marketing for a spirits brand told you I'm considering a packaging refresh like what questions might you ask me that would help me just even confirm is this right strategy should we even been doing a rebrand in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 50:53

Yeah so so a few things. So one would be earlier that that metric we talked about being able to see the actual health of your brand and is it connected with people um you know look at that. Number two figuring out once you decide that you're doing one you know I think that you should try to decide who are you what are you passionate about and then who are your customers and you know making that connection. Number three you know I think this is where a lot of people yeah they they get worried sometimes you get you get so caught up on I don't want to lose my old customers so I'm not going to make this change. Yep. Well if you had enough old customers you wouldn't be making a change in the first place. Yeah like um you know that's that's the reason you're making the change you know right so you know that's you gotta be willing to to take that chance and learn all the things that you've or take all the things you've learned about the industry you know about all the things that have changed since you first created that label and put them to use. You know it's uh there's there's no point in just making that tiny tweak that isn't going to be noticeable. Do it do it right yeah you know if we were looking at it originally and we were like well we're if we're already going to have to go through the whole process of submitting new labels to TTB and registering with all the distributors and all the states why would we not just say let's make new products let's you know like part of this has been you know it's not actually going to be even our same product mix it's a new product mix you know we've we've got very little carryover from the previous products um because we said okay what's new you know what's changed what are the what are the new consumer trends like why are we we don't have to be stut to what we did you know seven eight years ago we could yeah we can do new things yeah so yeah so that's that's been that's a problem those are those have been the big things I think to to learn about yourself and learn about your consumer and just get everything ready and go for it. You know I think if you're if you're passionate about it you know people always people used to always say authenticity and it became such a cheesy word and uh but I gotta say I I think I understand it so much more now with having gone through this process and I think that it will come through with the product and yeah with our story and with the results.

SPEAKER_02 53:46

Totally yeah I agree.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

Last question for you Ryan any brands or just kind of trends in the spirit space that you're kind of attracting or you're particularly excited about anything that jumps out at all yeah I think I think people trying to get away from being chasing after the legacy brands finally and I think you know seeing stuff that's where people are you know they're realizing you can you can be kind of a a lifestyle brand you know you you you know there's one brand that I I've I've I've enjoyed watching what they've been doing is uh film land spirits you know they've they've taken this like B movie poster sci-fi thing and put it on bottles and you know it's it's just creating this whole story around the brand that's different. You know it's it's attracting people that like whiskey and like that world. Yeah. You know building everything around it going all in towards that not just the whiskey world. And uh you know that's been really interesting. You know and then even seeing some of these uh like whiskey influencers and podcasters and things like that seeing them start their own brands now because they're able to do these little one-off things um you know it's it's it's tough to scale um and I've seen them find that out you know and um but they're finding the work the right ways and just doing these little drops here and there and um you know it's it's been really fun to watch them learn about the industry and and grow and and turn into real brands. And I mean there's a few of them now that it's it's been really cool to see.

SPEAKER_02 55:39

Yeah Ryan this has been awesome really appreciate the time I think uh I think you shared some rather really good valuable insights that people are going to really uh get a lot of value out of yeah where can people follow along where's the best place to follow along with you and and then also where's the best place to follow along with uh three chord as well yeah so uh threecordbourbon.com socials at three chord bourbon easy to find Facebook Instagram those are the the places where we're at the most um uh for me three chord ryan on uh instagram and then Ryan Gill on LinkedIn perfect awesome Ryan appreciate it's been great