GreatVines Helps Craft Producers Become Attractive Acquisition Targets

Using automation tools for beverage selling in the 3-tier system helps suppliers/producers and distributors reach their sales and marketing goals.  As we are keen on pointing out, the use of a platform like GreatVines is especially good at helping emerging organizations to expand more quickly and efficiently, improving the quality of the goals they set as well as the processes and practices needed to achieve them.  Sometimes, GreatVines does such a great job at helping its customers succeed, that the success of a burgeoning provider attracts the attention of a larger player seeking to make beneficial acquisitions.  Here are two instances of GreatVines supporting the growth of craft providers to such an extent that they were acquired for princely sums.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the acquisition of former GreatVines customer, High West by Constellation Brands Inc. for an estimated $160 million. Constellation Brands was surely attracted by High West’s double-digit annual growth over the last three years.  The kind of growth that users of GreatVines beverage selling solutions are frequently empowered to produce.

In a similar instance the Wall Street Journal recently reported on the acquisition of “fast-growing Deep Eddy Vodka”, also a GreatVines customer, by Heaven Hill Brands, the privately held Kentucky-based group. While the exact details of the acquisition were not disclosed, industry analysts suggest the purchase of Deep Eddy was valued at between $165 million and $300 million. It is safe to assume the 130% increase in volume to 330,000 nine-liter cases in 2015 and to half a million cases in 2016 were among the factors making Deep Eddy an attractive target for buy-out.

While neither High West nor Deep Eddy likely elected to implement GreatVines specifically to drive their respective organization towards acquisition, it is difficult to argue that the GreatVines platform didn’t play a role in the these events. The work they were able to Plan, Execute and Measure with GreatVines proved their value to their suitors. The efficiency, visibility, control and usability of GreatVines beverage selling solutions certainly supported the exceptional growth rates of both these producers and that is what ultimately made them so attractive to the larger players in the industry who are always looking out for new labels to absorb.

It is also very likely that the detailed records and reporting enabled by GreatVines was very useful in validating the financial and operational health and activities of these two recent acquisitions – making the process of acquisition much more tangible and verifiable. It is believed that proving real-time KPI data like key account distribution, visibility, promotion and repeat orders with real information from GreatVines is worth its weight in gold when negotiating a valuation.  Something to think about.