Episode 051A - How To Build A Successful Brewery Retail Apparel Program

This brewery is located in a county that until recently had been a dry county in central North Carolina. But in July 2008, voters decisively passed a referendum allowing beer, wine, and mixed beverage alcohol to be sold in the city for the first time in nearly sixty years. Almost 7 years later a schoolteacher and a Lowes manager who became friends, started to brew together and would eventually open the county’s first brewery EVER.   When they first opened the goal was to use inexpensive Gildan t-shirts with a 1 color logo on back to promote the brewery within the city. Later those shirts would evolve into the same branding available in several colors. Realizing their customers had one of each color of the same shirt, they had to start developing new designs that customers and travelers would want to buy and wear. Crafting the first couple of new designs after several of their more popular beers they began to see the sales of those shirts grow.

They needed to develop new designs on a regular basis and turn inventory of those designs faster.

Listen in as our guests share how they adopted the “buy less but buy more often” philosophy and soon began to sell through smaller quantities of apparel with new designs.