A Muse Idea ?

[Flagman]

After reading the thread from Kamakiri, I had an idea about a muse.

I'm from Belgium and we are known a bit for being a country with lots of different sorts of beers (around 115 breweries with +- 800 sorts). Perhaps it could be an idea to create a website where americans interested could buy Belgian beers.
I haven't really looked into this, but just wanted to see if there are people around here that know more about this market?

Some problems that would come to my mind at first thought:

- license for importing alcoholic drinks in the USA ?
- price for sending the stuff to the USA, costs would be big probably if every order would be sent from Belgium directly to the customer. Perhaps a warehouse would help in the USA and then send it from there.
- finding a niche into the market (perhaps people who drink belgian beers are allready a small niche?).
- Is it legal to sell beer online in the USA?

Pro's:

- from ordering online to mailing, everything could happen without much interfering, so it could be something worth to look into.
- buying price in Belgium should be lower then in the USA, no idea how it would be with the importing taxes and delivery fees though.

So just a quick thought I had after reading kamakiri his post about his little trucks. Anyone who can point me to online distributers that offer this kind of stuff, so I can look into prices or so?

[Sven]

How about shipping? Unless it's in a can it has a huge chance of breaking...

[foodpassion]

Have a look at this online belgian shop (http://shop.belgianshop.com/)

There's a few others around as well

[Flagman]

Sven, yes that was my idea (probably not good explained though), shipping a pallet to an overseas warehouse from where it is distributed in the USA.
The distributing should be cheaper I think when shipped to and then distributed in the USA instead of directly from Belgium. The work could go all automated I think, I know some beerdistributers around that would send it overseas and from there it could be distributed. With online ordering etc, it describes a good muse imho. Testing could also happen as described in Tim's book with a "not in stock" atm message ie.

foodpassion, I have seen the site allready, it was one of the first sites that popped up when I made a quick search. The thing is that this site is very expensive, so I'm not sure if a lot of people actually order from there.

All in all, perhaps a possible muse. But probably hard to set up alone from Belgium out I think.

I have some ideas for a website in mind allready, like adding articles about the beers offered and possible meals you can cook with the beer.

[foodpassion]

Sounds like an export business. If you have the contacts in the breweries and they are happy for you to act as an exporting agent, you'll find companies in the US, Australia (where I am) & New Zealand keen on importing the beer and distributing it to liquor retailors, pubs, restuarants etc... Any big beer drinking country for that matter.

I know in Australia & New Zealand, there's is increase in consumption from micro breweries (smaller beer producing companies). Belgian beer is quite popular in both countries.

If you have any questions in regards to legal requirements in Australia or NZ, please feel free to ask.

[kamakiri]

Thanks for the mention. Not sure what related to beer, but I am glad I could help.

With your idea, there are a ton of logistics issues. That by no means is a deal breaker though. The financial commitment is pretty big to start up though. A friend of mine does there here in Japan. Imports micro brews. The only way he cam make it work is by renting a warehouse and importing by the container. That makes one big, non regulation barrier to entry.

Instead of starting out with your own selection of beers, how about just outsourcing everything? There are many beers already in the US, and with a little creativity, you could get them to ship for you.

One thing is guaranteed: Beer sells. No if's, and's, or but's. The sheer number of liquor shops tells us that it is a viable product. It is not the product. I have had some horrid Belgian beer, and I have had some good stuff. You could probably find people who liked the taste beer that was filtered through a horse.

Instead of going with the licenses, and cash outlay, find a company to work with that will ship the beer you sell. you might have to bend your principals a bit, but if someone came to you with money and wanted to order Papst Blue Ribbon, would you turn them down?

Prove your sales ability first, then expand. Know that if you can actually sell beer online, you will have a muse for life.

[Flagman]

kamakiri, after reading about your muse, I was thinking about what, here in Belgium, would be like your Japanese trucks, to export to other countries. Cheap here and expensive there. I came up on the beer idea pretty quickly and after a quick price check on the site mentioned by foodpassion I shared the idea here.

Instead of starting out with your own selection of beers, how about just outsourcing everything? There are many beers already in the US, and with a little creativity, you could get them to ship for you.

Instead of going with the licenses, and cash outlay, find a company to work with that will ship the beer you sell. you might have to bend your principals a bit, but if someone came to you with money and wanted to order Papst Blue Ribbon, would you turn them down?
I guess you mean then the present beers that are allready imported by the brewers themselves and then getting a wholesaler or so to distribute them for me as the orders come in? That could probably work, if I know where and with who they process there goods once inside the USA.

@foodpassion, the idea of the breweries acting as export agent is good, but without any site or a single sell, I doubt they would take me seriously :).

[kamakiri]

Yep, that is exactly what I mean. It doesn't have all the glory and coolness of being able to say I am a beer importer, but the trade off is that you don't have to come up with $10,000 to start it either.

If there is one universal law of muses, it is that they change. They evolve the same way a business would. The mythical 4HWW only comes after priming the pump with hundreds of hours of prep work. In a lot of cases the muse turns out to be a full time job, but must people, after a bit of LD find that they now enjoy what they are doing, eliminating the problem they bought the book for in the first place.

In your case, it is not the beer. We know beer sells. The real question is: Can you sell beer?

Get that answered, and we can go sailing in South East Asia next June.

[kamakiri]

http://www.kegworks.com/