This is probably the biggest piece of truth from the Allagash founder. SA breweries should take note…
Don’t be a mile wide and an inch deep. Jerry Sheehan, who runs a number of our distributors, told me this.
And we learned it the hard way. By 2005 we were selling about 5,000 barrels of beer in 30 states and frankly not doing a great job anywhere. Around then, we made the tough decision to walk away from a fair amount of this volume and pull back — eliminating territories where we did not think we could be competitive and relevant.
Now we’re selling 80,000 barrels of beer in 17 states, and I’m much prouder of the job we’re doing today in all of our markets. Better to do a great job in a small pond than a not-so-great job in a big pond.
I think every business has concepts like this that are so simple they easily are overlooked.
