The SB Podcast: why distribution needs a shake-up
Why does this matter?
Tipple is a BevTech startup solving D2C/B2B distribution infrastructure for alcohol brands, with founder insights on building demand-first and navigating distribution challenges that directly apply to beverage startup founders.
Highlights
“People talk about, ‘Oh, you need distribution first’. No, you need demand first.” Eoin Bara, founder and CEO of digital distribution platform Tipple, talks about the key challenges facing brands looking for distribution in today’s spirits market. “I was pretty burnt out with it at that point,” says Bara, while discussing what it was like to sell the gin brand he founded and built from the ground up, Mór Irish Gin. “I was at a point where I just couldn’t do it anymore, between the cash-flow worries, between Covid and trying to rebuild after Covid, and all this sort of stuff. “It was just one of those points where I was just like, it just needs to go to somebody else who can actually put the time and energy into this that I don’t have. “And plus, I was so excited about Tipple, it was kind of hard to focus on building a brand because there’s hundreds of brands, thousands of brands, but there’s nobody who’s solved this big problem, and we could make such a positive impact on a lot of brands’ lives.” The big problem Bara saw was flexible solutions for direct-to-consumer (D2C) and business-to-business (B2B) distribution for spirits brands – which he felt first hand while growing Mór Irish Gin. That’s where the idea for Tipple was born. “Tipple is the infrastructure for the alcohol industry,” Bara explains. “It basically allows an alcohol brand to sell online from their own store. We also plug into marketplaces and do other things as well. “The idea is to make your brand as widely reachable as possible. You’ve made a great product. Now, let’s go get some sales. “If there’s demand, I shouldn’t just be leaving money on the table because I don’t have a distributor or I can’t sell from there, or the shipping is too expensive. The idea is that we want to make brands accessible everywhere, and what we do for that is we handle all the VAT, the excise, the compliance, the picking, the packing (at least from one of our bonded warehouses) – you just focus on sales. “And then what we do for distributors and brands as well is we enable B2B. So we join up all the systems to make it possible to get data to actually see what’s happening in your business in real time. “For distributors, we just generally try and make distributors’ lives easier. And for brands, we enable international business to business.” During the latest episode of The Spirits Business Podcast, Bara goes into further detail about the infrastructure he has created with Tipple – but remains very clear, this is not about replacing traditional distributors. “The way I look at it, is it’s an ecosystem. It’s a very fragile ecosystem, everything has to work together in order to make it all possible,” Bara says. “The idea here is to de-risk it for distributors. While we work with distributors, the plan is to go, ‘OK, well, this gets to a point where it’s not economically feasible to do Tipple anymore’. It'll then go through a traditional distributor to get into retail, get into all these other places.” Bara also talks in detail about what it was like to found and build a brand to the point of sale, and shares candid insights into what he’d do differently if he could go back and do it again. The full episode with Tipple’s Bara is available to listen to on The Spirits Business Podcast via all major streaming platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. Last week, we shared the full conversation from this year’s International Women’s Day panel talk, which covered mentorships in detail and how to secure more funding for women-founded businesses.
The Spirits Business
