Sommeliers Choice Awards 2024 Winners
Craft Distributors
Category: Spirits Wholesaler
Country: United States
Date:01/11/2020
Craft Distributors is an independent craft liquor exclusive wholesaler dedicated to helping small craft distillers build their brands and sell their products.
Craft Distributors is currently building a portfolio of small batch, great tasting, award winning spirits. Specifically, we are focused on building partnerships exclusively with brands that win tasting competitions. Craft Distributors has an on-site and off-site sales team. Our focus is customer service and quick fulfillment. If you have an interest in distributing your spirits in Georgia, then we are interested in you.
We know first-hand that new and existing brands face challenges finding distribution in Georgia and we want to change that. We launched our own brand, Rum Dog Rum, in 2017. We spent the past several years seeking a successful distribution relationship in Georgia with no success. Despite winning fourteen consecutive tasting competitions, including Double Gold in the 2020 Fifty Best Rums, Silver with a score of 91 in the 2019 London Spirits Competition, Platinum and Best in Show in the 2018 World Spirits Competition and Double Gold and Best in Show in the 2017 New York World Spirits Competition, we could not secure a distribution franchise in Georgia.
What we learned about Georgia’s three-tier system is that there is a significant bottleneck between suppliers and retailers. There are thousands of brands and thousands of points of sale, but there are only thirteen existing spirits distributors in Georgia. We concluded that if you can’t join them, beat them. So, we amended our federal license and founded our own spirits distribution company in the greater Atlanta area.