America: one dream, but not one market.

From the outside, America can look like the obvious growth market for an international alcohol brand. It is large, relatively affluent and culturally influential. The biggest retailers operate across multiple states, and national distributors appear to offer a straightforward route to scale.

That apparent simplicity is deceptive. Many of the most expensive mistakes begin with assumptions that seem entirely reasonable. A brand succeeds at home, appoints an importer or distributor, secures a respectable number of listings, and believes it has entered the US market. Usually it has only reached the starting line, and already spent considerably more than the spreadsheet suggested.

These are not lessons from a textbook. They look obvious only after you have learned them the hard way, normally while standing in an airport wondering why a product everybody loved in London is refusing to move in Dallas.

Lesson 1. The United States is not one market

Commercially, culturally and, in beverage alcohol especially, regulatorily, America is a collection of different markets wearing one very large trench coat. What works in Texas may not work in California. A proposition that connects in New York may need a different occasion, price point or sales approach in Florida.

So the question is not how to launch in America. It is where in America this particular brand has the strongest right to win first. The largest or most fashionable markets are not automatically the best starting points; their shelves and distributor books are already crowded with well-funded competitors.

Twisted Tea built its early momentum in rural New Hampshire and Maine before pursuing markets like Montana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, becoming a national brand before properly penetrating California, Texas or Florida. Surfside grew from Philadelphia's existing iced-tea culture and, by 2024, had reportedly sold 4.9 million cases to become the country's second-largest spirits-based RTD. A smaller market where people care can be worth far more than a famous one where you are product number forty-seven.

Lesson 2. Distribution is not demand

A purchase order is not consumer demand. A listing is not a sale. A thousand doors mean very little if the product is sitting in a warehouse or being discounted because nobody built the reason to buy it. The real evidence is velocity: how quickly it sells, whether consumers return, whether accounts reorder, and whether the economics hold after discounts, samples, freight and trade investment.

Boston Beer met this distinction expensively with Truly. When hard-seltzer growth slowed sharply in 2021, it recorded $196.4 million of direct and indirect volume-adjustment costs, including excess inventory built for growth that did not arrive. Sell-in can create the appearance of growth. Sell-through determines whether it is real.

Lesson 3. Your distributor is not your sales team

A good distributor is an essential partner, providing warehousing, logistics, account access and an established sales infrastructure. But even the best distributor carries a portfolio of brands, each competing for limited attention. Your brand will rarely be its first priority simply because it is yours.

For more than five years Tito's was essentially a one-man operation, with most of the early business in Texas and distributors extending the route rather than replacing the work of building demand. The supplier still has to create the plan, identify the accounts that matter, equip the distributor's team and maintain a disciplined operating rhythm. A distributor can help you scale momentum. It cannot manufacture it on your behalf.

Lesson 4. National distribution can become a vanity metric

Colouring more states on a map looks like progress. But twenty markets with weak velocity can be worth less than two cities where the brand has genuine relevance, visible placement and repeat purchase. Every additional market spreads inventory, management attention, trade spend and working capital. Density is often more valuable than reach.

BrewDog USA had distributed into 31 states, then during 2024 eliminated sales in 19 and ended the year selling in 14, explicitly choosing to concentrate on more profitable markets. A large footprint and a productive business are not necessarily the same thing.

Lesson 5. Home-market success is not US product-market fit

Success elsewhere is useful evidence, not proof the proposition transfers unchanged. Pack sizes, pricing conventions, occasions, retailer expectations and the competitive set can all shift. Suntory saw New York bartenders using expensive Yamazaki in cocktails, and rather than correcting the market, developed Toki, a more accessible, versatile blend for highballs, launching it in the US first in 2016. The heritage stayed Japanese; the product's role was informed by American behaviour.

Localisation is not the same as abandoning identity. Protect what makes the brand distinctive, and be flexible about how that value is expressed. The objective is not to make the brand generically American. Nobody needs another product covered in stars, stripes and vague references to disruption.

Lesson 6. The spreadsheet never captures all the friction

US entry nearly always takes longer and costs more than the plan suggests. It is rarely one dramatic expense, but the accumulation of smaller demands: inventory, samples, freight, warehousing, compliance, brokerage, distributor margins, retailer programmes, promotions, resets, travel, people and delayed payment. Growth itself consumes cash; a large order can create a working-capital problem long before it produces a profit.

So a sales forecast cannot be separated from a cash-flow plan. Every stage of expansion should answer three questions: what has to be funded, when does the cash return, and what happens if the product sells more slowly than expected. Optimism is necessary when building a brand, but it is not a working-capital strategy.

Lesson 7. You need accountable people on the ground

The United States cannot be managed effectively as a side project from another country. Someone has to visit the accounts, understand what is really happening, connect sales activity to inventory and make decisions quickly. That does not mean building an expensive national organisation on day one; a lean team of experienced operators is often far more effective. But lean cannot mean absent.

You can oversee the US remotely. You cannot truly operate it remotely. At some point somebody has to get on the plane, walk into the store, and discover the product is on the bottom shelf behind a cardboard display for something else.

Lesson 8. Focus beats scale, especially at the beginning

Choose the markets where you have a credible advantage. Prioritise the accounts that can prove the proposition. Concentrate resources behind the products and occasions most likely to win, and let genuine consumer behaviour, not executive enthusiasm, decide what expands next.

Skrewball began as a popular shot in the founders' Ocean Beach bar in San Diego, became a packaged whiskey in 2018, passed 500,000 nine-litre cases by 2022, and drew a majority investment from Pernod Ricard the following year. Focus creates density, density creates visibility, visibility supports velocity, velocity produces reorders, and reorders create the evidence to justify expansion. Launching everywhere and hoping the winners identify themselves is not a strategy. It is a particularly expensive form of market research.

The real lesson

None of this means international brands should be cautious about America. The opportunity is real, and the market rewards brands that arrive with a differentiated product, sufficient capital and a disciplined operating model. But America does not reward ambition alone. It rewards relevance, repetition and execution, and brands that know the difference between access and demand, between activity and progress, and between being widely available and genuinely wanted.

The US is not a market you conquer through confidence, coverage or the enthusiastic application of retailer logos to a presentation. It is a market you earn, account by account, consumer by consumer, and reorder by reorder.

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