The Founding of Pa's Bier, Inc.

Addendum for Inspiring Importers.

You can't get there from here - almost!

After numerous requests for more information on founding one's own import business, I finally have relented, and am offering this general account of my further turmoils, but this time without a customary German beer.

With my typical optimism, I ploded on, confident that the worst was behind me. Firstly I approached BATF (The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) in Washington, D.C. which proved to be the initial, most inportant step. The import license was mandatory, and their delightful, ca. five-page form, was a total joy, - proof of adequate funding, mafia money was OUT, numerous personal references, equally as many business references, (business references from someone who had never had a business), - basically my total life history.

Following this BATF approval, they were not finished with me. They also have stringent labeling laws for alcoholic beverages, followed by California's Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) and Dept. of Conservation in California with their recycling regulations, and specific labeling, i.e.: the CRV or California RedemptionValue on each label. (Numerous states have regulations on recycling, refund aspects of the bottles, varying from 5 cents to 10 cents in Michigan, and of course not only registering the brands in that state, but also posting significant bonds.) This total process took about nine months, - what an ordeal to give birth to a new company! I forgot the California ABC license, including not only the normal information, but extremely specific information as to exactly where the beer was to be stored. Then, of course, a business license from the town in which you are working, and of course, the incorporation of the company. By this time, my daughter, the discoverer of Edelweiss in Austria, later the link to my storage problems, and now an attorney, set up the incorporation.

Strange coincidences happen, just as shit happens, but this is not always bad. (Do you know moral of the story of the little bird flying through a cold, blizzardly Russian winter storm?) Again my oldest daughter, who had helped me find Edelweiss in Austria was now a successful waitress, and two of her customers owned or at least supervised a large warehouse, coincidentally with a customs office on the premises. Even after a stressful day, they were still willing to talk with me, over their happy-hour cocktail, about the storing of my beer in their warehouse. Some people can never stop working! Let me call them Rick and Earl, because that's really what their names are.

Suspecting that my knowledge was limited, during this time-span I befriended a small, independent, but successful importer/distributor, hung around occassionally, and picked up valuable tid-bits. I guess that he liked me, because he eventually offered me his support to sell some of my product. (How do like that, no longer beer, but "the product!") When my beer arrived he admitted that he never thought that I would do it - honesty personified!. He also said that no one can make a living with only one product. With the latter, he was totally correct. Although he was distributing some of my beer, I also went to bars, restaurants, liquor stores, and sold some myself as well as personally delivering it. Well, as my wife said, it kept me off the streets, - well in good German/Austrian tradition, in beer bars! See The "Honey Bucket" Sales Approach .

Well with my contacts with the Austrian brewery, licenses in order in the U.S., storage problems solved, I still had to get the beer from there to here, and someone to broker it through customs. Through the warehouse, I was recommended to two different brokers, and obviously choose one of them. My tranportation problem, I totally forget how that materialized, - probably either from my warehouse connection, or from my friend, the importer/distributor. Being moderately fluent in German, I have always used a transport company, firstly in Germany, but now one in Austria, closer to my pick-up point. (Actually U.S. Freight Forwarders work with these identical foreign companies, and it would be easier for you to use one of them.)

Well, if you got this far, I'm confident tht you can solve the remaining concerns, money, paying for the product, establishing credit with the brewery, figuring out the P.O.S. you need, - P.O.S.? I didn't even know what that meant when I began! Along the way, don't forget to survey the field, and determine the possibility of moving sufficient product to keep you too "Off the Streets."

My final comment, at least for now: "you can't get there from here, - almost!

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