We are looking to create enterprise software that allows liquor distributors to start accepting orders online via the web and mobile. This frees up sales reps to do high level sales activities and lets distributors save money by being able to service more accounts.
P.S. We are looking for a rails developer to hire if anyone is looking for some hourly work.
With that said, it would be cool if you could integrate with liquor management systems (i.e. BevSpot or BarMetrix) to somehow automate the entire process. So when they ran their inventory it would automatically create events and reorder the required products.
We actually have our system setup to work with Bevinco, which comes in and takes your inventory in the middle of the night and then generates an inventory report. We have a quick order page that matches that so they can just run down a list (opposed to driving through a catalog, which is our main way).
Our plan is to eventually have inventory be apart of our system so we can have machine learning on par levels, consumption, ordering.
A couple years ago a new bar opened up across the street from me. At the same time, a liquor store down the street was going out of business and put most of the liquor on clearance. The new bar owner filled me in on the state of liquor in Massachusetts. Apparently the system is super controlled by distributors. Even if he wanted to go down to the liquor store and buy 100 bottles of liquor on clearance, he couldn't. He can only buy through a licensed distributor. Some of the liquor he stocked was actually more expensive through the distributor than it was from retail liquor stores in the area. The industry has special controls in place, like special caps on dealer-distributed liquor. He joked about buying some of the clearance liquor and pouring it into the bottles. It was pretty clear that I was paying higher prices because of the distributor-controlled market.
Massachusetts seems to have some of the most strict alcohol laws around. Unlike neighboring states like New Hampshire, we can't order wine from wherever we want online. This means that many of the wines that I'd like to drink aren't available to me since no one in the area distributes them. Some people get around this by shipping wine to friends in nearby states or by traveling to places and shipping cases back via UPS marked "tiles + olive oil".
They seem to be solving this problem from the restaurant management side, which builds the demand-side of the marketplace, making it easier for them to sell distributors on the supply side: https://www.bevspot.com/distributors/
We aren't looking to change the way alcohol is distributed, just offer a tool to take orders. There are a bunch of distributors that have already built their own ecommerce ordering solutions and have found them to work well.
Are the distributors and wholesalers going to save more/make more money by using your software? How?
The problem is that all ordering and product info is then reactive to the rep. You can't login and see prices or products available, you have to reach out to your rep to answer questions.
The other side is that reps are busy and driving around all day, so they often don't respond by order cut off time. Our system helps take away these manual tasks and let hem do more selling.
2) Distributors spend $100k-$1mm each year paying employees to take orders for house accounts. Our system allows them to cut down on this labor cost. It also allows them to reach more accounts as each sales rep might only be able to service so many accounts. If we can automate part of it, they can do more selling to more accounts.
Many wholesale & distributor businesses seem to operate this way, but the reason is rarely due to lack of available technology solutions... Just a thought worth thinking about.
How big is this market?
The distributors get to streamline how orders are placed and have records of them. They also get to save money by servicing house accounts that might rely on telesales to take orders.
Are there any legal hurdles with scaling this across state lines?
Yea, there are things to take into account with certain states related to pricing, etc.
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Why did you pick this idea to work on?
PS Nice TLD.
How does Walmart/Costco/Big grocery store chain place orders for liquor now?
A handful of chains have developed systems to create PO's, but a majority just rely on sales reps to service the account.
Our goal is to go back to distributors and ask for integrations once we have the orders to back it up.
