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Thx for all the help Carl, we really appreciate the coorective mail. We will upload everything by tomorrow. Cheers, Urbain
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If the so called ’pirates’ can purchase your beer in BE and release it on the free market and make a large profit, your beer is to cheap in Belgium. That’s really the problem. Low demand and low prices in BE but high demand abroad. Simply triple the prices in Belgium on the ’rare’ beers & play it straight w/ the US import market. Heck, you’ve indicated nobody in BE wants to carry your beer anyway.
I can’t imagine the purchase of alcohol online from a Belgian brewery shipped via US mail is legal. I would think this violates federal import/tax rules, federal mail rules, and various State rules.
Setting up and an illegal transaction over the Internet that directly competes w/ legitimate US bottle shops and other breweries that pay the price to us a legitimate Importer w/ proper State licenses is a weird way to stop the Pirates.
I truly believe you are acting in good faith but I’m not sure your approach is any more noble or legal.
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To OldStyleCubFan,
Belgium and Europe are total free markets. Everybody can buy and sell from anybody. By that I mean that some distributors do carry some of our beers but without contracts. If there is demand, they are free to buy. By that I mean too that a private can buy between 10 or a 100 crates, nobody will look up. Prices are not that bad, it is the system that sucks.
On our webshop it is impossible to buy more than one crate per time and per Ip address. Some of the brands we sell, it is even impossible to buy more than 6 bottles at a time & per IP.
What do you prefer? The system before where 1 person out of Belgium would buy a 100 crates and then sells it to anybody through ebay for 50$ a bottle? Or the new situation where anybody from anywhere can buy between 1 and 6 bottles only and at a fair market price?
We have set up a webshop for I guess +- 230 countries, not USA only. As I already said in the past, it is not our goal to sell our production through the shop, or compete with importers, distributors and shops. Due to its availability everywhere on the globe and at a fair price , piracy will be discouraged through the brands we carry. And if every Belgian brewery would copy our actual strategy, piracy would be dead by now.
We need to learn and know more about the global market. With 3 weeks of activity, 99% of our online shop customers come from other countries than the USA. Most of them are Europeans and Africans. You can hardly state that we are competing with you over a 1% market share.
With us being not active, where do you think they would buy? I honestly think they would buy on the grey market. There can be a lot of reasons, ignorance, unavailability, easiness,etc...
However, if you are willing to co-operate with us, mail me your web shop address, we can inform that 1%, it is cheaper to buy direct from you. If you are an importer as you say, importing more could mean more availability, less grey market.
We truly believe, and if we can reach everybody out there who was buying legal or illegal from pirates until yesterday, informing them on the existence of a more democratic and honest market, this through us and other legal connections, making unavailable beers more available for everybody, we will seriously slow down the grey market.
That is what I call a noble activity.
On the other hand, to achieve goals, one has to be active, by doing nothing, the actual situation will only grow worse.
Maybe your government could start by shutting down all illegal Ebay activities, if it were to be illegal as you say. To my knowledge and believe Ebay is an American based company. That would be a good start.
Maybe our government should go after all privates that do illegal business on Ebay in Belgium, that would be another good start.
But nobody does nothing... in the meantime it is frustrating for a small manufacturer to see that whatever he does to improve availability, his products stay unavailable. Normal, some people buy it all, due to the market system in place, and then sell it 100 times the price. You call that noble? I don’t, that is why we decided to give it a try. Maybe we are wrong, and we will not succeed, but at least, we will have tried.
cheers, Urbain
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I’m always mightily amused whenever I hear Americans rave about the "free market" & its Holy Principles, and then are confronted with their own laws concerning import, distribution and sales.
Some of those must have been written by the lawyers on the Al Capone payroll...
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There are still plenty of things to complicate the so-called "free market" as it pertains to trade between the US and Europe. Just ask farmers. And when it comes to beer you are looking at two different markets.
Yes, it is possible for a Belgian brewery to survive almost entirely on exports to the U.S. But is that wise?
Sure, at the moment there are desperate US geeks willing to pay outrageous sums for a bottle. Is that the sort of demand on which you can build a long-term business plan?
Just asking.
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Why would Struise want to kill a growing Belgium market by tripling our prices? This would be suicide...
Why would Struise need to punish its standard Belgian consumers and beergeeks for two hands full of opportunists that are spoiling the official market now?
If 99% of our webshop activity goes to Europe & Africa, that means we do have a real problem there. Either there are not enough importers and distributors who do carry our brands on both continents and/or too much grey market is going on.
If 1% only goes to the USA, that means Shelton Brothers is doing a hell of a good job over there, so consider yourself lucky.
There is more official Struise beer abroad than in Belgium, but the Belgian market is growing steadily for Struise beers too. Indeed I’ve indicated in time no-one wanted to carry our brands in Belgium, but this is slowly changing too...
Our goal is to keep everybody happy while trying to kill the grey market, because nobody else does it in our place!
cheers, Urbain
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Just to be clear, I’m not an importer. I was just struck by how your efforts to stop the resale on eBay in the name of good seems to disrespect licensed bottle shops, licensed distributors, and other foreign breweries that go the legal route to sell beer in the US.
Do you plan to sell & ship beers direct from the brewery to US consumers without US label approval?
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Urbain, I tried to register (Account name ’FatPhil’, as here), but never received the confirmation e-mail. There was a + sign in my e-mail address, maybe that was the problem. My cellar is emptying currently, and I’d very much like to stock it with many of the beers you have on offer. If you could investigate that registration e-mail issue, I’d be most grateful.
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Hi Phil,
I tried to call you but you were not available. The info that I found on your email being "pc+struise@asdf.org" is probably an error. Maybe you could send me a PM with your correct email address so I can arrange your problem. Thx & cheers, Urbain
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I don’t believe US label approval is needed if the transaction is not taking place in the US...
Also, it doesn’t seem to me that the amount of bottles Struise could sell on line ( several liters a day?) would have any effect on or be competition against the US importers, who are currently selling by far the largest portion of Struise beer globally. I think the web store service is meant to be an "annex" to the bigger picture. For example, a lot of Black Albert did come stateside, but not every state got it. The new web store would give the opportunity to someone who lives in a "No Struise" zone (New Jersey has no Black Albert) to purchase bottles at a fair price and have them shipped.
IMO and all that jazz, of course.
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thx, cheers, Urbain 