North Coast Brewing Company Senior Vice President and National Director of Sales, Doug Moody, recently shared insight with Brewer Magazine on acquiring and maintaining overseas distribution. An excerpt from Brewer Magazine’s article is as follows:

North Coast Senior Vice President Doug Moody thinks the demand for craft beer worldwide is continuing to grow. The brewery’s export game really unfolded after its Russian Imperial Stout, Old Rasputin, won a gold medal in Sweden. Since then, the brewery has expanded its international territories to a few European nations along with several “closer” to it in Asia.

“I think as palates change and people are trying new and different things, I think the American craft beer market [over there] is ripe,” he said. “I would’ve never guessed that in a market like South Korea would my number one beer I would sell there would be Old Rasputin.

“A lot of people think of it as a winter beer but South Koreans drink as much in July as they do in January. So I think they’re passionate people and when they like something they go after it.

“That’s kind of what has been good for us about that market, a lot of our other export markets as well.”

Moody said marketing their product over there is much different. The sustainability story that can be important to Americans isn’t as successful over there and Moody said North Coast relies on their distribution partners to know how to sell the beer properly.

“We’ve got certain dollar amounts per case that we allocate to their marketing of our products and we basically kind of stay out of their way,” he said. “We don’t try to dictate the terms that they do that in.

“It’s still more about getting those consumers who have that discretionary income to drink really great beer from the US.”

Read Brewer Magazine’s full article.