Four Roses Bourbon Bulk Printing Success Story
Four Roses Bourbon Drives Brand Awareness and Increases Print Efficiencies With BrandMuscle
Challenge
Founded in Kentucky in 1888, Four Roses Bourbon has grown into one of the leading bourbon distilleries in the United States, with year-over-year sales growth of 13% in a declining category. A planned $23-million warehouse expansion in 2024 will increase their bottle storage capacity and support increased demand. Although the volume and complexity of their print POS items kept increasing as they added distributors, the company still managed their large sales teams’ POS orders with Excel spreadsheets, for all campaigns, across the U.S. That system involved too much email correspondence, too much oversight, and it generated excess print orders as campaigns changed seasonally for different markets.
The company’s busy marketing specialist managed POS for all sales and marketing across the company. When reps ordered new POS, the marketing specialist gathered each order’s details and shipping addresses, then submitted that information to print. Excel reports couldn’t show Four Roses where their print jobs sat within the cycle of production. Excel spreadsheets were difficult to circulate, they provided no communication about tracking information, and no opportunity to bulk orders to reduce costs. BrandMuscle recognized an opportunity to streamline their POS system by consolidating it onto one centralized, organized platform.
Solution
BrandMuscle’s Consolidator solution simplified everything, saving time, tracking accountability, monitoring spend, and reducing costs and waste.
With its structured ordering process, Consolidator let’s sales reps log into their existing BrandMuscle platform to place orders directly in the system, rather than having to log in to multiple platforms. Unlike Excel, Consolidator automatically formats files the way that production teams need them to go to print. Consolidator lets users pre-populate forms with order details. Where on- and off-premise orders are usually managed by separate teams and in separate tools, Consolidator lets Four Roses support both on- and off-premise in one order. Consolidating in this way allows separate teams to have their print pieces produced and delivered more precisely within a particular timeframe, improving speed to market and at a lower unit cost compared to placing individual orders.
While providing transparency into the production process and tracking details, Consolidator also provides historical information about what the market has done in previous months, which was very helpful in telling Four Roses who they printed for, where the POS items went, how many of each particular item they ordered.
Results
$91K
in cost savings
36%
reduction in unit cost
116K
average number of units per order
85
average number of different shipping locations per order
8
average number of different items in an order
45%
increase in print volume 2021 vs. 2022
“I love it! Consolidator is going to be a real value to the national sales team and eliminate my existing challenges within the Excel report we use to gather these orders.”
Printing with BrandMuscle also limits waste. We’re not printing 500 of something we know is not going to be used; we’re ordering as-needed. It helps us be more eco-friendly.”
Ellen Redmon, Marketing Specialist, Four Roses