{"id":1742,"date":"2015-09-23T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T16:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=1742"},"modified":"2016-02-26T13:40:17","modified_gmt":"2016-02-26T20:40:17","slug":"a-perfectly-hip-competitive-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2015\/09\/23\/a-perfectly-hip-competitive-market\/","title":{"rendered":"A Perfectly \u201cHip\u201d Competitive Market"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hipster. There is a lot of requirements for a person to be able to be associated with this word. Vintage clothing, vinyl records, interest in independent and underground bands. And craft beer. Many different industries have been impacted positively by this new movement, especially microbreweries residing in the beer universe. A microbrewery or craft brewer has been defined by the Brewers Association<\/a> as being \u201cthose that produce fewer than six million barrels a year and are less than 25 percent owned by a large beverage maker.\u201d The demand for these craft beers has been rising in the last few years as sales reportedly increased by 17.2 percent from 2012 to 2013. The supply has also matched demand as 1671 more microbreweries have appeared in just the last 5 years. The important question to ask here is, \u201cwhy isn’t every Joe Six-Pack with brewing experience trying to establish the next popular brewery?\u201d The market has profit written all over it: low barriers to entry and endless opportunity for growth. But there are strings attached to this seemly \u201cperfectly competitive market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rich Boyle, a co-founder of a highly popular Boston-based brewery, made a point in his interview with the New York Times<\/a>. His company rose to become the 12th largest microbrewery in the nation, but he isn’t reaping the reward anymore. He cashed out. The reason being a valid one. The time will come when a microbrewery looks to expand and expand, until they are a large company. The day this happens the brewery ceases to be a microbrewery and all the appeal of its exclusivity and obscurity disappears. This is not to say that a brewery cannot accomplish this, it simply means that the company now enters into a new market. With a new market comes new rules. The low barrier to entry becomes high and the market is filled with competitors that have significant control of that marketplace. Anheuser-Busch, SABMiller, and Heineken International are all examples of these macro-breweries that distribute millions of cases a day and, often own shares in smaller distributors and microbreweries. The result is that these companies directly and\/or indirectly control the distribution channels within this market. So here is the dilemma for any craft brewer looking to increase his profit; to be able to expand one’s place in the craft beer market they have to gain support from larger distributors and breweries. The microbrewery thus runs the risk of not only losing its current market as it expands, but it also faces fierce competition from very well established brands. Maybe Boyle had it right; cash out while the alternative college students and fanatic beer lovers still believe that your beer is new and hip because it probably won\u2019t always be!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hipster. There is a lot of requirements for a person to be able to be associated with this word. Vintage clothing, vinyl records, interest in independent and underground bands. And craft beer. Many different industries have been impacted positively by this new movement, especially microbreweries residing in the beer universe. A microbrewery or craft brewer has been defined by the Brewers Association as being \u201cthose that produce fewer than six million barrels a year and are less than 25 percent owned by a large beverage maker.\u201d The demand for these craft beers has been rising in the last few years Continue reading A Perfectly \u201cHip\u201d Competitive Market<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":489,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[334,333],"class_list":["post-1742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-market-expansion","tag-microbrewery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/489"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1742"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1744,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1742\/revisions\/1744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}