Sam Adams Touts their Low Market Share

The President of viastore came to me today and asked me to check out a commercial he had seen about Sam Adams beer - ironic because he's a pretty good teetotaler but regardless he thought the idea of Sam Adams promoting the fact that their market share was so low was an interesting topic.

I did some research, read some articles and interviews with Sam Adams CEO, Jim Koch.

Comparing themselves to the Porsche brand, Jim Koch describes Sam Adams: "Our destiny is to remain very small. We don't make a mass-produced or mass-marketed beer. We make a very flavorful beer that really only appeals to 5% of beer drinkers. If we were a car we'd be a Porsche. Everyone is familiar with it, but the market share is probably what ours is. We make quality, and that's really the American beer drinker's only hope going forward: to take pride in the quality of American beer because the quantity is owned by foreigners."

How does this translate to my business? How does this translate to your business?

viastore has always sold on value, not price. viastore prides itself in being creative, having a strong engineering force, being flexible and nimble, in the ability to manufacture custom products as if they were standard. But is that what our customers want? Do they want material handling equipment and systems that are built specifically to their application or do they want a system like their competitors, their neighbors, that's cookie cutter, standard, proven? You could argue pros and cons just like you could argue that it's better to make Bud Light because the majority of people drink that over Sam Adams.

As the American buyer becomes more and more overwhelmed with choices, as more and more technical and manufacturing jobs get shipped overseas and as more and more processes become automated attention is being shifted toward the creative, the aesthetically pleasing, how can we create value for a commodity like conveyor? With value adds like creativity, beauty, environmentally friendly, clever engineering and design. By creating art, just like brewing a high quality batch of Sam Adams brew.