Brewbound Live 2021 - Livestream Studio: Reuben Katz, Senior Business Development Director, NVISION

Justin Kendall [00:11] Hey everyone. Welcome to a special Brewbound Live sponsor interview. My name is Justin Kendall and I'm the editor of Brewbound. And today, I'm joined by Ruben Katz, senior Business Development director for Envision, a Chicago-based marketing supply chain provider. Ruben, thank you. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2 [00:29] Well, thanks. Glad to be here.

Justin Kendall [00:32] We're psyched to have you here and psyched to have you sponsoring Brewbound Live. Um, Ruben, can you give us a quick overview of some of the services that Envision provides for our viewers out there who may not be familiar with y'all?

Speaker 2 [00:45] Of course, uh, Envision is a marketing supply chain company, and what that means is that we help companies like your audience to better manage their point of sale activity at retail. A lot of those companies have a tendency to want to manage the task-based burdens of marketing execution like vendor management, item development, uh, order management, and things in that supply chain by Themselves without the help of companies like ours and what we bring to the party is a lot of leverage in the procurement area, insights and innovation through our vendor breadth, and consolidation of shipments to improve distributor service levels. And so along those lines we're able to create value and help them sell more beer by helping to execute marketing programs at a higher rate.

Justin Kendall [01:35] So Reuben, you've mentioned this is an area that craft brewers have struggled with in the past. What are some of the problems that you've seen there and how can NVISION work with them to fix those issues?

Speaker 2 [01:47] That's a great question. A lot of times, it's just a matter of, of knowing what's available to them. Craft brewers sometimes believe that because they started these businesses themselves and that they've worked in the business for a long time, that the, the material that they're aware of is all that's available to them. And what our company can do is open their eyes to a, a, a much wider A variety of point of sale items and branded merchandise items that can help them communicate their brands in a crowded marketplace. So that type of insight, as well as the insight that there are systems that are already developed that they can take advantage of rather than having to manage things on email, Google Sheets, and Excel spreadsheets to take orders or to manage fulfillment. The last thing I would tell you is that in a lot of cases, these brewers believe that sending material on beer trucks is a cost saver where they're not necessarily taking into concern what's happening at the distributor level. And we're here to tell you that distributors out there have a tough time managing point of sale when it comes in on the beer trucks because it's a different end of their operation.

Justin Kendall [03:00] So what do some of those items look like? What are some of those solutions look like?

Speaker 2 [03:05] Well, a lot of times customers will come to us and say that we need something unique and to use as a dealer loader or as a sales incentive that can carry our brand message. And so it's sometimes very difficult for craft brewers to figure out what's available to them, how that can be turned into something that they can, uh, uh, mass produce and do it in an affordable way. And so that's where our insights and innovation team really takes over and can. Go out and look at things that are both produced uh uh across the water or produced here domestically that can, you know, partner with well-known brands that are already out there looking for opportunities or simply looking for something that's new and different to cut through the noise. When it comes to printing techniques, there's not a whole lot there, but, uh, in the world of uh digital printing, there's unique things that you can do. For example, being able to create. Custom mirrors that are in a quantity as low as one. A lot of times uh craft brewers don't know that that type of stuff is available even to them at, at their level.

Justin Kendall [04:09] You and I had a conversation and one of the things that I took away was that you guys are able to provide some very insightful data and analytics to the, the clients that you work with. Things like a heat map for point of sale or, or rate of sale, and also you guys are working on a distributor survey. Can you tell us a little more about those services as well?

Speaker 2 [04:31] Sure. When it comes to, uh, data and analytics, one of the things that craft brewers often lack is a good history about how much point of sale and how much merchandizing they produced, where they sent it, how long stuff is in the marketplace, and, and also being able to understand what's currently in the warehouse. How do I create budgets and allocations around that. And how do I manage co-ops for my individual distributors? One of the things that comes with our service is an underlying technology that not only helps with project management and visibility, but can also measure all of those other aspects of the marketing supply chain to provide dashboard level access to customers about. Their spending in this area. What many of our customers do once they have all of that data in one place is able to knock that up against the data that they have from a selling standpoint to say we shipped this much point of sale into these areas sometimes measured by a heat map as you said. And they can look at that against their own data about sales in those regions to draw conclusions about the amount of point of sale and promotional activity that they're, that they're activating in those areas and the effect that it has on their list.

Justin Kendall [05:47] With NVISION taking some of this, uh, off of your clients, uh, workers' plates, what does that open up for their sales and marketing staffs?

Speaker 2 [05:58] That's a great question because it really helps in, in two different phases. On the front end with headquarters, it helps get their marketers back focused on marketing and away from the task-based, uh, burdens of execution that that take their eye off the ball. And so in this way they can either, uh. Keep people better, better focused on that material and stay out of having to hire additional people because they're getting more out of those headquarters folks. On the sales side, it's a major impact. Being able to spend more time with distributors and with customers to communicate the uh new products and the benefits of those products for them versus spending time taking orders, filling out paperwork and filling out Excel spreadsheets for, for. Point of sale makes a huge difference for them at the distributor level, being able to get point of sale for a promotion all at the same time, know when it's coming and have good customer service around being able to know when it's, you know, when it's supposed to arrive or having to manage returns or any of those sorts of things, keeping all of that sort of admin off of our customers' desks, improves distributor service levels and helps them get that point of sale out in the marketplace.

Justin Kendall [07:08] For new customers for of NVISION, you guys also provide an assessment with whiteboarding sessions. Tell us a little bit about how those go.

Speaker 2 [07:18] Oh, thanks for asking about that. Uh, so Envision has a process of approaching new customers with this assessment, as you mentioned. That assessment helps to figure out whether there is an opportunity to improve. You know, we have this, we have this supposition that there's a lot of value to be created with most craft brewers, but some of them may be doing it as well as it could be done for them, for their particular business. So we approach with this assessment and it comes in, it comes with two parts to it. On the front end, we measure the processes. So we're gonna ask some questions about how an idea gets from its inception all the way through execution. How many, who can generate the ideas, what sort of processes they go through, what technologies are at stake, and what are some of the pain points within that qualitative process. At the same time, we ask for a bunch of data about what you've produced and where you shipped it during a particular time period, and we do all of that to create a look at what your marketing supply chain is today and importantly, what your total cost of ownership is to execute it. The total cost of ownership is important. If you ask many of our customers what they spend on point of sale, they might look at a line on a budget and say, oh, our budget was $500,000 for it. But in reality, It's the $500,000 you spent with vendors plus a certain amount of time from individual personnel at headquarters, plus waste and obsolescence in the warehouse, plus warehousing costs, plus freight costs, plus inbound freight. There's just a lot of different things that go into that total cost of ownership. It might turn out that you think your total cost is $500,000 could be as much as $800,000 in that example. So we come back with a proposal that says, here's how envision can impact the qualitative part of it with systems and additional people and how we would impact that. And then on the financial side, how we can make changes in what you're buying, how you're buying it, and how you're distributing it to save money in that total cost of ownership. Ultimately, it comes back with a proposal that says, If your total cost of ownership is 8, actually 800,000, we can improve service levels, improve access to innovation, improve systems, and getting that information in one place, as well as improving distributor service levels at a net savings to your total cost.

Justin Kendall [09:40] Yeah, you make a point of those things really add up when you start figuring all those costs together.

Speaker 2 [09:46] You know, and, and, and some of them are hidden costs. Like, for example, a lot of folks will, will believe that they're saving money by shipping material on beer trucks, but in reality, no beer truck, you, you, no, uh, brewer ever pulled beer off of a beer truck to get point of sale on there, which means that there's an opportunity cost surrounding that in terms of when your distributors get material and their ability to execute in the marketplace.

Justin Kendall [10:11] So we know more about the services that NVISION provides, but what are you looking for in a partner?

Speaker 2 [10:18] Anybody who's doing this well, we wanna encourage them to keep doing it well. But for, for craft brewers out there who are wondering how they're going to scale with their growth projections or how they're going to improve distributor service levels or how they're going to get more out of their marketing teams without hiring additional people. That's the, those are the types of folks that we want to talk to because we believe that our business model can create value for them in solving those types of problems. So, you know, for anybody out there that's listening, if you're trying to figure out where all the money you spend on point of sale is showing up because you. Don't see it in the marketplace or you're hearing horror stories from your distributors about point of sale or your marketing people are just pulling their hair out about how to get point of sale executed through their system, it might be worth a phone call to us to see if there's a way that we can impact your business.

Justin Kendall [11:08] So, speaking of, how can they get in touch with you, Reuben?

Speaker 2 [11:12] Well, uh, I will be at Brewbound Live this year, so you can, you can just look for me. I'll be around, or you can send an email to our [email protected] or you can call me on my cell phone or send me a text at 773-989-7474. Awesome.

Justin Kendall [11:30] Well, thanks for the time, Reuben. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 [11:33] Uh, it's my pleasure and we look forward to seeing you at Brewbound Live.