About
Every side of the table.
Producer side, importer side, distributor-facing sales, and retail, in both markets and both languages. This page is the record. The numbers on the home page come from it.
Paris, behind the counter
I owned and ran two wine shops in Paris (pictured). Retail teaches what no export role can. I have sold wine to French consumers across a counter, watched what they pick up and what they put back, and taken a struggling shop from 9% to 34% gross margin before selling the business.
Import and négoce
Import and distribution roles with Sera Wine Imports / M. Chapoutier, and commercial roles with Maison Bouey and Bernard Magrez. Reading producers' offers, deciding what enters a book and what does not, and learning why most pitches fail before the tasting.
Export, EMEA
Export roles across the UK, the UAE, and the Netherlands. Different compliance, different buyers, same lesson. A market rewards the producer who learned its rules before arriving.
since 2018
The United States
Since 2018 my work has been the American market. Most recently as US Sales Director for a premium South American icon brand. National distributor relationships, key national accounts including Fogo de Chão, Total Wine & More, Costco, Morton's The Steakhouse, and Del Frisco's, and expansion across the whole of the US, open states, franchise states, and control states, monopolies included, run from inside the three-tier system. Distributor meetings, depletion reviews, price postings, program calendars. The actual mechanics this site describes.
The practice
I advise a small number of European wine and spirits producers on US entry and growth. Deliberately small. A small number of engagements at a time, every brief and every model through my own hands, fixed scope and fixed fee agreed before you commit. If the timing is wrong or the fit is not there, I say so early.
Languages & citizenship
French and British citizen, based in New York. Thirteen years living in France. I negotiate with American distributors in American English and report to French owners in French.
I build my own instruments
I build the market-intelligence tooling I work with. A weekly reader of US federal label approvals (TTB COLA) that shows who is entering the market and with what, and research tooling that maps distributor books and retail placement. They exist because directories and syndicated data answer yesterday's questions. When my advice says this distributor, these states, this quarter, these instruments are why.
The distributor tooling →What I bring
- In the US drinks trade, FOB is not the shipping Incoterm. It's the per-case price the importer sells to the distributor at.-to-shelf price architecture
- Distributor selection, incl. franchise-state caution
- Depletion-led brand management
- Control-state routes to market
- National key-account negotiation
- State-by-state entry sequencing
- EN/FR owner and board communication
- TTB COLA market intelligence
The houses, roles, and dates above are on LinkedIn in full.
View LinkedIn profile →I also take a small number of speaking and teaching engagements.
Speaking & education →Let's talk
Start with the free written diagnostic. If I am not the right person, I will tell you.