The "Winning at Home" Checklist
5 reasons why it's crucial for your brand to focus on the home market (and how to avoid that nobody has heard of it where it comes from)
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Dear Bottom-up Drinks Builder,
"Nobody is a Prophet in their land." Is this true?
Here are the top five reasons why drinks founders avoid their home market—and my five-step process for making winning on your home turf your priority.
Mastering your home market first will build solid foundations before scaling abroad. Too many founders rush to expand internationally before truly proving their concept locally.
Instead of analyzing what's not working at home, they look for growth shortcuts abroad. They believe selling elsewhere will be easier, but they're just postponing inevitable problems.
Your home market is the perfect crash test for your brand.
Skip it, and you'll need to fix fundamental issues later, when they'll be far more painful. Slow, sustainable growth beats a revenue nose-dive after a significant investment. If you can make it at home, you can make it anywhere.
The 5 Home Market Challenges
Challenge 1: Your hometown isn't trendy enough. Not everyone starts in NYC or London. Many brands, especially those with rural positioning, are born in small villages, often nothing picturesque. Targeting the nearest cool city is tempting, but what about winning over the locals who genuinely connect with your story?
Challenge 2: You get distracted by international inquiries.
When random importers contact you for a few cases, it's easy to say yes, dreaming of rapid expansion. But claiming you're sold in many countries won't impress investors—it'll just add pressure. Most successful brands sell 90% of their volume in just 1-2 markets. Focus your efforts. A few exported cases don't constitute a real market presence, and problems are always more complex to solve from thousands of miles away.
Challenge 3: You're reluctant to sell your product.
Many founders tell me they "don't have time" to sell their brand, quickly rushing to hire salespeople or distributors. This traps them in an ivory tower, disconnected from their brand's real challenges. You're mistaken if you think distributors, wholesalers, and retail chains are easier to deal with abroad. Your foreign importer won't magically fix your problems.
Challenge 4: Selling abroad masks unclear brand positioning.
This happens in two ways:
Your brand has "dubious" local positioning—perhaps built on an imaginary origin rather than authenticity. Locals will spot this instantly, so you avoid them by selling elsewhere. Many brands sell the dream of a place (like the Italian Riviera) without any genuine connection to it.
Your brand lacks a physical home. Contract brewing or distilling leaves you without a place to visit, so you go abroad to hide this weakness. Instead, build your story around something else—ingredient provenance or a compelling founder narrative.
Challenge 5: Targeting global cities burns cash quickly.
Many assume scaling means winning in the world's trendiest cities—exactly where every other brand wants to be. Are you truly ready for this A&P (Advertising & Promotion) bloodbath? Make sure you won't run out of runway.