One alcoholic-beverage company has made celebrity-oriented drinks the focus of its business model. Drinks Americas Holdings Ltd., Wilton, Conn., has signed joint ventures or other agreements with such celebrities as musicians Dr. Dre and Kid Rock and real-estate magnate and TV personality Donald Trump. Trump Super Premium Vodka, in which Mr. Trump has a 50% stake, sells for about $35 a bottle.Wonder if Kid Rock knows the meaning of schadenfreude?
But Drinks Americas, created in 2002, has struggled. In an SEC filing Monday, it said it faces a shortage of working capital and may be unable to continue operations without additional financing. The company posted a $3.5 million loss for the six months ended Oct. 31.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Kid Rock American Badass Beer may be in trouble
Oh, Kid Rock, Kid Rock...your beer house may be built on shifting sands.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Kid Rock may not know what schadenfreude is, but the financiers know how to launch a venture with little upfront cost and other creative financing. This entity does not get the love mom and pop put into that little restaurant we grew up with. A brief, and I mean b-r-i-e-f, perusal of of DKAM's 10-Q on EDGAR indicates not much went into this entity, and 2009 looks much worse than 2008. Also looks like two former "senior" employees have filed (or are filing, but enough to trigger a disclosure) suit to recoup owed wages. Also a breach of contract suit for owed royalties was disclosed. Regardless, this adds up to "We have no money and good luck getting it after we go under." So, in addition to contributing to the illiteracy and alcoholism of children, DKAM also appears to have pulled down GDP by a fraction of a basis point, added more noise to the US legal system, contributed to global warming, and increased the entropy of the universe by, proportionally, a non-trivial amount!!! They might have endangered baby seals too, but I'd be speculating ;-)
Why would you be happy about this? Do you enjoy relishing in other people's failures? odd
"Trump Super Premium Vodka"??? Are you effing serious?
I wonder if Lew knows the meaning the German proverb: Probieren geht über studieren
The seem to have a lot of celebrity tie ins for booze, but this is the outfit that bought Rheingold a few years back and then shelved it.
Whoever said 'no one lost money underestimating the poor taste of the American public' could finally be proven wrong. Maybe a Superbowl ad can get them going again.
Seeing an ill-advised project like this fail would amuse me, Alex, yes, and I don't really see that as 'odd.' I certainly don't "enjoy in relishing" every failure, not even most, but this one I will. Drink America represents the worst kind of putting celebrity over substance; I don't like to see that succeed, and schadenfreude is exactly the word that describes my reaction to this news.
That is, of course, just me; you're welcome to disagree. But I don't see much chance of me feeling bad about it.
I'm familiar with it, "Otto," but it looks like the "trying" is at hand, and we'll see what happens.
On the other hand, if you're implying that it's easy for me to criticize as someone who's not actually running a beer business, well...that's what I do. It's part of my profession. If that's what you're getting at, it's like telling a teacher "those who can't do, teach." Critics always come in for criticism, it comes with the territory. Nothing new.
On we go; next round.
They also had Willy Nelson's Whiskey River Bourbon and Sammy Hagar's Cabo Wabo Tequila. I don't know about Willy but I think Sammy is now somewhere else.
Meanwhile, Bruce Willis now owns 3.3% of Belvedere.
It does not bother me that they are going under as well, Lew. I just feel bad for Bobby Mason at Michigan Brewing, the guy making the beer for kid rock. He already had a good sized brewery, I just hope, he did not spend a bunch of money expanding to meet expected demand.
Stick to reviewing how beer tastes lew you are really good at that and obviously you have a lot of experience drinking beer. On starting a business or running anything larger than a tasting session maybe not so much. Not trying to be jerk or rude but you seem out of your league on the business end. If I am wrong please let me know how much skin you have in the game.
News flash, Otto: hardly any of the industry analysts have experience running a business. What's more, I've been calling industry trends about as well as they do. So I'll keep doing what I'm doing. I mean, it's not like I've been asking you to pass a writing exam to comment here, right? Or present proof of identity, God knows...
Right on, Lew.
If Donald Trump isn't worried about the company why would Kid Rock even care? On the bright side...since we do work with the building DU is in we would get more work to keep us busy.
Win.
Disagree Lew, most industry analysts have a lot of industry experience or 'skin in the game' to borrow otto's phrase and are compensated accordingly to their ability to accurately predict or explain events and situations.
I found out the hard way that once you get something wrong and lose yourself, or worse somebody else a lot of money or resources, you rarely make light of somebody else's mistakes. As for you Kid Rock I could care less one way or the other, but I found gloating over somebody else's bad call makes for bad karma especially when you do not even have a trade on. this is jp not Otto btw
Post a Comment