In this Bar Convent London session covering EU distribution markets, Xavier Baker, Co-Founder of Mermaid Gin (Isle of Wight Distillery), shares an incredibly transparent, detail-packed case study of his brand’s 10-year journey into Europe. He highlights both the strategic wins and the high-risk learning curves his team faced along the way.
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Xavier Baker’s Presentation Transcript
Xavier Baker (00:00) Hi everyone, I’m Xavier Baker—or Xav—co-founder of Mermaid Gin. We’ve been going for just over 10 years now. To give you a brief background, we created Mermaid Gin on the Isle of Wight to showcase exactly what the island has to offer in a gin. After launching successfully in the UK, we realized we wanted to expand our view, our brand, and our volume into the EU. What I’m going to share today is essentially our journey, including some of our learning curves, mistakes, and a few highlights.
Xavier Baker (00:30) There is massive opportunity out there in the EU. The consumers are quite similar to those over here in the UK. As Sam highlighted, there is a strong demand for authenticity, provenance, and craftsmanship—values we try to embed in everything we do. There is also a robust cocktail culture in hubs like Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona, alongside that beautiful, outdoor Mediterranean lifestyle that fits perfectly with the Mermaid brand identity.
Xavier Baker (00:57) I have to give a shout-out to BCB (Bar Convent Berlin). Many people might not know this, but we launched with an off-the-shelf bottle to begin with. We then went through an intense 18-month process to create our custom Mermaid Gin bottle. The mold alone cost us about £25,000, which was a massive financial risk for us at the time.
Xavier Baker (01:26) We cradled that single custom bottle all the way to BCB Berlin. We had exactly one bottle on the stand, and that was all we had to showcase, apart from talking about our local botanicals. Those first few BCB events were fantastic for us. We didn’t know anyone in Europe, so we were just stumbling through it, but some of the distributors we met back then are people we are still working with today.
Xavier Baker (01:55) When it comes to choosing the right distributor, it’s easy in the early days to just chase volume and celebrate a sale. However, it genuinely pays to have an upfront conversation. Where are you trying to sell your products? Do you just want raw volume, or do you want to establish the brand alongside that volume? Finding a distributor whose goals align with yours is essential.
Xavier Baker (02:23) The same goes for contracts; you absolutely must get the right distribution agreements set up. In the beginning, we operated on a simple one-page agreement, which did not suffice. We then ran a standard trade distribution agreement for a handful of years without really checking through it, thinking it was all okay. We eventually hit all sorts of legal issues. You need to ensure that the jurisdiction for any legal disputes is in your own country, not the country of the partner you are signing with. Early on, we had accidentally granted them rights in their own territory under their local laws, and we looked back thinking, “Why on earth did we do that?”
Xavier Baker (02:50) It is definitely worth doing your research. The industry is quite open, and there are standard distribution agreements out there, so feel free to ask a peer and borrow one. We’ve borrowed a few contracts from friendly brands and adapted them, but always make sure to get them checked by a legal professional.
Another important thing to look at is what other brands they represent. We signed with a couple of partners, celebrated getting the order, and then subsequently found out they were already selling Silent Pool. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Silent Pool—it’s a fantastic brand—but they operate just 50 miles down the road from us.
Xavier Baker (03:19) You need to thoroughly vet what brands a distributor carries. Have they successfully pushed independent brands forward? Have they actually grown a brand, or are they just order-takers after quick volume? These are the questions we now realize we must ask. At the time, we didn’t know any better.
You must evaluate if they are the best partner for your business values. Over the last couple of years, we have explicitly pulled together our corporate vision and values so our entire team is aligned on our brand purpose. Does your distributor share that purpose, or are they just trying to move boxes and fling volume into the market? Have those explicit conversations.
Xavier Baker (03:47) We quickly learned that the EU is not a monolith; markets vary completely. The Mediterranean is heavily focused on outdoor drinking and cocktail culture. Germany is a massive, wholesale-driven market. The Nordics are strictly controlled by state monopolies. While there are a few smaller, highly creative distributors out there in the Nordics you could talk to, it remains a market driven by high volume and low price. We don’t do much business there simply because we cannot afford to enter at those price points.
Xavier Baker (04:17) Then came post-Brexit. Before Brexit, we were just shipping individual pallets directly from the UK all over the place. Afterward, it became an absolute logistical nightmare—not just for importing goods back in, but for getting our stock out.
Xavier Baker (04:47) To solve this, we set up a centralized distribution hub in Holland. There are several bonded warehouses over there that specialize in this. We now ship full containers directly to our Dutch bonded warehouse, which makes life infinitely easier. If you try to send a single pallet from the UK post-Brexit, that pallet gets grouped into a container with other companies’ consignments. The customs officials checking it will require an individual invoice for every single pallet, causing massive delays. Shipping your own container—even a half-container—directly to a European distribution hub streamlines everything.
Xavier Baker (05:15) It makes it incredibly simple to clear customs and dispatch stock across Europe. It also gives your European distributors immense confidence because it removes the paperwork headache from their end. It requires some upfront investment, but it is absolutely worth its weight in gold.
Protecting your brand is another vital piece. I touched on trademarks earlier. This was something we didn’t fully grasp at the beginning, but we rapidly had to catch up on. You must get your brand protected. For us, getting “Mermaid” trademarked across the continent was crucial.
Xavier Baker (05:45) We didn’t realize at the time how distinct the various EU trademarking rules and regulations could be, so definitely get that sorted out early.
Language is another major factor. In the early days, it was just us. I don’t speak any foreign languages, and we quickly realized that a lack of local language skills led to poor communication and looked like a lack of effort on our part.
Xavier Baker (06:14) We have since hired a dedicated team member to head up our EU business, and he speaks five languages. Since he came on board, having someone who can build relationships in the local language has made a world of difference. It completely changes the dynamic when you aren’t relying on Google Translate and disjointed, peppered conversations.
You also need to stay on top of local compliance. Always check your back-of-pack labels. The new European “U-Label” system is coming through, which utilizes a centralized QR code to tick all the regulatory boxes.
Xavier Baker (06:43) However, even with overarching EU compliance, local variations pop up. For instance, the French authorities required a specific pregnant lady warning icon on the back of the bottle. We thought we were good to go with our standard EU label, but these hyper-local quirks will catch you out if you don’t look close.
Parallel pricing is another issue we’ve had to navigate. Pricing structures vary across different countries. In some markets, the baseline price is naturally lower; in others, you can command a premium.
Xavier Baker (07:11) However, maintaining a wide pricing disparity across Europe does you no favors. Distributors and wholesalers all talk to each other, and stock will inevitably start sliding across borders to exploit those margins. This creates massive pricing friction and erodes distributor confidence. If you give a partner a specific price to buy from you, but they see they can source your stock for two euros cheaper from a parallel exporter in another country, it’s a total nightmare.
Xavier Baker (07:41) We are currently undergoing an exercise to tighten that pricing corridor. We currently have about a six-euro variance across the EU, and we are working to reduce that down to a maximum of three and a half to four euros. It requires some difficult conversations, but we know exactly where those conversations need to happen and what we need to achieve.
Relationships are something we admittedly took for granted early on. We took a distributor on, celebrated the order, and then got so busy with other things that we didn’t give them the TLC they deserved.
Xavier Baker (08:11) Now that we have a dedicated manager on board, those relationships are much healthier. We are finding easy, quick wins just by listening to them. In Italy, for example, we had just expected them to crack on with sales. We finally sat down for a chat, and they said, “You know, if you just give us a simple one-pager offering a free box of glassware when a bar buys a case of gin, it will fly. The bartenders will go crazy for it.” It was such a basic, low-cost execution, yet we had completely missed it for months simply due to a lack of communication.
Xavier Baker (08:41) Finally, be patient. There are no quick wins in Europe. If you don’t time it right, you will completely miss the season. For example, we are already in May, which means all the major summer cocktail menus have been locked in for the year ahead. You aren’t going to secure any major new distribution at this point in the calendar. Be patient, take your time, and align your sales push with either the formal retail tender cycles or the hospitality industry’s seasonal shifts.
That’s it from me. I’ll be around if anyone has any questions. Thank you ever so much.