Instagram story viewer> @shawnmmiller> Posts
Shawn M Miller(@shawnmmiller)'s profile avatar HD Profile

Shawn M Miller

@shawnmmiller

3K
followers
2665
following
🤠 Agave Nerd
🥃 “Right Brain” @pkgdgroup
🌎 Advocating for Authenticity & Producer-Owned Brands
📍 Holland, Michigan, USA
❤️#Tequila #Mezcal #Raicilla
POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED
Download All
FAUSTO ROMERO, maestro raicillero, nos trae para probar sus marcas de Raicilla EL ACABO, TRES GALLOS y ASIL! 🐓 @ingeniero_raicillero Entrevista completa en YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqVeY11nFhY by @shawnmmiller
5
17 hours ago
Download
Our job is to sell the first bottle. That’s really hard. The producer’s job is to sell the second bottle. That’s really hard too. 🤣 We can build awareness. We can create distribution. We can get G4 Tequila onto a shelf, onto a back bar, into somebody’s glass, and hopefully convince them to give it a try. But after that first experience, the consumer gets to decide what it was worth. Was the tequila worth the money? Was the experience worth repeating? Do I want another bottle? That second purchase is the key to a brand growing the way G4 Tequila is growing. You can’t do that with Push alone. At least not sustainably. And that’s where Felipe and four generations of accumulated experience and judgment perfecting tequila show up in the business. We can sell the first bottle. The tequila has to earn the second. And the third. That seems like a pretty damn good #FelipeFriday thought. 🤠❤️‼️ #FelipeFriday #G4Tequila taken in Destileria el Pandillo by @shawnmmiller
0
a month ago
Download
PRODUCER OWNED Those two words are right on the front of the new El Viejito label. I’m not trying to decide whether producer ownership matters. I’m pretty far past that. 🤣 We’re committed to it. We’ve deliberately built PKGD around producer-owned brands because we believe the people making the spirit should have meaningful ownership and control over the brand they are building. What I’m trying to understand is how to make that information more useful to the person actually choosing a bottle. Because here’s the problem: If PRODUCER OWNED wasn’t printed on this label, how would you know? Would you look at the NOM? Google the brand? Read the website? Ask somebody at the store? Would you assume the family or distillery featured in the story owns the brand? Could you tell the difference between a producer’s own brand and another brand that happens to be made at the same distillery? That distinction matters to me. In this case, PRODUCER OWNED means the people who make El Viejito also own and control the brand. It does not automatically mean the tequila is better. You still have to make a great product, price it appropriately and earn somebody’s decision to buy it again. But ownership tells you something different. It tells you who you’re actually buying from. It tells you who ultimately controls the brand. And it tells you whether the people making the product are also participating in the long-term value being created around it. There’s evidence that consumers are interested in this. In the Slingshot/Jay Baer tequila consumer research, about half of the people surveyed said ownership by the distillery where the tequila is made was meaningful to them, and 46% cared about Mexican ownership. So my question isn’t really “Does ownership matter?” My question is: Are we giving you enough information to do anything with it? When you see PRODUCER OWNED, what does that mean to you? Is it clear? If it wasn’t printed on the bottle, how would you figure it out? And what would make ownership information genuinely useful when you’re deciding what to buy, order or recommend? I really want to know. 🤠❤️‼️ taken in Atotonilco El Alto, Jalisco by @shawnmmiller
3
a month ago
Download
One of our people called me the other day before giving an expert talk on agave spirits. They wanted to pressure-test a few things. I loved that. Then I started ruining their stories. 🤣 And I found myself apologizing. Repeatedly. Not because the stories were false. Because the commercial reality was usually a lot less romantic. I think we sometimes confuse authenticity with commercial innocence. As if a producer becomes less authentic the moment they understand business, competition, growth, cost, capacity, distribution or ambition. But these are real businesses. Producers compete. They understand markets. They make hard decisions. They want to grow. And none of that makes the tradition less real. Brands simplify because communication has to scale. The family. The village. The old distillery. The traditional process. All of that may be completely true. But the story is still compressed. The romance can be real. So can the business. And I think we respect producers more when we understand both. 🤠❤️‼️ #AgaveSpirits #Tequila #Mezcal #ProducerOwned #Mexico taken in Atotonilco El Alto, Jalisco by @shawnmmiller
2
a month ago
Download
#FelipeFriday feels especially meaningful this week. Ten years ago, G4 was an extraordinary producer-owned tequila, made by a remarkable family with an unwavering belief in how tequila should be made. And nobody cared. We could hardly give it away! This week, Tequila Report, Shanken News Daily, and VinePair all told some version of the same story: G4 has become a major player in tequila without losing what made it G4 in the first place. That matters to me. Growth is exciting. Growth without compromise is rare. Felipe builds it right. We bring it right. Congratulations, Felipe, and thank you for trusting us with G4. When did you first discover G4? #G4Tequila #FelipeCamarena #ElPandillo #ProducerOwned taken in Destileria el Pandillo by @shawnmmiller
2
a month ago
Download
People are drinking differently. That doesn’t just mean less. It means the moments are changing. A canned cocktail might be exactly right at a concert, a barbecue or watching a game. Another moment might deserve a really good tequila, a table full of people you care about, and enough time to actually enjoy it. Those are different occasions. And I don’t think our job is to convince people to drink more. Our job is to make and represent things worth choosing when they do. We’ve been calling that the Sweet Spot. Drink because it enhances the experience. Not because more consumption is the objective. The industry should probably spend less time trying to recreate old drinking habits and more time understanding the new ones. 🤠❤️‼️ More on “The Sweet Spot” at PKGD Magazine. taken in Taberna 3 Gallos - Ahuacatepec Jal. by @shawnmmiller
3
a month ago
Download
G4 was PKGD’s first tequila brand. El Pandillo was my first visit to non-tourist Mexico. Felipe Camarena was the first person who truly began teaching me what tequila was. I remember him as serious, intense and focused. The work was real. Real things feel different. Today, when I look at the success of G4, I do not see a tequila that caught a trend. I see generational judgment being recognized at scale. Growth creates pressure. Pressure to move faster, simplify the work, and let commercial people make decisions that belong to the producer. PKGD’s partnership with G4 was built to resist that pressure. The Camarena family owns G4, and Felipe maintains authority over the tequila. Our responsibility is to build the market without allowing growth to make G4 less itself. Who owns the brand is the starting point. Who controls the decisions is the test. That judgment reaches the glass. G4 tastes like tequila made by people who have spent four generations learning what every decision means. Four generations perfecting tequila. Bring the G4. Bring what you trust. When did you discover that authentic tequila could be so much better than the tequila you thought you knew? #FelipeFriday #G4Tequila #PKGDgroup #ElPandillo #ProducerOwned taken in Destileria el Pandillo by @shawnmmiller
2
a month ago
Download
Distribution is not market development. Shanken News Daily reported this week that Diageo is changing the way it approaches its U.S. business, including re-incentivizing distributors so the objective isn’t simply gaining distribution, but also driving point of sale. That sounds like a small distinction. I don’t think it is. We’ve spent 10 years working with distributors of every size, and great distributors are incredibly important. They create access, develop accounts, execute, provide local knowledge and help brands grow. But getting a bottle into an account and creating a market for that bottle are not the same job. We can’t simply hand a brand to a distributor and expect them to manufacture demand for us. They can help amplify demand. They can help convert opportunity into sales. But the brand still has to give consumers a reason to care. That’s where positioning, education, bartender advocacy, account quality, velocity, reorder and consumer demand begin to matter. We’ve been developing this idea pretty deeply inside PKGD over the last year, particularly around what I call access versus pull. Eventually we compressed it into a simple line: Push creates entry. Only pull sustains presence. Getting distribution is an accomplishment. What happens next determines whether you’ve actually built a market. More on the framework in the PKGD White Paper at PKGDgroup.com. 🤠❤️‼️ taken in Mapimí, Durango by @shawnmmiller
5
a month ago
Download
There have been plenty of negative reports lately about tequila and the broader spirits business. I don’t think the tequila category is dying. But I do think the cushion is disappearing. For several years, extraordinary growth allowed a lot of very different brands to grow at the same time. A more selective market starts asking harder questions. Who actually makes the product? Who owns the brand? Does what’s in the bottle justify the price? And once you get it onto a shelf or back bar, has anybody actually given people a reason to care about it? Distribution creates access. Authority creates trust. Trust creates pull. You can’t buy a bottle that isn’t available. Distribution matters enormously. But distribution isn’t the same thing as market development. For independent and producer-owned brands, I actually find that encouraging. Their advantages are different: extraordinary products, producer authority, transparency, real differentiation and human relationships. None of that guarantees success. But pressure has a way of showing you what was underneath the growth all along. Pressure reveals structure. 🤠❤️‼️ taken in Amatitan, Jalisco by @shawnmmiller
2
2 months ago
Download
Today I turn 55. About two and a half years ago, Amy gave me a clock that counted down to this birthday. Some of you knew what it meant. Many of you thought it was a retirement clock. The truth is, it wasn’t. When Amy bought it, I was overwhelmed. I loved what we were building at PKGD, but I wasn’t sure I could keep doing it the way I had been. I genuinely believed that by the time the clock reached zero, I would need a different way to live and work. Thankfully, that’s not what happened. The work didn’t get smaller. The responsibility didn’t get lighter. If anything, both have grown. What changed was me. Over the past two and a half years, with a lot of help from a lot of people, and with a lot of work on myself, I’ve changed how I think about leadership. The best word I’ve found for it is stewardship. Today, I still feel completely accountable for what happens at PKGD. I always will. But I no longer believe accountability means carrying everything myself. My job is to help build great people, sound judgment, healthy culture, and systems that allow other people to do their best work. The surprising part is that I enjoy my work more today than I ever have. I don’t keep doing it because I have to. I keep doing it because I want to. I never imagined that would be true when Amy started that clock. To everyone who has been part of this journey, thank you. I’m proud of what we’ve built together, grateful for what you’ve helped me become, and incredibly excited about what’s ahead. The clock reached zero today. I’m grateful I don’t need it anymore. 🤠❤️‼️🇺🇸🇲🇽 by @shawnmmiller
6
2 months ago
Download
A favorite moment from Tales. Most of the week I’m in motion. But every now and then I get to step aside, lean against the bar, and simply observe. The PKGD team doing incredible work. Friends throughout the industry introducing people to brands they genuinely believe in. There are few feelings more rewarding than watching something you’ve helped build begin to stand confidently on its own. One of the greatest privileges of leadership is eventually getting to become the audience for the people you’ve spent years helping succeed. I’m grateful for how far we’ve come, proud of the people who make it happen every day, and inspired by what comes next and who will carry the boxes in the future. 🤠❤️‼️🇲🇽🇺🇸 #PKGD #Tales taken in New Orleans, Louisiana by @shawnmmiller
0
2 months ago
Download
Flying home from Tales of the Cocktail and feeling very proud of what PKGD accomplished this week. This was our biggest Tales yet, and more importantly, it felt like a meaningful step forward. Our formal tasting was a success. Last night’s event was even bigger. We had the probable winner of Bartender of the Year making a G4 cocktail that is already her best-selling menu item, bringing real attention and respect to the brand. Our hosts were excellent. The venue was right. Our guest staff were absolute stars. Our team showed up with professionalism, hospitality, energy, and genuine belief in the products and producers we represent. The feedback was more than positive. It was admiration. Admiration for the products. Admiration for the stories. Admiration for the people behind them. We made an appropriate escalation of investment this year, and the outcome multiplied far beyond last year. That is what good stewardship should look like. Not simply spending more, but creating more credibility, more connection, and more impact. I am especially proud of Alex, Patrick, Kobe, Lyndsay, and everyone who helped make the week what it was. PKGD is making a bigger impact every year, and we are still learning, testing, and getting better. Heading home grateful. 👋🤠❤️‼️ taken in New Orleans, Louisiana by @shawnmmiller
3
2 months ago
Download
×

Download all media on this page

Photos Videos
back to up