You probably never heard of Glunz. Profiled recently in The Chicago Tribune (see article here), Glunz is a beer distributor. What makes the company interesting is how this 120 year old family owned-and-operated business has succeeded despite severe market Challenges. And it’s due to keeping White Space alive continuously, not just looking for solutions when problems develop.
Founded in 1888, Glunz has overcome a series of market Challenges. Just imagine facing these:
– in 1930 their business was outlawed by the passage of prohibition in the 13th ammendment to the Constitution. Rather than giving up, the company found opportunities in medicinal alcohol, sacramental wine and home brewing kits.
– After building a business as the national distributor of Schlitz, that brand collapsed in the 1970s due to a raft of articles on production errors and bad quality. But the company had already started distributing Stroh’s – a local beer out of Wisconsin – and they expanded Stroh’s in Schlitz place.
– But then Stroh’s was bought out, and disappeared. Yet again, years of effort had already been put in place to develop a relationship with Coors to distribute their beer and Glunz was ready to move when the Challenge came.
– But then Coors, being a big company, decided one day to drop Glunz and predicted the company would be dead within 6 months. Only Louis Glunz had already begun preparing for such a scenario and he had developed a relationship with Rolling Rock, a Pennsylvania beer with east coast cache but no market in the midwest. And so Glunz rolled out Rolling Rock to great success in stores and bars.
– Only to have Rolling Rock acquired by Annheuser-Busch last year – yet another Challenge. But again, Glunz had already started looking at beer imports they could grow as a replacement for Rolling Rock. Now Glunz distributes Stiegl, Stella Artois, Becks and Tecate.
2007 sales are expected to reach $30M, more than double sales of $13M in 1992 when Coors yanked their beer from Glunz distribution.
Any one of these market Challenges could have been a compeny-ending act. But Glunz has thrived because the leadership constantly maintains White Space. Instead of putting all their "focus" on the business at hand, and putting everything at risk on that one business, Glunz constantly maintains openness to new opportunities. Each of these might have grown Glunz into a much bigger business had the setbacks not occurred. But instead, they allowed Glunz to thrive very nicely despite horrific Challenges.
Business of all sizes and ages get Locked-in to their Success Formula. The Lock-in creates blinders have them moving too late when Challenges develop. Glunz is an example that even very old companies with tremendous heritage, and small companies that aren’t sitting on billions in resources, can be open to new opportunities. These small and older companies can, in fact, seek out new opportunites on a constant basis so as to be prepared no matter how the market shifts and turns. By keeping White Space constantly alive your chances for success greatly improve.