News
Press releases, media, upcoming events and more; tune in here for a collection of news about the knowledge sharing community at Crafting A Strategy.
Once again, the Co-Founders of CRAFTING A STRATEGY are leading the conversation in the craft beer business arena. In an interview with Oregonian Beer Writer, Andre Meunier, Sam Holloway discusses a growing number of beer business executives leaving the industry. Read the full story: “Change in Focus: Constant uphill battle led renowned brewer Sean Burke to leave industry for new passion” – The Oregonian, November 11, 2022. ALL CAS NEWS
Once again, the Co-Founders of CRAFTING A STRATEGY are leading the conversation in the craft beer business arena. In an interview with Oregonian Beer Writer, Andre Meunier, Sam Holloway discusses the launch of Unite-craft.com and its aim to level the playing field against big beer.
Read the full story: “Portland consulting group joins national effort to help craft breweries level the playing field against "Big Beer"” – The Oregonian, December 28, 2020
Once again, the Co-Founders of CRAFTING A STRATEGY are leading the conversation in the craft beer business arena. Featured in prominent Latin American beer blog Con Espuma, Sam Holloway describes the value of beer competition medals in a small brewery's overall strategy.
Read the full story: “¿Es el 2021 el año más importante para que tu cervecería gane una medalla?” – Con Espuma, June 3, 2021
Once again, the Co-Founders of CRAFTING A STRATEGY are leading the conversation in the craft beer business arena. In an interview with Oregonian Beer Writer, Andre Meunier, Holloway reflects on strategies that worked in 2020 and whether they should continue into 2021 and beyond.
Read the full story: “Oregon Beer in 2020: Stress, tanked sales and adaptability define a COVID-cursed year” – The Oregonian, December 28, 2020
Australian Brew News reporter, Clare Burnett suggests: "The challenge of COVID-19 has accelerated the move to online retail, but navigating consumer demands, appropriate platforms and stockist relationships as brewers digitize can be a nightmare." In her article, she interviews publicans, professors, and hotel operators each struggling with the right moves as small and independent breweries digitize their business models. Holloway offers advice on fragmentation, online sales, and how to deal with a promiscuous customer base who may be more comfortable ordering on mobile than sitting in your taprooms.
"The Pink Boots Society's mission to assist, inspire, and encourage women beer professionals and advance their careers in the beer industry through education is a spectacular match to our mission at Crafting A Strategy. With more breweries comes greater diversity and increasing opportunities for women to lead us forward. We're honored to help the Pink Boots Society fulfill their mission." -Sam Holloway, President CAS
May 2020 marks the one year anniversary of one of our favorite partnerships. We built our community to assist and inspire future leaders in the beer industry, and our scholarship program with the Pink Boots Society is a flagship effort that hits on our core values. To date, we have provided nine free one-year memberships to PBS scholarship winners. These women are from all across the globe and leading change for the better within their communities. Please join us in recognizing our first year’s scholarship winners:
- Terra Barrett (Port Rexton Brewing, St. John, NL Canada)
- Michele Bulington (Crasian Brewing Company, Brookston, IN USA)
- Leah Witkoske-West (Lock 27 Brewing, Dayton, OH USA)
- Patricia Low (BarmHaus Brewing Company, Garden Valley, CA USA)
- Kristine Bobrosky (Bravery Brewing, Lancaster, CA USA)
- Danella Soeka (On Tap Branding, Denver, CO USA)
- Maria Vicente Viñas (Cerveses Lluna, Alcoi, Alicante Spain)
- Andrea Sheehey (Mighty Squirrel Brewing Company, Waltham, MA USA)
- Alyssa Shoemaker (Brewery in Planning, Pennsylvania, USA)
For upcoming scholarships, click here.
Inspired by the survival story from CAS Co-founder, Joe Belcher and many others, a group of CAS member breweries have developed a program to increase awareness and raise money for blood cancer research (Leukemia, Lymphoma, Myeloma). That beer and our mission carry the same name: Out for Blood!
"2 years ago, I took my last round of chemotherapy to battle non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I was devastated when diagnosed, but I feel lucky in the sense it was me and not my wife or one of my kids. That is difficult to write but is important for me to share. It is what motivates me still to fight, to fight for others. Today I am a survivor. Today every 3 minutes someone is diagnosed with a blood cancer. So join the fight and raise a glass, and together, let’s go Out for Blood!" -Joe Belcher
To learn more, go to OutForBlood.Beer.
To see our growing number of events to support the program, check out our Facebook events page here.
Crafting A Strategy is a proud sponsor of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and the fight against all blood cancers.
We are very pleased to announce an education partnership with the Pink Boots Society. Beginning May 2019 and throughout the next two years, we will be offering free one-year memberships as part of the Pink Boots Society's scholarship initiatives. Each quarter, five memberships will be awarded to scholarship recipients. Recipients will be selected by the Pink Boots Society's Scholarship Selection Committee. These scholarships will diversity the beer business focused scholarships in the portfolio of educational scholarships offered via the Pink Boots Society.
Sam Holloway, President of Crafting A Strategy, states:
"The Pink Boots Society's mission to assist, inspire, and encourage women beer professionals and advance their careers in the beer Industry through education is a spectacular match to our mission at Crafting A Strategy. Our community includes hundreds of beer industry executives who use our platform and educational content to run better beer businesses. Our industry is on the cusp of having 10,000 breweries in the USA alone, and with more breweries comes greater diversity and increasing opportunities for women to lead us forward. We're honored to help the Pink Boots Society fulfill their mission."
Who is Crafting A Strategy?
We are a global community of makers who create experiences that unite people. Our membership includes breweries in 16 countries on four continents. We believe that a highly fragmented, dispersed, and global community of entrepreneurs that rely on wisdom and each other is the best way forward. Our members use technology to stay connected and to overcome geographic and market forces that are stacked against them.
We use the highest-level business ideas available, translated and made easy to understand, to help you build a business that can make a real difference in your community. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we know most of them reside inside the heads of our community members. Diversity of people in our community is the key. Big, small, men, women, brewers, lawyers, bankers – with greater diversity of training and vision, our collective can be stronger and more inclusive.
The scholarship application for this current window is May 5-31, 2019 and can be found here: httpps://www.pinkbootssociety.org/may-2019-crafting-a-strategy/
Keep your eyes here each quarter as we announce the new scholarship recipients and opportunities for the next round of scholarship applications.
CAS President, Sam Holloway, is scheduled to deliver top lecture, "Small Breweries: How to Grow and Stay Small" at the inaugural craft brewers conference in Europe, The Brewers of Europe Forum. This event, scheduled for June 7-8 in Brussels, brings together the 7,500+ European brewery community members. Other scheduled speakers can be seen here.
Sam Holloway offered these comments on his upcoming keynote: "I'm honored to be selected to speak about how small breweries can grow and thrive in global craft beer markets ... It is especially exciting to have several US and Netherlands based Crafting A Strategy members with us in Brussels. We've been building our community of brewing entrepreneurs for about four years, helping each other reinterpret business strategy if you are small and want to grow without being clobbered by the big breweries. Our methods work and I am excited to share them with EU craft breweries who want to learn from both successes and mistakes from the more mature craft beer markets in the USA. I would also like to thank my friend, Luc de Raedemaeker for inviting us to be a part of this exciting event!"
The Brewers of Europe Forum is led by Luc de Raedemaeker, who holds the position of Director of The Brewers of Europe Forum, CEO/Owner of Beer Matters, Tasting Director at Brussels Beer Challenge, CEO/Owner of BIERinhuis...to name a few.
The Brewers of Europe Forum will bring together more than 1,000 professionals from Europe's diverse brewing sector. An exhibition floor with 40+ companies will demonstrate the latest innovations in the industry and include tastings from beers around Europe. From cultivating your own yeast to the science of food pairing, from targeting millennials to reducing your environmental footprint, the Brewers of Europe Forum will offer inspiration for attendees coming together to prepare a bright future for beer in Europe. Read more from The Brewers of Europe Forum press release here.
Crafting A Strategy (CAS), a global online knowledge sharing community dedicated to the business of craft beer, is proud to offer Continuing Legal Education (CLE) with a focus the fast growing craft beer industry. Currently, we are not accredited with any state bar associations. We offer on-demand video training for your information only.
Founded in 2014, CAS is the professional development tool of choice for beer business professionals on four continents. Additionally, university business schools increasingly use CAS content in undergraduate and MBA courses to teach strategic thinking, innovation, leadership, and strategic control systems.