Sometime in 1995, a white-collared family man in Brighton cracked open a can of "Bud Dry."
"Dry beer," he thought. "This is silly. Beer is 90 percent water."
A simple fact, yet Stephen Brown, founder and CEO of WETBEER, Inc., believed he stumbled upon the entrepreneurial discovery of the century. The idea was so brilliant, he was willing to give up a well-paying career that was supporting his wife and three young children.
But he didn't run to a local brewer to sell his idea; nor did he contact any small distributors.
He logged onto the Internet and found himself selling "Wet" t-shirts, hats, mugs and pints advertising a beer that didn't exist.
"The fun of it all is that it was virtual," Brown said, adding that the 40-50 million people surfing everyday made it easier to sell attitude over substance. "People buy merchandise. It's a sentiment, feeling, an attitude [like] "Big Johnson" or "No Fear" t-shirts. People catch on to something cool and fun and it takes off."
Brown's idea of "cool and fun" ranges from brochures featuring country music star David Lee Murphy wearing WETBEER garb, to scantily-clad beach girls pasted on the web site.
To match the images, catch phrases flash across the page: "You don't want to be moist...you want to be soaked - get WETBEER," or "Wet yourself," or "Dry's out...Wet's in." They are the key to brewing up a frenzy over this faddish, intangible beer.
Just one of the popular "Wet" images expected to lure bandwagon-hopping college students. |
A list of distributors with whom Brown says he's struck a deal.
1) Silver Foam Distribution (Ann Arbor, Jackson, Battle Creek areas)
2) Superior Distribution (East Lansing and Lansing areas)
3) Lakeshore Beverage (almost entire west coast of Michigan)
4) Chippewa Beverage (Mt. Pleasant surrounding areas)
5) O.K. Distribution (sw corner of Mich.)
6) Paw Paw Distribution (Kalamazoo area)
7) Riffel and Sons (Saginaw, Bay City, Midland areas)
8) Oak Distribution (Oakland Co.and surrounding northern counties)
9) Gerry's Distribution (the entire thumb of Michigan)
10) Alpena Beverage (the entire ne corner of Mich.)
11) Petoskey Beverage (Charlevoix, Petoskey, Gaylord areas, incl, MAC Island)
12) Gold Coast Distribution (entire nw corner of Mich.)
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With beers hitting the market faster than a T-1 Internet connection, it's the advertising and attitude that makes beer a success. It worked for Rose City, Mich.'s Bad Frog Beer last year when it first hit the shelves and the Internet. Slogans ranged from "No more Mr. Nice Guy," to "Do it froggy style," to "I'm in a bad mood."
Brown said that the beer industry involves more than deciding on the type of beer to brew.
"I have a background in watching beers battling it out in gimmicks and hooks," said Brown, who worked for Penske Speedways Inc. as public relations director between 1991 and 1996, and as the publicity director for Fosters Beer two years before that.
Brown got his patent from the Ann Arbor-based law firm, Harness Dickey & Pierce, Patent Attorneys, in January 1997. The idea has cost him and a few small investors about $100,000 so far.
He decided his market would be 21-35 year old beach crowds interested in water sports like boating or skiing. Brown began calling them, "Generation Wet."
"But I have so many people who are 35 and over who are interested," Brown said. "WETBEER is definitely aimed at the 'Geneneration Wet' crowd, but it goes across all boundaries."
When he launched www.wetbeer.com, in August 1997, Brown's main concern was to sell his "Wet" gear. In three months, the web site racked up 2-3,000 hits per month. He started getting faxes and emails from people raving about WETBEER.
And soon they were demanding more than paraphernalia.
They wanted WETBEER.
"I thought, 'I've really got something here,'" Brown said. "I haven't had one person say, 'You've got a dumb idea.'"
Gluek Brewing Co. in Cold Spring, Minn. didn't think WETBEER was a dumb idea, since it agreed to brew the beer last October. Distributors all over Michigan, he added, have caught onto the "Wet" wave, and have agreed to start stacking the WETBEER lager on shelves this month.
"It looks like a unique package, something that will sell a few cases," said John Zeien, general sales manager at Chippewa Beverage Company in Mount Pleasant. "In the short term it'll go pretty good. Long term, it seems like a fad. We're not seeing any real future to it."
Party stores in college towns, Zeien said, will "get wet" first since students aren't loyal to one brand of beer, and are always willing to try something new.
Steve Widman, vice president of sales at Silver Foam Distributing company in Jackson, has faith in WETBEER for different reasons.
"It's fun. It's a very approachable type of marketing scheme," he said. "There's no profanity or obscene gestures."
He added that Silver Foam had distributed Bad Frog Beer in the past, but "there was a lot of negative baggage with it. They had a great marketing scheme but a poor product," he said.
WETBEER, on the other hand, is a "quality lager," Widman said, and it's "something you can have fun with."
A few of the locations where you can by a six-pack of WETBEER:
1) Canopy Party Store, Brighton
2) Vic & Bob's, Howell
3)Cap-N-Quark, Brighton
4)Grand Lake Party Shoppe, Howell
5)West Pointe Party Store, Adrian
6)Country Market, Brooklyn
7)All Sav-Time party stores in Jackson, Park Lake area
WETBEER promotions at clubs and bars in the Jackson-Ann Arbor area:
- Monday, May 4: 8-11 p.m.; Duffy's Food and Spirits, 751 Waterloo Ave. in Jackson. $1.25 for a bottle of WETBEER.
- Thursday, May 7: 7-9 p.m.; Champs Pub, 140 E. Grand River in Brighton. Sample and buy WETBEER.
- Other locations: Nectarine (Ann Arbor), Brighton Bar & Grill, Metropolis (Brighton), Cleary's Pub (Howell) Duby's (Pickney).
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"These stores actually called and asked for it (WETBEER)," Woodman said, adding that they found out about the new beverage by word of mouth.
Stephen Brown only hopes that other distributers like Silver Foam catch on to the WETBEER tidal wave. Ninety-five percent of Michigan distributers, Brown said, bought his idea, so why not Ohio and Indiana?
"It's just exploding," he said. "Everyone is getting behind it and they love it."
