Pac-Northwest wholesaler Columbia Distributing has struck a deal to acquire Point Blank Distributing, adding around 1 million cases to its annual case load of 60 million cases.
The transaction is expected to close May 31, Columbia Distributing CEO Chris Steffanci told Brewbound. Columbia is in the process of notifying suppliers within Point Blank’s portfolio and will begin meeting with them in the coming weeks to gain approvals, he added.
Once the deal is complete, Point Blank will operate as a separate division within Columbia with a yet-to-be-determined name in order to preserve what made the craft and import distributor successful, including servicing on-premise retailers, building relationships with supplier partners and creating a “craft brewer culture,” Steffanci said.
“Basically it’s going to be all the same people managing basically the same portfolio they have today,” he shared, adding the goal is to hire essentially the entire Point Blank on-premise team.
Key to that plan is the hiring of Point Blank brand manager Jimmy Werbin to lead the division, Steffanci said.
Columbia is also looking to retain as many Point Blank suppliers as possible. The distributor is aligned with pFriem Family Brewers and Deschutes-owned Boneyard Brewing in Washington state and has already secured approvals from those two brands on the transition.
“We’re willing to give distribution opportunities to anybody who wants to be with us, that wants to be part of that division,” Steffanci said. “We think a lot will. We think some may not.
“Hopefully, keeping this separate Point Blank division will help the guys who may be nervous about ‘being in Columbia’s system,’” he continued. “Hopefully that’ll help waive any concerns that have, and again, with Jimmy coming over, there should be a lot of continuity and consistency.”
If the new division is successful, Steffanci envisions a similar model forming in Seattle in about a year’s time.
Meanwhile, Columbia will be able to help “suppliers who are on the cusp of getting bigger” scale on the off-premise side of the business, via its market access, chain relationships, merchandising support and overall logistics speed.
“We think it’s taking the best of both worlds with Point Blank and Columbia and bringing them together,” he said.
Point Blank operates warehouses that serve Portland, Eugene, Corvallis and Bend in Oregon. Those operations will be consolidated within Columbia’s operations once the deal closes, Steffanci said. He added that warehouse workers and drivers are also being offered jobs at Columbia’s facilities.
“We probably won’t be able to hire everybody; we’re gonna hire as many people as we can,” he said.
Asked what Columbia learned from the 2022 joint venture with boutique craft distributor Scout Distribution in Idaho that has since been sold off, Steffanci stressed the importance of scale and anchor brands. The now-ended project suffered from a lack of back-office and logistical support due to its geographic distance from Columbia’s headquarters.
“We just didn’t have the scale, and because we didn’t have the scale, we couldn’t provide a logistics and service model that customers wanted,” he said. “So we kind of made it hard to do business with.
“What’s great about the Point Blank situation is because we have the Columbia side, we’re gonna be able to provide great service,” he added. “We have scale that allows us to efficiently move product around. And then we have the sales side, and we have brands like pFriem and Boneyard that still provide a lot of scale. These are really big brands.”
Point Blank was founded in 2003 by Scott Willis and the late Aaron Gardner. Steffanci said discussions with Willis picked up over the last six months.
“We have been talking to Scott off and on and always had this desire to ultimately have an opportunity to buy Point Blank,” he said.
Willis will stay on through the transition before exiting the business.
In other Columbia news, the distributor is picking up around 700,000 cases of Delicato Family Wines from Republic National Distributing (RNDC) in Oregon and Washington for the distributor’s wine and spirits division, Steffanci said.
“We don’t have any large box wine, so it fits a great white space,” he added. “About 70% of their total business is in Bota Box, which is the 3L box wine. …. It’s a pretty simple portfolio, not a lot of complexity.”
Columbia will begin distributing Delicato’s portfolio beginning March 1.