Crillon Importers Ltd. Identifies Demand Before it Even Exists

He introduced Americans to some of the biggest spirit brands in history. And yet strangely our story truly begins at his retirement.
    That being said, a little background is enlightening.
    Michel Pierre Roux was born in 1940 in Soyaux Charente, France, and immigrated to the United States in 1964 after graduating from the University of Strasbourg with a degree in hotel management and having served as an officer in the French Army. Beginning his career in America in the hospitality industry, Roux managed select nightclubs and owned restaurants in Texas.
    Roux began his career in 1970 at his former company as its first salesman and by 1981 was appointed president and CEO. From that moment on, Roux became instrumental in the development, distribution and success of many foreign products in the United States, including Stolichnaya vodkas, Grand Marnier, Absolut vodka, Bombay gin and Bombay Sapphire gin, as well as many other high-quality spirits, liqueurs and wines from around the world.
    Roux retired on September 30, 1998. By October 4, he had founded Crillon Importers Ltd.
    “When the time came for me to retire, I was too young to be retired,” says Roux, chairman and CEO of Crillon. “I thought of (creating) a company in which a few other people in the company would be people who had been working with me for many years.”

The Gift
    “The idea in the beginning was to take some brands and build them up,” Roux says. “At the same time, we wanted to create some brands that would belong to the company.”
    The portfolio of brands that Crillon presently either owns, co-owns or imports includes Magellan Gin, Absente, Agavero, Rhum Barbancourt, O.P. Anderson Aquavit, Elisir MP Roux, Douce Provence, Talapa Mezcal, H.B. Pastis and RinQuinQuin. Roux’s skilled eye for quality and meaning to the market deserve credit for each label in the lineup. “
    Michel had come from a much larger background,” says Jim Nikola, vice president, marketing. “Most of the companies he worked for were public, and this was his first private company. Our portfolio is the high-end part of the distilled spirits category across the spectrum.“
    Michel starts in the bottle,” Nikola says. “The liquid in the bottle needs to have a story — besides obviously being an excellent spirit, as a given. For instance, we have the first legal absinthe in the United States since 1915. That’s a very historic liquor. It’s called Absente. That’s Michel; he’s a visionary. A while back, in London, he saw that the absinthes of the past weren’t banned, and people were starting to discover that the ban had never taken place in eastern Europe and London. Absinthe started popping around, and so he wanted to bring the first absinthe into the United States since the ban. That’s the type of foresight Michel has. He sees trends well before they happen. That’s been his gift for a long time.”
    Roux’s gift for identifying a coming trend and addressing it with a product shines in the Crillon portfolio not only with Absente but also with Agavero,  for example. “
    It’s a flavored tequila, really before flavored tequilas existed,” Nikola says. “Until this year, you couldn’t label anything a flavored tequila.”
    And like the company’s other brands, Agavero fits Roux’s criteria by not only offering a stellar spirit in the bottle but also by having a story behind it; it’s flavored with a flower that grows in high altitudes in Mexico that the ancient Mayans as an aphrodisiac when brewed in a tea.

Small Company, Big Plus
    After working for much larger corporations, Roux believes the smaller size of Crillon has its benefits for the market and the operators who ultimately use its products.
“What we have is the flexibility to do things pretty quick,” Roux says. But he acknowledges that not everything can be done quickly.

“Everything takes time. Even the brands that we are seeing today, we think they came overnight. But they did not come overnight. Some took five or 10 years to be discovered.
    “We work on new ideas. We look at categories and what we can do. We look at new categories altogether. What you have to look at is the history of the business. What made scotch a
big thing?
    “The consumer is always looking for something new and exciting. America is a country of aspiration. People need to have something immediate — something better than the neighbor has. With all the new gadgets or games, people are fighting to get everything first. And I think there is a correlation  between that and our industry.”
    Crillon’s approach to marketing also differs from that of the big guys,
Roux says. “I think we have the best packaging. “We are not spending much time on print, TV or Internet advertising. We are spending time mostly on POS, packaging and things like this. For on-premise, we are giving them the option to do some new drinks with new products, which is a good thing.
    “We are giving them ideas, like we have a collection of spoons and a collection of glasses for Absente. These things are available to on-premise places across the country.”            NCB