As Fever-Tree enjoys strong growth in both liquor and grocery channels, the premium mixer has added to its Australia team with the appointment of Carl Willuweit as Commercial and Business Development Manager.
Fever-Tree’s Australia GM Andy Gaunt said that with varied experience across beer and grocery channels Willuweit, who was placed by BrightSide Executive Search, will be aiming to help Fever-Tree build on its recent strong growth.
“It’s around eight years since Fever-Tree first started in Australia and we’ve been working alongside SouthTrade as our partners for six years in the traditional brand owner and distributor third party partnership,” Gaunt told The Shout.
“As our business has grown and the category has developed, we made a couple of changes last year to help set us up for the future, and that was about bringing on a second distributor to work alongside SouthTrade and manage our grocery business.
“And like anything as you get bigger and more scale and there are more exciting things happening, but particularly in the dynamic of dual distributors, and giving better consumer and commercial support, it was really clear that we needed to build more of a team on the ground here.”
He added: “Carl is coming in to be a partner to our commercial and customer teams to drive the mixer category agenda alongside our partners through to our consumers, developing the right programs and tools and giving the mixer category some time and focus.
“We are a business with great ambitions, but we are still small and emerging and entrepreneurial and Carl comes with a great mix of corporate background having spent five years at Lion, five at CUB and a couple of years with Schweppes. Then for the last three years he established and set up the Young Henry’s commercial team.
“So he brings a nice mix of alcohol and non-alcohol experience with him and a really good understanding of the landscapes and customer environments.”
Gaunt worked with the team and BrightSide in recruiting Willuweit, and said they were “fantastic” to work with.
“This is the first time I’ve worked with BrightSide,” he said, “I thought they brought a really fresh approach. It was really clear to see they have an expertise and capability in drinks, and real pleasure to work with him. They managed things really well.”
Next week The Shout will bring you more from Fever-Tree and how the business has grown and developed in a challenging 2020.