A COMPANY WHICH HAS OUTLASTED ECONOMIC DOWNTURNS FOR 216 YEARS

It’s very exciting to see companies excel right off the bat and skyrocket to success, but its even more thrilling to see a company which has consistently done well for a very long time. This company has been in existence for 216 years and they are still going strong! Find out which company has lasted two centuries already!

INC highlights…

Can there be a 216-year-old start-up?

Bill Newlands, president of Beam North America, believes it is possible. As one on the most recognizable liquor brands in the United States—Jim Beam—gears up for another phase, the company is trying to stay quick and nimble while promoting its well-known brands.

The company, which includes brands such as Maker’s Mark, Cruzan Rum, and Suaza Tequila, split off from Fortune Brands this month to be publicly traded company under the name Beam Inc.  Fortune Brands, which sold its golf brand Titleist in July, will continue to house home goods and security companies, such as Master Lock and Moen faucets.

While Fortune Brands has been hit like other suppliers of home goods by the lack of new home construction since the onset of the recession, sales for spirits rose 2.3 percent to $19.2 billion last year, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. During 2010, Beam’s global revenues increased 7.9 percent to $2.7 billion.

Part of the strategy is keeping people like Frederick Booker Noe III, Jim Beam’s great grandson, and Rob Samuels, the grandson of the founder of Maker’s Mark, at the forefront as a brand ambassadors for the company, while quickly rolling out a series of new products to bring in a new audience.

Newland says a big portion of that audience is a population plenty of big spirits companies ignore: women.

In the past six years, Beam has added 11 of its 14 priority brands, including the much ballyhooed addition of reality TV star Bethenny Frankel’s Skinnygirl Cocktails. The margarita variety quickly became the No. 1 selling ready-to-drink cocktail, and the company recently added white sangria with plans for a white cosmopolitan drink.

Determining that women are more likely to favor drinks with a lower alcohol content and flavored spirits, Beam also launched a less potent variety of Courvoisier cognac blended with red wine, Pucker-flavored vodkas, a variety of Effen vodka inspired by the cucumber water you’d find at spas, as well as Red Stag, a cherry-flavored bourbon made by Jim Beam.

And while about 80 percent of bourbon drinkers are men, Noe says that about half of Red Stag customers are women—and that it’s helping introduce them to the bourbon category. In the last five years, Noe says he’s noticed that women are coming in groups to tastings, where before, they would only visit if with their husband or boyfriend.

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