[Noisebridge-discuss] Club Mate pricing

[Lee Sonko]

Sai Emrys writes
> I had my first Club Mate at last Tuesday's meeting.
> 
> Didn't really take much getting used to - looks like I really like the stuff.

Excellent!

I have been actively pursuing the obtainment of Club Mate in larger quantities. I have been speaking with the folks at the Loscher Brewery in Münchsteinach Germany. Actually, Charlotte spoke with Marcus Loscher in German as interpreter while I sat there and gesticulated.

Charlotte has also been helping as a cultural guide. For one, she told me how the brewery is in a laid back part of the country. No kidding... We wrote a detailed letter asking about 10 finer points of a possible purchase almost 3 weeks ago and just yesterday (hurray!) they got back to me even with me pestering them weekly. Oh and they only got back to me about 2 of the finer points and Charlotte hasn't yet been able to translate 1 of them due to a dialect difference. It'll probably just take a little staring at and maybe a phone call to figure out.


800 bottles (1 pallet, 40 cases with 20 0.5 liter bottles) delivered to a shipping dock in Hamburg € 799.90
or
2,400 bottles (3 pallets) € 2.049,90


I've also been speaking with a few freight forwarders. One gave a -rough- estimate of $680 to ship 1 meter^3 from the brewery to Oakland. I need more details from Loscher before I can get a firm price.



So direct shipping prices per bottle look -roughly- to be
$1.50 purchased & trucked to Hamburg
$0.85 ocean shipping
$0.30? fees?
-------------
$2.65 = ROUGH cost to buy and move 1 bottle (in 1 pallet) to Oakland from Münchsteinach.



There are still a lot of details to resolve like:
* labels - You may have noticed that the new shipment has new, all-English labels :-(
* German taxes - Hopefully they will not charge tax because it's for export and their letter says something about it but dialect got in the way
* import taxes, duties, fees - can't be resolved until Loscher gets back to me
* FDA approval and tariff classification - This should be easy again but can't be resolved until Loscher gets back to me about some details



I'm going to write back to Loscher to get some more details so I can pin down the price and feasibility 

questions include:
dimensions of a single pallet, stackability
11 digit FDA Registration number
label discussion
For import to the US and tariff purposes, can you tell me the tariff classification and the ingredients in Club Mate?
German VAT / MWST?


All this will be done not-Saturday night. :-)

Lee









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