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manchego 11/10/2004 at 08:53 PST
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Well, this may be of some help to a few of you:
Under the 21 Ammendment to the Constitution of the United States, individual States are allowed to further define how they wish to handle alcohol law, but of course maintaining the basic mandate of the 21st.
I say all that to encourage you to check with the governing body for alcohol in your State. In AZ it's the Dept of Liquor Licenses and Control. In CA it's the Alcohol Beverage Control. In NV it's thru the Secretary of State. So you are going to have to figure out a.) what the office is called, and b.) what licenses they require.
CA allows an importer to also be a distributor, a 3 tier State, but that is not common to most States. So effectively, in most other States you may only be an importer, who sells to a distributor, who sells to a retailer, who sells to a consumer -- aka, a 4 tier State. You can see how this affects pricing!
Transportation: Find out the name of the service port (ocean port) of the country you want to export from, and see if they have a website. Generally they will offer information on 3rd party shipping solutions. Also, do a search on shipping keywords for the country you want to work out of.
Be prepared to have to jump thru hoops! I cannot stress this enough! You will have to fill out mountains of paperwork, fill it out again because it was not done right in the first place, perhaps hire a consultant, etc... Also, be prepared to WAIT. It's just not possible to hurry the licensing approval process along. The best thing you can do is study the requirements, fill out the paperwork properly, and be sure to have your ducks in a row. Not trying to scare anyone, but that's the reality of it.
Good luck to those of you who want to import!
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