- Salespeople who work for the independent wholesalers who distribute Anheuser-Busch products feel the pain of the constant interruption in their wallets.
- Some say they lost the commission due to a drop in sales due to the boycott associated with the Trans partnership with Dylan Mulvaney
- Parent company Anheuser-Busch has lost $27 billion in value since the boycott began
Salespeople working for the independent wholesalers selling Anheuser-Busch drinks are feeling pain in their wallets over an ongoing boycott of Bud Light following her partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Bud Light sales have fallen for seven straight weeks after a controversial TikToker’s product endorsement received immediate backlash.
The partnership sparked protests and backlash and parent company Anheuser-Busch lost $27 billion in value in just months.
The financial hit the company continues to take has ripple effects across its distribution channels.
The incomes of salespeople who work for the nearly 500 independent wholesalers who sell Anheuser-Busch products to restaurants, bars and grocery stores have been reduced.
Some have reported losing $2,000 in the last month compared to the typical month of May due to the backlash.
Former Anhesuer-Busch InBev — the parent company of AB — executive Anson Frikes recently told ABC News that a product boycott undoubtedly creates financial pain for the thousands of salespeople who work for wholesalers who rely largely on performance-based compensation.
Compensation for salespeople varies with different distributors and markets, but according to Frericks, the typical salesperson earns about $60,000 annually, including $20,000 in variable pay, which is largely commission-based.
“The good people will start leaving because they’re not making money,” he told ABC.
An anonymous supervisor from a Florida distributor told the outlet that the average salesperson earns about $2,000 less in the month of May than he would normally have made based on numbers from the past few years.
The numbers are suffering primarily because of the decline in Bud Light sales, which hit a 60 percent decline during the week that ended Memorial Day.
This really killed a lot of commission-dependent men. This is who really hurts. ‘There’s nothing they can do – this has been thrown in their face,’ said the supervisor.
On an earnings call last month, Michel Docris, CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev, pointed to the stigma the boycott has placed on distributors and salespeople.
“This situation has affected our employees and especially our frontline workers: delivery drivers, salespeople, wholesalers, bud owners and servers,” he said.
“These people are the fabric of our business. They are our neighbors, our family and our friends. They are in every community in America. We’ve done everything we can to support our teams.”
Doukeris also said that Anheuser-Busch InBev provided financial support to front-line workers at independent distributors, giving each employee $500 and additional advertising spending for the month of May.
A statement from the company reads:Anheuser-Busch employs more than 18,000 people and our independent wholesaler partners have an additional 47,000 valuable colleagues. The current situation has affected our staff especially the front line workers including delivery drivers and sales representatives.
These people are our neighbors, family members, and friends. They are in every community in America. As we move forward, we will continue to do everything we can to support our teams while working tirelessly to do what we do best – bringing people together for a beer.
Despite the efforts of Bud Light and CEO Michel Doukeris, the brand has not seen a rebound in sales since the Mulvaney partnership.
About two months ago, Mulvaney posted digital content to her accounts to coincide with the NCAA March Madness tournament — joking that she wasn’t even sure what sport to promote.
The campaign was the brainchild of Alisa Heinscheid, Vice President of Marketing for Bud Light, who was placed on leave shortly after the incident. Its boss, Daniel Blake, vice president of marketing at Budweiser Group, has also been removed from his role in the backlash.
For the week ending May 20, Bud Light sales across the US were down nearly 26 percent compared to the same period a year ago. In the week ending May 6, in-store sales fell 23.6 percent. And in the week before that, ending April 29, sales fell 23.3%.
This follows lower sales for the week ending April 22, which saw a decline of 21.4 percent. Seven days ago, the decline was 17 percent, according to NielsenIQ data provided to Dailymail.com by Bump Williams Consultancy.
The data — which shows that sales of Bud Lite in the US are dropping as much as 20 percent each week — is uniformly seen by industry experts as a negative trend that may not reverse itself anytime soon.
“The entire industry is in shock,” Beer Business Daily editor Harry Schuhmacher told Fox News Digital.
He claimed that the newfound demand for non-Anheuser-Bush-owned beer could lead to a negative impact on the industry.
“Even Bud’s competitors don’t really dance on the grave because they know it could have happened to them,” he said.
#Bud #Light #boycott #hurts #salespeoples #commission