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News Stories and Press Releases
New York, N.Y. – December 19, 2011 – The NBC Sports Group, and its action sports arm Alli, and Red Bull Media House announced today a long-term partnership for the development of a new property, the Red Bull Signature Series. The strategic endeavor will bring 35 hours of jaw-dropping and one-of-a-kind action sports programming to NBC and the NBC Sports Network starting in January 2012.
The Red Bull Signature Series will include the most progressive and innovative snowboarding, mountain biking, freestyle motocross, ice cross downhill, skiing and BMX events, showcased on custom courses from the inspiration of the athletes themselves. The series features some of Red Bull’s top events including X-Fighters, Supernatural, Crashed Ice, Dream Line, Rampage and Cold Rush and other third party action sports competitions (see below for details on shows). The Red Bull Signature Series kicks off on NBC with Crashed Ice on Saturday, January 21. For more information, visit www.redbullsignatureseries.com.
“We look forward to partnering with the NBC Sports Group to expand their footprint in sports and deliver unique competition programming that you don’t see every day,” said Werner Brell, Managing Director, Red Bull Media House North America.
In conjunction with Alli Sports, a division of the NBC Sports Group, the Red Bull Signature Series will offer brands fully integrated sponsorship packages, including on-the-ground, on-air enhancements, commercial units and authentic combinations across its network and digital platforms. With the goal of pure sport progression, the new series will provide an event and media platform with more than 20 global events spread throughout the year, monthly programming on NBC and NBC Sports Network, and multiple digital and social extensions.
"This partnership is an amazing opportunity to create a new global property with a terrific brand in Red Bull, who already produces premium events and world class content,” said Alli Sports President Wade Martin. “The Red Bull Signature Series has amazing growth potential and provides a tremendous opportunity for other brands to be part of some of the world’s most unique sporting events with the NBC Sports Group and Red Bull Media House.”
Red Bull has created captivating athlete and sports content for nearly 25 years, and the relationship with the NBC Sports Group and Alli provides the ability to further reach mainstream audiences around the world.
“Red Bull Media House is a creator of spectacular and unique content in the action sports genre,” said Rob Simmelkjaer, Senior Vice President, NBC Sports Ventures. “We could not be more excited to be bringing this creativity to the NBC Sports Group family of networks.“
The Red Bull Signature Series will feature 20 hours of programming on NBC and 15 hours on NBC Sports Network each year over the course of the partnership. For additional information, visit www.redbullsignatureseries.com.
Red Bull Signature Series programming highlights to include:
•Red Bull X-Fighters: The world's best freestyle motocross riders travel the globe to compete in the premiere FMX series in front of thousands of fans at some of the most iconic locations on the planet.
•Red Bull Rampage: The creative, unrestricted ethos of free-ride mountain biking comes to the contest arena while staying true to the sport's core ideals. Poised on a sandstone ridge in the brutal landscape near Virgin, Utah, riders choose whatever line they dare between an established start gate and the finish line 1,500ft (500m) below. Exactly what happens between those two points will be legendary.
•Red Bull Supernatural: The brainchild of snowboarding icon Travis Rice, the event is a first-of-its-kind backcountry competition designed to showcase the skills of the best all-around riders on the planet. Over 100 man-made features have been built on the slope over summer, so that once snow falls, a series of tree-line features, jumps and drops will emerge creating the ultimate backcountry run.
•Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championship: A combination of ice hockey, downhill skating and boarder-cross, the official Ice Cross Downhill World Championship brings the toughest, fastest ice cross downhill racers from around the world to race through an unforgiving, gritty, freezing downhill ice canal course full of mind-and-body-bending twists, turns and chutes. The rules are simple: Four athletes line up at the start, duke it out shoulder to shoulder and the first across the finish line wins.
•Red Bull Dream Line: 16 of the world’s best BMX dirt riders meet at Anthony Napolitan’s private training facility in Minnesota, riding an un-restricted trails-style course that sends riders to the skies and back down again.
•Red Bull Cold Rush: The invitation-only event returns for year two at its stateside home of Silverton Mountain in Colorado, North America's highest and steepest ski area. Only accessible via helicopter or hiking, the high-alpine bowls, chutes and cliffs are home to the three-day competition. Comprised of three disciplines - Big Mountain, Cliffs, and Slopestyle - the peer-judged event will determine the best all-around backcountry skier.
http://www.foodchannel.com/articles/article/new-way-activate-vitamins-your-water/
We've been talking a lot lately about beverages, so here's another for you to think about. A drink called ACTIVATE has a proprietary cap design that stores vitamins separately from the water. This allows the vitamins to stay fresh and potent, ready when you are. All you do is twist the cap to release the vitamins into the water.
When it comes to enhanced vitamin drinks, this one caught our attention because of the unique bottle design as well as its flavors. I mean, really, Lulo Pear, Blueberry Pomegranate and Raspberry Citrus? Pretty creative combinations that certainly whet my taste buds.
“We are excited to share ACTIVATE’s new varieties with consumers,” said ACTIVATE CEO Dan Holland. “Vitamins and other ingredients lose their potency sitting in water. By storing the active ingredients inside the unique cap, separate from the water, the ingredients stay powerful, fresh. We believe ACTIVATE is the future for health conscious consumers on the move.”
Lulo Pear claims to offer 200 percent of your daily serving of Vitamin C, so stock up for colds and flu season. Blueberry Pomegranate is made with açaí and Aloe Vera extract, antioxidants known to support healthy aging. And Raspberry Citrus has been dubbed a "workout drink" because it's loaded with Vitamin C, amino acids and electrolytes. There are other flavors, too (Fruit Punch, Orange, Exotic Berry, Lemon Lime, Grape, Passion Fruit and Pink Grapefruit), so if this is your cup of . . . water, just check them out at this link.
Hood River, Or – In 2008 Full Sail Brewing created their small batch Brewer’s Share series as an opportunity for each of their individual brewers to express their creations to be shared on tap exclusively in their pub. Since their crew came up with so many great beers, they decided to share a selection of them with beer lovers everywhere. The first beer in the series "Extra Special Barney" (ESB) developed by Brewing Supervisor, Barney Brennan will be released in 22oz. bottles and on draft in January.
“It’s rare to know who makes your beer. We’re proud to be the people behind so many award winning brews. As an independent and employee owned brewery, you know that we put our hearts and souls into every drop. With Brewer’s Share, we take it one step further and introduce our individual brewers by name and beer,” said Irene Firmat, Full Sail’s CEO and Founder.
According to Brennan, this beer is a departure from the big, hoppy, Northwest ales. This Extra Special Bitter, a traditional English style ale, is brewed with attention to balance, highlighting both malt and hops. Five different malt varieties give the beer its orange hue, and caramel complexities. A single hop was used, Challenger, including a pound per barrel dry hop. The pint first offers the interaction of the aromas of malt and hop, then the medium body and caramel flavors finish with a slight bitterness. Drinkable and quenching with an invitation to return for another taste. 6.5% ABV, 35 IBU
Brennan’s ESB was inspired by two things; a perfect beer moment and the aromatic highlight of the hop selection in Yakima, a US Challenger hop. As Barney puts it, “I was sitting on the deck at the brewery overlooking the river in the sunshine – drinking a perfectly balanced bitter – already looking forward to the second pint. It was one of those great beer moments. Hopefully, my ESB will make one of those moments for someone else with its five different specialty malts and this one very special hop. We made it entirely with US Challenger hops including a pound per barrel dry hop because we wanted to share the aromatic experience we had at the hop rub in Yakima with our customers.”
The inspiration for the name “Brewer’s Share” came from that mysterious portion that vanishes from a barrel during aging that brewers refer to as the “angel’s share,” and that led to “Brewer’s Share,” an equally mysterious offering that appears during inspiration. Brewer’s Share can also mean a unit of ownership, as in stock. Consider this program to be an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Whenever you purchase a Brewer’s Share you get a unit of ownership – one share of the batch. As a shareholder you have the right to consume the beverage. In doing so you will also be investing in the public good – as each brewer not only chooses the recipe, they choose a local charity or organization that will benefit from each bottle sold – Which can bring an excellent return on ingestion (ROI).
Full Sail’s Brewer’s Share small batch offerings will be available in 22oz. bottles and on draft. The other beers in the 2012 line-up include Phil’s Existential Alt, Chris’s Summer Delight Berliner Weiss and Big Daddy J’s Malt Liquor. Full Sail will release one Brewer’s Share at a time and a new beer will be released for each season.
With each Brewer’s Share series beer, Full Sail picks a local charity or organization to receive a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the beer. Barney has chosen to support Columbia Gorge Arts in Education so every barrel of Extra Special Barney benefits this organization. The Columbia Gorge Arts in Education provides visual, literary, and performing arts to local K-12 students. Through artist residencies in schools, workshops, after school programs, community art projects and installations, programs for at-risk youth, and cultural performances, Columbia Gorge Arts in Education served 6,000 kids last year in the Mid-Columbia region. For more information please visit www.cgaie.org.
About Full Sail Brewing Company:
The independent and employee-owned Full Sail Brewery is perched on a bluff in Hood River, Oregon, overlooking the most epic wind and kite surfing spot in the world. At this very moment our specialists in the liquid refreshment arts are crafting barley and hops into your next beer. Among the company’s most popular brews are Full Sail Amber, IPA, Pale, LTD, Wassail, Session, Session Black, and Session Fest Premium lager. Founded in 1987, the Full Sail crew has been fermenting godlike nectar for 25 years. Committed to brewing great beer and sustainable practices their award winning brews are now available in 28 states. The Full Sail Tasting Room and Pub is open seven days a week. Swing by for a pint, grab a bite, tour the brewery, or just soak up the view.
http://www.fullsailbrewing.com
Willamette Valley Vineyards signs with Young's Market: by Peter Mitham (http://www.winesandvines.com)
The amount of time associated with distributing Willamette Valley Vineyards wines in-state led the winery to enter a distribution agreement with Young's Market Co.Turner, Ore.—A new chapter has begun in the evolution of Willamette Valley Vineyards Inc. The fast-growing winery is ending its long-standing practice of distributing its own wines to customers within the state.
This change, announced in WVV’s most recent quarterly report, follows the signing of an exclusive seven-year distribution agreement with the Oregon and Washington divisions of California-based Young’s Market Co. on Aug. 1, 2011. Young’s already distributes WVV’s wines in California, Alaska and Hawaii, and on Sept. 1 assumed Northwest distribution from the company’s in-house wholesale division, Bacchus Fine Wines.
Bacchus has been distributing approximately 1,000 SKUs of products by 130,000-case WVV and other vintners and reported total sales of $4.3 million in 2010, but it will cease operation by the end of the year. Overall sales for WVV in 2010 totalled $17.4 million.
“Management has determined that the winery, as a small public company, can no longer afford the public reporting compliance costs of distributing wines,” the quarterly report said. “By using a wholesaler like Young’s Market Northwest, that allows us to put more of our internal resources toward improving the quality of our Pinot Noir,” Libby Spencer, sales operations manager for WVV, told Wines & Vines this week. “It’s just proven to be a lot of work, and we’d really rather be talking with our customers and sharing the wine.”
Profits lacking
While there was a desire to retain distribution in-house because of the connection with the company’s roots, Spencer said the division’s contribution to profitability was “lacking.”
Sales of wines from other producers through Bacchus typically had a narrower margin than WVV’s own wines. In 2008, profitability was further compromised by high fuel prices and the cost of implementing new software to track stock. (See “Northwest Vintners Strategize,” April 1, 2009.)
A new division manager helped address these issues, but 2009 and 2010 margins remained tight. Bacchus’ profitability (as a percentage of sales) stood at 29.3% in 2008, 26.8% in 2009 and 27.6% in 2010. WVV’s own wines, by contrast, delivered profitability in the same three years of 55.2%, 54% and 49.2%, respectively.
The decision to outsource distribution was difficult, but it comes at a time when the winery is riding a wave of success. Its wines are regularly scoring 90-plus in consumer magazines, and this past spring Wine Press Northwest named WVV “Oregon Winery of the Year” while Wine & Spirits magazine recently chose it as its Winery of the Year.
WVV’s rising reputation has made its wines easier to sell, and in turn made it easier for the winery to relinquish distribution (The agreement with Young’s excludes Morrow, Umatilla, Union, Wallowa, Grant, Baker and Malheur counties in Oregon, however.)
“Anytime we can do something internally, he likes it,” Spencer said of WVV co-founder, president and chair Jim Bernau, who was travelling this week and unavailable for interviews. “(But) at some point we have to make the decision: ‘Does it make sense for us to do this ourselves?”
The decision couldn’t have come at a better time. The wine distribution business in Oregon has grown in tandem with the wine industry over the past five years, according to industry studies by Full Glass Research of California. The 2010 economic impact study pegs revenues associated with wine distribution in Oregon at $449.4 million, while in the 2005 report the figure was just $223.8 million.
Spencer told Wines & Vines that no jobs will be lost as a result of the termination of Bacchus Fine Wines. WVV will retain approximately 50 full-time staff members, and the 18 employees associated with Bacchus are being assigned to other positions within the company.
Columbia Distributing is proud to announce that it has received the 2011 Beverage Distributor of the Year award by Beverage Executive magazine.
View the full article: http://www.beverageexec.com/articles/full/14833/having-the-beer-gene
A generous donation of over 2000 books was delivered on October 25th to local non-profit Bridge Meadows’ library by employees of Columbia Distributing. Columbia held a “Fill the Shelves” book drive at branch locations in both Oregon and Washington throughout the month of August asking employees to donate new or gently used books. The large donation will help Bridge Meadows, an inter-generational community for adoptive families located in North Portland; serve the families and senior residents of the community.
The donation was well received by Bridge Meadows Executive Director Derenda Schubert, “The Bridge Meadows community is so very grateful for the incredible donation of books by the employees of Columbia Distributing. The library is a special place for children, parents and elders to gather and learn, and the books from the Columbia Distributing team will be a wonderful addition contributing to a love of reading!”
Columbia Distributing is a corporate sponsor of Bridge Meadows and has worked with the organization since 2008 to help partially fund the building of one of the units located within the community. Bridge Meadows placed its first family in the community this past May and already houses six of the nine family homes.
About Bridge Meadows: Bridge Meadows (www.bridgemeadows.org) is an intergenerational, affordable housing community located in North Portland whose mission is to develop and sustain intergenerational neighborhoods for adoptive families of foster children that promote permanency, community and caring relationships, while offering safety and meaningful purpose in the daily lives of older adults.
Young’s Market Company and Columbia Distributing jointly announced today that Young’s Market purchased Columbia’s 50% interest in Young’s-Columbia of Oregon, LLC and Young’s-Columbia of Washington, LLC, effective April 18, 2011. The Young’s-Columbia entities are the largest distributors of wine in Washington and Oregon, with annual sales in excess of $500 Million. The parties have agreed to continue their highly successful shared services business arrangement in Oregon and Washington pursuant to which Columbia Distributing will continue to strategically partner with the Young’s Columbia entities to maximize operational synergies.
In announcing the purchase, Christopher Underwood, the CEO of Young’s Market Company said: “This acquisition is a further demonstration of Young’s absolute and unqualified commitment to the beverage alcohol distribution business in the Western United States. Columbia Distributing has been a loyal and supportive partner and they will continue in that role as the services provider for the Young’s-Columbia companies. Neither our customers nor our suppliers will experience any operational changes as a result of this transaction. We are very excited about the future of our business in the Pacific Northwest”, Mr. Underwood concluded.
Gregg Christiansen, the CEO of Columbia Distributing said: “Our company has worked closely with our partners at Young’s-Columbia since 2003 to implement the most innovative and efficient shared service agreement in our industry. This has enabled both companies to provide optimum service standards to our retail and supplier partners. Columbia Distributing looks forward to continuing this successful relationship with Young’s-Columbia”.
About Young’s Market Company: Young’s Market Company is one of the nation’s largest distributors of fine wines and spirits with operations in California, Hawaii, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Montana and Wyoming.
About Columbia Distributing: Columbia Distributing is one of the nation’s largest beverage wholesalers, with annual sales of more than 33 million cases of beer and 11 million cases of non-alcoholic beverages. The Company has over 2,500 employees and operates out of nine primary distribution facilities throughout Oregon and Washington.