When the tax man came for the beer

2017: Saudi Arabia introduces excise tax: 50% on carbonated soft drinks, 100% on energy drinks. Overnight, the economics of the portfolio across all channels (HORECA, wholesale, traditional trade, modern trade) were exposed to a repricing shock.

Commercial orchestration at scale: coordinating a six-person trade-marketing team and nine regional sales managers across a distribution network of roughly 300 vehicles and 3,000 stores, and running two country-wide new-SKU launches, each with budgets above $500K.

Helped build the commercial contingency response to the tax: impact analysis per channel, pricing-scenario modelling, revised loyalty and discount mechanics, work with the bottling side on recipe and product changes, and engagement around the regulatory implications.

Meanwhile the launches ran as one campaign with channel-differentiated execution: high-visibility in-store in modern trade, adapted execution in traditional trade and wholesale, experiential activation in HORECA, and a football-themed consumer experience.

A structured commercial response that protected continuity across channels through a major regulatory shock, the first genuinely systemic commercial problem of my career, and the one that taught me to treat regulation as a business problem, not a tax problem.

Trade marketing · channel execution · campaign orchestration