Cheryl Durzy CEO of LibDib

Thirsty Thursdays @3PM EST

Welcome to Thirsty Thursdays @3PM EST!

My name is Jessie Ott, the Host of this Podcast which is all about Beverage Innovation. I talk with Innovation Pioneers from Agriculture to Glass.

This week, I spoke with Cheryl Durzy, CEO at Liberation Distribution otherwise known as LibDib, founded in June of 2016. LibDib has reimagined distribution from the old brick-and-mortar way of selling your products to the distributor directly.

Cheryl started her career working in PR with high-tech clients at Alexander Ogilvy, which was a premonition of her starting LibDib, a technology platform. She then transitioned to sales and marketing for her parent’s winery, Clos LaChance Winery, for nearly 18 years.

Within that time, Cheryl explored her entrepreneurial spirit by creating products and one was a wine brand called MommyJuice Wines. This is a fascinating story to hear, plus she learned so much from this experience including trademark law.

With so much innovation exploding everywhere and distributor consolidation, even though they are an 80,000-case winery, it’s viewed as small and the challenge of getting distribution was increasingly difficult.

Cheryl, with her entrepreneurial spirit, took control of the winery’s own destiny and became a pioneer and beverage industry disruptor. Within only two years, she had built the technology whereby the CEO of Republic National Distributor Company (RNDC) who at the time was Tom Cole reached out to establish a partnership.

She talks about the ins and outs of how LibDib works for each side of the business and discusses her mentor, Tom Cole, and his vision and people skills as well as her goals to reach as CEO.

I can’t thank Cheryl enough for joining me on my podcast and sharing her journey with us all. I’m a huge admirer of hers and wish her and her team continued breakthrough success.

Shout out to @BenSalisbury and @JulieMilroy as Cheryl and I discussed our mutual respect for you both!

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