Word: bottler
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...many alleged plots to fleece R. and D.-rich pharmaceutical firms. Last spring a Gillette consultant went to prison for trying to market secret designs of the company's Mach3 razor to competitors such as Bic. And a small Maryland soft-drink distributor claims that Coca-Cola Enterprises, the bottler partly owned by Coke, used wiretapping and other shady tactics to destroy his business. CCE denies all the charges...
Coke has played kick the can with the big "Project Blue" global campaign that Pepsi launched last year, grabbing Pepsi strongholds like Russia and India. Goizueta orchestrated one of the cola war's most outrageous raids--buying half of Pepsi's Venezuelan bottler and grabbing a dominant market share almost overnight. "The conclusion is obvious," he told TIME shortly afterward. "Our system has terrific momentum...
Then came August, when Enrico learned that Pepsi's biggest bottler, Argentina's B.A.E.S.A., was rotten with financial problems--this coming on the heels of accounting shenanigans with Pepsi Bottling of Puerto Rico. And last week Pepsi's sad summer seemed to reach its nadir in Venezuela, the company's showcase South American market: overnight and without notice, Pepsi's independent (to say the least) bottler switched 18 plants and 2,500 trucks to archrival Coca-Cola, a midnight move that will cost Pepsi some $400 million in sales and $10 million in profits according to analysts if the defection...
...been the choice of generations of Venezuelans, holding a 40% market share; the country of 21 million was one of Pepsi's Top 10 global markets. The relationship was cushioned by the friendship between PepsiCo boss Enrico and Oswaldo Cisneros, CEO of Embotelladras Hit de Venezuela, the Pepsi bottler there. But Cisneros became a Coke convert for a reported price of $300 million, a whopping chunk of cash for half interest in the business. The swiftness of the deal left Pepsi's regional president, Alberto Uribe, sputtering with rage: "Oswaldo Cisneros was my friend. He sent me four lawyers...
Pepsi and Coke have sold their products overseas for decades; or rather, they have sold concentrate to an unruly menagerie of bottlers in nearly 200 countries. In the past decade the two have spent billions to gain more control over the trademarks by letting licenses lapse, setting up partnerships or muscling undesirable bottlers out of the way. Pepsi, for instance, now has a 40% interest in its bottlers. Earlier this summer Coke arranged to buy out its British partner, Cadbury Schweppes; the two were the beverage version of Charles and Di. Coke's new partner is Coca-Cola Enterprises...