Strategic focus, flexibility and portfolio management in the spirits industry

Based on an interview with Chiara Garavini, Group FP&A, IFRS & CSRD Reporting, OnePlan, Investor Relations & Corporate Finance Senior Director, Gruppo Campari

Over the past three decades, the spirits industry has undergone profound transformation. What distinguishes the current phase, however, is not only the intensity of change, but its global nature. Unlike the past, when trends tended to emerge in specific regions and diffuse gradually, today’s shifts are increasingly synchronous across geographies, driven by macroeconomic volatility, changing consumption behaviors, and evolving social norms.

In this context, managing international growth is no longer about simply expanding footprint. It is about actively managing a portfolio of countries, brands, and routes to market, under conditions of persistent uncertainty.

As Chiara Garavini explains, Gruppo Campari frames this complexity by distinguishing between cyclical trends, which tend to fade over time, and structural trends, which reshape the industry and therefore require strategic engagement rather than resistance. This distinction is central to Campari’s approach to international strategy.

Structural vs. cyclical trends: why the difference matters

Cyclical trends, such as post-Covid consumption normalization, pressure on discretionary spending, or short-term volatility in interest rates, require careful monitoring but are not expected to permanently alter the industry. Structural trends, by contrast, define the future competitive landscape. Among the most relevant:

• Moderation: consumers drink less, but better.
• Premiumization: value grows faster than volume.
• New consumption occasions: daytime, aperitivo, refreshment moments.
• Ready-to-drink (RTD) formats enabling convenience and accessibility.
• Alcohol-free alternatives expanding social inclusion.
• Emerging uncertainties linked to GLP-1 drugs and cannabis, which are monitored closely.

 
Chiara Garavini

Rather than fighting these shifts, Campari’s strategy is to identify, anticipate, and leverage them, transforming uncertainty into opportunity. Over the years, Campari has combined internal know-how and market feedback from local teams with a steady acquisition engine (often one deal per year), using M&A to complement organic innovation and strengthen local competitiveness through targeted category, brand, and route-to-market moves. Campari has developed a unique go-to-market, deeply rooted in on-premise excellence. Initiatives such as Campari Academies play a critical role here: they are not just bartending training platforms, but listening posts, enabling the company to detect early signals and react quickly.

Value over volume: where profit pools really are

A critical insight shaping Campari’s geographic priorities is the distinction between volume and value.

While regions such as APAC dominate global spirits consumption by volume, largely driven by local, unbranded products, the picture changes dramatically when focusing on premium spirits, which represent Campari’s core strategic arena.

Here, North America, essentially the U.S., emerges as the single largest global profit pool, followed by Europe. This explains why Campari’s international strategy prioritizes these markets not merely for scale, but for value creation.

As Garavini explains, the strategic relevance of the U.S. does not lie in a straight replication of European aperitivo culture, but in the ability to build brands and consumption occasions through the on-premise channel that fit with the brand identity, even in a market traditionally organized around other spirits categories. In this context, bars and restaurants become the primary space where brands are activated, stories are told, and new drinking moments are progressively unlocked.

Heritage with flexibility: decoupling without diluting identity

One of the most distinctive features of Campari’s international strategy is its ability to preserve a strong brand heritage while allowing for selective and disciplined adaptation. Importantly, adaptation does not primarily occur through radical changes in product identity or taste profiles. On the contrary, Campari has repeatedly resisted pressure to fundamentally alter the core characteristics of its flagship brands, for instance, refusing to “sweeten” Campari for the U.S. market despite early skepticism about American taste preferences. This choice was later validated by the global rise of premium cocktail culture and classics such as the Negroni, which reinforced the brand’s authenticity and positioning.

At the same time, targeted, technical adaptations are implemented when necessary. These include adjustments in alcohol content to comply with local regulations (for example, Campari being sold at 25% ABV in France and at a lower ABV in Germany), as well as pack-size variations driven by regulatory or channel requirements.

Strategic flexibility also emerges through brand and portfolio innovation at the market level. The launch of Sarti Rosa in Germany illustrates this approach particularly well: the brand was developed rapidly by leveraging existing assets within the group, allowing Campari to respond quickly to a competitive threat in that market. Initially conceived as a local response, thanks to a very positive consumer response, Sarti Rosa later became a case of reverse innovation, with plans to roll it out in Italy, Austria, and Switzerland, and not only, using the same consumption logic.

Selected local brands are crucial in the portfolio strategy of Campari. They are used to generate cash and fund growth elsewhere, while marketing and advertisement & promotion investments are concentrated on brands with global scaling potential.

Organic growth and acquisitions: two complementary engines

Campari’s growth over the past two decades has been driven by a dual engine:

• External growth, through more than 40 acquisitions totaling approximately €5 billion, in 20 years;
• Organic growth, accounting for roughly half of total expansion.

Acquisitions are never purely financial. Each new brand must be integrated into Campari’s culture, systems, and values, a complex task that becomes even more challenging during periods of macroeconomic volatility.

At the same time, growth has required increased focus. As the group scaled, Campari deliberately streamlined its portfolio, divesting brands that no longer fit strategic priorities (such as Cinzano or Averna or Mirto), in order to concentrate resources on “big bets” with global potential. Divestments happened not because brands were weak, but because they no longer fit strategic priorities.

Focus as a strategic principle: category, brand, route to market

Focus is a recurring theme throughout the interview and a defining element of Campari’s international strategy.

Campari organizes its portfolio into four strategic “houses” (aperitifs, whiskey & rum, agave, cognac & champagne), each with distinct production cycles, investment horizons, and planning requirements. This reflects the reality that selling today often requires decisions made years or decades earlier, particularly for aged spirits.

Brands are prioritized according to long-term growth potential. Flagship brands such as Aperol receive disproportionate investment, reflecting their ability to scale globally and anchor consumption occasions.

In the U.S., Campari prioritized whiskey and tequila to build critical mass and credibility with distributors, creating a solid platform before building the aperitifs business. The category focus is a precondition for market access, although brand strength and attractiveness are key features for distributors to push brands such as Aperol. Brands like Aperol (24% of group sales) come after category legitimacy is built. While Aperol is a global priority brand, Espolòn (tequila) or Wild Turkey (whiskey) are conceived as U.S. growth engines.

Europe is the natural stronghold for aperitifs, as a core consumption occasion, where Campari can fully exploit its heritage and category leadership. So the strategy is scaling a dominant category where it already exists.

Route-to-Market focus

Campari’s approach clearly differentiates between:

• On-premise, where brands are built, stories are told, and consumption occasions are created
• Off-premise, where volume and availability matter

In new markets, expansion typically begins city by city, bar by bar, leveraging the on-premise channel to educate bartenders and consumers before scaling through retail.

While Campari’s international strategy strongly emphasizes the on-premise channel as a brand-building engine, this logic is not universally applicable. In certain markets, particularly those characterized by high regulation, strong retail monopolies, or more home-based consumption patterns, the off-premise channel plays a structurally more important role.

In these contexts, the strategic focus shifts from experiential activation to portfolio relevance, distribution access, and retail execution, requiring different investment priorities and go-to-market choices. This reinforces the idea that Campari’s notion of focus does not imply a single global model, but rather a disciplined adaptation of route-to-market strategies to local consumption structures.

Conclusions: managing complexity through focused adaptation

The Campari case highlights a critical lesson for large, consumer-facing companies operating in regulated and highly fragmented industries: international growth can no longer be managed through one-size-fits-all models. Scale, in itself, is not a guarantee of success. On the contrary, the larger and more complex the organization, the greater the need to refine market understanding and pursue targeted adaptation.

For global groups such as Campari, adaptation does not imply diluting brand identity or abandoning heritage. Rather, it takes the form of disciplined, selective adjustments ranging from variations in alcohol content driven by regulation to differentiated go-to-market or go-to-consumer approaches, packaging formats, service models, and performance metrics. It also involves making clear choices about which products, channels, and consumer segments to prioritize in each geography, recognizing that consumption structures and route-to-market dynamics differ substantially across countries.

Focus, in this context, does not mean simplification, but rather prioritization of categories, brands, routes to market, and geographies, as well as brand building investments, guided by a clear understanding of where value is created and how it can be captured sustainably.

Importantly, adaptation is not limited to incremental fine-tuning. The case also shows how innovation can emerge locally, through market-specific launches that respond to concrete competitive or cultural needs, as well as market or consumer needs. When successful, these initiatives may evolve into cases of reverse innovation, enriching the broader portfolio and being redeployed across other markets, including the country of origin. In this sense, local experimentation and global leverage reinforce one another.

The portfolio dimension plays a central role in this process. A diversified brand portfolio allows Campari to remain deeply anchored in local territories, preserving brands and category relevance for a local market, while simultaneously using such brands as idea laboratories and informational nodes to build global assets. These brands act as early sensors of change, feeding insights back into the organization and supporting both organic growth via international expansion and innovation at scale. Organic growth and acquisitions, rather than being alternative paths, work hand in hand in navigating complexity.

These strategic choices are reinforced by Campari’s governance structure: a publicly listed company with strong family control. This configuration provides long-term stability, continuity of strategic direction, and the ability to invest through cycles, even in periods of heightened volatility. It also enables a rare combination of creative ambition and financial discipline, two elements that often pull in opposite direction but are tightly coupled in Campari’s model.

The outcome is consistent value creation. Since its IPO in 2001, Campari has delivered approximately 10% annualized total shareholder return, positioning itself as the best performer in the global spirits industry to date.