What 2025 Taught Me About Where the Drinks Industry Is Actually Going

When we closed out November with over 1,000% year-on-year growth, I had to check the numbers twice. That kind of figure looks like a mistake. It wasn't. It was the result of something shifting in how brands think about international growth - and Tipple being in the right position when it happened.

For the full year, we finished at 313% year-on-year sales growth. That's the headline. But the more interesting story is what's behind it.

Europe stopped being the backup plan.

For years, I watched brands treat Europe as an afterthought. The US was the prize. Europe was somewhere you went when the US got too expensive or too competitive.

That thinking changed in 2025.

US tariffs hit hard. Imported products got squeezed on margin. Brands that had been US-focused started doing the math and didn't like what they saw. Europe - with its multiple distinct markets, strong digital adoption, and genuine consumer demand - started looking a lot more attractive.

The category surprises

Whisky was our fastest-growing category by value. Germany and France drove most of that. No surprise there, both markets have strong whisky cultures and willingness to buy premium brands online.

What did surprise me was RTDs.

I expected them to underperform. They're heavy, logistically complex, and you need volume to make the economics work. Instead, they were one of our strongest performers by growth rate. That tells me consumer appetite is there, even when the operational friction is high. When you have the right infrastructure, category limitations matter less.

What slowed us down

I won't pretend everything was smooth.

Brexit has made UK operations harder. There's no way around it. The regulatory complexity adds friction for brands trying to move product across the border. We've managed it, but it's a real cost in time and in simplicity.

Ireland took longer than I'd have liked, and I'll own that. We're an Irish company. Home market should be straightforward. But the licensing environment is restrictive, and brands here weren't as familiar with DTC as a route-to-market. That slowed things down.

Since January, that's changed. Irish brands are moving. The market is opening up and we're growing here now. It just took a little longer to get started on our own doorstep.

The partnerships that defined the year

These aren't brands bolting on a tool. They're using Tipple as their primary route-to-market across multiple countries.

That's the shift I've been building toward. Brands don't want five different vendors for five different problems. They want one platform that handles the whole thing and scales with them.

What's coming in 2026

The thing I'm most excited about heading into 2026 is our B2B platform.

DTC gets most of the attention. But for brands trying to move serious volume across Europe, B2B is where the infrastructure gap is biggest. Right now, most brands are managing trade orders manually with email threads, spreadsheets, missed payments. It's slow and it leaks money.

Tipple's B2B platform changes that. Automated orders, credit management, compliance, payments, all handled in one place. Brands that combine DTC and B2B through Tipple will have a real edge on brands that don't.