Case Study: Clown Shoes Brewing

“Ok, everybody, please take a breath. Yes, Clown Shoes has been acquired by Harpoon. No, we are not going to lose our identity, and no, we are not ‘selling out.’ Harpoon is an independent employee-owned craft brewery.” That was the opening line of a letter from Clown Shoes Brewing’s co-owner, Greg Berman, about the sale of the Ipswich, Massachusetts company to Mass Bay Brewing Company, parent of Boston-based Harpoon Brewing. Harpoon is a partly ESOP-owned brewer. It started its ESOP in 2014 when one of the two owners was ready to move on. It has grown to over 300 employee-owners and is a leading presence in the New England market.

Berman told Craft Brewing magazine that “Harpoon and Clown Shoes are both fiercely loyal to our brands, to independent craft brewing, and to our employees. I’ve been a fan of Harpoon for a long time, and it’s very gratifying for me that our team will get to work alongside the expert brewers at Mass Bay Brewing Company (MMBC) to grow Clown Shoes and get our beer into the hands of more beer drinkers.”
Harpoon had not been actively looking for a deal. “Our only other acquisition was buying the Catamount Brewery in Windsor, Vermont 17 years ago,” Harpoon CEO Dan Kenary told the website Mass Brewing. But after meeting with Clown Shoes founder Gregg Berman, whose passion and vision impressed him, Kenary met with his team and decided to make an offer. “With our industry undergoing so much change, we asked ourselves, " Who do we want to be doing that change with over the next five or ten years?” he explained. “When we thought about what the future might hold (likely more consolidation of local breweries, he predicts), the deal started to make sense.”

For Clown Shoes, the deal meant they could get access to the growing taproom market and to Harpoon’s state-of-the-art brewing facilities. Even better, everyone at Clown Shoes now would be an owner. “To say we’re excited about the arrangement would be an understatement,” Jim Ronemus, Clown Shoes director of sales, told Mass Brewing. “Everyone’s ecstatic.”

Berman said, “The ESOP at MBBC was created by Dan Kenary and senior managers for the best of reasons: to keep the company independent and to give employees a vested interest in long-term success. The employees I met during my four years at MBBC were absolutely invested in the plan.  People genuinely appreciate the ESOP. The culture created by the ESOP was one of true employee ownership, pride, and responsibility. And fun! The ESOP and culture at MBBC were the major reasons I chose to sell Clown Shoes to MBBC, leaving two other offers on the table.”