Tequila Sales Growth by Quality and Region

The highest quality tequila brands grew at over 10% per year from 2006-2016 and now account for over 1/3 of all tequila sold by volume. The growth was in the premium and super premium qualities.  Standard and value brands grew at under 2% per year. These lower quality brands accounted for 82% of sales by volume in 2006 and only 66% in 2016.

North America accounts for over 1/2 of sales and grew at 5.2% per year, while other regions grew significantly less. Latin America, the next biggest region, grew at 2% and Europe grew at only 0.3%.  The rest of the world, which only accounted for 5% of sales in 2016, grew at 6.5% over the past decade.

The data from the IWSR Global Trends Report is summarized in these charts:

To create these charts, I first converted the IWSR report into an Excel spreadsheet using pdftables.  I then extracted the tequila sales by quality and region data into new tabs in by workbook.  The data included 2016 sales and CAGR 2006-2016.  I used an Excel formula to compute the approximate 2006 sales.  The data also included CAGR from 2011-2016.  So I also computed 2011 sales.

I then combined some smaller categories.  For quality, I added prestige and ultra-premium into super premium as each accounted for less than 1% of sales.  For regions, I grouped the two European regions into one and combined all other regions into a 'rest of world' category.  If I were to create a third chart, I would split out the rest of the world as some of these small regions experienced high growth, while others did not.  This information could be valuable to marketers.

My goal was to make two charts that were very similar in appearance.  This would make it easier for the reader to absorb the data.  They might spend more time parsing the first chart, but would be able to more quickly assimilate the information in the second.

I started with the quality chart.  I created the chart from my Excel data and placed it in PowerPoint.  I determined that including the 2011 data did not add a great deal of additional knowledge about sales growth.

I added a CAGR column to the left of the chart and used the CAGR total label (in Bars and Series) to add the 3.7% value to the chart.  I also created a data column with the category names and added a row called total to the bottom to have a total label for my CAGR.  I adjusted colors to have darker and lighter blues followed by lighter and darker greens, using the Mekko Graphics color palette.  I used linked lines to highlight the changes share for each category from 2006 to 2016.  I removed the axes from the chart to make it look cleaner.  I also adjusted chart margins and bar gaps to improve the chart look and its readability.

Once I had one chart in close to final format.  I copied it and created a duplicate chart.  I then replaced the quality data with the region data.  I only had to make some minor changes to get the look of both charts to be very similar.

If you'd like to work with the charts, you can download them from SlideShare.