X Ways Importers Are Adapting to Trump's World

Change, the Baltimore investment sage T. Rowe Price once said, is the investor's only certainty. That's equally true for the businessman too. In times of change, some firms prosper and some firms die.

Likewise, the quote, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most adaptable to change" has the ring of truth and is widely attributed to Charles Darwin, but he never actually wrote or said it.

Instead, it was written by Leon C. Megginson, Professor of Management and Marketing at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, in an article, "Lessons from Europe for American Business," published in Southwest Social Science Quarterly in 1963.

So it pays to pay attention to how firms are adapting to the changes President Trump is forcing on the world order, because while business may not like what he's doing, there's not much the businessman can do about it other than adapt – or stagnate or die.

SevenFifty Daily interviewed some wine importers, and here's what they are doing to adapt:

• Control of route to market can be critical. The key is to reduce friction between importer, wholesaler and retailer. Banville Wine Merchants owns a direct wholesale business to create measureable execution. Sales in 2025 were up 26% over 2024. As of mid-February, sales were up 39% year-over-year.
• Dalla Terra Italian Wine & Spirits acts as a national agent for its producers, who take on some costs of the expanded sales organization but reap the benefits of success.
• Invest in boots on the ground. Show up more, train more, taste more. Keep wine top-of mind for accounts and sales teams. Add market managers.
• Eliminate out-of-stocks, backorders, late arrivals and delivery or allocation hiccups.
• Tighten credit. When product lands, an importers has to pay the tariff at once. It then goes into a warehouse for 60 to 90 days before going to a distributor who typically doesn't pay for 30 to 60 days.
• Invest in California production, which is tariff free. With California producers hurting, a producer can drive a baargain which throwing a lifeline to a winery.

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