Maker's Mark's Samuels highlights business expo
CAVE CITY — Southcentral Kentucky’s cooperative nature was evident Tuesday during a business expo in Cave City.
More than 70 vendors from around the region, including Warren County, were at the event to network and to listen to Bill Samuels Jr., chairman emeritus of Maker’s Mark Distillery.
Samuels said Kentucky’s bourbon industry has reinvented itself over the past few decades and now supplies more than 96 percent of the world’s bourbon.
That’s a dramatic change from when his father started the business and didn’t know who his customers would be.
Samuels credits a newspaper article in the Wall Street Journal for helping the fledgling business take off.
A profile on the business appeared on the front page of the paper.
“The next day, we had to install five phone lines,” he said.
Samuels said he isn’t really the marketing genius he’s purported to have become after “accidentally” getting into the family business. Samuels was a rocket scientist in California and got fired from his job after he caused an accident.
