If you’re in the beers and spirits aisle at your local supermarket and a Scotsman is behaving strangely around the Innis & Gunn fixture, don’t be alarmed. It’s probably Dougal Sharp, managing director of the oak-aged beer company who says he can’t help rearranging bottles or badgering the store manager to fill the shelf if it wins his brand more exposure. “If you care about something that deeply, that’s the way it is. My wife pulls her hair out,” he says.

Sharp set up Innis & Gunn in 2003 with William Grant & Sons whisky company as a joint venture and led a successful management buy-out in 2008. Working with Grant’s was a huge learning opportunity, especially around doing business overseas, says Sharp, and since the MBO Innis & Gunn has recorded annual growth of 60 per cent year on year and scooped a variety of awards for its beer quality, including four Scotland Food & Drink gongs this year. Turnover in 2009 was £4.39m.

What marks the business out from other speciality brews? The way it’s aged in oak barrels previously used to mature bourbon is an obvious difference—“it’s a very unusual proposition for a beer”. But, Sharp adds, other factors contribute, too. Its strategy to spread sales into a variety of markets has been important during the recession. Sterling’s weakness has been a boon because 70 per cent of turnover comes from exports. And its approach towards distributors and customers has been well received. “We get to know our overseas and home market thoroughly,” says Sharp. “We work hard to know what will sell.”

Innis & Gunn sells to bars, restaurants, hotels, leading multiple grocers and the off-trade sector as well. In Canada, it’s the number one British bottled beer. Sharp says he’s now looking to crack the American market and has set up a new company, Innis & Gunn USA, to sell its products to distributors in each state.

“We’ve become our own importer, and to our knowledge we’re the only British brewer that does this,” he explains. Two good reasons lie behind the decision. “Being our own importer gives us, as a small, premium-niche beer brand, a level of control that you’d never get through the other model,” says Sharp. “This way, we sell to the distributor, they pay us in 25 days and we get our cash 95 days quicker. An importer would sit on it for 120 days. This will generate cash rather than eat cash for four months.”

In the UK, he adds, the company plans to launch its beer on draught and in keg. “I Google Innis & Gunn every weekend to see what people say about it. That a product we’re producing is generating so much goodwill… you can feel nothing but pride and excitement about that.”