Why your delivery order names you, and how your client gets theirs
Each sale in a cask's life is its own transfer, recorded by the warehouse. Here's the chain, and what it means for you and your client.
It's one of the questions we hear most. Why is the delivery order coming to me, when the cask is for my client?
The short answer is that you bought it. The longer answer explains how ownership of a cask works, and it's worth having ready for your clients.
The warehouse keeps the record
There's no public register of who owns which cask. Ownership is recorded by the bonded warehouse that holds it. A delivery order, or DO, is the instruction that tells the warehouse to move a cask from one owner's account to another's. When the warehouse processes it, it stamps the DO and updates its records.
A warehouse can only move a cask out of the account it's in, and into the account of whoever bought it. So a cask passes along the chain of sales one step at a time.
- CaskLayer buys the cask, and the warehouse moves it into CaskLayer's account.
- You buy it from CaskLayer, and the warehouse moves it into your company's account.
- Your client buys it from you, and the warehouse moves it into theirs.
Each step has its own DO, and the warehouse stamps each one.
Why the DO follows the sale
We sell to you, and you sell to your client, so the cask moves from us to you and then from you to them. Your client buys from you, on your terms and at your price, and never needs to deal with us. That's how your client relationship stays yours.
Passing the cask to your client
- Your client opens their own account at the same warehouse.
- You prepare a DO from your company to your client, usually on the warehouse's own template.
- You and your client sign it, and you send it to the warehouse.
- The warehouse stamps it, and your client is the registered owner.
What shows who owns a cask
Ownership rests on records that agree with each other. They are the invoice, a description that identifies the cask, the delivery order, the warehouse's stamp, and the warehouse's records after that. A certificate or an app screen can present that information, but it isn't the proof. Give your client copies of the real documents.