The Advertising Specialty Institute's Promo Insiders podcast published an episode this month profiling Juan Jose Sánchez, chairman and co-founder of Clase Azul México, ahead of his keynote at the 2026 ASI Power Summit.

The feature is unusual territory for ASI Central, a publisher that normally covers the promotional-products trade rather than spirits. Sánchez's scheduled appearance at the summit, running October 25 through 27, 2026 at the Fairmont Grand Del Mar, was billed around the question of how Clase Azul built a distinctive luxury brand in a crowded tequila market, which pulled a tequila executive into a non-drinks industry's content calendar.

How Clase Azul got started

Clase Azul was founded in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1997 by Arturo Lomeli, who had already failed once with an earlier tequila brand before starting over. The first reposado bottles reached the market in 2000, a run of just 58 cases. Sánchez's own entry came a few years later: ASI's bio describes him as a former financial services executive who helped launch the brand in the United States in 2001, at one point selling bottles out of the trunk of his car, and who did not join the company full time until 2003, after advising Lomeli informally as a San Francisco based banker. Distribution scaled up in 2005, when Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits picked up the brand and sales reportedly tripled within six months. Growth was not linear: during the 2008 financial crisis, a group of celebrity investors offered capital in exchange for equity, the partners accepted and doubled production in anticipation, and the deal then collapsed, leaving the company overstocked and cash poor.

The growth figures behind the keynote

By 2019, Clase Azul's revenue had passed $55 million, and that same year Lomeli and Sánchez turned down a $1 billion acquisition offer rather than sell. The company opened a bottling plant in Jalisco in 2022 with capacity for roughly 150,000 bottles a month. A Forbes estimate published in December 2024 put annual revenue at $150 million across roughly 200,000 retail accounts worldwide, with the brand now exported to 92 countries, and valued the company at more than $1.5 billion using a ten times revenue multiple common in recent spirits deals. None of those figures come from the company itself: Clase Azul has told reporters it keeps its financials private, so the revenue and valuation numbers circulating in the press are outside estimates, not disclosed results.

What is documented about ownership

Lomeli is described as majority shareholder and chief executive. Sánchez holds a minority stake and is identified in Forbes's reporting as Lomeli's brother-in-law from an earlier marriage. Public statements from the company have repeatedly emphasized that Clase Azul remains privately held and entirely Mexican owned, with Lomeli on record saying he is in no hurry to change that. Sánchez's title has shifted across the record: earlier company materials and interviews referred to him as president, while the 2026 ASI Power Summit listing and podcast credit him as chairman.

What this means

Clase Azul does not currently carry a Tequila Watch score or certification entry, so nothing here speaks to the liquid itself. The company's growth numbers remain third party estimates until Clase Azul publishes its own figures, worth remembering the next time a billion dollar valuation gets repeated as fact.