Many of the most influential accounts of the growth in the numbers of new businesses being started and the general increase in the economic significance of the small-business sector draw upon flexible specialisation theory, which explains such trends in terms of the breakup of the mass market for standardised goods and services and the consequent emergence of a variety of smaller niche markets capable of exploitation by new or small businesses. In this paper our purpose is to suggest that the opportunities for new firm formation and growth arising from such changes may be more circumscribed than have hitherto been acknowledged. Drawing upon evidence from the UK brewing industry, which has seen the creation of many hundreds of new breweries during the past twenty years, we highlight the role of distribution channels as a significant barrier to the growth of the small-business sector. Changes to the regulatory environment (the Beer Orders) in an attempt by government to improve the competitiveness of the UK brewing industry have, paradoxically, had the opposite effect to that intended, and so have failed to increase market opportunities for microbrewers. Future research must give greater attention to the role of distribution in order to achieve a better understanding of the changing structure and spatial organisation of production.
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