Well, you're right about one thing. All these guys know each other. Although there are 10s of thousands of hot sauces on the market, I'm starting to think that there aren't 10s of thousands of hot sauce makers, if you know what I mean. There seems to be some heavy duty duplication going on. That said...
I'm rather in a tiny boat on a big ocean. These guys get numerous shipments every day of new sauces that they're expected to simply put on their shelves. If the reaction to my sauces by these guys, is typical, it's going to be a while before I get any US distribution.
I sent out a boxful of my sauces to one distributor a while ago, and after several weeks of waiting, I called to ask what he thought. Well, he had no idea. Even after having received my sauces over a month previously, my sauces were still in the box and he had no idea when they'd see the light of day.
If that's what I'm up against, I'm going to have to continue to enter the market bottle by bottle.
T.