One Man Brand

Formerly ambassador for one of the biggest vodka brands in the world, Alex Kammerling decided to ditch the day job and follow his dream – to launch his very own liquor from scratch. He tells us how...

Approximately five years ago, I had an idea. I had recently been working for Campari and was in the middle of holding a training session on the history of gin when it dawned on me: alcohol has been used as a medicine for thousands of years… So what happened?

A number of established spirit, liqueur and bitters brands on the market today were originally created for medicinal reasons (some of them by bartenders), as alcohol is a great carrier of flavour, a preservative, and delivers the required effect quickly into the bloodstream. The development of modern medicine saw this tradition all but die, with the exception of a few bitters brands such as Fernet Branca and Underberg. In today’s low-fat, five-a-day, gluten-free, responsible-drinking age, I felt certain there was gap in the market for a lower-proof spirit that evoked the apothecaries of old, but with a modern twist.

With a sea of badly-conceived new brands hitting the market and with 17 years’ worth of experience behind me, including four years as brand ambassador for Grey Goose, I thought that I was in a better position than most to create my own drink… But where to start?

Step 1:
The Recipe
I was never quite sure what I was going to end up with, but had noticed the increased interest in gin and bitters – luckily my two favourite spirit categories – and so I aimed somewhere in the middle. I scoured the internet, brand brochures, books and medical journals to find 100 herbs, spices, berries, roots, barks, peels, nuts, leaves and flowers that have been used historically for medicinal purposes. I infused all of these in neutral alcohol and methodically tasted each one, sorting the wheat from the chaff.

I was trying to create a balanced spirit, something that both bartenders and punters would like, but primarily something unique and distinctive in taste that could be drunk neat or mixed into simple drinks and cocktails.

It was the ginseng that stood out. Not only did it have a 5,000-year history of medicinal use, it tasted like nothing else – albeit a little ‘earthy’. I looked to distillation to remove this quality and used the other botanicals as a support act for the smoky, salty, rootiness of my four different types of ginseng.

It has been an incredibly hard task to finalise a recipe that I was happy with (I almost gave up a couple of times) but 115 infusions, 23 distillates and 120 recipes later, I now have a final product: Kammerling’s – Ginseng Spirit. Golden yellow in colour, it is fresh and citrussy on the nose with light floral/anise and juniper notes, and a sweet, rich and spiced herbal palate, finally ending with a long, honeyed bitterness.

Step 2:
Design & Branding
For me, it has always been about the liquid. Everything from the bottle, label, brand and marketing takes inspiration from the product inside the bottle. That said, why spend all that time and money creating a nice liquid just to put it in cheap bottle with a plain label?

Luckily, I have a degree in design (not a complete waste of three years then!) and with help from friends and family, I managed to design the brand myself. If you need to pay a professional to create your brand, be warned, it can take a long time and can be costly. But it’s worth it if it catches people’s attention and inspires some brand respect.

Something to be aware of when making decisions about the bottle is the fact that a large percentage of spirit, wine and beer bottles are made by Saver, a company in France that has minimum order requirements. If you want bespoke glass made (consider that different countries use different sized bottles, meaning expensive tooling costs for each size) you’re looking at £20k upwards.
Bear in mind too, that your suppliers will expect payment up-front as you will be a new customer.

Step 3:
The Business Plan
Having a good recipe and a nice-looking bottle is one thing, but having a good business plan is a whole other kessel der fische. Blending liquids, inventing cocktails and designing logos is the fun bit, but at the end of the day you need to sell it, and for me, writing a business plan was the steepest learning curve.

You soon realise that you are looking at an expensive product when you find out how much duty is charged on alcohol, price up the raw ingredients, add up the distillation, bottling, handling, delivery and storage costs, and consider your profit margin along with the wholesaler and retailer margins (plus 20% VAT). A project of this nature needs some serious investment to get it off the ground.

The best way to learn about business plans is to start writing one. I started by copying the format from one I downloaded. You’ll have to rewrite it numerous times, but it does gets better each time you have a stab. Start collecting data – a business plan is not much without justifiable figures. This can be as simple as calling bars to find out what the competition is selling, downloading the Drinks International Millionaires Club (published each summer) or by getting hold of the International Wine and Spirits Report – both contain the world’s big brand-busting spirits and their sales volumes.

This will form the basis for your sales projections and the size of the marketplace you are intending to sell in, which will help you write a cash-flow plan and will ultimately feed into your P&L (profit and loss account) – the holy grail of a business plan.

Step 4:
Fund-Raising
Launching a new product is not cheap and unless you have a rich uncle, you’re going to need financial help. Production costs are only one slice of the business-plan pie – the majority of costs are made up from salaries, overheads (office rent and rates, insurance, phone, internet), your website, PR and marketing, and legal expenses. When you write your business plan, be as specific as you can about each and every associated cost, and how that is counterbalanced with the sales.

Watch Dragons’ Den – it is all on there. There is no easy answer to finding financial funding, you either have to speak to the bank or find someone who has got cash to invest and then work out how much of your business you are willing to give away.

Step 5:
Marketing
Shit doesn’t sell itself. You might have a better-tasting recipe for Coca-Cola, but without a good USP, marketing plan and a seriously healthy marketing budget, it will be like trying to sell ice to the Eskimos. I picked up a fair amount of marketing knowledge having worked for Grey Goose, but most of it is common sense.

Check out Martin Lindstrom’s books: Brand Sense and Buyology, they rock. Malcom Gladwell’s books are a good read, and if you really want to dive into the marketing jargon deep-end, then David Aaker is your man. Another really helpful resource for business and marketing is entrepreneurial success expert Chris Cardell’s website cardellmedia.co.uk

An essential marketing tool, however, is creating ‘signature serves’, which need to be aptly-named, easy to replicate and delicious. Having been a bartender, this part was fairly easy for me, although I road-tested them all to be sure people liked them (I offered to make drinks at friends’ weddings in order to get a cross-section of ages and classes to taste it and give me feedback).

Step 6:
Legal & Admin
There are a plethora of legal requirements that need to be considered before launching a brand to the market. The basics are setting up a company and opening a business account. You then have to jump through hoops for a WOWGR licence (which is required by HMRC to allow you to store bonded goods in a warehouse), get trademarks registered, domain names set up, bar-codes registered, Drinkaware membership and then sort out any legal issues with contracts between suppliers, investors and/or business partners.
Bizarrely, there is no official body for testing your product to see whether it is safe for human consumption, although I had a series of (not cheap) tests done for my own peace of mind. 

Step 7:
The Launch…
I was originally due to launch in the first week of January 2011. At the time of writing, it’s the second week of January and I am still negotiating with printers to reprint labels that aren’t right, trying to deal with Chinese export departments to get my ginseng into the country and I am also rapidly running out of cash! This year is clearly going to be exciting but incredibly nerve-wracking. Follow me on Twitter or Facebook, or visit kammerlings.com to see how I am getting on and to wish me luck!

Editorial feature from Imbibe Magazine – March/April 2011

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