The Blog has Moved!

The beta version of our website is up, and the blog will be continued there, under the "Journal" tab at the bottom left.    I'm just going over now, to write my entry on our very first event, the Annual Luncheon of the Hudson Valley Garden Club!

Website address:  www.PeonyVodka.com

Website

We've got a first draft, and expect to have a BETA VERSION of the website up within 8 weeks' time.  For the moment, if you go HERE you will see the screening page -- the page behind which the website is being built.  That page will go away once the site is ready to be viewed, though it does give a hint of what's to come.

OK, look, I'm squirming in my chair with excitement like a little kid -- go!  click the link!  I can't wait!!

Edited to Add:  it only is a bit special on a computer, not a phone.  If you are clicking from a phone you will think I lost my mind as *that* is nothing special.

Life Lesson: Everything takes longer than you think!

I'm finding this to be true.  We are working on distribution, social media marketing plans, our website,  our first event AND, most importantly, the actual production of our vodka.  ONE piece is now holding up the process -- the ceramic printing on the bottle.  Once we get that sorted, we can throw the switch for all the little pieces (and there are more than you'd think!) to start production.

Another bit of evidence for Starting Small

Bottom line:  it lets you prove the product -- prove people will buy it, without spending a fortune on the launch.

From Guy Kawasaki:


How To Launch and Why Scaling Doesn't Matter

How to Launch (And Why Scaling Doesn’t Matter)

In the early days of starting up, the ability to scale is overrated. “Scale,” in case you haven’t heard the term, refers to the concept that there are processes in place that are fast, cheap, and repeatable because there will soon be millions of customers who generate billions of dollars of revenue.

For example, if Pierre Omidyar had to test every used printer offered for sale, eBay couldn’t scale. If Marc Benioff had to make every sales call, Salesforce.com couldn’t scale. If James Hong’s parents had to check every picture to see if it was porn, Hot or Not couldn’t scale.

Holding yourself to a mass-scaling test in the early days is a mistake—putting the proverbial horse before the cart. This is akin to wondering if you should start a restaurant because it may be impossible to scale the perfectionism of an executive chef for multiple locations.

How about first ensuring that people within in a twenty-mile radius like the food before working about scaling the restaurant? That is, see if the business will work at all. For example, a company that I advise called Tutor Universe provides tutoring service via smartphones. Think of it as “Uber for tutoring.”

The long-term plan was that students could ask questions about any topic and receive help in under fifteen minutes. However, in the beginning, a critical mass of tutors for every subject didn’t yet exist. Many startups face just such a chicken-or-egg challenge: if you had enough tutors, you’d attract enough students. If you had enough students, you’d attract enough tutors.

What do you do when you’re faced with this kind of challenge? The answer is simple: you cheat! You use your own employees to answer questions and hire tutors in the Philippines (highly educated, English speaking, and cheap) until you can reach a critical mass of a marketplace. Skeptics and inexperienced entrepreneurs might object: you can’t scale if you have to use employees or hire tutors because they are too expensive.

This might be true, but it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you establish three key points:

• You can get the word out
• Students are willing to install an app
• They will pay for help.

Your priority, in short, is proving that people will use your product at all. If they won’t, then it won’t matter if you can’t scale. If they will, then you will figure out a way to scale. I’ve never seen a startup die because it couldn’t scale fast enough. I’ve seen hundreds of startups die because people refused to embrace their product.

This post is a tiny part of Guy Kawasaki’s latest book, The Art of the Start 2.0. Read it and reap…

Starting Small

A few weeks ago I wrote that we sent mock ups of our bottles to the largest distributor in the country for their feedback.  The bad news is that we learned it would cost us $100,000 to launch in one state with them.  (Not happening).  The good news was that this executive gave us a lot of specific feedback.  He loved our bottle though thought it could "pop" more. (We've enlarged some of the type -- which we think does the trick).  Most crucially he said we should start small.  And by small, I mean 10 accounts.  He said do that, and concentrate on those accounts and once we've built them up to a certain level, to go out and add more.

This same advice was given to us by our insurance broker, who is one of the few people in the country to have his finger on the pulse of small liquor brands.  He said he's seen people start big and they tend not to work out, whereas the clients he's seen start small seem happy -- in other words, it is a winning strategy.

And so it is ours.

A Million Balls In The Air

Or so it seems!

I'm not writing much as we are so busy nailing down all aspects of production, from the label printer, to the bottle printer, to the cork, the capsule, etc.  We've got the bottle and the booze and our special proprietary blend of botanicals sorted, though, and are also very hard at work on a website.  We're pursuing several avenues for distribution.  We've already been invited to our first event which is a perfect fit for us . . . so the blog's been taking a bit of a back seat for the moment.

Tasting Serge's cocktails

Serge has created two cocktail recipes just for us!  He ran them by me at his restaurant, Serevan.  They are incredibly good, which, of course, is no surprise.  The pink one is watermelon based, with mint and St. Germain, and the other one has pear puree, cardamom, lemon juice, saffron and fresh herbs.  The receipes are going on our hang tag, and I will absolutely post them here.

Box to distributor

OK, so this looks like nothing, but actually, it is big.

The box contains the mock ups we had done. They are going to the largest distributor in the US, to get a senior executive's perspective and advice He's seen our written materials  and been encouraging; now it is time for them to see our actual product.

The UPC Code

So, we need one.

This is more complicated than it looks.

However, after about 2 weeks of angst, Three Meadows Spirits now has one!  It did take speaking with a customer service representative as the website is, erm, USELESS and puzzling over the various documents just served to drive me batty.  However, it is done.  Hurrah.

Mock ups

We are getting really close to being able to show you the bottles, but not quite yet.  However, while we nail down the actual production of 6,000 bottles of our vodka, we've had a couple of bottles mocked up so we can show people what they really, and accurately, will look like.  They're looking good!

We've been approved!

Another huge milestone has been passed -- our label has been approved by the TTB!  Yay hurray!

Now we turn to nailing down the nuts and bolts of production -- we couldn't get quotes on label printing, for example, until we knew what the label would be.  So far we've firmed up our bottle supplier and should have label quotes within a week or two.  We are also getting closure quotes, and bottle decorating quotes as some of the label is printed directly onto the bottle.  I hope we'll have that information within a couple of weeks, and then we can start placing orders.

While it is wintry outside, we are working away

Things are quieter as we are still awaiting word from the TTB.  However, we continue to refine the label and bottle.  Alex Isley justified his world class reputation by doing mock ups of our bottles and putting them on actual store shelves to see what pops more.  We considered, though ultimately rejected, changing the text color from black to white.  On the shelf, the white pops more, but parts were harder to read up close and the black looked more elegant.

We also made contact with a bottle supplier, and have slightly changed the bottle.  it is a little slimmer, and very elegant.  (It is also available in relatively small quantities, is made near our distiller, and can be had at any time).

We are thinking about our website, and about distribution.  Serge is going to get busy designing our cocktails after he gets through the Valentine's Day rush.