Good evening! As I type this out late Sunday night, because that's the kind of guy I am... I'm not sure how long it was since my last update, but I hope that most of you have received your swag bags if you invested in that $250+ dollar range and that you're enjoying the cool shirts, huge ice maker trays and other random things in there, and the glasses if you were in the $500+ range. I've seen a few of you post and tag us in your Instagrams or Facebook and it's always super cool to see that! I even saw one investor from Minnesota posted, without tagging us, for his daughter's birthday, wearing his shirt!! That was really a cool thing to see too because I just recently took my two young kids, Owen and Emma, up to Bemidji, MN for a weekend stay at a cabin resort. Very cool place with an awesome owner, called Kohl's Resort, if you happen to be looking for a beautiful midwestern place to go to...
But I digress, here's the updates...
We're sitting on a virtual mountain of hand sanitizer, which I basically got into heavily because there was an opportunity with COVID and the FDA option to adapt and sell that. And it was glorious for a month and a half! We actually turned profitable, ever so briefly. But then the bottom dropped out and we now have a large chunk of cash tied up in sanitizer inventory. Yuck! Yeah, I hate it too. But, the good news is that we are super adaptable and we've already got several new potential outlets for it to get that cash back and get back to what we originally planned to do! If we have to liquidate at cost, we will, but we've got a few other ways to skin this cat and with a little patience, we'll get it out of here really fast.
As I type, I realize it's extremely hard to sum up in one update all the things we've been doing. I could write a book! But I won't, don't worry. On the sales end, we are kick starting some great incentive programs in Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas to drive some volume. We have finished negotiating a launch in New Hampshire (delaying until tastings and such are allowed because it's a control state with a 6 month trial period), Massachusetts, and Florida very soon. For Florida, we expect a PO tomorrow as a matter of fact. The distributor we are launching with presented to ABC stores (there are 150 in Florida) and they will be bringing on the gin in those stores. Not sure how many, but a significant number of them, along with vodka and GinQuila! So if you live there, I'm sure you'll be excited to learn about this! We're targeting to be in 25+ markets next year, meaning 25+ states.
We are also working on our first international foray, where we will be launching our gin and GinQuila in Boliva by early next year! It takes about 4 months to complete all the registration and paperwork, but we are excited to go international and honestly this is a super low risk learning experience for the ins and outs of doing that. If successful, and of course you know we will be, then we will later go into Paraguay and Argentina, and beyond! We also resubmitted all of our products through a broker to Costco. Relax though! Not USA Costco, but for international Costcos in other countries. Still, Costco is freakin' Costco! Potential to get our gin and/or GinQuila in Costcos in Iceland, Australia, Japan, Mexico, England, Spain, France and a couple others I forget. Personally, I'm gunning for Iceland because that just seems bad ass to me.
With the success of GinQuila, I'm working on some ways to age it faster so we can turn it around way faster than 6+ months in barrels. I'll post a video of the system I develop for this as soon as I get it finished, which should be in the next couple weeks because orders are coming in soon and I gotta get more stock rolling!
Other things... working on a better e-commerce platform to offer spirits through (possibly in Q4 this year)... getting into more locations and chains... expanding our distribution footprint. Honestly, we are super psyched for next year because everything we're doing this year is basically setting us up for an incredible 2021 and a strong close to 2020. None of this is actually reflected in the revenue yet, but that is not going to be far behind.
There's a lot more to say, but I gotta leave you hanging a little bit! I did want to say to please, please, please post yourselves in the shirts or what have you, with the ice tray, stickers, whatever on your IG or FB and please tag us if you do. We absolutely LOVE seeing these, and the strongest way to grow is through word of mouth and the help of all of you! Thanks for reading!
Karl