Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / GEMS: Selling 100,000 Units in Year One with Avec Drinks founder Denetrias Charlemagne

Transcript

GEMS: Selling 100,000 Units in Year One with Avec Drinks founder Denetrias Charlemagne · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:08
  Let's break down like how you actually, I think I actually read you did 100,000 units in your first year or something crazy like that. Let's break down your kind of launch plan and your marketing strategy.
• 0:21
  Yeah, I wish I could say, I feel like everyone comes on these shows but I'm so organized about exactly how it went down. But it was like, alright, we can't, like our plan was really to be more like Red Bull, right? Like more in the streets, at different festivals, partnering with cooler events, like not like Coachella but like the level below, like Moment PS1 and like the groups that are organizing parties, like you know, big DJs and COVID happened. It was like, okay, well now we need a really cool website. So
• 0:49
  We spent most of our, I mean, even small, but like launch dollars on a really cool website, making sure the experience felt interesting and different. And then really working on kind of like the branding and the product. Like that's where most of our focus went. I knew from having worked in media, so I worked in media for many years, but worked for Vice primarily and then was trying to start a female founded media company called Damn Joan and like kind of saw the world of media blow up.
• 1:16
  with Facebook blowing up. And so I was very, as a marketer, very like, not anti-Facebook, but wary of just like launching on Facebook and being like, now we're a DDC brand, just launched on Facebook. So we didn't actually spend any money on like paid advertising until like six to seven months in. Like all of it was like, how could we get a bunch of earned media?
• 1:35
  I was lucky to have a close girlfriend who was in restaurant PR, food and beverage PR. COVID happened and she had a little bit of excess time. And I was like, why don't you let us be your first client? And she's just been crushing it ever since. So all the press accolade goes to her 100%. But I think it was important. The strategy we did have is that we knew we would have to kind of tell a story around Vivek. It wouldn't be like...
• 1:59
  Okay, yeah, we're a new tequila and people get it. We're a new mixer. You can mix it with alcohol. Here's how you mix it. It's low sugar. It's low calorie. It's founded by this diverse team. We have values. It's launching on the internet. There are so many different stories to tell.
• 2:14
  So we knew that like PR, we didn't know how powerful PR could be to like drive your whole business basically the first year. But we knew that we needed to tell a story, right, like around not just how to use it, but like why we were launching, why to care about this category and create some buzz and excitement around it. So even in pandemic, we launched with like the six feet apart bar, which I don't know if you saw, but we built this six feet apart platform.
• 2:37
  table um and did like a little launch event in new york and like when it was safe we would do smaller kind of like activation things because like you get into the drinks business because you want to hang out with people right you don't really get into the drinks business again to like sit behind your computer so it's like as much as we could we're trying to get in front with real people and do real things yeah
• 3:00
  Oh my gosh, that is so cool. I love that. That's creative thinking right there. Skills in advertising. It was fun. That sounds so fun. And what about like now? Obviously, you said you didn't start spending on paid media until six or seven months in. But when you look at your marketing mix and the kinds of initiatives you're doing, where are you finding that you're kind of able to acquire customers at scale for a reasonable cost?
• 3:25
  Yeah. I mean, that's a golden question we'll have to ask before Seed. But I would say, honestly, like partnerships have been really successful. So like we pair well, both in the non-alcoholic space and the alcoholic space with those, you know, like the spirits of both of those worlds. But then also partnering with like, we did something with a makeup company, right? Like if you care about clean ingredients that you put on your skin, you likely care about clean ingredients in your drink. We've partnered with like moms who are like,
• 3:53
  I'm pregnant and for the first time I have to like relook at what I'm drinking today, right? So I think it's for us, the first day was really figuring out like getting tighter on who our core audience was, what occasion we were in. And now I think we're like really double doubting on partnerships. I would say online as the world opens up is slowing down a bit in terms of like.
• 4:13
  how easy it is to scale that channel. Like people are going out into bars and restaurants and supermarkets more. So we always knew that our business would move more wholesale. Like that was the original plan. So spending more time again with real people in real life, like mixing with real things. So yeah. So I think it's like, you know, more boots on the ground, sales, sampling, cans and hands, you know, liquid to lips, all the fun sayings people say in beverage. Oh, I haven't heard that. That's so cool. Yeah.
• 4:41
  So yeah, just getting more trial. And last year, I would say there's a lot of press, a lot of PR and partnerships that like made our business scalable. Mm hmm.
• 4:54
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 5:18
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• 5:41
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