YouSaid · the spoken record

Bill Creelman

lines on the record: 71
first: 2020-01-13
most recent: 2020-01-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think it's a combination. So, you know, I thought a lot about that question and we talk about it even just internally a lot. We are all incredible workers in our commitment level of the company is insane and has had to be for a long time. And what that allowed us to do is see opportunities when they surfaced, you know, when the world was moving out of sweetened beverages and sugar, we were positioned well to be able to see that and take advantage of those changes. So is that good luck? Is that, you know, why did we position that way? It's not clear to me, but I think we needed a good dose of both of those to get to where we are today.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not captured that way. I mean, I think what I'm learning now with kids and kind of the world changing the way it is, for me, I think it's important that we are big enough to survive, you know, kind of through twists and turns. I just have incredible respect for brands that have survived decades, centuries and are part of the fabric of culture. I mean, that's really interesting and exciting to me. So how do you measure that? I'm not sure, but I think we're marching forward and not really thinking about or being distracted by the other stuff today.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, we still have really are just getting started. You know, if you look at the landscape of sparkling beverages and There are some incredible brands out there, and we are, we're really kind of the new guy. So that's incredibly motivating for us. There's always risk to these businesses. And so I'm keenly aware of that. I never for a minute take any of this for granted. The challenge is how do you maintain everything you love about the business, what got you into it as the business grows. I think the businesses that really get sort of lost are the ones that lose their identity. And so we're trying to do everything we can to ensure that doesn't happen.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think anyone that gets into startup space and I guess specifically food and beverage, I think sort of knows they're going to be sacrificing a big part of sort of their life outside of work. I mean, it's just you have to be 100% in or, you know, it's probably not the right vocation for you. What I've tried to do is really focus on the business and my family. I don't know any other way to do it. I've tried in the past, but I think particularly in a dynamic space like this, you really have to be 100% committed, or it's probably not, it's not going to end up successful.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so, the growth has been attributable to, I think, just this incredible team that brought people into real ingredients. And obviously we've been very fortunate with the turn of drinks to more of a less sweet profile. And I think lastly, people really starting to care about ingredients and transparency and what they put in their body. And so I think we've been lucky to benefit from kind of all of those things happening simultaneously. You need all of them in different amounts.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, we went through, we reverse engineered the ingredients. We got in scientists and we spent a lot of money to really understand even what we were buying. I mean, I'm a little embarrassed to say because we just didn't know there really is no standard for a natural flavor. There may very well be all of the things you described, but there's no assurance of that. I don't think anyone felt they were doing anything bad with natural flavors. It was more for us a decision that we made as a business that we wanted to stand for what was in the product. And so we made the hard decision to get out of natural flavors entirely. That's really the, you know, kind of our position in the market.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have this conversation out in the open that I'm going to get in trouble. And so here I was decade plus in the business and I was putting an ingredient in that I couldn't totally be sure what it was. And it really for us was a problem.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we were at the time, we had natural flavors in our drinks. Started to get people writing in asking what natural flavors were. Natural flavors is the word that the government asks you to use to kind of describe the whole world of these essences that you just described. So we actually reached out to our flavor houses and asked them, can you just give us a little bit more information? We're being asked by our consumers. Is it really just the lemon oils that are being squeezed? They would say, let me get back to you. I just need to confirm that myself. Or they would say we don't disclose that. And no one would tell us what they were. And so that's where, you know, we had to go rogue and really sort of start to investigate further on our own. I mean, I distinctly recall a conversation with a food scientist who was working for a flavorhouse at the time and he said, let me go into a closet because I'm afraid if I”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it was the recognition that in 2016 or 2017, there's been a lot of innovation coming into Beverage. And the risk was for us that if we didn't really stand for one single thing that we were going to go down the path of so many other businesses where you sort of try to do everything pretty well and nothing really, really great, both businesses were resource intensive. You know, you have two inventories, two supply chains, kind of two of everything. And so we said, look, if we're going to really be as successful as we think we can be, we just can't do everything twice. So I would say though it was purely on the belief that this was a big idea. And in order to get there, we had to do what we call simplified amplify. You know, basically really get behind the business we had.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was a really important moment for us. And what we were experiencing, even just in our day-to-day lives, was just the concern around sugar. And so we had a low, very low sugar soda. But even that among our team was confusing. You know, people say, well, I don't drink soda and say, well, wait, this actually isn't a soda. It was sort of the perfect storm. So we made the hard decision to shut down. It was about a $5 million business, super profitable and just focus our resources on the sparkling water.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So by then we had really made the decision once the product was stable and there was clearly an audience for the retail version, we really said to ourselves like, are we going to make a run at this? And we took the step to bring in some outside capital. We brought out an incredible team and really said, we're going to go sort of heads down. And really... I would say really that was the inflection point. We now are going to try to compete with the big guys and it ideally define or find our own space in this big and crowded category.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a salmonal moment for the business. At the time, we really didn't have any customers for the sparkling water. The soda was doing well in those food service accounts, but the sparkling water, the unsweetened version was really not anywhere. And they, yeah, they just were incredibly brave and took on the product and initially just took it in the east. And we were lucky enough to then get expanded. And they really have just been in a real believer. It really changed our business, honestly, because without that belief, I'm not sure that we would have had the conviction to continue to expand further into retail.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first, we made one batch of raspberry lime. It was the first time we moved the product over from a bottle into a can. And it was really just on the back of that remaining stable that we decided we were now comfortable enough to roll that out. So it was 2014, 15, we finally broke through.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Europe, and they had figured out how to deal with Polt, but really none of these guys wanted to be in the business of dealing with fresh juice and then carbonation. It really took us hand holding them. And, you know, the brewing industry has some of this, you know, particularly temperature sensitivity, but it took them really just focusing on it and deciding it was important and that we were willing to kind of stay with it until we got to a successful outcome.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there wasn't a single carbonated beverage plant in the US that had ever handled a product like this. The closest was something like orangeina.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So pulp is really fussy. I mean, Pope obviously is sticky, it's bits, it can get into these lines and then get sort of clogged or, you know, and so.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've only frankly heard that. I mean, when we have our initial call with one of our bottling facilities, you know, they say, oh, geez, you know, I hope this isn't spin drift, is it? Because we've heard about you guys. I mean, you know, it's, and the reason is the unpredictability. You know, when we show up with a tanker of fresh squeezed lemon juice, it is a problem for these plants because they have to run it right away. It's got pulp, you know, which no one particularly wants to deal with.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the ingredients you're starting with. I mean, the magic of every time you cut into a grapefruit, you're not totally sure what that grapefruit is going to taste like. Is it sweet? Is it tart? Is it sour? We have those same challenges with our product. The fundamentals are that when you squeeze a lemon or an orange or grapefruit, it is alive. I mean, you put it in your fridge, you know, as you know, it'll last a few days and then it no longer tastes like orange juice or lemon juice. Our challenge is how do you preserve that incredible flavor? And the answer was to move very fast, to refrigerate like crazy, and then do it in a predictable way. So it also just required a lot of investment. You know, that was not a small decision to make, especially for, you know, a small business with a small team that”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At a certain point, we were on our own, and there was really no, we had no one in the industry that could help guide us in this area. I don't think I would have gotten into this business had I known how complicated it was. And again, the unpredictability of”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, yeah, I guess the benefit of having gone through it before was that I knew where the risk was, or at least I thought I did. So ultimately, there's just risk embedded in startups and in food and beverage, and particularly in single serve beverage space. So I would say we took calculated risks. Like I would bet on launching a market or a particular customer and make sure that that was up and running and successful and then I would reinvest it again. In launching the next customer”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. So what we ended up doing is basically putting mortgages on our house. But again, now you're talking about buying inventory and starting to hire a team.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, sure. I was terrified. You know, I'd come out of this now. It was still very early in sort of the rebound out of the recession. So yeah, these were real fears. And beverages expensive. You know, I knew that even more so than my prior business that this was going to be a capital intensive business. I mean, you just, it was clear right away that between the coolers and going up against the big soda guys and trying to do something really different in terms of the ingredients, all of that just was going to be challenging. So, you know, we from a family perspective, you know, we invested as much as we could. And then we knew we were going to have to kind of make some lifestyle changes and also think about bringing an outside capital.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Spindrift is the whitewash of a wave when it's windy outside, a wave will kind of crest and the wind will shear the top of the wave off creating this mist. And that wind-blown mist is called Spindrift. And one of my captains when I was working out on the island introduced me to this name when I was probably 14 or 15. And for whatever reason, I don't know why it really sort of resonated with me. I just thought it was really interesting word and spin and drift were interesting words too. So I tucked it away. And so when I was thinking about what I wanted to call this now refreshing, sparkling beverage for, you know, it suddenly made sense to kind of recycle it again.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so what I would do is I would bring a truck in and the truck would take the batch, whatever we made 500 cases of each, and we would bring it to a cold storage facility in Taunton, Massachusetts called Americold. And they would, you know, they had all kinds of other fresh items. You know, they were staging vegetables for the next day or cranberries or whatever. They were huge, a gigantic warehouse. And so we would talk our little pallets into their huge warehouse. And then whenever I needed a sample, I would just drive down there. I would put on a gigantic freezer refrigerator coat, go out and pull product, and then I would take it out into the market. That food service focus with me and now my small team was really all we did for the first four or five years in our business.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Needed a place to tell our story, really. So we went where people were excited about our brand and it happened to be these small, independent for the most part sandwich shops and salad shops. And this was the time of sweet green and kava and panero was changing there menu to be more health conscious. And we solved a problem for them because often they were a lot of them were trying to tell a health and wellness story with a big soda machine. And so we could come in oftentimes we actually even brought our own equipment, refrigerated equipment and we would actually work with them. I mean, we'd sit down and say, okay, you're launching a cranberry salad or sandwich this fall. We have it a cranberry raspberry. It's delicious. Let storytell together. And that made for a pretty good partnership.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We didn't. I think we recognized pretty early on that the great thing about soda and sparkling water, unlike cocktail mix, is that everyone sold it. So the challenge was actually more to figure out who could we really get to champion this product where we ultimately found our people, if you will, is in the fast casual space, the people that were making delicious sandwiches or salads or that now we're looking for a product that had a similar ingredient profile to what they were offering in their other food.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. So, you know, we had to produce a minimum quantity, and then we had to go out and shuffle it to door. And the challenging part really, so the product was very expensive. It was $3 a bottle. So it really forced us to think hard about who would be interested in something like this. And obviously with the decline of soda, there was a little bit of interest in alternatives. And that's really how we positioned it”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was terrifying. I mean, you know, because you had minimum production quantities we made, I think, 500 cases of each flavor. We had four flavors, so 2,000 cases.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly right. I mean, usually people would say that must exist, or they thought they were already getting that in whatever they were buying today or at that time. And so I actually didn't mind that people were questioning the ingredients and wondering why it hadn't been done or was it really being done? Were we really doing what we were saying, that was enough motivation for me to double down and say, okay, now I think we can really make a business out of this as long as we're clear about communicating what is so special about this product.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Yeah, there was no other way to maintain that incredible fresh flavor that we were talking about at the time without keeping it cold. I mean, it just was too volatile a product. Maybe I'll just add to that that it was also more of a soda profile at the time. So it added a little bit of sugar in it, natural flavors and color, you know, just sort of whatever. Were things added early on as we were just trying to dial in the flavor and in order to make it sellable.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I set up shop in our basement and I went about solving all of those problems. So I found really at the time the only fresh juice supplier out on the West Coast and flew out there and saw how they were squeezing juice and then found at the time a bottler that was willing to handle all of this fresh juice. They had the facility cold storage. And I started a fresh supply chain. So the only way we could make the product then was to refrigerate it. So we I would run a batch in Worcester, Massachusetts. I would ship it to a cold warehouse where it would remain chilled in Taunton, Massachusetts, and then I would load samples in the back of my Prius and drive up and down the East Coast, you know, Boston, Portland, Portsmouth, Nantucket, Cape Islands, and I would sell it. I would get people excited.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly right, and it actually didn't take all that long to figure out why. And the reason is because it's incredibly challenging. I mean, that flavor that you get from squeezing something fresh and putting sparkling water over the top of it is much, much harder to translate than I think I imagined and others may. I mean, so what I did literally was, you know, go online. Luckily, there was the internet at this point, go online and really dig in. And that then sparked this whole other. Work stream to really then decide why. Was it because these ingredients weren't available 12 months a year? Was it because the product couldn't be made and then sold commercially for some regulation reason? Was there not the consumer demand? And those are the questions that I set out to solve.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was in my house with a soda stream. I was cutting up fruit and squeezing it and seeing how it responded and settled and carbonated water and tasting it with my wife and our kids. And I mean, the idea is not complicated. Everyone has lemons and, you know, has access to sparkling water. But the flavor that this created was just as anyone that sorted a sparkling water with a wedge of lemon at lunch or whatever. I mean, it really is quite unusual, has a lot more dimension of flavor. It's got a little bit of sweetness, a little tart, earthiness to it. It's very different than what was out there. And so I began to research whether this was a unique idea or not or something that had been done before. And that was really the genesis of Spindrift.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, so going back to my childhood, I mean, I was really interested in an ingredients. You know, I started to look at taking real ingredients, the, you know, something you would start a meal with, a lemon, an orange, a grapefruit. And what if this could become the base for a sparkling beverage?”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly right. It was Super exciting for me to start to think what is going to happen with this decline in soda? Are soda's going to go away? Is carbonation going to go away? And what's the root cause of all this? Is it the sugar? Is it diet? And so that puzzle, that idea was just hard for me to ignore.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's exactly right. And I was still around my team, so Stirrings was still kind of going as a business now with Indiageo. And I think it was hard to ignore back then the kind of soda challenge. And so you'll recall this is when sodas were getting pulled out of public buildings and taxes were starting to get levied. And so this is a lot of.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why they couldn't have soda. I was having a hard time reconciling it. And so my idea started to coalesce around soda and how there might be an opportunity to do something different.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was sort of, I would say, in receiving position, waiting for an idea or a thought or an inspiration. And I still loved being around food. I mean, it was, you know, I just get a charge out of walking down Main Street, you know, looking at what's happening in the world, observing people and what they're eating and drinking. And I was really sort of paying attention to the trends, you know, more than maybe just an average person would. And so at the time I was a big Diet Coke guy. So, you know, the absurdity of starting a really interesting meal and going out and shopping for fun ingredients, which is what my wife and I love to do. And then in the same afternoon, you know, drinking three diet coke. I mean, it just, it was at a certain point, it became confusing, really, because the kids didn't understand why, you know, the two messages around eating healthy.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was really hard actually on the team side. It was really hard, despite some financial rewards. It was really hard to sort of disband it and then ultimately walk away from it. So I would say that disappointment for me was it motivator though. You know, I was still in my early 30s, mid-30s. I felt like there was a way to do it a whole lot better than what we had just experienced.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was exhausted, honestly. You know, at that point, we had pulled forward. This agreement with Diageo, which was sort of hard fought and not quite the result we expected, it really was quite a difficult deal to finalize. And I felt like I had been going for a long time at that point and needed a break.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so actually, what was interesting to me back then was the idea of actually taking the business abroad to other markets. And so I actually moved now my wife and our two very young children over to London and lived and worked with their international team out of London for two years. That was intended to be the term of the partnership. What ended up happening is in 2008, the business and the partnership really kind of hadn't fulfilled the potential that we had all imagined. And there were a variety of factors for that. One was the economy changing, the other was sort of the fit between their big business and our tiny business. And so we ended up agreeing to exit the business to them earlier just because it made sense for both of us.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. You know, there was a lot of synergies between what we did and what they did, and they had this huge network and 30,000 people and distributors and marketers. And we had a cocktail line that kind of went perfectly with everything they did. And so the prospect of working with this sort of global powerhouse and selling not just in the US, but potentially around the world. I mean, all of that was intoxicating. And the plumbing was that we ultimately ended up selling them a percentage of the business with the idea that we would then exit the business to them entirely, pending kind of growth and trajectory of the business.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Yeah, they had this huge portfolio, and they were seeing the cocktail craze, and we were lucky enough to get an article on the Wall Street Journal right around the holidays talking about how Stirrings was helping to demystify cocktails in the next week. We got an inbound from their business development lead who said he was interested in meeting with us and talking about partnering up to ultimately pair their spirits with our cocktail mixes. So yeah, it was.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being in the north end of Boston, you know, hearing that we needed to move find money to cover payroll that was three hours later in the day and having to find the cash somewhere. So that absolutely was a huge lesson for us, just how the optics of a brand and the expense associated with growing isn't necessarily sustainable out of just cash flow alone, even when you're on fire the way we were.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that was really challenging because you're exactly right. You have your way to a big team at this point. We were showing up in everyone's sort of corner store, liquor store. And yet we were from a kind of a business economics fundamentals perspective. We were just making payroll. You know, I can remember.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know crazy enough, we really didn't. We never took outside capital at stirrings. We borrowed like crazy. I mean, we were leveraged personally. You know, I had, you know, millions of dollars of notes that I was responsible for. We just tried to be as creative as we could. And our supply partners worked with us on terms and that sort of thing. It was really sort of moving deck chairs around trying to figure out where to who to pay and what day.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Happened is the sales really took off. So eventually a number of liquor distributors ended up bringing it on. But it was a really expensive challenging product to make, you know, just for us to be shipping it around the country and doing so. We were chasing breakeven throughout the entire business. The food business is really like that. You know, you're always faced with a decision do we want to go after the next level of growth or be satisfied with where we are and try to manage it to more break even? And I would say we were, we chose to really sort of chase growth and make the brand, you know, the cocktail mix. In the US”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this is where I would say we knew enough to be dangerous. You know, we knew what a good margarita tasted like, I think. And Bloody Mary's, you know, I remember standing in my kitchen with, you know, kind of tomatoes everywhere. And really, the value of the brand initially was just in helping kind of demystify a cocktail and making it accessible to a much bigger audience. We saw that there was an opportunity if you made the product interesting enough visually and the label was sort of elegant. Consumers would proudly display it in their spirit cabinet or fridge wherever it was. And it really helped make the product much more accessible and drove a lot more interest and brand awareness.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What happened was two things. One was that our partner that I mentioned had decided he and his wife were sort of ready to move on. And my business partner and I, Gil, you know, kind of asked ourselves, like, is this something that we want to pursue on our own? And we actually purchased him out of the business. So that was a big step. And then kind of within that, we recognize that Nantucket Offshore seasonings may not necessarily fully represent our full idea and the opportunity. And we sort of got together and engaged a whole bunch of people, anyone that would listen to say, we want to create a platform and really just focus on cocktails. We want to be the premium cocktail business. And we ended up calling it stirrings. We love the name. And ultimately, that was really the big idea that kind of catapulted us into a national brand.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's exactly what happened. So, you know, throughout all of these years, it's really just about survival, you know, trying to find something that to keep us going year round. Really through a whole bunch of trial and error that we landed on cocktails. And so we really ultimately got into the cocktail business as a result of the other businesses really not showing that kind of promise.”
2020-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Spindrift: Bill Creelman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT