We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nigel Walwyn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nigel below.
Nigel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
In 2015 I walked into a major distillery to meet with the head of operations about my concept to create a real fruit and rum liqueur line. They told me to use artificial flavors because it’s the least expensive path to market and everyone does it that way. I knew at the moment I was on to something special. A few years earlier I invented a formula for a Caribbean style beverage, using real fruits picked from my family’s backyard, spices and Caribbean rums we had been drinking for years. Despite the higher costs I was able to formulate a unique liqueur using real fruits and natural flavors and avoided using artificial ingredients that often give alcoholic beverages in some categories a synthetic taste profile.
Once our products hit the market the difference was clear. Customer’s reactions ranged from shock to profound joy. Our company’s popularity grew with each activation and tasting event across metro Atlanta. Demand for our unique products also grew as accounts increased their orders based on customer requests and demand.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Caribbean Smooth Beverages founder Nigel Walwyn made one of his frequent visits to his family home in St. Croix. In the backyard he handpicked sun-ripened fruits like mangoes, coconuts and his childhood favorite, passion fruit. For years while living in the Caribbean he had been making his own delicious fruit drinks from scratch. This time however, he decided to make an adult beverage with some local rums and spices. One sip and he knew he had discovered something special. He shared his concoction with family and friends, and over the next few years they began demanding it at every opportunity.
Back at home in Atlanta, Nigel continued to work in the television news industry. His coworkers and their friends consistently asked Nigel to make the passion fruit drink. Nigel began considering whether it was time to think seriously about starting a business around his juicy creation as the fan base grew. Nigel had spent the previous 25 years working in corporate in the television news industry. Nigel, a multiple Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award winner worked his way up from a videotape editor after graduating college, to producer and eventually news executive at ABC stations in several U.S. markets. With the encouragement of friends, he began to dream about being an entrepreneur and went into research mode. Nigel quickly realized the alcohol industry and the life of an entrepreneur would require a significant commitment that would not leave him time to do anything else. The decision was made, and Nigel made his fateful transition from news to booze.
In 2014, Nigel set out to learn about business and entrepreneurship while researching the alcohol industry, developing his recipes into a product that can be produced at scale and build new relationships in a challenging and elusive industry. In the first months Nigel basically went back to school by attending classes put on by SCORE, self-teaching with the aid of the SBA Learning Center and even mirroring the master’s program undertaken by a close friend through Strayer University. Armed with a treasure trove of new knowledge, Nigel proceeded to build a team, secure permits and licenses and began looking at ways to raise capital. He quickly found out the alcohol industry is extremely capital intensive, and his dream would go nowhere without outside funding to start production. The next 18 months of sharing his vision with anybody who would listen and pitching potential angel investors went nowhere. A crowdfunding campaign helped raise some funds but nowhere near the goal needed to get started. Then came the opportunity to meet a banker interested in helping new and small businesses enter the liquor industry. That meeting led to an introduction to Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs (ACE), a community organization created to help small businesses get started. Their staff helped me walk through the onerous process of securing an SBA loan for startups.
I created the company for consumers looking for an authentic taste of the islands. We focus on female consumers who enjoy flavorful and fruity adult beverages. Our unique packaging appeals to women and reflects the essence of a woman. The tropical and sometimes bombastic first sip often elicits a reaction that coincidentally sounds like the name of our liqueurs brand Ou-Oui! (Oouu-Weee!). It’s a euphoric expression, filled with joy and is often followed by laughter. Just saying the name brings an immediate smile. Our mission is to make the world a happier place with each sip of our premium liqueurs and upcoming cocktails.
We have two product lines either on the market or coming soon. Ou Oui! Premium Liqueurs was launched in 2017 and RumShaker Premium Cocktails launches this spring. We differentiate our products from our competitors in three fundamental areas: comfort, taste and ingredients. Our liquids stand out because we put real fruits in the bottle, blended into our proprietary formulation of rums and spices. The tropical experience starts immediately upon removing the stopper. The aromas of real tropical fruits penetrate your nasal cavities and stimulates your palate before the liquid touches it. The first splash of the 35 – 40 proof liquids immediately signals you’re in for a unique taste and a very authentic Caribbean experience.
The audacity of a regular guy with no alcohol industry experience- to bring his backyard invention to market, position it to where it is now a proven concept, created momentum and interest in domestic and overseas markets is a testament to the perseverance and tenacity needed to push through the struggles of entrepreneurship.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Two and half years after rolling out our liqueurs it became clear we had a sustainable business and a proven concept. Product continued depleting but so too was our cash. Driving sales with marketing campaigns is very expensive in this industry. It was time to seek more funding based on our key performance metrics. We had been courting investors most of the year and in the last quarter of 2019 had found a serious prospect. Pitches were made and interest was shown and final meetings were scheduled in early to mid 2020. The Covid-19 Pandemic destroyed our chances of closing that deal and other opportunities evaporated as the world changed. I spent the next two years chasing funding opportunities as my company’s financial picture went from good to bad to ugly. Inventory depleted and with no capital to restock our distributors and get revenue, our cash flow quickly dried up. I shut down operations to avoid going bankrupt and dug into my personal funds to continue paying the loan.
Our lender extended extreme grace and helped us qualify for programs that allowed the business to stay afloat. However due to the capital intensive nature of the industry our financials were not attractive to traditional and even non-traditional lenders. Our only hope remained equity investors, so I launched a Wefunder campaign that raised almost $70K but less than half needed to go back into production. As I continued chasing prospects and watching that fund deplete it again looked like I had no path forward. In desperation I even entertained several precarious non-traditional funding opportunities that ended up being a waste of time.
Four years after the collapse of my deal during Covid I am on the verge of launching a new brand after pivoting from the more costly liqueur line. I am self-funding the restart of operations with an affordable copacker and some new vendors. Between 2000 and 2023 I had ample opportunities and even excuses to give up and move on but I stayed the course, found a way to pivot and survive and here we go again.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
As a new alcohol product it is crucial that we get opportunities for tastings. However in our home market of Georgia we faced a significant challenge because it’s illegal to pour alcoholic beverages in liquor stores. So during the first weeks of our launch, we were not selling anything because nobody had heard about us. Many consumers were unwilling to take a chance and buy a bottle of something they may not like.
I figured out a work-around that would allow us to do tastings in the stores without breaking any laws. I created a non-alcohol version of the liqueurs that highlighted the fruity profile, a key characteristic of the product. It became a game-changer for our sales efforts. We saw a huge spike in account sales from day one of our tasting promotions. We would taste 50 consumers in a two hour session and sell between 15 – 20 bottles on average. Our company was alone in this type of promotion, always outselling even the major brands because they could only hand-sell the traditional way. The campaign was so successful we implemented it weekly and it significantly impacted key performance indicators like our account reorder metrics.
Contact Info:
- Website: rumshaker.com
- Instagram: rumshaker_
- Facebook: sipououi
- Youtube: Caribbean Smooth OuOui!