Four Pillars Gin creator Stu Gregor on how to build a premium brand (without spending a fortune) | #390

STU McGregor:

But I had so much experience in the industry I knew there was an opportunity and I knew I have the right people with me and I picked a couple of great partners one of whom is an amazing distiller Cameron McKenzie who I’d worked with for 15 years one of whom is an amazing marketing and branding guy who I knew would be able to do all the digital stuff and we start with a possible campaign raising a little bit of money.

Tim Reid:

So, hold that thought. I want to talk about possible but you have a marketing agency called liquid idea. You have decided to apply all your learnings that you have applied to building other people’s brands to a product of your own. So, why did you choose gin?

STU McGregor:

Well, because we’d been fiddly I’d sort of done a bit of winemaking in wine building a wine business. We just had a 10 years. Crowded market. There’s 3,000 wineries in Australia. And if all of them make 10 wines they make a chardonnay a salmon and blanker of cabernet a riesling on that sort of stuff that’s 30, 000 different wines. You name it and they’re getting weirder and more wonderful malbec melos and the rest of the things and so but there was really essentially less than a handful of people making gin and I drank a lot of gin. And the fact is we used to say it took a lot of gin for us to make average wine. So now it takes quite a lot of wine for us to make really good gin. So it’s actually worked well.

Tim Reid:

So it was always going to be a spirit was it? It didn’t have an idea for a body frigid cube and with dig.

STU McGregor:

Interestingly to tell you the absolute truth that the first conversation we had was between Cameron myself was about making tonic because we drank a lot of gin and tonic. And there was no good tonic. It was only sweep’s tonic and if you got crappy It was kirk’s right really low low level tonic and there was a few fancy genes coming out of the market whether it was hendrix or tank or a number 10 and we will go and ask for a gin and tonic and they give you the post mix guns normally. The gun I do work behind a bar what the gun is and there’s a button on it there’s an s button for Soter a C for coca T for tonic and L for lemonade. Half the time the barman hits the wrong one anyway.  It paid a lots of extra good gin and then you get the really shi tonic. So for literally three days, we thought we might make tonic and then like I remember having a conversation with Cameron and just we don’t know how to make a soft drink but we know how to make booze. And we understand the booze industry. We all know how to distribute like a coca-cola or how to distribute soft drinks. So why wouldn’t we make the gin. I mean surely the genes the good bit of the gin and tonic

Tim Reid:

And why gin and not bourbon or scotch or vodka?

STU McGregor:

One, we drank gin. Two, frankly you can make gin and turn it over more quickly than you can whisky because whisky has got to be in a barrel for a minimum of two years to make them really good probably three to four or five years and I wasn’t really that keen on having my children inherit all this bloody effort I’d been put in a ring with. And also we drank gin and gin is the white spirit that makes the classic cocktails makes your martinis and Negronis south sides or the gimlets or the great drinks are based on gin. Gin was having a bit of a renaissance vodka was a very sort of 10 years ago and gin is just such a great white spirit and the other thing about gin that we discovered is that you can put local botanicals local flavours.

Tim Reid:

Well, I think I’ve read somewhere where you said: a gin is one of those liquors with taste of a place and I love that.

STU McGregor:

And there’s not that many of them in spirits because a lot of spirits like if you make a bourbon or a whisky whether it’s Scotch or Irish whisky it ends up taking more of the barrel because it might be in there for 10 years so whatever the base spirit might be or whatever herbs and spices you might have put in in the early stage pretty much get overwhelmed by the type of oak you use. So for us, gin we had allowed us to use lemon myrdal it allowed us to use local lavender. It allowed us to use tassie pepper berry and we’ve used probably in all the gins we’ve made over the last four years we probably use 30 or 40 different native Australian botanicals  like a wattle seed and strawberry guam and all these amazing things.

Tim Reid:

I just gonna say you have done a little seed and strawberry guam gin have you?

Tell me. You apologize at the top saying business owners listening won’t want to hear about the fact that you didn’t. It was a huge consideration. We’re just going to do gin. And you embarked on this. I love that. And you come from a marketing background and liquid idea gency and all where I’m sure there are clients asking where’s that marketing report? where’s that marketing strategy? where’s the focus group?

STU McGregor:

Where’s the focus group? Where is a qualitative and quantitative market research?

Tim Reid:

But you know and I know some people love that but it sits on the bloody desk and gathers dust and next thing someone else has launched a great product ahead of you.

STU McGregor:

It’s not for me. Market research and probably market research gave birth to the camel. Like everyone had their little teeny bit two cents worth when they went back to the back to the collective and said well what if we did this and what if we did this and he went up with something that does nothing to anyone. And I think sometimes marketers aren’t willing or aren’t confident enough in their own ability to back themselves and they’re not confident enough to say right. I know I’m getting this right or I’m a pretty good chance of getting this right. There’s no certainties in life. But the other thing is to build the right people around you, the right network around you. right employees and partners and distribution like if you have all that knowledge that you’ve built up over a period of time it actually becomes quite easy to make those decisions. But you could have the balls to back yourself to do it.

Tim Reid:

So much small business and business generally comes down to business courage having done you’ll be most like 300 to 90 something interview. And courage is this constant thing that links people like you that you jump.

STU McGregor:

It’s courage first but then it’s perseverance. It’s perseverance and perseverance. So one of the things that even if you have the courage to jump that’s great but you have not even begun the journey yet. What it is all about is perseverance. The one word when people ask me how do you describe the small business or four pillars or anything like that. The one word that immediately comes to my mind is relentless. It’s relentless. Like every day you’ve got to be thinking about how you can do things different how you can do things better.

Tim Reid:

Maybe there’s some listening who go It’s bloody relentless. I can’t stand it. Well get out of it you’re selling the wrong thing. You aren’t love what you’re doing.

STU McGregor:

You don’t like what you do because if I look and I had another distiller come to me about he actually came to the liquid ideas and said look we’ve got a distillery and it’s not far from yours and where we look at your success and wonder why are you so successful and yet we were established about the same time but we’re not so much. I said a simple thing I said how many events like masterclasses have you done how many times you’ve gone and met with your customers and shown them what’s in your gin or your whisky or whatever it is. He said: Oh well I think we’ve done like maybe four or five. And I had a look I think we’ve done a 112.

Tim Reid:

Masterclasses.

STU McGregor:

Masterclasses tastings in-store events dinners and everything. Like every single day because you have to be touching customers.

Tim Reid:

You don’t have deep pockets you’re out there sleeves up grinding away having a crack getting it in front of as many people as possible doing things.

STU McGregor:

We don’t have the budget to go stick billboards on the side of Main Street. We don’t have a budget to do TV ads or anything else like that. But what we can do. The advantage we have is that people can get up close to us. You’re going to get close to the guy who invented tanqueray or they’re going to get a Johnny walker or a bloke who mate or actually a woman who made Hendricks who funnily enough was here. But you can get up close to us and I think one of the things that we did really successfully in our first three or four years is we got close to our customers both our trade customers so the retailers and bartenders that sold us but also out just punter’s anyone who was interested.

Tim Reid:

I think business owners generally undervalue the power of the business owner going out the front of the brand shaking hands what are they say hugging babies doing all that stuff because all of a sudden it goes well that’s the person who owns the business.

STU McGregor:

You got to do it as often and for as long as you possibly can. There’s going to be a point where we for instance focus is now in 15 markets where you can’t be in all those markets around the world at one time. But if there’s anything really important or if there’s anything B you’ve got to be the one who put yourself up there and sometimes. It’s hard for anyone to think oh my God all the travel that must be so hard. I mean that’s bullshit. I mean it’s really quite fun. And I hate people who complain that they have to fly around the world doing something they love to do.

It gets quite tough. For an old bloke who spends most the night drinking and then has to get up the next morning to do it all would say.

Tim Reid:

I hear you. I was in the Maldives last week worked every day. Let’s talk money because you don’t have deep pockets maybe you got deep pockets now. I didn’t see what are you parked at the front the lambeau.

STU McGregor:

I had to get one of the girls who works for me to buy my lunch today. I don’t have any money in my pocket. That’s it.

Tim Reid:

I’ve got some water for you here.

STU McGregor:

I’m like the Prince of Wales. It doesn’t have any cash.

Tim Reid:

There you go. Exactly right. You ran a possible campaign. Three weeks ago on this show a young bloke who came up with a simple way. I’ve been absolutely fascinated by Crowdfunding. Simple way to manage your keys. Enter the chunky key ring and he’s got this thing called the orbitkey. I think it was like 20 grand on Indiegogo ended up with 1.3 million. Amazing story. So you run a possible campaign in order to do what by your first vat.

STU McGregor:

No, that was just basically to buy the first batch of gin. So we hadn’t made the gin yet.

Tim Reid:

So you’re buying that gin. You’re not even making it.

STU McGregor:

No, for the customer to buy the gin we were make the gin. We hadn’t made the gin yet but we wanted to see whether or not I think we were looking for 30 grand. We were going to sell the first batch. They would’ve been about 450 bottles. Now I’m just doing the maths quickly about 70 bucks a bottle. So I was about $30,000 we were looking for and we gave it a month. And we thought it would be nice to see if we get there in a month if we can sell all 450 bottles in a month. I bet you smashed it three days.

Tim Reid:

Wow. Why?

STU McGregor:

There was just this a norm and this was the moment like I still remember sitting in bed at night just refreshing the possible campaign with my wife that I would sort of know because no one would count the money in the bottles like thinking we could sell the whole batch in the next few days. Yes. Well hardly because it’s been $30, 000 doesn’t get you far when you’re buying $250,000.

Tim Reid:

Proof of concept.

STU McGregor:

Proof of concept is exactly what it was. It told us that there was a demand for. And then when we had all these people who didn’t get in emailing us and asking us how they could get him we think christ now number two and then sort of a market where you have a market and they weren’t all matched. It was when the first 50 you could see the first 50 go make make make cams. But as soon as you start seeing people who you’ve never heard of I think that’s one of the great things. People call it that. I heard someone refer to it the other day as dark conversations conversations that you know as a brand owner conversation you have no plan. When one bartender is telling a customer about how good your product is and you’re not in the room you’ve got nothing to do with it but someone has told that bartender on his own right is telling a customer that you’ve got to drink four pillars and then often it comes back to you. And there is no direct connection. And that is the best moment.

Tim Reid:

You and I are in the lift coming up to the studio. 15 minutes ago I introduce you to some bloke who’s got a ship’s outfit on and he got 4 pillars. That feels good.

STU McGregor:

That’s unreal and it doesn’t matter where you are when that’s unreal. I’m not trying to sound like a complete wanker. Last week we did an event in Manchester in the UK just a little Sunday afternoon session I don’t know maybe 20 people turned up and we just tasted the gins at this really well known gin bar in Manchester because I’d been on the Manchester United fan and I’d been to see Liverpool play man u the day before childhood literally.

Tim Reid:

With Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

STU McGregor:

Sitting in the attic. As a man you never saw him. Almost getting there almost getting glass. And we’re in Manchester in this great little bar and we’d met the owners a couple of times before and then she emailed me yesterday morning. She said how good is it with a couple of photos. So I’m on holidays with my husband a Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. We stay at the Park Hyatt a bit of a flash holiday with the husband and there’s the old went downstairs four pillars gin and tonic and my husband because we always talk about serving it with an orange because we put oranges in the distillation it’s not a lemon or a lime or anything else. They served it with a lime. And my husband isn’t in the industry to come along to meet us and that’s I was the one who does it and it has to be served with an orange. And so I took some pictures of it. They a very generous pause in how much you think there’s about 100 million. And that’s one of those things that it just astonishes you to think.

Tim Reid:

Let’s just pause there because again people are listening businesses go oh yeah it’s alright for old stew with his four pillars and he’s getting noticed. And it was born to do that. And I listen to you and talk. I love it when I come across someone and I say a podcast and watch a show called It’s called the Small Business Big Marketing. I’ve heard of that. I love that. And again it’s come out of a passion and a love and a grind to get it in front of as many people as possible. It is massive marketing listen here because I don’t care whether it’s the vet or the plumber or whoever listening. It can happen to them. You’ve just got to get out there and. And I call it socializing your business because no one else going to do it for you. And we don’t have the money to spend on advertising which is the lazy way. His 10 grand go to a billboard company get a brand out there. Well it’s going to happen.

STU McGregor:

It doesn’t work. One of the things I always tell my clients and it’s something that we did it at four pillars as well as a really simple thing is sit down. Like when you’re starting this business of the brand or anything else and write down the 100 names of people who can influence the purchasing decision of your product whatever that product is. Now if it’s a vet, you start writing down 100 people who can influence that positive or negatively. So that might be the local council it might be the local dog breeders it might be the dog trainers the dog walkers it might be whatever else it is and then figure out a way to get in touch with them all. You might have to go meet them you might find their email addresses. But if you’ve got a top 100. So, for us in gin. tWho the hell of 100 people who can influence whether they’re going to the gene market in Australia and all of it. Sometimes it’s licencing people like what we’re going to eventually need a licence to produce it’s not going to be someone at the ATO it’s going to be the guy who writes the booze column and the age it’s going to be the guy writes it in the Herald it’s going to be the guy who is the bartender of the year who just won that big award. It’s going to be the guy who runs Dan Murphy’s it’s going to be the guys who run the local bottle shop and all of a sudden you get that hundred. Then, how are you going to touch each one of them.

Tim Reid:

So, the touch of each one of those is not the same touch, correct? You got to be clear.

And you go in with a pitch mindset. Or do you go in there to say hey good am. I’m Stu got this thing called four pillars. Just wanted to reduce you to it see ya or you got you clear on what you want next.

STU McGregor:

There’s never a s a C a straight away like there’s always gonna be a you I like I never go into any meeting with anyone without a bottle of the gin. No matter what it is even a day. I come in here. It’s the sound of four pillars knocking. You can’t do anything without the product. And it always amazes me like even when I go out to lunch or something I’m if I go to a restaurant for lunch I’m always going to take a bottle with me give it to the guys the bartender at the restaurant and he may not know me because for us that’s it. That’s the lowest cost marketing investment we got. So at the end of the day costs of production, cost of goods we are whatever mainly tax. I mean in Australia it’s all about tax but giving a gift to someone and say here’s a bottle of gin. This is my card. This is what we do and sometimes he says oh great I love that gin is my favourite. Sometimes he says: what’s that? Sometimes you ask to see the bar manager. But I mean everywhere you go I mean I’m always giving a bottle of gin away because one it’s the best way that people can see what you’re doing better than a t-shirt or a bit of paraphernalia or anything else.

Tim Reid:

Like they’ll say I gave you a copy of my book as you came in I’m a service provider.  I don’t have a product to give. But having that book. When you read it.

STU McGregor:

If I had my glasses on it I understand it.

Tim Reid:

It’s a glorified business card. So, I think that anyone with your service provider or a product provider again get your product out there give it out. So you run your possible campaign that goes beautifully. Proof of concept. I’m guessing at this stage because one of the things that I love about what you’ve done with four pillars is the quality of the aesthetic of the brand is beautiful. The packaging on the bottle. These brochures and mini cocktail books that you’ve given me everything is beautiful. I imagine they weren’t there at the start. Now over time you have put a lot of effort into this thing they call brand. Stu, define brand for us. And what it means to you.

STU McGregor:

Well to build a great brand. Well, I always talk about brands and so does mac who is in the business with me and he’s a bit of a branding guru. I’m a branding executioner. But the brand is ostensibly where the value of the business seats where it rests because at the end of the day what we’re trying to build I was talking about people talk about brand equity all this is bull shit we talk about bias. I want people to become biased towards four pillars illogically biased. The fact is that is a particularly delicious gin that wins awards and everything else. But for a lot of people a gin is a gin. But I want them to feel an emotional connection.

Tim Reid:

That’s the word emotion.

STU McGregor:

That is beyond what they feel for the other gin that sitting next to on a shelf. And all of that comes out of how we present ourselves in person how we present ourselves in brochures, how we present ourselves on the Internet, how we present ourselves on Instagram, how we talk to our customers on Facebook and all of that sort of stuff. If we can do that consistently with a really friendly sometimes funny most of the time polite except for me on Twitter occasionally.

Twitter we’ve got these rules. I’m only allowed to Twitter. But on Twitter you can have a crack at your table. You could be a bit edgy. But it’s funny because in Australia virtually none of our customers on Twitter they’re all on Instagram. Whereas in the UK they’re all on Twitter or on Twitter. It’s a funny thing so all about Twitter 90% of the conversations. Our brand has four pillars you which I’m doing on Twitter with people in the UK and 95 percent of the conversations we’re having on Instagram with people in Australia. So don’t think you’ve got to build your brand on Twitter in Australia that’s a dummett.

Tim Reid:

Oh, you couldn’t.

STU McGregor:

If Facebook has been incredibly important for us in building those conversations where people can ask questions. Facebook the sort of platform where it’s a community like they say you can’t hard sell. One thing we’ll never do, we don’t give shit away to try to get followers, follow us now and we’ll give a free bottle and all that stuff is just not what we do. Because those are people who become numbers of your followers but who will be totally and utterly disengaged if they don’t win the bottle. They don’t give a shit about you and it’s just a dumb way of marketing.

I’d rather have 30,000 amazing followers on Facebook.

Tim Reid:

Facebook is made for alcohol because Gary Vaynerchuk social media gurus and Facebook is a party that everyone’s going to see who’s with who where they’re at what they’re eating what they’re drinking. Gary V. Do you like Gary V?

STU McGregor:

It’s funny cause it came out of the booze industry. I knew him way ago before he became super famous.

Tim Reid:

Well he could tell you everyone is super famous.

STU McGregor:

He does. He doesn’t mind telling people he’s famous.

Tim Reid:

He’s done all right.

STU McGregor:

He’s done very well.

Tim Reid:

What he does say is Facebook is a party and so treated that way. So the minute if you’re in a party and someone comes over the top and says you should buy this. It was like mate go away but you have a conversation about where you had a where you tried for pillars or a cocktail that you make with it and it’s a social conversation.

STU McGregor:

You need other people to tell them they tried it. And that’s what our Facebook fans do. One of the best things we ever see is when we post something on Facebook we were releasing a Christmas gin for instance and we post some pictures and say it’s available and all that sort of stuff. It’s when people are sharing it to their friends and just saying must buy. Let’s go this weekend. Those are the conversations where we’re not telling them they must buy. We’re just telling them what’s happening and we’re seeing them make the decisions because that’s the new marketing if you like the new branding which is that you can’t try to. The old fashioned advertising model was just basically scream it to themat people till they feel that they have to buy it and scream it to them on billboards grimmett to them on television set. Now you’ve got to build up trust and have conversations with them all that’s it. It’s cheaper. But harder. Oh yeah. And but you end up with more loyal followers than you would have if you were just screaming at them in billboards on tv.

Tim Reid:

There is a real mindset shift that I say older business owners need to understand. But I’m going to say anyone 40 plus 35-40 plus where what you got to understand is that you can develop a huge tribe of followers and it doesn’t need to be millions but a tribe of loyal followers who love what you do on social media and it’s content because you can’t see it. You don’t really get a sense of just how many eyes or ears are watching you right listening to you versus billboards on the highway which everyone that drives pass sees it. But when you drive pass engages with it

STU McGregor:

You’re so lucky if someone just glances up while they’re either let’s be honest texting or talking to someone on the phone or changing the radio station, listen to your podcast, talking to the girlfriend, boyfriend next door. The chances of them seeing that are right a million eyeballs when pass that on the day you put a million eyeballs ignored it. I mean obviously they didn’t and I know I’m not an enemy of the advertising industry or heaven for the outdoor advertising industry because I’ve got mates in that business and they’ll tell me that I’m completely wrong. But you’re right, you can measure your social media audience so you can measure its success we can do things like post on Facebook or Instagram post a picture and very easily measure the level of engagement. And we can do things that we can sell at a dinner. It’s also spending money. A lot of people say oh yeah but they’re all happy to press like them it’s pretty picture everything. But are they really willing to become customers. The answer is yes. If we put a post up on Facebook maybe two weeks ago that said we’re going to launch this new gin you need to be on our database if you want to get first dibs on this gin. And we had more than 2,000 new people go into that database of which we reckon are more than a quarter of them will buy the gin. Let’s call it 500 extra sales of gin 100 bucks ago now. That is a serious measure of the success of Facebook and on Instagram. We know the number of people who come into our distillery and healesville in the Yarra Valley when you ask the bill how did you hear about us. Everything else got Instagram. We love your instagram page like. And we’re talking to literally. We’ll put 80,000 people.

Tim Reid:

Wrap some numbers around that the brand as it stands now and then tell us what you’re spending on marketing. Can you do that? Can you tell us like in terms of turnover staff, skews, units sold.

STU McGregor:

I’m not an obvious guy. I’m not trying to say no I don’t have it but I can tell you that we’ve probably got 25 full time staff now.

Tim Reid:

How many years in?

STU McGregor:

Almost four years. And so a lot most of them are down at the Distillery So they’re doing they’re making the gin, they’re packing the gin, they’re selling the gin. So we’ve got a cellar door down like a wine cellar door. And we’ve also got a bar down there like a full time bar and drinks and tasting paddles. And so there’s good and then they’re doing the admin and all that sort of stuff. Give me 20 down there. And then there’s five of us who sort of work on. I’ve got a couple of ambassadors. I’ve got one in the UK, one in Australia and one who’s almost full time in the US and look for us.

Tim Reid:

Can you talk turn over?

STU McGregor:

I probably can. We’re sort of between ourselves when 5 and 10. The problem with turnover are different it depends who pays the tax. Third of about revenue would be money that goes straight to the tax code. So when we sell it let’s say bottle goes down.

Tim Reid:

Can you go and get the CFO from Google or Apple to maybe work for four pillars and you’ll be paying a dollar a year in Ireland or wherever you are The Cocoa Islands like that.

STU McGregor:

I’ll give you a sense of how bad our Texas. I’ll give you 30 seconds of why this tax is bullshit. That bottle of gin that I just gave you here is $75, five metres away from where it’s made. I was at 75 bucks a damn movies or any of the other liquor stores around the country. That bottle of gin shifts on the shelf in the United States and Los Angeles in a bottle. So for 35 bucks U.S so let’s call that 40 low 42, 43 bucks in Australia. So it’s 30 dollars cheaper in the US than it is here and that’s all tax. That’s the money we give the Australian government for tax that they get more out of every bottle of four pillars than we do. Significantly almost double. Thanks for them but they don’t do much in terms of building the brand.

Tim Reid:

Irrigation, roads, hospitals.

STU McGregor:

But the fact is, our gin is most expensive in Australia. But even in the UK you can probably buy.

Tim Reid:

You might have just come back from Singapore and grog was exceptionally expensive over there. I want to talk about Singapore in a minute but just going back to finish that, So you create a significant brand 25 staff, call it 5 mill turnover for years, well done. First of all, what’s going on marketing because we just took a lot of social media, a lot of socializing, a lot of networking. I’m getting a feeling not a lot, a lot of effort.

STU McGregor:

A lot of effort. I mean it has to be. Your marketing, first four or five years is going to be about who you know. It’s got to be about those 100 people. It’s got to be about. I mean that the key to our marketing to be perfectly honest is the product itself. We start every presentation even if we’re just talking to our own investors or we’re talking our own staff. It all begins with gin. That’s how the first press presentation always starts which is if we weren’t making gin that was world class nothing else would really matter. We’d just be a bit crap. People would buy us for the first time because they’re a made or they’re Australian or whatever. But everything has to be world class. Then we have a team who don’t physically make the gin because Cameron and his team are responsible making the gin. We have to make sure that everything else that happens whether it’s social media packaging, collateral even our events I had such an anal fastidious event like our events have to be amazing people have to leave that four pillar is tasty. I might have been to a wine tasting before a meeting or whatever but that four pillars was the best taste I’ve ever been to. Now if you combine that with also that four pillar gin is the best I’ve ever tasted. Then you got a loyal customer for not for life and certainly for the next few years.

Tim Reid:

Loyal and someone who is vocal. I look at this and I’m looking forward to tasting this gin but I’ll be telling others because you create a very shareable brand. Can you put a dollar figure to your marketing before we move on?

STU McGregor:

In the single figures, 100% in the single figures. About 110%.

Tim Reid:

Yeah okay. Now you’re a brand guy. I was in Singapore last week. My wife and I went to raffles which is being refurbished home of the Singapore sling. A major component of Singapore sling is gin. I got talking to the barman. I was quite excited to go in there and have the experience most of Raffles is closed at the moment so they’ve moved everything to the long bar which didn’t meant a lot to me till I went there but it’s not the original bar where the sling used to be drunk. That said, I was a bit disappointed by the barman’s lack of enthusiasm for the fact that like I said to her mate you’re probably the most famous barman in Singapore. He didn’t really care for that. I was trying to engage it. I want to talk about it. The next thing I know he’s holding two bottles of Gordon’s gin which I would have thought is rubbish and is making 36 bucks ago. So I said should we have another one? I said probably not. Have you ever samp skoda or something.

STU McGregor:

Go to another bar.

Tim Reid:

At least want to tick the buckler’s because we’d actually come in from the Maldives. So, that was bucketlist tick by the Raffles Singapore. But I you agree with me so crap that they use it.

STU McGregor:

But they also have sloe gin as well they use a gin made with sloe berries as well in a Singapore Sling. I’ve done the raffles thing obviously as well put it this way. Singapore has amazing cocktail bars right now. Like Singapore has got to incredible cocktail bar seems super cool. Singapore is going really well at the moment for us but I don’t think we’ve ever sold a bottle of raffles.

Singapore if anyone listening going to Singapore for God’s sake don’t take raffles Singapore take 36 back by two really good for four cocktails at a groovy cocktail bar.

Tim Reid:

So that was kind of social influence. He would have been a great social influence but he doesn’t really care. I hope he’s not listening. I kind of hope he’s listening to the show actually. Your role has been reversed as a social influence because American Express hit you up and said Hey listen can we feature you but let’s watch it that’s significant. Hey listeners what I’m talking about is a 90 second video exposé of stew and his team and the four pillars brand done by one of the biggest brands in the world American Express. I mean you’re a social influence in yourself mate.

STU McGregor:

Well you know all I was looking for is a million free points and one of the ones that clink when you dropped them. Amex is an interesting beast because they did come to us and they came out of the blue because their PR company knew me through something I said well you know they were looking for a small Australian brand and I was really happy to do it one because and I mean there’s no pay for play or anything else. As I said they didn’t give me a million points or the centurion card. I’ve used them for ever and like literally for well over 15 years in all my small business I’ve used them against me because it’s always really good. It’s always been really easy to reconcile my amex bill so I bloody I’ve got no problem using them. And they came and shot a really lovely video and it hundreds of thousands of people and it’s a great advertisement for four pillars.

Tim Reid:

The boomerang effect in action which is where you put effort into building a great brand. You hope to sell a lot of it which is primarily what you want but other great things happen and for a to feature and that is an example that I want to talk to you about your distiller in healesville. I mean I haven’t been there I’ve seen a lot of pictures of it videos of it. It’s beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful. Now that would not have been a cheap exercise and to have it so why you’ve got it you have to have it distill to have gin. But why did you turn it into an entire destination experience?

STU McGregor:

Well simply because none existed. So there’s two things. One is, if you’d seen the building before it was shitty. It was a crappy old timber yard it was a dirty old timber yard out in the outside right on the edge of healesville. And in fact Cameron  lives maybe 150 meters away from it and we used to walk past this crappy old timber yard out on the way to the pub called the terminus to drink beer and talk crap and maybe have a bet and we would say shit if that ever came on the market how good would that be. That would be the perfect place to put it still because at the time we were making the gin at a mate’s winery just like back corner. Like honestly we had as much room as this studio. I’m going to call it 15 square metres or anything like that and we’ll make an engine there. And we were quickly running out of room as you can imagine. And Cameron he just happened to know the local real estate agent because he was only a small town he saw the local real estate agent talking to the bloke at the front of it one day and he just rang the agent straight away and said he’s thinking of selling the timber yard. They said well yeah he is. And we said right where you are hereby our remedy you may sign it. It’s up for sale. I said we’ve got to buy it. Well this is probably three years ago.

Tim Reid:

So, you’re one of the brand off buying property.

STU McGregor:

So we put all that out for small business we put all our super fund into it. He says commercial property. All three all three of us poured our whole super into buying the property and then we had to spend quite a bit of on it to do it because it was honestly it was a rat infested till you spent a lot of it.

Tim Reid:

Looks like you spent a lot of time. I mean it’s been designed.

STU McGregor:

It was designed primarily by one of our partners wives who worked for the local construction and architects firm. Rebecca is an incredible designer so she helped us with that sort of stuff. And so you use as many of the local resources as you possibly can. And then yeah look it is beautiful because as I said before you can’t particularly these days you can’t let customers down at one leg of the journey. I think I got it’s a great scene. The brochures are beautiful then they turn up the distilling art. It’s just a shit hole.

Tim Reid:

I love that legs of the journey. Your website is delightful. Your packagings delightful distillery is delightful. You are very very very clear on what the four pillars brand stands for represents personality. How do you do that?

STU McGregor:

We have to be you conscientious. So even from the from the greeting that people get when they walk into the distillery. How’s that going to go. It’s the lessons that you learned from great service places great hospitality places like we want everywhere so things like TripAdvisor we talk about social media. Number one thing to do in the Yarra Valley on TripAdvisor more than the healesville Sanctuary which gets probably 350,000 visitors a year primarily because we get a lot of five star reviews and that five star review and none of those reviews not none. Most of those reviews feature the people before the product or the product they go and then I went to four pillars because I already knew I like the gin the people there were amazing. We had Elton online us or David of or Kylie or Kirstie do our taste were so friendly and they had such passion for the job and they loved it and all this sort of stuff and we already knew that gin were great. but now we just absolutely love the place.

Tim Reid:

Reinforces the old branding quotes. You people can copy what we do. There will be another premium gin but they can’t copy who we are. You like that?

STU McGregor:

They can’t copy who we are. There is a distillery that does it great.

Tim Reid:

Because they haven’t got the emotional attachment. There you go. Tell me when you reckon the brand, first of all, are you happy where four pillars is right now? in 2017.

STU McGregor:

Yes.  

Tim Reid:

Where do you think it would be if you hadn’t opened up the whole distillery experience?

STU McGregor:

A long way back from where it is now simply because and it’s interesting a lot of distilleries call them distillery breweries winery and all that sort of stuff thought that the brand was everything and it didn’t matter where your home was And it’s interesting that now a lot of the big companies even Bombay Sapphire and tanqueray and all those guys are going. We need a home base. We had a place to take people to show them what we’re all about. People have done it really well.

Tim Reid:

How do you know that?

STU McGregor:

Because bombay just opened one last year. They spent millions on a place just out of sight out of London 10k doing it as we speak. Do you think your influence your them. Oh yes. Well hang on hang on.

Tim Reid:

Yes or no.

STU McGregor:

You know what I think I thought because whisky has always been really good at it. Yes right I had a whisky just earlier. You get a great experience whether you’re going to Glen phytic or I’ve never been to any of them. To be honest but I mean people tell me stories about when they go to the eila. Freud or lagavulin and I get this great. What does he talk about. It sounds impressive. Beautiful. Yes. And you know who’s also done it really well apparently the Americans you know like you’re going to Kentucky Jim Beam or the angels, Tennaci all those sorts of places. And we always thought well we’ve got to have a home where we can showcase things we can take that the bartenders we can take great customers we can take and punters can just come and we also thought was not going to love a bar where you can have a good drink. One of the things we don’t like a best seller doors in wine for instance is you sort of stand there against them. You got like the wife of the winemaker standing there who just doesn’t want you there anyway. Could she be on the internet or something. It’s what I want or can I try a white wine and then you have this awkward 20 minute do I buy a bottle. Do I have to be nice to her. Spit it out. You get the shit crappy little glasses and you walk out of there you go. Well that was a pretty ordinary experience. People come to our joint and you can’t get rid of them. I mean this is actually a problem. They’re probably shellacked getting out and doing tasting of the gene. Then they go sit down and they have a good cocktail. I’ve got guys making real cocktails now and they can have coffee they can of beer. They can have wine it’s a real bar. And people love it and it just builds that experience. And while they’re there and their instagram ing the out of an eye selling all their mates they’ve got to visit.

Tim Reid:

Hashtag four pillars.

STU McGregor:

Hashtag four pillars gin.

Tim Reid:

Just to finish up, if there was one thing budget no don’t worry about the budget. One thing you could do to market the four pillars brand in the world in the coming 12 months what would it be?

STU McGregor:

If there was one thing we could do I automatically think. I love sport. I thought she’d be great to do a super bowl.

STU McGregor:

That’s how advertising does work. Well it only works if I get a couple of free tickets to the super bowl because I’ve just been watching the baseball and I’ve been watching the world series. I’ve got a couple of people said to me today actually they rang me and I said you want to be quick. That’s a bottom of the six that the dodgers are down by 1. No look. The one thing I would love to do and I know this sounds like a bit of a cliche. I’d love to have more time to do the good things that we’re already doing and do it more often and do it in more markets. So one thing I would love to do if I could do anything I would somehow replicate all the people we have working for us at the distillery and put them in markets all around the world to sell the story because the thing that we’re going to do better than anyone else is get great ambassadors on the road. We just had a new U.K. ambassador out here. We got the US guy. He’s a big Aussie guy as a bartender and a cool dude in the US. I’d like to have 10. So you have 10 people like that.

Tim Reid:

So you’re happy with what you’re doing right now and you’d love to replicate it. I had a fellow Ant Morell on this show about 18 months ago. He is responsible for bounce the indoor playgrounds the trampolines and all that great success story. Like two years in he’s doing 80 million dollars. Who would have thought but he’s you know opening in Dubai when I was talking to him what he has done because he too is very happy with the staff that he’s got in his original flagship playroom in Melbourne. He’s sending them over to buy two to open up to buy or to open up Paris to open up and to replicate. And he’s actually running talent competitions like a sort of Australia’s Got Talent to attract people in and he’s getting cues lining up too. So interesting I hear that a lot where it’s all about the people at the end of the day.

STU McGregor:

Because the quickest way to break your love for a brand you never got to meet your heroes.

Pretty well known former captain of Australian cricket team. I still wish I’d never met him because he was a bit curious and the easiest way for people to fall out of love for four pillars is for they meet the guys and four pillars and go their dribblers you know he’s yeah he’s it. Yep. And they go. And I know when I think of why I’m terrible because I’ve been in the minors for so long. I look at the wine as much for the person who’s behind it as I do for the product in the bottle if I like the winemaker, I’m already two thirds of the way there to look in the product. Now I know not everyone who likes four pillars can meet us. If we make 20,000 people in a year then those 20,000 people are probably told 10 or 20 people that they met the four pillars guys and they are either good guys okay guys dickheads or champions. And so we just want to be one of those. Yeah probably not number three I think.

Tim Reid:

Hence the name?

STU McGregor:

Hence the name. In a way I think it was one of the pillars of the brand but it’s fantastic.

Yeah it’s the lowest pillar it’s the southwest pillar.

Tim Reid:

I have to ask you we’ve got to wrap things up. But does it kill you that you’re making such beautiful gin that you’re having to mix it with second grade tonic.

STU McGregor:

The thing is the tonic business is starting to go better now. We wish we had created fever-tree it’s at all the good liquor stores it mostly goodbar So it’s the new it’s taken on schweppes basically and it’s really good tonic. There’s a bunch of good tonic branscum and they all had the same idea as us. They just had the courage. We can say we’re going to take the tonic.

And in fact fever-tree which started maybe a year or two before us is one of the great success stories of the London Stock Exchange just on the secondary market in London. Who would have thought Megan tonic would be a 250 million pound business.

Tim Reid:

That’s unbelievable.

STU McGregor:

It is incredible. It’s really good tonic as well and we use it. We do 20 and 30,000 bottles of it at the distillery every year. 

Tim Reid:

How will you avoid selling out? Because you see brands like this nice niche boutique premium. It’s not for everyone. But at some point what do I get. Is it the point where I walk in Dan Murphies and go there is the can of four films and so on.

STU McGregor:

We did see it was on the weekend. I think we must bring up past the races I think and there was a couple of girls walking past with Gordon’s gin and tonic. I’m going to be a crook and the guy I was with said there you go that’s your dream isn’t it. One day when they’re walking down the street.

Tim Reid:

So how do you avoid it?

STU McGregor:

You just have to be true. It’s really true.

Tim Reid:

I reckon I reckon true is hard.

STU McGregor:

Your bullshit detector but sometimes are wrong. In your gut but someone else is telling you they’re right or someone else is telling you that it’s on brand. But it’s not. If you know your brand better than anyone you’ve got to be able to make that call that says no we’re not going to go there we’re not going to slap you. Despite what you might be me going hey listen I think we should be naming rights sponsor of the Sydney Swans so I can be the number one ticket holder my football team or we should dispose of the Denver Broncos so we can go the Super Bowl. I don’t know. But  it’s wrong. And I think you don’t sell out as long as you still care enough.

People only sell out when they lose interest.

Tim Reid:

Well, they sell out too when they care so much that they built something so amazing that someone comes along with a big chequebook. And you go hang on that’s a pretty big check. And thank you.

STU McGregor:

It’s a funny thing in our industry because a lot of brands like ours do like to literally sell at some of the brands never sell out. If you know what I mean. There are many great. There’s a bunch of great whisky brands and even so mates of ours have a brand called Smith and they actually sold to a big multinational last year. But the guys who started it are still involved. The place they’re making the gin is still the same but they’ve got all of this new distribution points now all over the world.

Tim Reid:

I heard there’s a feral hog or one of those boutique beers that come from the brewery down in Melbourne for a long time and has just been bought by one of the big breweries. Now one of the kind of funky hotels in Melbourne have gone you know what we’re selling at 50 percent discount. Get rid of it we don’t want to stock it anymore. So you lose your tribe like you do.

STU McGregor:

I think you lose some of your tribe. I don’t think you lose all of your tribe. I don’t think people like you for pines and spun of that some of the boys up here just in brookfield that you sold to see you be they could be here. They just sold out maybe six or eight weeks ago. Couple of others. I mean it’s an a old problem. I mean we would like to hold onto this business for as bloody long as we can because apart from anything else if you’re in a position where it’s fun and you can afford it and you still growing

Tim Reid:

And watch baseball in the middle of the game and I’m sorry to bring you in here do the interview but I’d love chatting you. Keep going. And while we put it up that bottle there right there and probably just start to talk. Thank you.

STU McGregor:

https://www.fourpillarsgin.com.au

Tim Reid:

Go and get it. If you roll up to the distillery and hillsville and mention Timbo. You’ll get kicked out Thanks, Stu.

STU McGregor:

Half a shot of gin for you. Thanks for having me.