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Chris Beyer
Founder @ Veso Aperitifs
Chris Beyer is a professional with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Computer Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania who is dedicated to promoting a more deliberate approach to drinking culture. He has a diverse background with experience in various roles such as Founder at Veso, Product Manager at Thumbtack, Software Engineer at Thumbtack, and Software Development Engineer at Amazon Web Services. His journey includes internships at Amazon in software development and failure analysis at Steinke Beyer, Inc. Chris also contributed part-time at Los Altos True Value Hardware. His academic journey includes a High School Diploma from Los Altos High School.
Highlights
Last week, Veso launched a collaboration Vermouth that we had built with a content creator. At 9:30am, the Vermouth went live, and it was sold out within 90 minutes.
We teamed up with content creator/influencer/martini queen Evie from @drinksbyevie to create a sub-brand of Veso, Vermouth by Evie, made specifically for dirty martinis. We started joking about a collaboration earlier this year, and then made it official and built and launched this brand in just 9 months.
The master plan behind it: Veso, as a small and nimble brand that owns our own manufacturing, is able to build quickly and provide the expertise on vermouth formulation, production, brand building, and launch logistics. Evie, with a huge following of her own, provides brand building and marketing support. We were able to build this Vermouth quickly, and reach tons of consumers with the help of Evie's platform.
There's plenty of examples of collaborations between massive brands and huge celebrities, but in the early-stages of a brand, there aren't many (any?) examples of collabs like this that are so mutually beneficial for both parties. We were able to share the Veso brand with tons of new consumers, and Evie got the chance to build a product of her own, to extend her talents beyond simply content creation.
We had so many learnings along the way, and tested some pretty interesting marketing tactics to help us sell out so fast. Many of these are part of the secret sauce for this launch, so we can't share them all publicly, but a few key learnings:
- Influencers are people! Focus on creating relationships with them (this goes for your consumer too!) instead of just treating them like a tool or a means to an end.
- The scarcity effect is real. People need an incentive to purchase, and scarcity creates a damn good incentive for people to shorten their consideration period for a new product.
- The more niche, the better. The more that you can explain the exact use case for a product, the more likely it is to resonate with the target consumer. For this launch, we made this vermouth specifically for one recipe, the Dirty Martini (though it's delicious in other cocktails as well).
Want to hear more about how this collaboration came to fruition, and how we made it such a success? Feel free to reach out!
July is typically one of the slowest months of the year for sales in the winery/craft spirits industry, but Veso just hit an all-time-high monthly sales record, beating out last November (which is a big month due to holiday sales).
We're still a tiny little craft aperitif/vermouth company, but it feels good to show forward progress in such a big way. Everything is hitting right, we're generating a ton of buzz in San Francisco, and we're finding it hard to keep product in stock.
It took time and focus to get here. Many months of hard work, investing in longer-term initiatives, and being patient while the work we did compounded. The sales process in alcohol is a long game, and you usually don't see immediate results. But I've learned to just keep pressing along, and that the work will eventually pay off.
For a more tactical reflection on our recent growth, it's due to a few factors:
- Landing distribution in California with one of the best boutique distro's out there, and focusing on ramping them up and giving them the resources they need.
- Producing more product up front, so that we have enough stock to be able to focus on sales without going out-of-stock so quickly.
- Getting out into the field, and building relationships with our customers: bars, restaurants, and retailers.
- A focus on our home geo: by focusing almost all of our efforts on San Francisco, we're able to make a bigger splash and have word-of-mouth do its thing.
Onwards and upwards. Bon Aperitif!
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