And if you haven't been waiting for it all year, maybe you're just not in the demographic.
I'm speaking, of course, about June 12, International Cachaça Day, a day that has been set aside to raise awareness of the sugarcane-derived liquor that is the national spirit of Brazil. I learned about it from Matti Anttila, a 30-year-old former J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) i-banker who, after working in Brazil, was inspired to found Cabana Cachaça, a premium export version of what had been mainly a downmarket local hooch.
Anttila's publicist contacted me after I wrote a post called "
Booze M&A: The frontiers beckon." (I also
heard from the Patrón Tequila people.) In the post I naively speculated about the possible attraction of cachaça in the U.S. market, what with its roots in sexy Brazil, never stopping to think that naturally, somebody had already thought of that.
Specifically, Anttila, an Amherst College grad who comes from a family in St. Louis who sold their brewery to Anheuser Busch Cos. a couple of generations ago. He launched Cabana Cachaça in 2006. As it turns out,
starting a liquor brand was actually a fad in certain circles a few years back, according to a New York Times Fashion & Style article.
I've no idea how those other young liquor entrepreneurs are faring -- and please, no updates. But what I heard from Anttila is a story that's familiar in many an industry -- of innovation and new brands being built up in an entrepreneurial setting outside the big companies that dominate the sector, and often becoming acquisition targets for the giants once they're proved. Think
Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE:KO) and Vitaminwater, or
Nestle SA and PowerBar. Or Patrón Tequila and its part-owner Bacardi Ltd.
Not that Anttila is necessarily headed for a home run like those, or sounds ready to sell yet. But he does seem to be getting some traction. The brand went national in the U.S. in 2008, signing a distribution deal with Southern Wine & Spirits, the largest wholesaler in the country. The category as a whole is growing fast -- 50% last year, he says, with Europe, especially Germany, still the biggest export market. For its part, Cabana grew 450% last year.
"Our target is a 10% market share of the category in the U.S.," he says. "And the category in my estimate will be about 150,000 cases in the U.S. this year." He thinks Cabana could a 50,000-case-per-year brand.
Anttila says he first looked for an existing brand in Brazil, but couldn't find a suitable one. "So I decided if I'm going to do this the right way, I need to create a brand from scratch," he says. He found a local distillery, cranked up a double distilled product and (eventually) moved on to the important part, the marketing.
Anttila says he's raised $10 million in financing in three rounds, all from individuals, with the largest single investment at $7.5 million. A decent chunk of the money seems to have gone into a national ad campaign featuring an
anonymous naked woman in various poses, photographed by fashion photographer
Mario Sorrenti, whom you should probably know about, though of course I didn't. Funny, I had actually seen the ads around Manhattan. Missed the booze entirely though.
Is a recession a tough time to be selling liquor that goes for more than $30 a bottle and puts the punch in $12 cocktails? Antilla's answer is that established premium brands have slowed their growth, but that an emerging category like his can still prosper by meeting people's desire for something special.
Which may be true, but after a visit to the
Cabana Web site, it's also hard not to wonder about it falling a little out of step with these post-bubble times. After a lengthy trip through the jungle, click on the bar, and then on the guy sitting at the bar. He laments that life isn't perfect, that golf swings aren't perfect, but that waking up next to a beautiful girl really is perfect. If only he could remember her name!
OK, what do I know from cutting edge? Anttila says he built a brand to appeal to his own demographic, and this theme of anonymous naked women surely has some timeless, laddish appeal. But I couldn't help asking: Can the guy at the bar not remember the girl's name because he drank too much Cabana Cachaça the night before?
Nah. "That might just be a lifestyle of his," says Anttila. -
Kenneth Klee
Join Corporate Dealmaker's LinkedIn forum
Juergen Lasowski
And the winners are...
