We can't find the internet
Attempting to reconnect
Something went wrong!
Hang in there while we get back on track
Victor Guardiola
00:01:59 - 00:02:57
Yeah, absolutely. So Bowie is a sparkling agua fresca brand. Really, our main drivers are building a culturally representative and better for you beverage company. And it was started after realizing the lack of health, forward Hispanic beverages within the ready to drink beverage category. Just seeing all the beverages I would deem as authentic that I grew up with didn't exactly keep health in mind. So Jordan and I started tinkering with the idea of a clean label agua fresca, one with significantly less sugar than what you would traditionally find in taquerias and food trucks around Mexican restaurants. And we took that concept through entrepreneurship programs, a farmers market, and finally landed on the canned version as of April of 2022.
Blaine Bolus
00:02:58 - 00:03:10
Why don't you tell us a little bit about your guys specific backgrounds? Right. Do you guys work in jobs before this? Was this right out of college? Tell us a little bit about the career journey.
Jordan Hicks
00:03:10 - 00:04:19
Yeah, absolutely. I can kind of bite off that to start. But, yeah, both Victor and I came from, obviously, we got a young start in the industry. We definitely started Bowie pretty much while we were in college. At the time, victor was kind of at the tail end of his college career, and I was just about halfway through, you know, when we originally started kind of tinkering with the recipe. At that time, I was working at a cocktail bar down here in Austin, feeling pretty burnt out, which was also around the time that I got my job into the CPG space. I started working for a snack bar company called Kate's Real Food at the time and just started out as kind of a local little sales rep for the area. And then the roles kind of grew a little bit more and more, which were super helpful in Bowie's early days with kind of at least getting our heads screwed on, as far know, a path to market. Yeah, you know, as far as CPG experience goes, it was somewhat limited. I worked with Kate's for about a year and a half, and then before know it was just odd jobs and.
Victor Guardiola
00:04:19 - 00:04:21
Working at a cocktail bar for the most part.
Blaine Bolus
00:04:21 - 00:04:24
Ramon, did you have something you wanted to ask?
Ramon Berrios
00:04:24 - 00:04:35
Well, you mentioned you landed on the canned version. What was it before? What were you selling at the farmers markets and what was the product before you got to the current version?
Victor Guardiola
00:04:35 - 00:04:39
You want to tackle the process? The commercial kitchen.
Blaine Bolus
00:04:42 - 00:04:42
Yeah.
Jordan Hicks
00:04:42 - 00:06:27
When Bawi first got started, I guess our original recipes were kind of done technically through a soda stream, which does not work very well for carbonating, anything other than water. So we blew up a few of them in the R and D process. But eventually we graduated to some more grown up carbonation equipment that I actually stole from my uncle. He's a big homebrew nerd. So we just stole a bunch of kegs and all sorts of fun little carbonation homebrew equipment and then just kind of started tinkering with the recipe in the dorm kitchen, pretty much more or less. And then eventually when we wanted to jump into the farmers markets, we graduated from force carbonating in the kitchens. And then when we got into the commercial kitchens, it was a little bit more larger format. So we grew into these big five gallon kegs, and we'd roll up to the farmers markets, if you're familiar, they're called Jockey boxes, kind of similar to a kegurator, if you're familiar with that, but basically just a shitty Igloo cooler with some taps on it. And we dumped a bunch of ice in there. It had some coils to cool it down. And, yeah, we would just serve it pretty much like on tap back then. So served with big 16 ounce ice cups and some fresh fruit juice. Agua fresca back then, but, yeah, now we've graduated, obviously, to the can. So not slinging kegs around that's amazing.
Ramon Berrios
00:06:27 - 00:06:39
Did anything come out of the farmers markets? I'm curious for people that are thinking like, oh, I don't know if this is a waste of time for me to start my brand this way. Anything cool happened there?
Victor Guardiola
00:06:39 - 00:09:27
Yeah, the two things we kind of wanted to tick Bolus on was validating product market fit to a certain degree, and also self funding the development of the business. I think we kind of lucked out in terms of product market fit, especially selling an ice cold beverage on tap in Austin heat. Ramon, you've lived here. You know how brutal these summers could get. And we would roll up with this delicious watermelon branch agua fresca and pineapple agua fresca, and we would have a line going down the farmers market, fart Creek farmers market, and sell out quite often. So we kind of had the validation of, oh, damn. Agua fresca is a popular or well known beverage. It has a pretty high level of consumer knowledge. But more than that, I would say taking the cultural relevance out of it, this fruit juice forward beverage with lower sugar count has likes to stand on absent from it being a cultural commodity. And on the fundraising side, we were not printing money by any means in these farmers markets. It was a labor of love. And to touch more on that, jordan and I were still in school while all this was going on. And the farmers markets were Saturday mornings and we had class Friday. So we would get out of class at like four or five. We would bust ass to the commercial kitchen late in the evening, too, because we made an agreement with the commercial kitchen provider, Herb Levy, to let us in and off hours to give us a discount on rate. And we would oftentimes stay in this commercial kitchen until three or four in the morning, go back to our apartments in West Campus, west of UT Austin, where both of us lived, sleep for a couple hours, roll up to the farmers markets, and that was the process. But after about four months, COVID reared its head and we had to bounce from the farmers markets. We could no longer operate there. So our choice was to pursue this in the background during a pandemic while both of us had our jobs post college, where we had to then learn to fundraise and eventually through a trial and error for about a year, raise enough funds to get it going.
Blaine Bolus
00:09:27 - 00:10:20
The next question I had for you guys is I think it's awesome that you guys were able to start this brand in college, right? I think a lot of college kids maybe don't know what they want to do. They might be looking for other jobs, they might be trying to have as much fun as possible. But you guys were obviously you guys were grinding a little bit. So what was the inspiration for getting something like this off the ground while you're still in school and taking that initiative to build a brand while you're still an undergrad. Tell me a little bit about that and also tell me about what was, like, the reception from your friends and peers. Right. Was everyone being entrepreneurial? Is that something that a bunch of people were doing? Was everyone else out partying? Was everyone looking for a job? Just give me the breakdown of what you guys were thinking and what was going on in the zeitgeist of your college demo.
Victor Guardiola
00:10:20 - 00:11:30
Yeah. Blaine, to clarify, your first question was, why did we start this basically during our undergrad? Okay, got you. Yeah. Jordan and I had been friends for a really long time, and both of us were really quite entrepreneurial, I would say. I think we both have a really high, I guess, psychological definition of the locus of control. Like, we feel like we can do things, and finding someone else who has that level of confidence and assurance in themselves that is willing to give a rather ambitious idea a try is really important. And I don't think Jordan and I expected it out of our friendship whenever we met each other, but we had trialed a few small entrepreneurial endeavors here and there, I think. Do you remember the shitty Squarespace websites?
Jordan Hicks
00:11:30 - 00:13:19
Yeah, I think green belt, like web design or something. Yeah, we just roll up to a bunch of food trucks that didn't have websites and pretty much offer to make a squarespace site for them or something, which I don't think we ended up ever getting anyone to pay. US money to build a website, which is probably smart, but yeah, I don't think we're necessarily trying to build some crazy, massive business while we're in college or something. For me, and I feel like I can speak for you a little bit on this, too, Victor. We were definitely entrepreneurial and looking for some side gigs here and there because we both didn't come from super affluent families or anything, and we're always needing some extra cash at any given moment while we were in college. So, yeah, we were just kind of messing around and having fun and just kind of doing whatever was interesting to us at that time, which is kind of, I guess, like how Bowie organically kind of happened. We just kind of rolled into it, and we're like, whoa, this is pretty cool. We could have a fun logo and build a cool brand around this. Let's see how it works in the farmers markets, and then kind of go from there because maybe one day we can get it into a can and stuff like that. It was kind of organic, honestly, in some way, but we both kind of have those entrepreneurial bones in us, and we were just kind of rolling with it, having fun wherever we could.
Victor Guardiola
00:13:19 - 00:16:24
Yeah, and the other thing, too, is that the timing was great. I didn't talk about my background quite yet, but I was trying to get a CPG concept off the ground myself. It was this shitty little poorly researched caffeinated mint concept that I come to find I couldn't even prototype. I wasn't a citizen at the time, and I had to get, like, a pill press to make these little caffeinated mints. And I was told if I did that, it might make getting my citizenship a little harder. But this was around the time I applied into that entrepreneurship Practicum at UT Austin at the School of Business. And Jordan and I had reconnected right around that time, too, and had started talking about creating a ready to drink agua fresca right as I was entering the Practicum. And Jordan was getting Hicks feet wet in sales within CPG. We were already friends, and both of us were the only 1920 year olds we knew in the consumer goods industry. So it was like, cool, let's see what's up. And then after the Practicum, we kind of realized that Bowie had some legs to stand on from a market research perspective. We had access to UT Austin's market research databases, which they got it all. These academic institutions have pretty much all the research you can imagine, and we just poured into it, took it through the Practicum and realized, damn, this could be not only really rewarding from a cultural and a personal perspective, but it could potentially be lucrative down the line. Like when we started hearing about all of the CPG exits here in know, just in Austin, there's plenty of wonderful success stories, from amplified snack brands to sweet beef tea, tito's, Deep, Eddie, vodka kettle and fire, you name it. There's quite c four. Yes, c four, exactly. Manish from C four was one of the speakers at this Practicum two, which was swinging way above its weight class, by the way. Eight students, weekly projects. And you had people like Brian Goldberg from Amplify Snack Brands, jason Schiber from Waterloo, all these people just coming in on the weekly, and you were just presenting to them. And most of the students there did not want to pursue a career in the consumer packaged goods industry. So we got to eat a little bit more than the other students because we wanted to pursue a career in the consumer package. Good industry.
Blaine Bolus
00:16:24 - 00:16:55
So that leads me to my next question. I know we chatted a little bit about this, but was fundraising strategy for you guys, right? Like, you've got it. You've kind of bootstrapped it together. It's working. You're selling in farmers markets. People like the concept, and you're like, okay, now we need some capital to turn this into a real brand. So I want you guys to walk me through how you determined how much money you wanted to raise, right? Like, how you planned on deploying that money and then how you actually raised the money. So why don't we start with how'd you figure out how much money you wanted to raise in the first place.
Victor Guardiola
00:16:55 - 00:17:51
For sure, I wish I could give you a meticulous answer on how we figured out how to raise that first sum of money, but truthfully, those adjustments were made on the fly, too. In the beginning, we thought, let's see about raising a quarter million dollars free product, pre revenue. But quickly after sending out our first hundred or so cold emails, we realized we likely had to change our fundraising strategy a bit. But to answer more of your question, after the farmers market, I had began working at a startup here in town called Golden Ratio. And my main role there was growth and product. And on the growth side, I helped the founder, which turned out to be one of my greatest mentors, a gentleman named Mark. Now, yeah.
Ramon Berrios
00:17:53 - 00:17:56
He'S a good friend, and he was also a previous guest on The.
Victor Guardiola
00:17:58 - 00:19:22
Awesome Great Salesman. Like damn good salesman. And I got to see how he fundraised, how he approached talking to these investors, sending cold emails. I got to see the system he built and incorporate my ideas. And as I'm on Google Chrome, I see my investor CRM right there in the top left as a shortcut, and it is based off of what Clark was working with at that time. We just made our own personal tweaks to it from Jordan's sales experience, from my superhuman shortcuts, from all of Know combined. But it was quite a grind to get our first significant investor. We thought it could have happened a bit sooner, but I think it took us about nine or ten months, give or take. I was learning the fundraising ropes with Clark and sending a mountain of cold emails, and Jordan and I were taking so many calls, so many meetings, pitching the concepts, not having any traction behind us, just more so an investment deck that labored away on Illustrator.
Jordan Hicks
00:19:22 - 00:20:28
Yeah, and even at that time, again, we didn't have any cans to send around or ship around. We were still very much incubated out of the household kitchen. So even sharing samples was somewhat laborious process. We got someone that we deemed hot enough to get some samples sent out. It was back to the kitchen, juicing fruit and using now our counter pressure bottle system to fill some little champagne bottles with some samples to send out, and slapping a fun little sexy label on there just to make it look somewhat professional. But, yeah, it's pretty tough fundraising with no traction, no product that you can really ship around and be a 20 or 21 year old at the time, too. So, yeah, it took a minute. It took a minute to get any sizable check.
Blaine Bolus
00:20:30 - 00:21:11
One thing I just wanted to comment on is I think the hardest time to raise money is when you're fresca out of college, right? You've got all this energy. I went through it ramon, I'm sure you've been through it, but the hardest checks for me to raise were my first checks, and they were the ones when I was right out of college and I didn't have a job outside of the startup that I was working on. And everyone's like, Why are you going to do it? I was like, Because I'm going to do so I'd love to hear a little bit more about you said it took a while till you guys got that first check, right? What were all the mess ups or screw ups you guys made along the way? And what was like the final pitch that kind of you started to see traction around?
Victor Guardiola
00:21:11 - 00:24:00
Yeah, I would say more than know. Jordan and I hadn't fundraised before, so we weren't comfortable with the follow up cadence. It takes, for example, like, working for Clark and then seeing when we eventually converted on someone wanting to invest. Sometimes it takes like a dozen follow ups where you're attempting to add value in every follow up, whether it's like, hey, we just got into X Restaurant, or, hey, we just got R one, like, revision. One of our can design something along those lines. But we had to get comfortable with following up with people until they were sick of it at some point at our lowest valuation, too. And eventually, the straw that broke the camel's back is we finally got Patrick Terry from Pete Terry's burger stand on the phone. And Ramon, we talked about this a bit briefly, but anyone who's lived in Austin knows how prolific Pete Terry's is here in town and how strong that trademark and their brand is here. But Jordan and I had eaten so many meals at was a it was a know in the friend group almost. So we eventually got him on the phone, met up with him, gave him some samples. And I remember Jordan and I were living together at the time at a house on Riverside, and we are in the upstairs office, and we're finally calling Patrick Terry for the last time, and he told us, all right, well, I'll put in 50 grand. We won't say the valuation, but I'll put in 50 grand. And we were like, okay, sounds great, Patrick. Thank you so much. We'll work on getting the paperwork. And I just remember we hung up. We were in disbelief because the burger man, the coveted burger man who turned out to be the most delightful person ever, wrote us our first check and allowed us to quit our jobs and fundraise and pursue Bowie. So he was the big domino.
Jordan Hicks
00:25:41 - 00:26:44
We like Victor mentioned, we'd been fundraising for? Felt like an eternity at that point. But we weren't just fundraising. We were also kind of just getting the PCs into place in the background so that once the Hicks and the Dominoes did start to know we could be a little bit more turnkey and start flipping stuff around. Because I don't remember when Patrick ended up coming in, Victor, but I do remember it being hot and know, wanting to jump on that weather as soon as possible and get some sort of can version out there. But obviously we didn't realize how long that would take. So as far as production goes, we had been working on finding some sort of Copacking situation close to home down here in Austin, as well as starting to go down the path of brand design and figuring out our brand book and everything like that. So we'd been kind of adding a.
Victor Guardiola
00:26:44 - 00:26:45
Few.
Jordan Hicks
00:26:47 - 00:29:24
Agencies at the time to help us kind of build our brand up and then obviously trying to wrap our heads around how to get this real fruit juice beverage that we're hand pressing with a Vitamix or whatever it was a Breville or I don't even remember what it was called. But to a canned version that sits on a shelf for hopefully longer than a few months and doesn't spoil. So, yeah, we figured out pretty quickly we needed a food scientist, which Clark came in clutch again and hooked us up with an amazing food scientist who really helped us kind of get our ducks in a row as far as the commercialization of the formula. And then we started working with a co packer down here in Austin who was just a brewer who had some extra line time and canning equipment that we just convinced to help us figure out how to put this thing in a can. Like, you have a canning line, you probably know how to get this into a can. And this is what our food scientist gave us. And, yeah, just kind of jumped into it in tandem with, obviously the brand design of it all. But, yeah, it really just kicked into high gear the commercialization component of Bowie, which took obviously longer than we expected, which is good because obviously there's tons of issues that come into play, especially when you're working in kind of a smaller scale. Copacker and you don't know what you're doing. And sometimes some of those people don't know what they're doing. The copacker we worked with, luckily, was a genius. But it's a small facility. He doesn't have any crazy pasteurization equipment or we weren't dosing things with Velcro or anything like that. So it was very much just like figuring out how to make cans not turn into kombucha or beer and make sure nothing gets cross contaminated and everything like that. So, yeah, that was kind of the first big step. And luckily we'd been working on it in the background for the past few months. So it was very much like we had the ability to finally move forward on pulling Trig on some of these invoices, rather than being like, we're still confirming with another vendor on a better price and stuff like that. So it was really just like, all right, now to figure out how to get this thing into a can and get it on the shelf was the next big steps from the yeah, and.
Blaine Bolus
00:29:24 - 00:29:25
Go for it, Victor.
Victor Guardiola
00:29:25 - 00:30:38
Yeah, to add to that a little bit, too, after Patrick's involvement, and something I like reiterating to first time entrepreneurs who are struggling fundraising, you just got to close, like, one significant check and after that, the rest of the round will be a whole lot easier. So chronologically, the next investor was Mike Ripka from Torchy's Tacos, which it's not that we were targeting restauranteurs in particular. These gentlemen were just, like, kind enough and excited enough about what we were doing. They wanted to get involved. And after we closed those two, the refs around kind of shaped itself and people started wanting to get more involved. But it just snowballed. And it took, like, one significant check to get the ball rolling on branding, package design, commercial formulation, everything else. So just holding off until that one great thing happens could really signal for a lot of progress, like, right around the corner.
Ramon Berrios
00:30:38 - 00:30:40
I have a question. How did you meet Clark?
Victor Guardiola
00:30:40 - 00:31:23
I actually believe I met him at a CPG event here in town. And when I graduated during the pandemic, I couldn't find a lot of job opportunities either, and I knew I wanted to work in the CPG space. So I just shot Clark in email and at this time, Golden Ratio was hiring. And he was awesome. He was like, yeah, come by, see what you can do to help. And he hired me on the spot whenever I saw him. But that was a cold email. Yeah.
Ramon Berrios
00:31:23 - 00:32:03
The reason I ask is because it seems like a lot of the dominoes effect happen after you met him. And you can be networking with a bunch of people at a bunch of places, but really all it takes is like, one person that will bring 80% of the value, that can introduce you to the scientists, to the supplier. You don't need to spend most of the time networking. It reaches a point where you have to go heads down. So that's really cool. I really like Clark. He's a great guy. And so it seems like that one key to success is finding that one person who's willing to be an open book.
Victor Guardiola
00:32:03 - 00:33:03
Yeah, significant mentorship has been the name of the game for us. And more than just, like, using the word networking, really. I think what we got good at is just making a lot of friends in the industry, coming up to people and being okay with not trying to be the smartest person in the room or the most flushed out business concept with three year projections off of doing, like, zero in sales beforehand. Just asking, like, yo, like, I need some help flushing this idea out sometimes, or how should I revise my fundraising? Being really as humble as we can be when we have those combos. But Clark was probably the most significant mentor I've had. It's a short list of people that have made the resounding amount of difference in this arc, for sure.
Blaine Bolus
00:33:03 - 00:34:00
Yeah, I think mentorship is a huge one. And one thing that you mentioned that I think is really important for when you're thinking about mentorship or how you find it, it's not just saying like, oh, I want to mentor. This guy should be my mentor. It's like going to a mentor with a specific problem. Like you had said, like, oh, I need help doing XYZ. And you know what that problem is. You know, that person has specific domain knowledge and then you're building a relationship, but it's also over a specific goal that they're going to have insight into. So I think that's really important to keep in mind. One thing that I was really excited to chat about with you guys on this Pod was your branding and package design. Right. How did it happen? It's super fresh, looks amazing, your website is great, the branding is great across the board. So, yeah, talk to me about not only the inspiration for it, but how did you guys execute on it? What was. The process, like for sure.
Victor Guardiola
00:34:01 - 00:37:46
So that branding and package design, you see, took quite a while to reach fruition, mainly because we had a couple key requirements whenever designing, like a culturally inspired brand. And we quickly realized after working with one branding agency, that we needed a little bit more cultural representation in the branding and design team to accurately communicate the offering. And it makes sense, logically, like you would want someone with said products, cultural origin behind branding or strategy or illustration. But that's not often the case within these design communities. If some agency has pitched a project, of course they're going to say yes, even if it's like the subculture of a culture where they have not much context for. So we realized that after working with that initial agency. And then we interviewed over a dozen agencies from coast to coast, and we landed on a great agency called the Working Assembly, based out of and, you know, a couple defining characteristics for them is we found that the founder had started a program where she worked with minority owned brands. And it spoke to us as founders, as founders who want to support minority owned businesses and create a more culturally representative retail space. But apart from that, their head of brand and one of their lead designers, they were both Latino. Diego, who is one of their head designers, is from South America, he's an immigrant. And Anthony Fernandez, the head of branding, he's Hispanic and he was really familiar with the culture. So when we were presented idea briefs of the four or five different creative directions, they were rooted in a lot more cultural awareness than just a pinterest board with pictures of cancun, which is what we were used to beforehand. So it was a lot more thorough and it was a lot more beautiful and impactful. And that makes a huge difference whenever we're talking about how your packaging drives trial and how well your product does. And that's why we kind of landed on such a culturally significant Lotteria card motif, which I don't think other agencies would have been able to accomplish nearly as well. But Jordan and I both took a fine tooth comb on every iteration of the branding package design to kind of optimize it as much as we could. And we landed on this card letteria card motif with a high contrast background. So the cans are all white and they have this gorgeous little placard with hand drawn illustrations in the center that are really communicative of the flavor and the freshness of what's in the can itself. But it took quite a while to land on that design variant and that specific front panel and trademark.
Blaine Bolus
00:37:46 - 00:38:13
The other question I had in terms of branding was after you got the design, after you were happy with it, after you're like, this is what we're going to use moving forward, did you have any iteration on the label design or any of the messaging that was actually on the label. After getting either market feedback or just getting it in your hand, were there any more design turns that were taken?
Jordan Hicks
00:38:14 - 00:39:48
I'd say there wasn't too much besides just like formulation related things that we kind of maybe adjusted here and there and maybe like adding in some different types of stickers and stuff like that on kind of the back panel. But there were definitely some things that I guess we got some feedback on, and we kind of planted our foot in the ground on some things. Like, for example, we lead with the flavor name in Spanish on our front panel. And a lot of people, mostly more so investors and people that were not as much consumers but more so invested in us and our success were very much in the realm that we need to lead with the English name. And that's something that I'm really glad we didn't end up adjusting. I think it adds some flair to the brand, especially the front panel. And it's a little bit interesting. And we kind of conceded and threw the English translation down at the bottom on, like, a little banner down at the butt of the can. But yeah, that was probably the biggest thing that I think a lot of people were like, you should switch this, which I'm really glad we didn't because it's a little different and it looks really good on the front panel more than anything, rather than just the English translation 100%.
Victor Guardiola
00:39:48 - 00:40:51
And I would say the little testing we did do, they're great flag posts for market researchers to say, okay, consumers are leaning a little more this way rather than that. But I think at a certain point, you kind of got to be like, this is the future. Consumers don't know what this is yet. This is an offering that hasn't been made within a retail channel yet, but once it's out there, consumer sentiment is likely going to change and they might warm up to the idea of this copy being in Spanish or a beautiful bright Lotteria motif being front and center. Regardless of what the A B test was saying that we posted on our Instagram during the farmers market days, it was like, yeah, there's a picture that.
Jordan Hicks
00:40:51 - 00:40:57
We think this is better. People could figure it out. Maybe not passionate. It's a little less unfamiliar.
Blaine Bolus
00:40:59 - 00:41:25
One of my last questions before we wrap up here is you guys obviously got started. You raised some money, built a great brand, beautiful packaging, and now you guys are in why don't you tell us where you guys are? I know you guys are in Sprouts. You guys are in Safeway, a bunch of markets. What's kind of the roadmap from here in terms of how you guys think about growing and scaling the business?
Jordan Hicks
00:41:25 - 00:43:24
Yeah, as of today, we're in a little over 600 doors across the US. The bulk of those being sprouts. We just launched with Sprouts right at the beginning of the summer. And then yeah, we've been trialing a few short term activations with Safeway, mostly in NorCal and then we just picked one up down here in the Albertson southern region right here in our home state. But yeah, outside of that, lots of independence, mostly more so in the Natural Channel. Another one of our big retailers, and really was our first retailer, was Foxtrot, who opened up some distribution into Chicago, which we had never anticipated moving into the Midwest, especially our first year of launching, which I vaguely remember even joking around like, let's launch this thing in the Midwest just to see how it does or something. But we had the opportunity to kind of jump into a retailer like Foxtrot and we bid it off and ran with it. And Chicago ended up being one of our bigger metros right now, which is crazy. But yeah, just a little over 600 doors. We're mostly focused in the natural channel. With that being said, really trying to build off the Sprouts momentum, hopefully get up to some larger natural retailers in the next few months, but mostly focused on Texas and California for the next, I'd say six to twelve months. We got some good distribution down here in Texas and then in California as well and really want to grow those markets a little bit more. But yeah, kind of picking off as many national natural retailers as we can and really kind of hounding our home markets and the markets that we have some kick ass distribution in.
Blaine Bolus
00:43:25 - 00:43:38
What does it look like from a manufacturing and a scaling perspective to be able to meet the demands of a national supplier like Sprouts? And then if you guys have ambition to get in more, how are you guys handling that on the back end?
Jordan Hicks
00:43:38 - 00:45:04
Yeah, we're still figuring it out. No, just kidding. But partly, yeah, it was definitely a big shift compared to what we're used to. Luckily. I think what's really helped us is mostly working in that smaller copacker. In the early days, it kind of allowed us to be super hands on and intimately familiar with our formula, what works and what doesn't work, where the pain points are and everything like that. Things to look out for, which makes finding other contract manufacturers copackers a little bit easier. And at least you can have some confidence when you roll in there that it's less of like shotgunning shotgunning and seeing if it tastes right when it comes out of the line and everything like that. But as far as scaling up goes, it's something that we're in the weeds on right now. And luckily we've built some really great copacking relationships. We got some really helpful operational contractors behind us too, that are helping us grow it at the right scale that we need it to be. But it's as simple as ordering more juice and more cans. But when you have a solid copacker that can kind of grow with you at your scale and where you want.
Victor Guardiola
00:45:04 - 00:45:05
To be.
Jordan Hicks
00:45:07 - 00:45:10
In twelve to 18 months, it helps things a lot.
Victor Guardiola
00:45:10 - 00:46:59
And the financing component of it is a slightly different story for sure, but I can speak for both of us for sure, where this is probably the easiest it has ever been for us to raise capital with some great historical sales behind us and some impressive velocity figures. It is much different than raising money out of a farmer's market or with like ten G's in lifetime sales. It's a different story now. So now it's building all of the systems to ensure we're able to scale effectively and speaking to the right people on our cap table or people in our network who want us to win, who have done the song and dance within their own CPG businesses or who are currently chief financial officers of a CPG business or coos down the line. So we like having these subject matter experts in our back pockets to help inform any SOP we need to build here at Bowie. And now that we're beginning to hire more people, it's abundantly helpful that we ping our network and incorporate all of these learnings into any systems we're creating internally. But it's getting so big we have to delegate, which is a great problem to have. The business is kind of forcing us to have to add team members and give them job descriptions and responsibilities that are just out of our scope at this point. There just aren't enough hours in the day for Jordan and I to handle everything. So we're excited to be scaling this quickly.
Blaine Bolus
00:47:01 - 00:47:12
For everyone listening that wants to follow along with the brand, connect with you guys. Why don't you give a shout out to where we can find the brand online? Where can we find you guys online?
Victor Guardiola
00:47:12 - 00:47:49
Totally. So for Bowie Socials, you could find us on Instagram at drinkbowie and our website is unsurprisingly drinkbowie.com. My Insta handle is BIC H G. And I'm also Stuart Drew X on Twitter. I don't think I can call it X at guardiola. It's V and the rest of my last name. So B-U-A-R-D-I-O-L-A-I can't say that again for my own good. Too many.
Jordan Hicks
00:47:49 - 00:47:54
Yeah, you can find me on Instagram too. Just Jordan H 98. Awesome.
Blaine Bolus
00:47:54 - 00:48:02
Well, thanks so much guys, for coming on the show. Love learning about Bali. You guys are crushing it. Keep it up and thanks for joining us today.
Jordan Hicks
00:48:02 - 00:48:04
Appreciate it, y'all. Thanks for having us.
Ramon Berrios
00:48:04 - 00:48:05
Thank you guys.
Victor Guardiola
00:48:05 - 00:48:06
Worries. Thanks for having us.
What is Castmagic?
Castmagic is the best way to generate content from audio and video.
Full transcripts from your audio files. Theme & speaker analysis. AI-generated content ready to copy/paste. And more.