Espresso: How the 'Doom Bar Effect' Took Tarquin’s Gin from Local Legend to £10M National

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0:24We're very densely distributed in Cornwall. But a lot of, I think several hundred thousand people live in Cornwall, but we also swell at peak season or school holidays where we get, I think, over 5 million overnight visitors a year come on holiday to the county. So if you're selling 200 bottles to the dog and duck pub down the road, there's a good chance that if the majority of that is in the summer that you're not selling it to just Cornish people, you're selling it to people from London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle. so you can market and this is what we've we've sort of coined this phrase in-house as you can market to a national audience on a local level so and i think that is what has enabled us with tarquins to grow from you know me selling that first batch out of the boot of my car to the gunner's head to a 2021 2022 we were the large i think 2022 um largest super premium gin brand which £30 plus price point in the UK where we did something like half a million bottles.

1:33So it's kind of, you know, we've been able to market cost effectively to a national audience by advertising locally. That kind of has a bit of a ring to it. And then we use digital marketing to follow people back along the M4, M5, M6 motorway corridors around the rest of the UK. And what we coined this as a marketing phenomenon, we call it the doom bar effect. So there's a cask ale brand called Doom Bar, which grew from a micro breweries in the 90s or 80s when it started up. And Rock, which is a village just the other side of the Camel River to us, it grew to become a£150 million retail sales brand or sales brand by retail value in the UK, the largest cask ale brand.

2:17so this tiny cornish brewery became the you know the number one player in the uk and it really did that via consistent marketing and just really solid distribution working from cornwall outwards along those key arteries to the rest of the country really leaning on that that that core foundation of visitors to the region and it sounds um i don't know whether it sounds simple or it's simple effectively um but probably quite complicated in how it works but yeah you know market locally and then follow everyone back to their home i'm just trying to think if for other brands like does that strategy work because of cornwall i i e like i i love the whole you know what i think you've done very well is is build brand depth through the classes through the tours we've seen today yeah but the one of the advent and advantages of being down here is that you have the swell of cornwall during the summers i'm just i'm just trying to think how does a brand who's based in Milton Keynes, for example.

3:17Is it possible? Do you know what I mean? Oh, I think it's harder. Yeah, no, I think we've got an amazing tailwind. You know, I think we've got fantastic advantage of location. Not only, as I said, the local community is incredibly supportive of locally made products. So they've been, you know, huge supporters of the brand from the very beginning. You know, these are the guys who own wine shops, you know, writing me checks up front. You're like, thank you so much for, you know, me hand delivering it or my dad would deliver it and you know but then but then again like there's probably gin brands but the strategy does work for like you know there's probably gin brands based up in uh the late district yeah yeah you know so as in i do still think you've got done a fucking amazing job and i think the brand i've i did i've got a piece which i wrote in my newsletter between uh brand depth and brand awareness people wank over brand awareness it's the top line figures and i believe brand awareness builds uh meek fans yes whereas brand depth which is doing things that don't scale which is the tour i saw today there's eight people here yeah eight people are going around there's a depth of connection to you as a brand and that and i think what you guys have done through constraining geography and constraining kind of building this you know putting the purple dye in the swimming pool not the ocean and then what you said there about using the arteries of the m4 m5 m6 whatever to push the brand outwards is is is delicious let's talk about the bottle because again it's beautiful and uh yeah perry talks about this thing from perry from big fish he did loads of brands yeah he actually did sip smith yeah yeah i remember i chatted to them actually for my refresh i think they're out of my budget out of my price range yes but um but yeah they're one of the top they love their work oh yeah i think i've i've read about i think i've watched a clip on is it pack for tising or packetizing or something and i think yeah it's it's genius and it's the premise of it is you can spend all your money in the world on atl campaigns but ultimately i think someone said to me said i think giles brooks said this me 90 of the sales come from the shelf edge in in grocery at least yeah so 80 20 rule put your money and your spend where it's actually going to move the needle and actually that is the best salesman in the world and i think it looks absolutely gorgeous talk to me about what i don't have you have you got any pictures of what it used to look like um yeah i've got is there any this is this is a limited edition but it used to look like that but change the colour that's the wrong but so it's like the wax it's like the wax the wax was blue it's the same colour the one in the second this one that's the bottle but it used to be blue wax and black label so look I mean very rustic but the wax was still yeah we always had the wax what's the why behind the wax so the wax is kind of when I start when I start you need a a tamper proof seal so that's legally for any you know container of of drink and use a tamper proof seal so that could be a ribbon you know a ribbon strip a plastic seal um and it could be a wax dip and i was very much inspired by some of these really cool crafty brands in the states and i had a literally a pinterest mood board that i shared with these brand designers um which had a wax dip and um it just naturally over the course of design got exaggerated and because of the peculiar you know because of the wine cognac shape of our bottle.

6:57It flowed quite nicely with a drip as well. So it kind of, it became a key part of what we do in it. You know, it's almost iconic. Pops out on a back bar if the lighting's good and you can kind of recognise that they've got Tarquins listed quite easily. And it has this sense of theatre when you open it as well. We have these little ribbon strips underneath. You can pop the cork and it's just super cool. Thank you so much for listening to that espresso. I hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day. Let's be having you, boy. And please do subscribe, follow the podcast, share this espresso on WhatsApp if you liked it.

7:34And also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description. I spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy. It's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink. You're not going to get these in a business book. So please subscribe and thank me later.