After selling his company in the UK Nick Kingsman was looking for a new challenge, and he thought the Caribbean might be the answer. His immediate thoughts were Barbados but upon realizing that country was now hugely overdeveloped and it was no longer the charming island that he knew from years past, serendipity played its part and he decided to take a look at Grenada.
Whilst looking online for suitable places to invest he came across an Ad featuring a property which looked very smart and had won numerous architectural awards.
Landing in Grenada, he fell in love with the place and bought one of the 5 bedroom “Lawn houses” off plan at Prickly Bay Waterside and the rest as they say is history.
Being a sociable chap it didn’t take long before he was introduced to Graham and Wendy Williams of Westerhall Estate Rums.
“I very much enjoyed the Rums and soon realized they had no representation in the UK. So I decided to give it a go and become the UK importer and shipped a hundred cases of various rums to test the market.
The devious strategy was that if it didn’t sell …then he’d just have to drink it himself! How could he lose?
Nick soon discovered exporting to the UK is very easy
“All you have to do is get your product, stick it on one of the Geest boats which arrive every 2 weeks in Grenada and within another 10 days its back in the UK. Once it arrives in the UK that is when the interesting bit starts…
To hold Liquor in a bond in the UK, which means that you do not have to pay the excise duties until you sell it requires a lot of licensing and getting those licenses is quite difficult.
“The first shipment we had delivered to the UK we could not get all the licenses required from Her Majesties Royal Customs HMRC, so I had to pay the duty upfront as soon as it arrived which is approximate 8 pounds a bottle in duty plus VAT which is 20% in the UK, so it all adds up to about 10 pounds of tax per bottle. If a bottle sells for 20 pounds 10 pounds of that is tax.
“There is not a lot of margin per bottle in low end spirits” Kingsman observes “but if the bottle sells for 50 pounds then customers still only pay the 10 pounds per bottle duty, so obviously there are better margins in the aged premium rums.
However having said that, Kingsman illustrates “the greater part of our market is for pouring rums and rum for cocktails, which you wouldn’t necessarily use an aged 10 year old rum for when someone wants a Rum and Coke.
How do you break into the market with a new product like this?
“Thats the difficult thing. When you speak to various people about how the other brands do it, all the feedback tells you that it all depends on how much you want to spend and how quickly you want to achieve that.
Big brands that are funded by large organizations quite easily spend millions of pounds a year on marketing and promotion. We do not have the luxury of this kind of budget so we tailor our spend to opportunities we see which is how we came to be the Cowes Sailing Week sponsor. This evolved out of a connection we had with the RORC. (Royal Ocean Racing Club) out of the UK.
Officers of the club, the Commodore and Chief Executive were here in Grenada visiting the Government finalizing the details of their first transatlantic race from Lanzarote to Grenada which arrives here just before Christmas, I happened to be at the Aquarium restaurant having lunch and we started chatting and I raised the topic of “Have you got a Grenadian Rum to sponsor your race and if not then you need one!’
“So we got involved with them and sponsored their trans Atlantic race for 3 years. We subsequently moved over to Cowes Week after that and it has been a great success – Westerhall Estate are the official Rum of the event.
“I gauge success from the contacts we have made through sponsoring the event and how that leads to direct sales. For instance we were discussing an opportunity to sell product to Harvey Nichols in London so we invited their spirits buyer to the event in Cowes. He attended and through that, we secured an order for our rums to be stocked in what is a very prestigious store in central London and it all came about due to our involvement in the Cowes Sailing Week. We are not the Named sponsor of the event as that would cost us many thousands of pounds but as the official rum of the event it works very well for us.
What other strategies do you have for Westerhall Rums & world domination?
“Part of our strategy was rebranding the product 12 months ago for a couple of reasons.
1.The bottle size sold here in Grenada and the USA Market is 750ml bottles whist the standard in the UK/Europe is 700ml size for spirits.
Only Wine is allowed to be sold in 750ml bottles, so we had to change the physical size of the bottle for the UK market.
2. Other than the name on the label (Westerhall Estate, Grenada) the products did not have much in common. So we spoke to a marketing agency and they suggested we repackage the rums into new bottles with a clean stylish modern label. RUM No. 3, 5, 7, & 10 based on the average age of the Rums.
“This has proven to be very successful. If you look at the many bottles behind a bar unless you know the name of the product you don’t know whats inside. ..It could be Vodka, Whiskey, Bourbon, whatever…
“With our new labels we have picked up a lot of interest from various distributors all over the country. Bars and Restaurants are also loving the new labels as they see it as clean modern and stylish. So without us doing the re-brand, we would not be in a position we are in today.
Kingsman continues “We now have distributors in other European countriesOne in Switzerland One in Germany One in Norway one in Russia, one in Switzerland and we are now looking at Italy so we are moving ahead.
“We bottle the Rum in the UK purely out of logistics of getting the UK sized bottle over to Grenada because our bottles come from Italy so it seemed a bit crazy to send bottles from Europe to Grenada fill them up and then send it back to the UK
“We get each product shipped over to us in bulk liquid containers which hold 1,000 liters each. Its all under bond so we do not pay any duty until we sell the bottled product but we do have to pay that immediately, the government want their money as soon as the rum leaves the bonded warehouse.
How much do you sell?
“We started off at zero and we are now up to about 250 cases a month, the industry usually gauges sales in cases and we have 6 bottles in a case so approximately 18,000 bottles per year across the range obviously if we were selling that volume of the 10 year old we’d be much better off as there is more profit in the premium rums but we are happy with what were doing with obvious room for improvement.
Price Range positioning in the UK?
Retail prices in the UK are roughly:-
21pounds = No. 3
26 pounds = No. 5
29 pounds = No. 7
35 pounds = No. 10
“Our biggest seller by volume is the No 3 as that gets used for cocktails and mixed rum drinks – that is a big market in the UK.
“We sold a lot at the Cowes Week as we were mixing a Westerhall Signature Cocktail, the “Pink and Stormy” which is a variation of the traditional “Dark and Stormy” which is claimed to be invented by Goslings (Rum) I heard they tried to trademark it but were unsuccessful in doing so, but anyways, the recipe for a Rum and Ginger Beer is always called a “Dark and Stormy”
So you invented this “Pink & Stormy”?
“As far as we know, yes, and if it did exist before then, it certainly was not called a “Pink & Stormy”
The Pink and Stormy recipe:
Rum
Ginger beer
Lime Juice
Dash of Grenadine
Nutmeg on top
Ice
“We were selling it in large 1.5 liter Jugs during Cowes Week designed to serve 5 people but what we found was that people were coming along and buying a 1.5 liter jug per person …with a straw!
“So 5 Jugs for 5 people. Thats sailors for you ! The cocktail market is so full up of all sorts of cocktails and its mainly all about what they look like and the brand of rum in it is kind of secondary. All the brands have their own signature cocktails and we now have ours and we are sticking with it.
“The Ginger Beer adds a cloudiness to it all hence the “stormy” and the “pink” we like to think of as the Grenadian Sunset.
The linguistic link between Grenadine and Grenada makes it kinda memorable and appropriate for a Grenada Rum Cocktail.
So you have quite the operation going ….Are other people involved in the Business?
“My daughter Annabel, she has been over to Grenada quite a few times and she’s really getting involved. We have Brand Managers who go out and do a lot of the hard graft by doing the cold calling. You can’t just get a distributor and hope they sell it for you, so you have to go out to pubs and bars and get it put on the shelfs once you can get your product on the shelves of supermarkets, liquor stores and in the bars-then thats the start of something.
We are not the distributors or the Bottlers, we are officially The importers of Westerhall Rums into the UK and Europe.
How much quantities are you looking at?
“Europe is still quite small for us at the moment …the order we had for Germany for instance was about 75 cases and the one we got for Norway was only around 50 cases so its not vast but we are going to build on it and we have to start somewhere.
Who do you think are your main competitors in the UK market?
“I would say our main competitor in the UK as a brand is probably Mount Gay especially as we are involved with sailing and the regattas etc.
At Cowes Week for instance, we had some initial resistance. A few bars were saying they normally stock Mount Gay and really didn’t know too much about Westerhall, but one of them stocked up on our product and ended up selling 150 bottles of ours and only 3 bottles of Mount Gay which made us very happy.
Well done ! we agree WE is a much better rum and obviously the sailors agreed!
As a comparison do you have any idea of how many bottles Mount Gay do a year in the UK?
“We have no idea of their volume obviously they are a much bigger brand than ours and we expect they are doing some sizeable numbers in the UK . A figure I do know however, is that of Bacardi…. They sell 19 million (12 bottle) cases worldwide per year. Thats a lot of Rum, so we have a long way to catch them up.
“When you start selling a million cases a year you get on a kind of elite list. So our aim is to reach this target. A million cases a year!
“We also sell online through an App in England called “Bevy” which is an American butler service so they deliver anywhere in London and we are seeing reasonable volumes through that service and various other online shopping services.
“We really love working with Westerhall Estates from Graham & Wendy, to the girl at the front desk, all are great people to work with. The gardens at the estate are also beautiful so I love enjoying that aspect. We also love the island as a destination and we think it has the right blend of different businesses like the Medical school which brings in a tremendous amount of benefits to the island and various high end Tourism products like Port Louis, Mount Cinnamon, Sandals and the new Silversands hotel shows that the island is developing in a great manner.
In conclusion Kingsman states “I’m now a great advocate of Grenada and I constantly tell friends of mine who are looking to travel to the Caribbean…”No don’t go there…Come to Grenada instead” and they do!
“One of my friends was going to purchase a house in Antigua and I told him to come here to Grenada instead, so he did and eventually bought a villa at Mount Cinnamon.
Nick Kingsman continues “Also as a direct result of me singing Grenada’s praises and due to my friendship with one particular person, “CaneCo” came to Grenada and is setting up an exciting project involving growing cane on 600 acres of land and setting up a distillery to produce high end premium rums in Grenada. This investment is estimated to cost around $20 million usd, so when I say I am always singing Grenada’s praises you can see that I mean it.
“I think that this kind of investment into Grenada is and will be very beneficial to present and future generations. The level of investment diversity, carded for the next 20 years, is likely to help Grenada advance much quicker than the last 20 years.
A rising tide lifts all boats…We’ll drink to that!