Conversations with... Howard Davies of Salcombe Distilling Co.

The popularity of gin has continued to increase over the last few years and for those working from home and home-schooling, it is perhaps more front of mind than normal.

In a recent webinar, we caught up with co-founder of Salcombe Distilling Co, Howard Davies. Famous for their award winning Salcombe Gin which genuinely puts Salcombe on the map with their beautiful nautical branding and delicious range of products. We talked everything spirits related, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic from the Virtual Gin School to rum and hand sanitisers.

Howard would you mind telling us a little about yourself?

I co-founded Salcombe Distilling Co. with a really good friend of mine, Angus, with whom I used to teach sailing in Salcombe when we were teenagers many many moons ago. We started trading about four years ago as Salcombe Distilling Co. and the company's very much born out of our combined passion and love of fine spirits and great lifestyle on and around the water. To now be in this position with a distillery on the water's edge in Salcombe producing gin and other spirits is absolutely a dream come true!

We have won numerous national and international awards and we now want to take the company further forward in our aspiration to become the world's number one luxury spirits brand.

And how is the business?

It's good and we've been quite fortunate. When COVID-19 kicked off it was obviously a big concern for us with all of the bars and restaurants closing down. We had numerous board meetings reconsidering our strategy and taking a big step back. Certainly the business has been hit quite hard in terms of our on-trade sales during the last few months but going a long way to compensate this has been our direct sales to consumers.

Everyone’s at home at the moment and people are still wanting to drink gin or other spirits. So that's really helped a lot.

What have you had to do to adapt to the current COVID-19 crisis?

We have had to adapt on the operational side with most of the team working from home. We had to take the difficult decision to furlough some of the team, and we’ve also been trying to limit how many people are going into the distillery. Recently we've opened our retail store ‘The Victuallers’ at the distillery in Salcombe and had to put measures in place, like a Perspex screen over the checkout counter and limit how many customers we can have in the store at any one time.

And then of course adapting our focus more to e-commerce and online sales and looking at how we can temporarily adapt other parts of our business away from physical sales to trade establishments.

What have been some of the biggest lessons learnt throughout this difficult period?

I suppose the one thing I found really valuable was being forced to take a big step back and look at your business. It means you take a really hard look at what's actually delivering revenue and what’s not and whether you are just spinning the wheels for the sake of it.

Your business spans leisure, hospitality, wholesale and retail. With the gin school and bar closed where are your thoughts as we see restrictions easing?

I’m absolutely gutted that we had to shut the Gin School, it is a part of the company that we are so proud of. With it being so interactive and in such close proximity we simply can't run it at the moment, so what we have done is launched our home-school Gin schooling service. On the retail and wholesale side we have worked hard to maintain a dialogue with a lot of our clients to try to provide some flexibility in credit arrangements to help support them. We also been talking to them to proactively discuss what can we do to work together so that when they are able to open again we can really maximize the opportunity.

And where have you seen opportunities?

E-commerce is huge and we have been looking at what we can do to absolutely maximize that in terms of investing more in anything that relates to online presence. That could be getting more products online, getting more promotions online, investing more in social media and doing things like this - talking to you guys! But then there is the diversification as well. And so the obvious one is producing hand sanitizer. It became apparent very quickly there was a massive need out there for it, so we started creating some hand sanitizer and initially we were just giving it away, with over 1000 bottles provided free to local organisations in the first few weeks.

Now hand sanitiser has become something much more part of everybody's day to day life, so we thought now this is quite an interesting opportunity to create a beautiful bespoke hand sanitiser because a lot of what's out there is very functional. We have created our own hand sanitiser called Safe Harbour that contains coastal botanicals and has a lovely aroma with some really nice packaging. We are selling that now online and doing some collaborations with the charity Shelterbox and some other brands so that's been a really positive outcome.

I understand you've actually had some other products launched during this period. Would you like to tell us a little bit about those?

It must be about a month ago now that we launched our white rum, 'White strand'. Initially I wasn’t sure how good a white rum could be and there are plenty of longstanding white rum brands that are out there.

However, I can honestly say it blew me away in terms of how good it is. We released it a few weeks ago and it's had a fantastic response. The whole sector is growing already and will continue to grow so that is quite exciting in itself. Another fascinating area is the non- alcoholic and low alcoholic spirit sector which has grown significantly over the last few years and continues to do so. In the non- alcoholic sector I think it's still a bit challenging in that some of what's out at the moment is struggling to deliver on taste. So we had a big focus on producing a non alcoholic spirit that really tastes amazing and we will be releasing this later this summer.

Salcombe Gin is well known nationally but I understand that you have been expanding into the US. How have you found that experience and do you have any tips for companies looking to move into the US?

We have exported to China and a few other places such as Croatia and Spain but the US is a big new initiative for us.

Obviously the US is a fair distance away across the Atlantic but they do speak the same language! Nonetheless it's amazing how different the legislation, on alcohol in particular, and is even more controlled than here in the UK.

They have what's known as the three tier system whereby as a producer typically you can't sell direct to consumer or direct to trade and so you can only sell to a distributor, and it's not like there's a single distributor that covers the entirety of the United States!

So that has been quite challenging but we are there now and I’m so glad that we've done it.

Sustainability is really important to you personally. What are some of the initiatives that Salcombe Distilling Co has in place to minimize environmental impact?

This is really important to me and actually and I'm pleased to say with pretty much everybody in the business as well and it feels weird to be promoting something that you feel you should be doing anyway.

Last year we launched a bottle refill scheme which is a really simple concept but works well as customers get a discount when they bring their bottle back for a refill. I really love that this is ‘re-use’ rather than just ‘recycle’ which believe is much more valuable and we are now looking at how we could roll this out further geographically.

Another example of other things we have done is around packaging for couriers. We worked closely with a supplier to design bespoke cardboard packaging. Despite sounding simple, it was a challenging thing to do to actually get something that really works, because getting heavy yet fragile glass bottles moved around by couriers in one piece is not easy!

The real positive here is that often you worry about how much its going to cost to try to be sustainable, but what we have found is that if you do invest the time, often the result is that the packaging is cheaper and it looks better too.

What would your advice be to other companies looking to be competitive but remaining true to their core values?

What has surprised me is it feels a bit daunting at times. It's like, OK, I’m running a business, I’ve got to make a profit, employ and pay people so you can't just rely on your business being sustainable. But at the same time when you start looking at initiatives that fit your core values, often it can be better both for your brand and be more cost effective.

What I’ve learned is don't be afraid to shout about what you're doing for sustainability. I believe that if we all talk more about what we're doing then it creates more pressure on other businesses out there and consumers to do more themselves as well. So for that reason you almost have a responsibility to talk about the good stuff that you're doing to encourage other people to do it as well.

So for that reason you almost have a responsibility to talk about the good stuff that you're doing to encourage other people to do it as well.

And what are your thoughts on the future of food and drink as some of the lockdown restrictions ease?

I'm optimistic but it's going to take time and it has of course been a dreadful thing that a lot of businesses are struggling.

I think that there will be an ongoing increase in terms of home consumption of fine food and fine drink. Something that we have been seeing for quite a while, even pre COVID-19 is the desire to be able to elevate the dining and drinking experience that we have in our own homes.

Having better quality ingredients and then matching your drinks or cocktails with fantastic food and recreating that fantastic bar or restaurant at home is going to continue to increase and I think there's opportunity there.

Have you got any final thoughts or advice?

I have one very very important piece of advice - put more ice in your glass!

I see this crime again and again and one or two measly ice cubes is an absolute travesty.

So absolutely load your glass with ice! It’s makes a huge difference when you're serving a gin and tonic or other cocktails, so that's probably one of the most important things you can do.

Thank you to Howard for your wise words and wishing you luck for the summer and beyond.

Watch the webinar with Howard Davies