By Deborah Moss

brand spotlight

Bill Creelman and Gil MacLean took a great idea—their line of all-natural cocktail mixers—and gave it a new name, a new identity and a new future in the food world. Discover how the Stirrings owners built their brand along with an expert assessment on what you can learn from them for your business.

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When Bill Creelman (left) and Gil MacLean (right) launched their line of all-natural cocktail mixers, bar ingredients and rimmers, they had big plans for their small business. The boyhood friends from Leverett, Massachusetts, “wanted to redefine how people think about cocktails,” explains MacLean. “Bill and I were a part of the Dot-Com, Grey Goose generation when spirits were becoming more premium, vodka in particular. But the quality of mixing products were the same old high-fructose, Jolly Rancher cocktail mixers. We wanted to change that.”

Creelman adds: “We wanted to become the global leader in premium cocktails.” Today, with 37 full-time employees, a 35,000-square-foot office with a 20-foot bar and a food science laboratory, and products sold in 35 countries, Stirrings is well on its way to meeting that goal.


An Early Transformation
Although Stirrings was officially launched in 2005, the company grew out of a specialty food business, Nantucket Harvest Company, that MacLean, 38, and Creelman, 35, started in 1997. The company originally sold Nantucket Off-Shore Seasonings rubs, seasonings and products from the island where they’d spent summers growing up. Products such as smoked blue fish pâté, jellies made from local plums and local bay scallops were sold through catalog orders and in retail outlets. In 2001, they started selling cocktail rimmers for Bloody Marys, Margaritas and rum drinks under the Nantucket Off-Shore Seasonings brand. The bar products were an immediate hit. “We used high-quality French sea salt,” explains MacLean. “At that time, consumers were looking for better ingredients for everything.”

From there, they began offering all-natural fruit juice mixers for Cosmopolitans, Mojitos, Margaritas, Mango Margaritas, Bloody Marys and Apple Martinis. “Whole Foods was booming and organic products were becoming more prevalent, but there wasn’t an all-natural, real juice mixer to complement the premium spirits that were becoming so popular,” explains MacLean. “We saw the need for that product.”


Creating Brand Appeal
As the bar products took off, MacLean and Creelman saw the potential for growth and realized they needed to look at the way they were branding the cocktail line. Their six new mixers and matching rimmers equaled more than 50 percent of their sales in the first few years they were sold under the Nantucket Off-Shore Seasonings brand. “People knew Nantucket Off-Shore Seasonings as a rub company so we decided to keep it as a rub company. (They owned this brand until 2008 when it was acquired by a natural food product company.) But we needed to rebrand the bar products,” says Creelman. “We did six months of work on our own—blackboard sessions with friends, family and employees—coming up with names we liked. We wanted something that spanned the category, but wasn’t so broad that it was generic, like Cocktail Products Inc.” After creating around 400 names, they hired TippingSprung, a branding agency in New York City that has worked with companies such as G.E. and Timberland, to help them decide on a new brand. “Cocktails are an American invention with a rich 100-plus-year tradition. People take them very seriously,” notes Creelman. “We didn’t want to be too trendy, but we wanted it to represent the newness of what we were trying to do.”

MacLean and Creelman worked with John Lineweaver of Lineweaver Design on the logo at the same time they were developing the name. The stir-de-lis, the little swirl located on the front of the bottle, was meant to represent the motion of stirring a drink and was inspired by the street signs in Nantucket. The apothecary bottles were Creelman’s idea. “A unique product needed a unique package,” says MacLean. “We were doing something totally new. We wanted a package that people would be proud to put out on their bar instead of hiding the nasty mixer in the back of the fridge.”


Launching a Category
The former bartenders and cocktail aficionados had experience making delicious, natural mixers and rimmers, but as business grew it was trickier to recreate the same quality for a mass market. “We didn’t have competition in the beginning,” says MacLean. “Stirrings created the category.” And while the lack of competition was great for business, it meant MacLean and Creelman had a steep learning curve. “There wasn’t a footprint to follow,” says Creelman. “For example we had to keep a natural product shelf-stable. It’s one thing to recreate a product for your friends but to keep it shelf-stable for retailers for a year is a whole new challenge.”

They also encountered problems with distribution. Originally they shipped to order, but quickly realized that shipping heavy liquid-filled glass bottles could be problematic. They started working with Kehe, Millbrook and various liquor distributors. “We sell to so many classes of trade that it makes for a complex distribution scheme and support infrastructure,” says Creelman. “We don’t just ship one thing to one customer.”

When it came to pricing, they took a tip from the spirits industry. “We were producing an extraordinarily pricey product. We sought the highest level of juice and distinctive varietals that were the best quality from anywhere in the world,” says Creelman, who has sourced products from California to the South of France. “That doesn’t lend itself to producing an inexpensive product. But we knew we had to separate ourselves from the pack. If we sold our mixers at $2.99 or $3.99, we’d rapidly go out of business.”

So they chose to sell at $8.99 - $9.99 a bottle. Because their products were a complete departure from what was available, they opted to market it in a new way too. Stirrings was first sold with glassware at a tableware retailer. “We needed to communicate what our product was, how it was to be used and why it was meaningful to the consumer,” explains Creelman. “We thought the most compelling way to tell our story was to put our products in a merchandising environment that made it clear. You see our product next to a mixer or shaker and nice glasses and it’s clear. We were selling cocktails and selling a lifestyle.” As the brand was built, it was later sold at specialty food retailers, liquor stores and larger grocers such as Whole Foods.


Building a Marketing Strategy
Stirrings has done a fair share of magazine advertising. “We advertised the brand heavily in gourmet trade publications beginning with the launch in 2005,” says MacLean. “We’ve also dabbled in a very selective amount of outdoor, digital and print recently to drive consumer awareness.” And Stirrings has maintained a fun, user-friendly website with a blog since it launched in 2005. “It has always been a great way for us to relate to our customers,” explains Kristine Ford, marketing director. “The website is approachable, engaging, interactive and fun—just like the brand.” The site includes innovative sections—recipes, party planning tips, DIY cocktails to encourage recession-friendly, at-home entertaining—that reflect the lifestyle that Stirrings is selling.

But the most successful marketing Stirrings does is sampling. They do tastings at premium liquor stores, Cost Plus World Market and Williams-Sonoma. And they reach new customers by offering Stirrings samples in unusual places. For example, they passed out tasters to people waiting in line on the opening night of the Sex in the City movie; they have also handed out samples to the crowds pouring off the Nantucket ferry in the summer. “The more people who try our products, the greater chance of converting them to a user,” Creelman says. “We have a passionate consumer base. They spread the word, they give us feedback and really embrace what we’re trying to do,” says MacLean.

MacLean and Creelman also say that the retail stores in which they are sold do “an amazing job advertising for us and telling our story.” Stirrings products can be found in places as diverse as Whole Foods, Gristedes, Target and Williams-Sonoma, as well as for foodservice use in restaurants, bars and hotels (for example, Hilton hotels or Starwood resorts). “We just launched a brand new, distinct foodservice package—one liter combifit—made from 80 percent recyclable materials—it fits easily into the well at the bar and our apothecary-style bottles didn’t fit so well. So far it’s been a huge success.” Stirrings mixers are even offered on some Delta Airlines flights in mini-versions of the apothecary bottle.


Leaning on Staff
Along with their passionate customers, MacLean and Creelman attribute their success to their devoted employees. “Our team has been absolutely great—young passionate employees who live the brand,” says Creelman. MacLean agrees, “You need to get the most talented people you can. It’s a complete cliché but your people are going to make the company a success or will drag in down.” Their employees have been known to take their work home with them when they pass out samples of products to encourage their favorite restaurants to carry them. “People don’t do that because they have to,” explains Ford. “They like the mixers and are proud to encourage restaurants to carry Stirrings.”

From choosing the right employees to creating great new products, instinct plays a big role in the way MacLean and Creelman have run their businesses since they launched Nantucket Harvest Company. “As business grows, you are presented with so many more decisions and it’s tempting to pay attention to data that’s presented to you—to not do what got you there,” says Creelman. “But we grew the company with a philosophy that if we wouldn’t use it at home or with our friends then we wouldn’t sell to the public. Following that instinct is all you really need to know.” |SFM|

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