Selling cocktails online sounds like a lovely business.

Until you remember your product is liquid, glass, alcohol and needs to arrive looking like something you'd actually want to drink.

Adam sits down with Tom Mayes, Co-Founder of Edmunds Cocktails, to talk about the decisions behind growing the business from two brothers making cocktails at home to producing around 1.5 million cocktails a year.

And it turns out quite a few of those decisions come down to one thing:

How much control are you willing to give up?

Tom and his brother Paul have kept fulfilment in-house for years – partly because their product makes outsourcing complicated and partly, Tom admits, because they're control freaks.

But as Edmunds has grown, that's becoming harder to justify.

Then there's Amazon.

Edmunds isn't currently selling there, preferring to grow its own DTC channel and keep hold of the customer relationship and data.

But when millions of potential customers are already searching somewhere else, at what point does protecting your DTC business mean leaving money on the table?

Adam and Tom get into all of it.

They also chat about:

–How a business built for hospitality accidentally found a huge DTC opportunity during COVID
–Going from roughly £10k to £50k in online sales almost overnight
– The realities of fulfilling cocktails yourself
– Why something as simple as a garnish made outsourcing considerably more complicated
– Where Amazon could fit into Edmunds' future without becoming the whole strategy
– The danger of becoming too dependent on someone else's platform
– Why Tom wishes they'd documented the Edmunds journey from day one
– Staying close enough to customers to spot new product opportunities
– Bootstrapping the business to around £1.2m before raising investment
– Personalisation, gifting and what's next for the brand

And, naturally, cocktail Christmas crackers.

About the guest

Tom Mayes is Co-Founder of Edmunds Cocktails, which he launched alongside his brother Paul in 2019.

What started with cocktails made at home has grown into a business producing more than 1.5 million cocktails a year and supplying over 1,200 venues and retailers, including PizzaExpress and Nobu Hotels.

About the host

Adam Pearce is Co-Founder of Blend Commerce and eCom Collab Club®, where he brings together the founders, operators and people actually doing the work behind growing eCommerce brands.

On the eCom Collab Club® Podcast, Adam gets into the decisions, disasters, lessons and occasional bits of brilliance that don't tend to make it into the polished LinkedIn version.

Booze. Boxes. Bezos.

What could possibly go wrong? 🍸