Henry and Rupert each make it into their favourite magazines

We're currently going through a spell of inward facing work as we get the company lined up for hitting the UK market in force next year. Everything is being considered in the light of the successes of the last 6 months and how we can widen the availability of Muddler Cocktails. As open as we are we don't want too give to much away (we know there are some people looking at this blog so that they can copy our success). But rest assured that the first people to know what we are going to be up to will be the readers of the blog (and those who catch Henry or I out with a drink in our hands).

If you fancy trying some new alcoholic drinks, how about trying the Wine show (http://www.wineshow.co.uk/) which starts tomorrow evening. This event showcases wines from around the world and is supposed to have good food to boot. We've always said that Muddler is an alternative to a glass of wine or a spirit and mixer, so Henry and I are going to go and enjoy some of that alternative tomorrow night. This is a big event and the culmination of a year's worth of work by my mate Chuck, so I'm sure he'll have a slurp or two of vino to celebrate the opening night.

Chuck is one of the guys I play rugby with (and have done for too many years now) so whilst mentioning him... I'll also say hello to the Rosslyn Park Hatters who continue to excel on the field (even with me holding them back). Their enthusiasm for Muddler is kind of enforced by me, but they are working on how to squeeze as much PR out as possible for Muddler Cocktails. Thanks must go to Pat who continues to blatantly abuse our match reports for Muddler Publicity. This is the most blatant:
http://www.rosslynpark.co.uk/wp-content/docs/2007/10/parknews47.pdf
(the top of page 4) but there are plenty of others... I think someone got Muddlered this week in a game.... could we be creating a new word?

Anyway, Henry hasn't been slouching on the PR and has been going on to me for months about his favourite magazine, Dare, and how we should explain to them the wonders of our Muddler Cocktails. Once he had explained to me that Dare was only avaliable in Superdrug (just next to his hair care products apparently) we agreed that it was the way to go. So if you are in Superdrug look out for November's Dare:

and we're on page 83:

Another good piece, and we know the magazine is being read as we've already had our first consumer email about it and the mag has only been out for a few days. Another quick mention, thanks to Lil Gav for pointing us in the right direction with Dare magazine.

So on to my PR achievements. I hope you are sitting down at this point.... this is the big one!

We've made it all they way to the Old Stortfordian.

What? You don't know about this publication. Let me explain, it is my schools old boys newsletter:

This is the school that I went to for 11 years and Henry spent a gap year being beaten up by small children.

So here you go, here's the piece:



So just wait for the next Muddler Blog to see if Henry has been able to better my PR in the Old Stortfordian.

The Muddler Cocktails PR machine rolls on....

As if winning the rugby on Saturday wasn't enough of a reason to celebrate, Muddler Cocktails has also managed to scoop a press release in The Grocers drinks special.

We feature next to Baileys in the Spirits at Christmas section with a picture of the drink and bottle stating that the 'Producers are optimistic about the growth in pre-mix and cocktail categories'

This comes just a month after we last featured and also ties in with our press ad that features a few pages later.

Hopefully this double whammy will give us the impact and stand out we need to take Muddler Cocktails to the next level.

Momentum is definitely building with the success of the Oasis launch the week before. As you can see the product looked great in the stylish and premium environment.

Hopefully this week will be just as encouraging as Rupert and I head back to the tasting lab and look to expand Muddler Cocktails range further....

In a Muddle?

What a wait you've all had for me to write inspiring words... and yet again you may have to wait a little longer! I'm certainly going to bring you up to date, but inspire, we'll see.

The last few weeks have been a feverish bed of activities as we juggled the tasks that could lead us to hitting our targets. These targets are the ones that Henry had previously mentioned to really help us focus. When you have no office politics, managerial or even shareholder direction (or hassle) then it is easy to stare wide eyed each morning at the realm of possibilities and end up getting none of them done. We're managing to avoid this by keeping our eyes on specific targets....

Or are we?... with a range of other enquiries and distractions coming in you have to learn to juggle everything and on top of that there is 'play time' which currentl is the the Rugby World Cup.

Last Friday Henry argued with van hire companies, ended up with a people carrier, took 5 hours to get to Manchester, lugged a load of stock around and then presented Muddler to the shoppers of Oasis in the Trafford Centre. This was a great opportunity to gauge customer reaction, promote the drink and for Henry to hang around in a ladies store. With a number of people driving to the Trafford Centre the samples were small but there was the increasingly familiar mix of lovers (who REALLY like it) and those for who you wont get them off their usual tipple. The biggest disappointment for Henry was going back to the City where we were students and ending up getting into the middle of town too late for a curry (well a civilised one) and the kebab he had was really poor. Our ex-housemate, Will, who kindly put Henry up in Manchester has promised better when we go up for our house re-union. Henry's demanding a Manchester curry!

Whilst Henry was pushing Muddler north I was pushing south to Marseille. The tickets I bought 21 months ago for the Rugby World Cup quarter-finals had come good and I made the long train journey to watch us smash the old rivals Australia. What a weekend, what a game, what an atmosphere in the town, what a location we had for our accommodation (a cheap and strategically placed yacht in the port). That marks the end of me seeing World Cup games live, and it is now on to shouting loudly at the television and reminding my Aussie housemate about the score last weekend.

Anyway, what have I been up to on the Muddler front. Henry mentioned the success of our Muddler Launch Party. Well last night I confirmed it by going to collect the cases that they did not use in the White Horse that night... it was surprisingly few so it obviously went down well!

Also on the day of the party I got stuck in to the first rugby game of the season for me. So I have more PR to note, as Muddler Cocktails made it into Park News (Rosslyn Parks newsletter) - click here to see the article (on page 4 about the Hatters). Thanks to Pat (aka Skipper) for blatantly lobbing in Muddler Cocktails for a plug.

Whilst on the subject of PR we have recently mailed out a number of samples to the press (the postal strike will have meant that they are still crawling towards them). Prior to all this I gave a sneak peak of the PR to a friend of a friend who worked at www.urbanjunkies.com (a massive what's hot daily email for Londoners). Even without a link to our website the hits on our website went up by a few thousand that day.

Next week sees the launch of our first advert in The Grocer (it is actually out tomorrow - Saturday) a trade magazine for the supermarkets and independent shops. We think we've been cunning to make it stand out, but the proof will be when we see it in the publication. The aim is to re-enforce the messages that we are putting out to the Supermarkets et al. We also think that they've written a bit about us, but you can never be sure. If you want to grab a copy (it is in some newsagents) and delve in to the alcohol special.

Other business has seen me wrestling with our accounts as I've managed to get out our first VAT return. Having been waiting for this for 6 months it is nice to think that we may actually get back the VAT we have spent setting up the company.... but it did lead to a day a half of me going back through all our expenses and trying to get it all okay in our accounting system!

Hopefully, the HM Revenue and Customs will not need to post me anything... just a bank transfer will be sufficient. The other issues of dealing with a small business is the joy of a postal strike. As I said above we did a big PR push on the day before the strike - sending out approximately 40 boxes of stuff but I doubt they will have got to them by now. I still really haven't had any post so the prospect of the strike starting up again are not great for any small business.

The other battle is with couriers, in the old days Henry used to lob stuff at the post room and it magically disappeared off to its destination. I just used to zip some stuff up and email, ftp it etc and there were the couple of occasions where we were desperate for time and the stuff was too big to send electronically that we would burn a stack of DVDs and bung someone on the Eurostar to make sure it got somewhere first thing. BUT all of that was easier than trying to get couriers to actually collect our stuff, not break it and deliver it in a timely manner. Those bright yellow vans that storm around towns could do with improving customer service quite a bit. So we've both spent time emailing and phoning couriers to try and locate a large number of samples and presentation boxes etc that have been sent out.

The other job I currently have that you never (or rarely) experience in a large organisation is chasing down outstanding debts. Almost all of our customers have been timely in paying (far better than I expected). However, there are a select few who are becoming a bit slow so need that nudging. Interestingly it is both the big and small businesses that fall into this category. Things will now get more interesting as the postal strike means that 'the cheque is in the post' is not a ridiculous suggestion....

In between all this Henry and I have started reading books again... and it is NOT Harry Potter. This is all part of our look at our strategy for the future. The current book that I've completed and Henry is ploughing through is the story of Cobra Beer, the result is daily discussions between us that help shape our thoughts. Let me make it quite clear, we are not imitating anyone... whoever said writing endless Blogs like this are a good idea?

Looking forward we met our 'juice guys' or should that be 'juice gals' on Wednesday. The aim was to discuss where we take the products going forward and to try out a new flavour that Henry and I had come up with from our garden tasting session. We always new that so many of the juices in supermarkets were not a true reflection of a 100% natural product and have all sorts of sweeteners etc in them. The reality is that they don't actually taste like the actual fruits. At our juicers they put together a 100% natural equivalent and the taste was very different to those un-natural imitators. Next time you are in the supermarket whether it is in the chiller or not take a look at the back of the carton to find out what is in the product, you may well be surprised. So we have pushed that flavour to the side and will go back to the drawing board. A discussion then kicked off about potential fruits and purees etc so then followed a large barrage of stupid questions from Henry and I to understand more about the taste/ texture properties of various fruits. You don't want to even begin to imagine what the weather this year has done to juice prices - almost all of them have gone up as harvests are down but the juicers are once again scouring the markets to find the right quality of fruit. So thanks once again for the help of our juicers who continue to support us as we build the brand and come up with flavours that do not work!

So the main focus is the future as we decide how to prepare for 2008 across all aspects of our business. The future's bright and orange (or maybe pear or strawberry). The question we currently wrestle with is how best to make it work and get the message of 'Real fruit cocktails' out there. In between all of this we run an entire office and business in the current time.

The answer to my title question is - NO far from being in a Muddle we are looking at putting Muddler on the right course for the future.

3 it's the magic number

So it was another eventful week for Muddler Cocktails. We attended our first trade show in Birmingham which meant driving up there every day which was pretty exhausting. It was really good as it meant we got to see a lots of people from many different and varied backgrounds and get their views on our product.

The first thing was setting up our stand. With it being last minute and on a tight budget we decided to make the most of what we had and used our cases as a way of branding and creating something interesting. Below are some pics of what we did. We got lots of positive comments from the other stands, it seems the minimalist and natural approach that we have adopted in everything we do goes down very well, which is just as well!

Overall the week was a real confidence booster. While for some it wasn't their thing for the vast majority we got a really good response and a number of these were extremely positive. The really encouraging thing was that it ticking the boxes we had set out to; different, refreshing, not too sweet, a real cocktail, fruity, just what I feel like when I want a drink... and it wasn't just the trade that were sampling it. We also had a wide range of consumers from the Leisure show next door which created a funny mix. One minute you had your typical real ale landlord with rosy cheeks and a large beer belly the next you had an orange tanned, peroxide hair, testosterone pumped body builder having a taste. It went down particularly well with latter because of the naturalness and nothing added element.
It was a great experience and we came away with some really interesting leads to follow up on this week. An unexpected bonus was meeting some really nice people on the stands around us. There was a real sense of comradery and it was great to be able to share experiences and the odd glass of wine or Muddler Cocktail.

Saturday was our launch party at the White Horse, which also linked up with a couple of Birthdays as well. It was great to get everyone together and celebrate what we have achieved so far. Muddler Cocktails certainly got things in the swing and it was absolutely heaving, they couldn't serve the drinks quick enough. Everyone was so positive about it and if ever we were going to end the week on a high this was it. I think Rups and I could enter the Guinness book of records for the number of times we had to tell people what it was all about but it's all about spreading the word and it certainly spread around on Sat night.

As you can imagine yesterday was very chilled and spent recovering but today we're straight back into things. This week is all about our launch event with Oasis clothes store at the Trafford Centre on Friday. The promo flyer is below come along if you're in the area and shop in style with a cocktail in your hand!