Charles and I met while backpacking in Mongolia - it's a pretty cool story, there were a group of 5 of us sleeping in a tent in the middle of February. Now, I'm sure there are colder places in the world, but being in a tent in the middle of winter with no heating in a barren wasteland next to Siberia gets pretty cold. So of course the only way to bond is over Mongolian vodka... also to stay warm.
Around two years ago, Chuck (as we know him) was doing his MBA, and I was in my final year of college. We came up with the idea of starting an Italian vodka (what's better than the food and the sunshine?!). Fast forward to now, and we have launched Infina vodka, have a client list including the W hotel, the Park Hyatt, the Conrad Hotel, the Shangrila hotel group in Beijing, amongst many others. More than that, it's not just Chuck and Krum anymore. Now there's Dylan and Rex involved too. We make the 'Core Four' of Infina, and are the guys involved in taking this company forward. We are looking to add more people to the team all the time, but the fit has to be perfect. Dylan is a fellow brit, and he's hilarious. And Rex, well he's just a massive Chinese American football player. Do you know the movie the Blindside? He played American Football with that guy from the movie for Ol' Miss. How awesome is that?! And he's Chinese! And he's a giant, but has the most awesome baby laugh that sort of goes heheheehe. So yes, we have an awesome team. If we ever have the privilege to meet, please do ask how we all met Rex, it's a funny story.
We plan to expand to Shanghai, and also to Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the next six months. This is of course a really good thing because it means we are selling vodka. As such, we are investing from our revenues into producing more vodka, but we would like to make a much bigger batch this time, so that we can expand at a much more quickly.
We are already a working business, although young, and have made a huge impact in the last 6 months in Beijing. What happens with this new batch of vodka, that's just as good as the last batch, get's taken to our warehouse in Shanghai, and we replicate exactly what we have done in Beijing - make sure everyone has a crazy fun time and get Infina into bars and clubs. Honestly, and this is not just because we started it, it's some of the smoothest vodka you'll ever try. But as we said, we are not interested in just the vodka - we do not purely compete on the taste or look of our vodka. We are very fortunate to be able to work with young, like minded individuals - musicians, artists, chefs, photographers, even with film. What this allows us to do is have a really creative marketing campaign, and do some really cool collaborations, with partners ranging from hotels and restaurants to artists and musicians. It allows us to create the perfect experiences every time.
Our initial risks were to see if we could get traction on a limited marketing budget, and as we have already proven that we are a product that people buy, we are in a position where we have to produce more bottles than we originally thought. In terms of actual risk, it is going down - and we're getting more and more experienced everyday. Moreover, the fact that we have to order more bottles of vodka means that our business model is working!
