Set up in October 2016 by husband and wife, Lew Hardy and Jessica Eade, and nestled beneath the Dinorwig Slate Quarry, in the foothills of Snowdonia National Park, Dinorwig Distillery is a micro-distillery making artisan gin and botanical infusions using the couple’s own recipes.
Inspired by the local Welsh landscape and heritage, Dinorwig Distillery is founded on the ethos of artisan production and provenance. Although this is a costly process, Jessica and Lew feel this is what sets their gin apart and roots it in the local landscape.
As the distillery is set up in a small barn on Jessica and Lew’s land, many of the herbs they use are grown on-site. They also use their own mountain well water for distilling and cutting the gin to drinking strength. The whole production process, including distilling, bottling, sealing and labelling takes place on-site by hand.
Dinorwig Distillery currently sells its gin to a range of local specialist shops and will soon launch an online shop.
What they did
An experienced clinical psychologist, Jessica has worked for the NHS and run her own private practice, offering psychological therapy services. Keen food and drink enthusiasts, Jessica and Lew, who is also working for Bangor University, decided to concentrate on the couple’s new venture in November 2016.
Having set up in rural North Wales, Jessica and Lew run a collaborative business model where they buy in supporting services from local providers and specialists in that field, e.g. accounting, website maintenance and design, garden maintenance, fruit growers, etc. "In this way, we support other small, local businesses and get to focus on what we do best: making gin!", comments Jessica.
What would they do differently
"That’s a very difficult question. We went from idea to market in a very short space of time, considering that Jess also trained in distilling and developed the product herself during that time. The time pressure we put ourselves under no doubt has meant that we made some potentially avoidable mistakes. However, you need a certain amount of stress to create drive, and success doesn’t always look pretty. It might have been nice, sensible even, to have developed the product over a number of years, tested the market, been less pressured", says Lew.
Their proudest moment in business
"Serving our gin at a party with friends and family – all evening no one wanted to move on to any other beverage."
Do they use Welsh in their business
"We have used Welsh in our gin bottle label and have just developed a bi-lingual leaflet. We are also in the process of developing a bi-lingual website. We only sell directly at local festivals and we always try to make sure that we have at least one fluent Welsh speaker in the team (grown-up children come in handy here!). Neither myself nor my husband are fluent in Welsh, so for any written detail we have to buy-in translation services. Although we do not necessarily need to use the Welsh language, our product is made in and inspired by this land and the Welsh language is a significant part of that heritage. It is for this reason that we make the effort to use Welsh where we can in our business."
Describe the type of support (financial / non-financial) they’ve received from Business Wales / Welsh Government
A Business Wales adviser helped Jessica and Lew develop their business idea and provided support with issues such as food safety training, lab analysis services, bottle suppliers, compliance checks and licenses. They also helped with marketing and explored promotional channels, website development, online sales, attendance of food shows and social media.
Having successfully launched the business, Jessica started looking for financial support for a bilingual website with an online shopping platform and for an additional still to increase productivity. The adviser helped Jessica with her start-up loan application and the accompanying business and financial plans, enabling Dinorwig Distillery to successfully obtain an £8,000 loan.
Jessica commented: "I met with Business Wales right at the start of moving the business from idea into reality. Thank goodness that I did. The advice that I had certainly stopped me from going down some very long and fruitless paths. My adviser was also a great listener and let me run a hundred ideas past them before making me focus on the priorities of where to start. They gave some great examples of how other businesses had tackled similar issues and this was hugely beneficial.
I was also put in touch with other organisations, whose help has been really invaluable. Business Wales kept in touch and when we met up again about 12 months into the business to discuss finance, my adviser was able to help us secure a loan, allowing us to buy some additional pieces of equipment to significantly improve production capacity. I have greatly appreciated the input, wisdom and attitude towards mistakes: learn and move on!"
Top Tips
Here are Dinorwig Distillery’s top tips for anyone else looking to start or grow their own business:
- a business can be like a new baby who needs constant attention, but this is not sustainable, so build in “breaks” as a matter of routine (switch off the phone, take a walk, see friends)
- decide what you want to achieve short-term, but also have an end goal (where do you want to be in 5 years’ time?)
- develop a business support network (other business owners, business advisers, mentors, accountant); watch how they run their business and run ideas past them
- be flexible and listen to others’ advice but always hold your goals in mind, at the end of the day it is your business and no one else will run it like you
- be prepared to make mistakes, again and again, and again!