How did you hit on the idea of developing a unique rum brand?
I was a rum drinker for a long time. When I was in London, I'd go to parties and bars and the rum brands were all pretty similar...pirates and sailing ships and sandy beaches. They were pretty lame and embarrassing, to be honest.
I never had a rum brand that was cool enough to take to parties. None of my friends drank rum and I felt like it was an image problem more than anything else. I did a lot of research and found rum was a really untapped category, yet it was really big globally. The more I looked into it, the more I considered it a real business proposition.
What did you do before Stolen Rum?
I studied law and marketing at Otago and shifted to the University of Auckland in 1999 and added accounting and finance. I finished my law degree in 2001 and was admitted to the bar as a barrister and solicitor that year. I was pretty anti-corporate at the time and I didn't want to go into law. Instead I went to Sydney for a year, working in cafes and bars and DJ-ing. Then, on a whim, I decided to move to London.
I turned up in London just after 9/11 happened. Jobs had evaporated so it was a pretty difficult time to get professional work. I worked for another year in bars and hospitality then was lucky enough to get a job with a French law firm in London for 18 months. I was approached by the Bank of America and I worked in their legal team and their investment banking division on the trading floor.
You threw in a promising career as a lawyer for an investment bank to set up your own business. Why?
I couldn't commit to it. We had just purchased another bank, Merrill Lynch, and I was offered a very good job there. Given the gravitas of the job I had to commit to three years. It just wasn't in my heart to do it.
While applying to study an MBA abroad, I started talking to people about founding my own business instead. Their advice was 'if you've got an idea why don't you just do it?' So I packed up and went back to New Zealand and stayed on my mum's sofa. I moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Mt Eden with my friend Roger (Holmes) and we worked on Stolen Rum together. We launched Stolen from there.
Where does your rum come from?
It was a process of trying to find the right partner to work with. There's a lot of rum in the Caribbean. It's like milk in New Zealand, if you can imagine big Fonterra tankers full of rum. We found a well-known distillery in Trinidad that was prepared to work with us commercially. They can blend rums to your taste, kind of like getting a bespoke suit made. They are very skilled at putting rums together from a lot of different rums.
To what do you attribute your success?
Hard work, having a lot of good people around and spending a lot of time on the behind-the-scenes stuff, the not-so-glamorous stuff - and working on making sure the brand has a lot of cut-through and is memorable in the market.
Last year you raised $4 million in capital from private investors in New Zealand, including chef Peter Gordon, and four other countries - allowing Stolen Rum to expand internationally. Why do you think those investors backed you?
Peter is an old friend, we were in London together and I worked for him. I think people saw the vision of what we were trying to do. Beverages and hospitality is quite an emotive industry so I guess it resonated with a lot of people on that level. Maybe they saw the big picture. That's a great feeling when that happens, it's like sharing a moment.
What were the key benefits of studying at the University of Auckland?
It was an amazing background in terms of being able to articulate business plans and vision and understand what a business means in a corporate and legal sense. It was good background to go into business with and be respected by other people. People seem to take you a lot more seriously if you have a law degree, that's the reality - as funny as that is.
What was the most valuable lesson you learned at university?
It's not always the brightest people who do well. I wasn't very bright, I had to work really, really hard. You can get there by working hard, having a vision and keeping focused on it.
What's the key advice you would give someone wanting to build a brand or launch a new product?
I think getting out and doing it is the most important thing; executing by trial and error. There are a lot of good ideas that don't happen so actually getting something to market is a huge step.
You're based in New York at the moment. Why?
Eighteen months ago I moved to Miami and then I moved to New York seven months ago.
It's the epicentre of commerce for the States. For us, it's a huge hub of capital and intellect. It made sense to be here, it's just so influential culturally. People are very uplifting and positive. It's a good place to get business done.
You've launched a coffee-and-cigarettes flavoured spiced rum. Where do you get inspiration for new ideas?
I worked with a team - James Hurman, Roger Holmes and Kelvin Soh - on that so it was a collaborative idea. We were playing around with different flavours of rum. Coffee and cigarettes is inspired by a movie by Jim Jarmusch called Coffee and Cigarettes. It was about the greatest conversations over a coffee and a cigarette. Rather than being a flavour, it's more of an inspiration. The smokiness of tobacco and coffee goes particularly well with rum.
It's a little bit naughty and politically incorrect, don't you think?
Yes, that was the thinking. It is initially jarring which is good; it's what we wanted. It goes back to what I was saying about having cut-through and memorability in the market.
What next for Stolen Rum?
We're planning a fairly sustained and focused roll-out in the USA. You'll see a lot happening over the next six months. The USA is a huge focus for us. It's mind-boggling how big this place is. In New York State, the market is about 50 times as big as the market in New Zealand.
If you had a whole day and night off in New York, what would you do?
Sleep in, coffee at Happy Bones and then another coffee at Two Hands, right near my apartment, wander round letting the caffeine take its creative course. Lunch at Nomad Hotel, wander around some more, read a book in Elizabeth St Park, get a suit made at P.
Johnson's, get my hair cut then go to dinner at Carbone with lots of people. Then out to listen to some music, at Output, I guess. Note that I've never done all of this in one day; that would be greedy. Wouldn't it be nice, though?