Corban Halcrow, founder of Dancing Goat Liquid Coffee.
When and how did you hit upon the idea behind your business?
As a young carpenter I got into the coffee industry through working part-time in my parents' takeaway espresso business, which they set up in 2006. I then decided to join them as owners of a new espresso takeaway venture that I designed and built in 2009. By mid-2010 I'd convinced my parents we should get into roasting coffee. I designed and built a roasterie on my rural property here on the Kapiti Coast, taught myself to roast coffee and supplied the family espresso business as a first client.
But after a few years of lining up with every other coffee company in the country trying to get key cafe accounts, I felt there was a need for a bit of innovation in the industry. I hit upon the idea behind Dancing Goat Liquid Coffee in early 2013 when I noticed that high-end specialty coffees, mixed with trendy new brew methods were all the rage with some coffee retailers.
I guess my dream was to create much bigger bodied and more refined ambient - or cold - extracted liquid coffee that might change the coffee drinking experience, and might even get consumers to reach into their pockets and pay a bit more for high quality coffees.
Unlike wine, coffees at a consumer level all have fairly similar price points, even though there can be a big variance in the quality. So that was really the beginning of my idea.
To have an idea is one thing, but to turn that into a business is another. What were the practical steps you took to turn that original idea into an actual business?
There were months of failed attempts to make the product and long nights spent wondering if I was just trying to do something just for the sake of being different. At a certain point I just decided it was time to step away from the influence of the conventional coffee equipment I was experimenting with and try a different approach.
So I started to take some inspiration from wine making and craft brewing methods and technologies. At first it was mainly to help inspire me with the design of the hardware I would use to make my product, and learn more about large-scale beverage operations.
But then I stumbled across a lot of different techniques that inspired me to look differently at the product I was trying to make. I still needed something that ticked the boxes of what I set out to do, but also thought I could maybe create a product that would improve with age just like a wine.
In November 2013 I had cracked the basics of a method that was not only a lot simpler than what I'd been trying with my previous experiments, but could be done on mass scale and seemed to get better with age.
The next step was to take the product to my family - who are also my business partners - to talk about commercialising the product. At this point I started to produce the product in really small quantities and we began retailing it at the family takeaway coffee businesses and local markets.
What's your plan for how your idea is going to develop from here?
We started to sell the product to larger retailers like local supermarkets, niche produce stores and wholesale suppliers and backed it up with tastings. We've found, though, that most people still purchase products they've been recommended, rather than discovering them for themselves, so good old word-of-mouth has been what's got the product selling.
We've got new labelling and branding imagery coming out soon and a purpose-built building under construction that will give us the room to expand here and offshore. We're planning to start exporting in the near future; I'm in early-stage talks with importers in Hong Kong and have had some interest in supplying the product to Europe.
What have you found the most challenging aspect of turning your idea into a business?
I think learning about intellectual property - and how to protect it - has been the biggest learning curve in terms of developing this idea into a business. I'd been advised to get some protection for my innovation and that started me on a year-long project, which ended in February this year, to patent the product.
But when I was told that my product was being moved through to acceptance with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand, my legal counsel also advised me that if I planned to file for IP protection in any other countries I'd need to do it before 17 March.
At that point I realised I really had very little understanding of our intellectual property position. Soon after I dug through a pile of old letters in my office and found a letter inviting me to a meeting with an intellectual property strategy specialist called EverEdge IP.
Meeting them gave me an insight into the realities of protecting intellectual property and I also got some really valuable advice from a senior member of that team that set my mind clear.
What's a key piece of advice you'd have for someone else with a burning business idea who wants to make it a reality?
Keeping things simple is better. An idea is worth nothing until it's turned into a product you can sell and if that doesn't work well on a small scale, then it probably won't work well on a big scale either.
Coming up in Your Business: Etsy is a massive global marketplace to buy and sell all things homemade. So what are some of the great Kiwi businesses making a living out of selling on this platform? If you've got a story to tell on growing a small business through Etsy, drop me a note: nzhsmallbusiness@gmail.com