Our crowdfunding roadshow has taken us so far to Tallinn, Tartu and Riga. Here are the key questions investors have been asking us:
Why does your 2023 roadmap have 12 products?
We plan to come out with new products for new seasons in each category - spirits, non-alcoholic distilled drinks, and tonic sodas. At the same time, we are keeping close control of our portfolio management and will be vicious also in dropping non-performing products from our portfolio.
What gives you a reason to believe in accelerating growth after slower 2019?
There are a few key drivers for growth this year:
1) its the first time Lahhentagge has professional salespeople in the team, this is helping us to grow our reach significantly on the home market, and it will help to grow further on the export markets where we have already established beachheads
2) the first non-alcoholic gin Flâneur and our upcoming alcoholic drink have got raving reviews. Many bartenders believe Flâneur can be the flagship product to grow Lahhentagge in the growing non-alcoholic trend
3) we expect to see first fruits of long-term work on export markets, with the most explicit volume opportunity being in Finland, where we picked up two cities Christmas trees to roll out localised versions of our Spruce&Cardamom tonic soda
4) we have started own production and will have it fully up early months of 2020 – enabling us to be more flexible and respond to the growing demand
Related to slower 2019 growth — we lacked sales resource in the team, our distilling equipment arrived only in the second half of the year, and the first product from this was launched only for Christmas.
In January 2020 our drinks reached Antarctica.
How did you reach the company valuation? Where does it come from?
We took into account the valuation of similar stage Estonian drink companies when they have raised money - positioned ourselves just above the average there based on the broad international reach of our products. At the same time, we took into account also EV/sales valuation of roughly 5x in the wider drinks industry, putting our valuation roughly on par with larger peers which have fewer risks, but also fewer growth opportunities.
What drives down your own costs?
Growing scale and moving production to Saaremaa will be the key drivers for lowering the cost base.
What people will you need to hire next?
Most likely they would be the second salesperson, a full-stack marketing person and production help. We have good people in our Lahhentagge network who could likely fill most, if not all, of the positions.
You mention 1,300 POS target, how do you manage that with just two salespersons?
We see that the majority of the point of sales will be part of different retail chains, which lowers significantly the potential number of contacts for one salesperson to handle.
Why did you rebrand tonic waters?
We initially launched them for adult Estonian market under Lahjentagge brand which worked for that demographic well, but we saw two developments which caused rebranding 1) an increasing amount of children started to buy and consume the drink 2) it started to get early traction on some export markets. There were ethical and language reasons behind rebranding them to Estonic Soda, but we would not rule out introducing Lahhentagge tonics for an adult audience.
You also plan to have white label production, what would that be?
We have already several requests from Estonian brands to produce their drinks.
Lahhentagge Quote from Latvia
In local alcohol-free gin market, who do you compete with?
In the Estonian market, the only meaningful rival is Diageo’s Seedlip.
For a perfect G&T or F&T as you say your Flaneur asks for a sweeter tonic than Estonic. Do you plan to make them?
We would not rule that out.
What’s the exit plan?
