When I launched an adult non-alcoholic spirits brand, in 2018, the category barely existed. I was so focused on the product, the brand, the listings, that I significantly underestimated one thing: how much it would cost to educate people. Not just consumers, but grocery buyers, bartenders… everyone in the chain. What is this? How do I drink it? Where does it live in my store? Those questions had to be answered repeatedly: on the bottle, on the shelf, in every piece of marketing. The brands that underestimate the education budget are often the ones that stall, not because the product isn’t good, but because the market doesn’t yet know what to do with it.
The second thing that caught me off guard was infrastructure. When we started producing at scale, the supply chain wasn’t ready for us. Bottlers and distillers were set up for alcoholic spirits or large-format soft drinks. Blending a spirits format with non-alcoholic liquids required new machinery, new processes, and a critical mass of other brands entering the market before producers felt the investment was worthwhile. That takes time, and it’s largely outside your control. Building a new category means building an ecosystem, not just a brand.
Which brings me to the counterintuitive one. Your competitors are not your enemies. In the early days of low & no, we shared knowledge, worked with industry bodies like Club Soda, and collectively worked to get the category understood and properly ranged. If you’re first into a space, part of your job is to build the market itself and you’ll struggle to do that alone.
Your trade partners matter as much as your end consumers in those early years. Grocers are the ones explaining your product to their customers, so give them the tools, the language, and the shelf logic to do it well. The biggest barrier we faced early on was that people really didn’t know where to find this newly created category, which subsequently led to incredibly strong category signposting and creative activations. One of the most memorable was a wellness aisle trial within Sainsbury’s, reaching thousands of shoppers who would never normally walk down the BWS aisle.
Think creatively about where you show up, not just how. The opportunities in a new category can be huge, but don’t underestimate everything else. Move quickly, but have patience too. Cultural shifts take time, and you won’t be able to change the world overnight, however much you might want to. Once the category is established though, it will be worth the wait.
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