⚡ How this Iced Tea Brand is Disrupting the Drinks Industry

Morning Innovators ⚡ In less than 5 minutes, we’ll cover…

🥳 The best funding opportunities, events and jobs in the start-up world
📰 The biggest news stories in the start-up world
🫖 How this iced tea brand is disrupting the drinks industry
🌨️ How snowy weather helped this company go viral
📧 A CRM tool to help you build stronger customer relationships

✨ Last weeks most clicked link was this link to submit your deck to Sixth Wave Ventures.

⚡If you’re looking to attend our next start-up social, you’re in luck! After filling our ticket allocation, we’ve been able to increase capacity for our next event and have added an additional 20 tickets! Get yours here.

Happy hustling,
Rich & Gary

🎤 Events/Opportunities

🧑‍🚀 Hotbed are hosting an Investor:Founder Speed Dating event at Spacemade Barbican, and are looking for 10 founders to meet 10 angels and early-stage VCs for back-to-back 1:1 meetings.

💸 OpenseedVC has officially launched! They are first investors in experienced operators with up to $150k cheques as they take the leap to start their technology companies. Their focus is commerce, health & work in Africa & Europe.

🦅 Applications are now open for the next Barclays Eagle Labs Funding Readiness Programme. The online programme will covers; Grant funding, Crowdfunding, Equity investment, Alternative ways of funding your business.

💷 There’s one week left to apply for Baltic Ventures accelerator. Baltic Ventures is an early-stage tech accelerator based in the Baltic Triangle, Liverpool that supports game-changing founding teams who are building the solutions and businesses of tomorrow. They offer a 4-month cohort programme, including £30k investment, dedicated coaching support, interactive masterclasses and VC investor meetings.

💼 Job opportunities

🏠 Software Engineer, Habito
💻 Senior Product Manager, Edge & Node
🪫 Full Stack Engineer, tem.

💵 DeepL, a Cologne-based start-up that uses AI for language translation, has raised $300m at a $2bn valuation. Sifted

💻 Microsoft wants to bring generative AI to the forefront of Windows — and the PCs running it. TechCrunch

🤳 Linktree surpasses 50M users, rolls out its social commerce program to more creators. TechCrunch

💷 Vitesse, an integrated treasury and payment service provider for the insurance industry, has raised $93m (£73.1m) in a Series C funding round. UKTN

🫖 Riviera: Crafting a Refreshing Take on British Iced Tea

Riviera is redefining the iced tea experience with a splash of Mediterranean zest. Founded by Francesca Gresswell in 2020 amid a clear market void, Riviera offers a sophisticated twist to the traditional iced tea with flavours like peach, lemon, raspberry, and mint. Aimed primarily at young adults aged 16-35, Riviera's beverages cater to a modern, health-conscious consumer base, boasting vegan, low-calorie, gluten-free, natural, and non-carbonated qualities. This brand is about more than just taste—it's about delivering a premium experience that can grace the menus of cafes, restaurants, and bars across the UK.

Initial Steps: Establishing a Local Foundation

Riviera’s journey began with a simple, yet effective strategy: local engagement. Their first stockist, a local café charmed by Riviera's local roots and UK manufacturing, came on board through direct outreach bolstered by the Riviera team sharing their mission and story across social media. Early marketing strategies leaned heavily on attending markets throughout the East Midlands, which not only boosted direct consumer interaction but also helped grow their online presence significantly, as they used these markets to collect email subscribers and social followers.

The power of social media, especially platforms like TikTok, played a crucial role in expanding Riviera’s direct-to-consumer sales. Francesca’s personal brand, alongside the business page, provided valuable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs and increased brand visibility and engagement.

Scaling Up: Building Brand Momentum

Riviera's growth strategy was marked by prudence and gradual scaling, having taken a whole year to build a social following and create relationships with stockists. Francesca's philosophy of "don't run before you can walk" proved vital in ensuring the brand's stability and sustainable growth. By solidifying its customer base and manufacturing relationships first, Riviera was able to scale its production and invest in marketing effectively. After being able to secure a good number of stockists and sales, their first hire was a social media executive. The addition of a social media executive and collaboration with creative teams transitioned Riviera from a local to a national brand, broadening its market reach across the UK.

Lessons Learned: Social Media and Brand Presence

Reflecting on the early days, Francesca acknowledged the initial underutilisation of social media as a pivotal tool for brand growth. The recent adoption of platforms like TikTok was noted as a missed opportunity to engage with a broader audience sooner. Moreover, due to being naturally introverted, overcoming personal barriers to embrace more public and creative marketing strategies, such as in-person activations and sampling, was highlighted as an area for improvement.

Bootstrapping and Financial Insights

Riviera remains a bootstrapped venture, fuelled mostly by Francesca's savings, having worked full time since turning 18 and putting all that money into Riviera at age 22. Riviera was also partly funded by local grants, and a small inheritance. This financial independence, while challenging, has kept the company grounded and cautious in its expenditure. The food and beverage industry is noted for its high entry costs and prolonged path to profitability, especially given the scale of investment required for product development and market expansion. Francesca’s own words were “Boostrapping is hard, you will see other brands soar as they have hundreds of thousands to dedicate to marketing spend but in the end it can cause more issues than it's worth. I consider myself really lucky to be able to boostrap the business. You need tens of thousands to launch a product based business as you have to buy and develop the product. As you expand you only have to buy more stock so it's rare to be profitable in your first three years. Most of the food and drink businesses you see in the supermarkets are still loss making 10+ years in as they expand.”

Overcoming Challenges: Manufacturing Setbacks

A significant setback for Riviera occurred when an unexpected surge in demand led to a rapid depletion of stock during peak season, having sold the same amount of stock in a 2 week period as they did the whole of the previous year combined. The desperate need to get more stock forced a hasty partnership with a new manufacturer, as their usual manufacturer had no availabilty, which unfortunately resulted in a batch of substandard products that ended up being a considerable financial loss of £10,000 in stock as they had to be thrown away. This experience underscored the importance of thorough due diligence and contingency planning in manufacturing partnerships.

Core Takeaways and Future Outlook

Among the key lessons gleaned from Riviera's journey are the importance of trusting your instincts and maintaining resilience through fluctuating business cycles. As the brand continues to navigate the competitive beverage landscape, these insights forge the path forward, emphasising innovation, customer engagement, and strategic growth.

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We’ve all had experienced a time in which we think, “I’m seeing that business everywhere at the moment”. Well, the team at Polo Mints were making EVERYONE feel like that with this marketing stunt.

After receiving some heavy snow, the Polo Mints team were already prepared having anticipated the cold weather. They got some moulds made up in advance and went around turning every bit of snow into a Polo Mint. Naturally, Polo Mints being white makes it even more realistic, but your product doesn’t have to be white to make this work.

How can you use the weather or the landscape to create a viral marketing campaign? Maybe head down to the beach and fill it from top to bottom with your company logo using nothing but the sand and a mould?

Each week we highlight our favourite tools - either something we’ve been using in our businesses, or tools that our innovator community have recommended.

Capsule CRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform designed for small to medium-sized businesses. It offers tools for managing contacts, tracking sales opportunities, and organising customer communications. Capsule CRM features customisable pipelines, task management, and email integration, allowing businesses to streamline their sales processes and improve customer interactions. The platform also supports integrations with popular third-party applications such as G Suite, Mailchimp, and Xero. Capsule CRM aims to simplify CRM functions with an intuitive interface and scalable features, making it suitable for growing businesses seeking to enhance their customer relationship management capabilities.

Next week we’ll be highlighting another awesome start-up (if you want us to feature you, drop us a message), as well as sharing all the usuals including funding opportunities, Start-Up news, plus plenty of awesome tips, tricks and tools.

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