Craft distillery, Archie Rose Distilling Co. drives awareness and sales with limited edition gin collection When Archie Rose created four unique gin flavours to match specially designed labels it got a taste of the amazing power of limited editions to build brand awareness and sales among channel customers and consumers. Each release of 3000 bottles, with artist-designed, digitally printed labels, sold out faster than the one before; the final one in just hours.

Industry sectors: Food and beverage

Brand name: Archie Rose Distilling Co.

Testimonial from: Victoria Tulloch, Head of Marketing, Archie Rose

Print Service Provider: Multi-Color Australia and New Zealand (MCC)

HP equipment: HP Indigo 6600 Digital Press

Websites: archierose.com.au \ mcclabel.com/australia

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Challenge

“The idea of starting with artwork and retro-fitting the botanicals to match was an interesting challenge. It was a great way to push the boundaries on creating a world-class, limited edition collaboration series, with the quality of the artwork, label design, and spirit validated by a global packaging award win” – Victoria Tulloch, Head of Marketing, Archie Rose

Raise brand awareness in a fast-growing marketArchie Rose Distilling Co., located in Sydney, Australia, was founded in 2015, but it has already made an international name for itself by developing unique, award-winning gin, vodka, and whisky. Built on a spirit of sharing, and through technical and creative collaboration, it is quick to innovate, both in its products and in how it shares the spirits experience.

The modern Australian spirits-making industry is growing fast. The industry was really small when Archie Rose first launched and there are now over 150 distilleries around Australia. With that, consumer awareness is increasing, but so too is competition.

“We take a unique approach to how we make our products, and to how we package and brand them,” says Victoria Tulloch, Head of Marketing. “Not only is the product in the bottle exceptional, but also our packaging and branding are at a very high level.”

True to their brand ethos, Archie Rose recently worked with the acclaimed tattoo artist Kian Forreal, known as Horisumi, to create its first limited edition series. While packaging is usually inspired by the product, in this case, Archie Rose took the opposite tack – it started with four designs celebrating the Japanese seasons, and then developed unique gins to match those designs.

As a young company, Archie Rose wanted to increase brand awareness and support its ongoing consumer engagement drive. Crucially, it also wanted to explore what new opportunities can be opened with limited editions.

Solution

“Thanks to Horisumi’s artwork and the packaging, it’s a product that really stands out on shelf. The label design, paper stock, and printing all contributed to a really beautiful packaging result.”– Victoria Tulloch, Head of Marketing, Archie Rose

A perfect meeting of product, packaging, and promotionHorisumi provided the artwork for all four seasons upfront, to give Archie Rose time to bring his illustrations to life through the flavour of each gin. Once each season’s unique gin formulation was set, the distillery worked with Multi-Color (MCC), a leading Australian wine label printing company, and the Squad Ink design agency to turn Horisumi’s artwork into gorgeous gin bottle labels.

The labels were printed on the HP Indigo 6600 Digital Press, on uncoated paper specially selected for its texture, which is similar to the watercolour paper Horisumi used for his artwork. Gold foil embellishments were added to bring the concept together, locked up with the Archie Rose brand. The labels later went on to win the design agency a Gold FAB Award for packaging design – a prestigious win that echoes Archie Rose’s many awards for its products.

Archie Rose marketed the special edition directly to business customers, including Australia’s top 100 bars and one major national retailer, and to other engaged customers on its database. It also promoted the releases on social media, through paid advertisements on social media, and email marketing to consumers.

“We really pride ourselves on our visual content, creating outstanding content and videos to drive interest, so we did a video series around this,” says Tulloch. “We also created a range of different signature drinks around these gins and used the signature drinks to market the products to bars and consumers.”

Results

There is tremendous brand value in well-executed limited edition products. In this instance collaborating with Horisumi meant the really excellent final result was the sum of many parts. If a business is truly committed to bringing all these parts together, limited editions have the potential to grow your brand in really interesting ways.” – Victoria Tulloch, Head of Marketing, Archie Rose

Engagement boost and sellout success Archie Rose’s first limited edition collection achieved phenomenal sales results. The first set of 3000 numbered bottles – for Autumn, released in March 2017 – sold out in four months. The Winter release sold in 3.5 months, Spring in just two weeks, and the final release, Summer, sold out within six hours.

The first 200 bottles of each release were offered with a special-edition wrap around the bottle, increasing exclusiveness and demand. Archie Rose also released 100 complete sets of the four gins with a poster featuring the four artwork designs.

“We were really pleased with the result,” recalls Tulloch. “It has had a wonderful impact on groups of customers and consumers that we care about, and it contributed to significant social media acquisition and engagement.”

Since this first successful limited edition, Archie Rose has released a Summer Gin Project special edition, and it is planning other special editions going forward.

Archie Rose learned a lot from the experiment, and Tulloch says she sees value for other small companies to also learn and grow with these kind of short-run production campaigns. Even though the upfront investment can be higher than for regular production runs, the overall payoff can be huge.

“There is tremendous value in the concept and theory behind limited editions. We see it as a collaboration product, a sum of many parts. If a business is truly committed to bringing all those parts together, limited editions have exceptional potential to propel you forward.”

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