Tell us about Lyre’s Spirit Co.
Lyre’s is the world’s most-awarded and largest range of non-alcoholic spirits, invented right here in Australia. We’re now available in more than 35 countries, in over 20 major retailers as well as in many of the world’s best bars and restaurants.
What inspired you to start Lyre’s Spirit Co?
We saw an opportunity to bring sophistication and elegance to the mixed drink and cocktail occasion. We knew people wanted to drink less, but we also suspected they didn’t want to give up their favourite drinks or moments of human connection over a beverage – we were right!
Tell us about your career and background.
I’m the Co-Founder of BrandLink group – a group of marketing services businesses dedicated to helping our exclusively consumer goods customers launch, promote and sell their products. Within the group is one of Australia’s largest market agencies (Kinetic) as well as a promotional logistics business (BrandLink) that’s been a record-equalling AFR Fast100 recipient (for 4 years). I started my career in retail marketing, but things really took off when I landed a role with The Coca-Cola Company back in the early 2000s.
Describe a typical work day for you.
That’s a tricky one as they’re all different. Last year, I travelled 230 days of the year internationally developing the Lyre’s business, selling our product into national distributors, recruiting team members and profiling and appointing agencies, so much of the typical work day was in airports, hotels and cafes. Zoom was critical to stay in touch with the global team, and I often spent many hours on that with the core team back in Australia. When the pandemic hit, we were already used to mostly remote working, so we didn’t really break our stride – we accidentally built a pandemic-proof business!
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business?
Just that – start. Don’t try and plan the perfect business and hit a home run the first time. That will come. First launch, then learn, likely fail and then iterate. Launch again. Learn to panel beat the business at speed. That’s what’s demanded of founder’s in 2021. Bake in agility and an ability to deal with volatility. Recruit the right people. Have fun.
What’s next for you, and Lyre’s Spirit Co?
We’ve got a few more countries we need to find representation in, we’ll be manufacturing in four new countries this year, we’ve got an amazing new pipeline of product launches planned and our team needs to get a lot bigger to support the demand that we’re seeing in the category and for our brand. Never a dull moment!
