Old Young's Distillery is a renowned gin distillery located in the Swan Valley, Western Australia.
Founded by James Young, the company has won several awards, including Australian Champion Distiller in 2017 and 2018, and WA Champion Distiller in 2020 and 2022.
They offer a range of hand-crafted gins and vodkas, including their signature 1829 Gin and Pavlova Vodka.
They also operate an award-winning restaurant known as a Old Young’s Kitchen and a monthly gin membership of over 10,000 members called the Juniper Society.
Old Young's had modest beginnings, with founder James Young working 7 days a week, distilling gin in a 36sqm shed.
Now, they have generated over $5 million in total sales and have big plans.
Over the next 18-24 months they have set their sights on continued growth that includes tripling production capacity, establishing an East Coast Sales team, targeting new export markets, and growing the profile and membership of their Juniper Society.
Additionally, the company plans to build a monumental new home in the Swan Valley that Young describes as a “Cathedral of Gin”.
They are also actively seeking out new opportunities to expand its product range and hospitality experiences. Old Young’s has identified several areas for growth, including brown spirits, a non-alcoholic project, new product development such as bottled cocktails and RTDs, and a brand refresh.
They also remain committed to supporting their community with plans to continue their community grants program in Gingin and investing in the arts.
To execute their plans they turned to Equity Crowdfunding, and partnered with Glide Agency to help them achieve their raise.
Using social ads on Facebook, we built an equity crowdfunding campaign that targeted investors in Western Australia initially, before expanding to the East Coast.
By going all out with the advertising spend in the early stages of the Expression of Interest (EOI) phase, we were able to create an early push that optimised the campaign quickly and kept the Cost per Acquisition (CPA) low, allowing us to generate over 3,200 Expressions of Interest before the offer was even launched.
With a strong EOI performance, the Investment phase was a breeze.
The demand for craft spirits has skyrocketed in Australia over the last 10 years; investors clearly saw potential in Old Young’s and were eager to be a part of history.
Within 23 hours, Old Young’s reached their maximum target, raised a total of $2.7 million and welcomed 855 new investors.
The campaign was a resounding success in many ways, aside from reaching their investment goal Old Young's Distillery also broke three impressive records.
To begin with, it was the fastest ever $2 million raise in Western Australia!
Secondly, it was the largest alcohol-based raise in Australia ever!
And finally, it was the largest equity crowdfunding raise in Australia for this financial year!
Old Young’s equity crowdfunding campaign was a testament to the company’s reputation and loyal following.
The success of the campaign will enable Old Young’s to not only continue producing exceptional spirits but to achieve all their grand ambitions and we look forward to seeing what they accomplish next.
Cheers!
I’ve been speaking to investors throughout this process and so many of them have followed us right back to when we launched in 2016! To raise this amount of money in such a short time in tricky economic times is a testament to the creativity and passion we bring to work every day. I’m so excited for our plans and to have 855 new investors to share that ride with!
