 Hey, folks, welcome to the podcast. So we're doing a special series of podcasts, which I'm recording over Google Hangouts. So we're doing audio and video, because for some unknown reason, people don't want to come see me face to face right now. But there's always opportunity. And the cool thing is I'm able to now podcast with people from all over the world. So we're going to get an amazing eclectic mix of people from, from different industries, different perspectives to share their story and tell us, you know, their thoughts and feelings and what's going on right now and all of that cool stuff. Hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe in all the usual places and enjoy my life. Thanks for joining me. And it's a real pleasure to have Joyce and Racer from Double Dutch. How you girls doing? We're very good. Thank you for having us. This is very exciting. Pleasure, no pleasure. We like had in the diary a few times and we were going to do face to face, but you didn't want to come see me, which was Of course we want to still see you. We're going to make up of the genetic. Yeah, 100%. 100% when this is over. So you both, so you're both live in London. So where are you with your, you've gone home now? Or what's the, like, where are you girls remain? We have gone home because we were in a tiny flat in London. So now we've got some outside space, which is better. Nice. Nice. When did you, when did you leave London? I think three weeks ago or something. Beginning of April. Yeah. Yeah. How have you found it? Have you found it like being at home, lockdown? Yeah, I think it's interesting. I think definitely the first two weeks we focus so much on like pivoting our business so much more to like online and digital, but now I'm almost kind of used to it. I think it's in a way less stressful. I think there's more time in the day. So I think there's ups and downs on this whole lockdown. But it gave us the opportunity to really rethink our business model and really seeing what's the priority. So I think all in all, it's probably, it might have had like a good advantage for us. Really? Awesome. Cool. We'll hear about that. We'll hear about that. Just be interesting on, on like kind of home life. I mean, for me, I'm a real people's person. I love like meeting someone face to face and I get a lot of energy from that stuff. And so for me, it's taken like a few weeks to just adjust to like being at home. Video calls are cool, but it's not quite the same as meeting someone face to face. Have you found the same thing or have you adjusted quite well to like your new routine? No, I think it's really difficult to just kind of the things you took, you take for granted, like just go Friday afternoon to a pub with some friends. And I think just go have a little nice apparel spritz on the terrace. I mean, especially now with the nice weather, but we can do a little party with the two of us. I think, yeah, it's definitely been a big change, but yeah, getting used to it now. Yeah, I think for us, I think that we are lucky enough that we are like in parenting together. So at least you can have a gin and tonic together. But I think it's definitely challenging. And yeah, I can't wait to go out and have a gin and tonic and just enjoy life a little bit more. Definitely. How have you coached with like your team, obviously your team at home? Have you been doing like kind of regular Zoom calls or like how have you kept everyone like motivated? We've been doing loads of Zoom calls. We've got one weekly kind of more casual gin and tonic Thursday afternoon Zoom call with everyone. And then we've got one-to-ones almost daily with the rest of the team. I think WhatsApp also has been quite important, like with WhatsApp, we're just like sending business updates, but also just like more like fun memes and whatever. So I think in terms of like our contact with the team has been like really good. And I think most of our team has been amazing in taking the most of it. So I think maybe even with some of the team on the sales side particularly, I think maybe we have more contact now than during normal life, especially the team that are because we're not all based in London and half of the team is remote. So we don't tend to meet so often face to face. So I think now with the weekly Zoom calls and a few times a week, the one-to-ones, I think maybe there's even more contact. Yeah, I'm actually having that as well. Even people in the office, you kind of come in and you just gnarled or you're like, hey, how you doing? Whereas now it's like we've got to speak and you're on the video and you've actually got to be like, what's going on? And obviously nothing really is going on, right? Because you're at home, you haven't been out. So, but you still have to like, it's cool, you get to know each other quite well. I found that like I've almost got closer to people than I would have done just in the office. It's a weird one, I think. What's going to be very strange is selling when this is over in a mask, you're going to like go to the clients and you're going to have to put your mask on and try and sell a drink or recruitment services or whatever you're trying. It's going to be really interesting, that new kind of paper as well. I think it's going to be different. I don't think we'll be doing so much face to face meetings. And I think this time kind of has learned everyone that you can do a meeting over a Zoom call or just pick up the phone. And I think maybe we'll do slightly less face to face meetings going forward. And I think I think this gave us a good opportunity. I think lots of people have seen this as a good opportunity to see how you can work more efficiently. There's no point in traveling three hours back and forth for a meeting that of course, face to face meetings are still going to be super important than I think people buy from people, not from products. But I do think people have really experienced now how efficient it can be without the unnecessary trouble. Yeah, that's true. I think office space in big cities is going to struggle. You're right, like a lot of big companies, certainly to start with when we come out of lockdown, not everyone's going to go back at the same time. You might have like someone going in a couple of days a week, someone another couple of days, and you just won't need so much space. You won't need a desk per person. And then you get some people that really love working at home, others really love going into the office, then a bunch of people in between. It's cool. This trend was coming, but it's just got like a massive like shot in the arm and it's just accelerated. It's going to be interesting. Very true. We just put in an offer on like a lease on this storyhouse in Seoul, where we would build like a bar downstairs and then like this activation event space in the top floor and then like have offices for the next three years that we can really go to the team. I mean, I think what a God's present that we weren't able to sign it before COVID because now we're thinking behalf of the team is probably going to be first working remotely. They don't even want to come into a nice office anymore. Yeah, it's true. Do you think that will be the case? Do you think after this like taste of working from home, you'll be happy with people working wherever they want to work? I just think, I think being in an office is still much better because I think you've got like the personal contact and I think it's crucial. But I just think maybe for example one day week or I don't know, I just don't think it's going to be exactly the same yet. And as you said, if you have 10 people, I don't think there are 10 of them are going to be in the office. I think it's going to be at like 80% 70% maybe and then and maybe it's a bit more like flexible. People want to come in a bit later to avoid traffic or like really busy tube stations. And I mean, I think we always encourage flexible working hours anyway. So I think that's only going to going to increase more. Yeah, that's true. Do you want to just run through what you what you actually do? So to double Dutch, presumably you're both Dutch and your twins in case no one knew. And when did you start your your brand and how did it all come about? So with Double Dutch, we offer a range of 10 delicious and innovative tonic waters and mixers. So we do flavors like your Indian tonic water, skinny tonic water, and then we have like more exciting flavors like a cucumber and watermelon, pomegranate and basil, and many more. So we started Double Dutch. Now we're in our fifth year of trading. We always so we are Dutch, as you said, and in the Netherlands, they actually invented Chin in the 1617 century. So it's the birthplace of Chin, I don't know why. Well, the Dutch King of Orange, he actually brought us to the UK and made it a very British product. So our parents, they always had a distillery as a hobby. And we kind of grew up knowing all the local distilleries, build up a really big passion for good drinks. And then when we were students at university here in the Netherlands, we always used to make tonic waters and our own sodas for friends and family, they we would throw like parties and our friends would bring the gin or the vodka, and we would make like our experiment with different sodas and flavors. So our friends, they started calling us a tonic twins. And it was just like a fun thing we did. And then we graduated started working in finance, didn't really enjoy that. So then we moved to London to do a second master in tech entrepreneurship at UCL. And it was then that we realized, wow, the gin and tonic hype was even bigger in here in the UK than it was back in the Netherlands. The choice of mixes were like as limited as back home. So we wrote our dissertation about the concept of new type of mixers. And then when we graduated, our university gave us an award for best dissertation of the year. And with that, they gave us our initial investment. So we got funding from a university to produce a first batch and then took it from there. Amazing. That's a great story. And you always wanted to do your own business or did that kind of the idea come to you during like the masters in London? I think we always, our family is quite entrepreneurial as well and have their own business. But I think we always thought we'll start our own thing maybe later in life. And I think a kind of university in London and our dissertation project kind of pushed that forward. And then we just decided to start straight out of uni. Brilliant. Brilliant. What's been what's been like, what was the most difficult thing starting? So many things every day. I think probably just super hard to get your first customers and you probably get like 150 notes before you get your first yes. So that's definitely could can be really demotivating and kind of, yeah, I think it's good that you're if you have a co-founder, I think it's slightly easier because you can pull each other up. And you just kind of need to persist and pull through the notes and just find someone who wants to support you. Yeah, it's tough. I'm in my 10th year now. My 10th anniversary is the first of April. Thank you. Thank you. And you're right. Like the big a big thing is being comfortable with losing, you know, or with rejection or with failure or just that you can't always win all the time. And you're going to get a lot of noise. And as long as you keep picking yourself up and keep going and don't quit. And, you know, you just keep going and you turn up to work and you do your thing. And they have a lot of patience because things take a lot of time, right? It doesn't just like you start the business and suddenly, you know, it takes to take a lot of effort and a lot of energy. But you get there eventually. Yeah, it's good. It's nice to have the two of you together, obviously know each other, say, well, so presuming bounce off each other or in the company each other. It's good to have a co-founder, I think. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, I think for us, it's great because we 100% like trust each other. And it's just much more time efficient because you don't need to do any tip-towing. You just be straight away. But we do fight a lot. Yeah, we do. But we make up quickly as well. Was it, has it been weird then, like, from just being like, you know, sisters, twins and stuff to actually like running and building a business together? Has it been a bit of a change or was it just a natural progression? We always, we've been quite close. We don't have any other siblings. So we always been in the same class. We went to, we always, we've lived together during our student years. It was quite natural. We've always been really close. That's really good. Do you have different jobs? No, different jobs. Yeah. So Reissa does everything in terms of like marketing, sales and team. And I'm responsible for like finance operations and export sites of the business. Awesome. Awesome. And so how did you start then? So we, did you start selling, trying to sell wholesale, like to bars and restaurants and stuff like that? What was there? So we started into the investments bar hotel scene. We started super niche, kind of started in the West End to the premium accounts of five star hotels and the high-end cocktail bars and really focused on that. Definitely one of the biggest challenges and struggles in the beginning was that we didn't really, even after a year of market research, we didn't realize that bars and restaurants, they don't buy from manufacturers directly, but they buy via a wholesaler. So then we kind of, we kind of had the chicken and the egg problem that a wholesaler doesn't want to stock you if a bar, it doesn't want to stock you, but the bar doesn't want to stock you if a wholesaler doesn't stock you. And there was definitely kind of a, definitely a difficulty. So then we finally got a wholesaler on bars and that really helped us, but we definitely focused really small geographically and type of, and channel and type of accounts and then kind of over the time just kind of made it broader and expanded into other areas. Great. And then to the focus to start with was in London? Yes, it's fine. And where do you manufacture? We, we've always manufactured in the UK, we still are, but we started initially in London, then moved to the Midlands. Now most of our production is in Northern Ireland, but then we also produce in Europe and in South Africa because we're 100 percent, we're working to becoming 100 percent carbon neutral. So we're trying to get our environmental footprint as low as possible. Oh, so you see, and South Africa is a market for you now? Yeah. Yeah. Come on. I was supposed to be there to see my grandma, but they wouldn't let me in the country, flights were cancelled. Oh, wow. When did you want to go? I was supposed to go two weeks ago. Oh, yeah. Right in the middle. But I literally right in the middle of my grandma was so excited to see her. She's 98. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully next year, I go, I go like once or twice a year there. It's such, it's mostly to Cape Town. It's a great place. Yeah. Amazing. It's a really, really good spot. So on, on COVID, how have you, how have you found business? Like what's, what's been the effect and what have you done? I think when it first started to weed thoughts, oh my God, this is good. I mean, it was terrible before it cost us almost for, I mean, a terrible decrease. Think for us, we always used to be very focused on restaurants, bars, hotels. So that obviously fell away. But then our online and retail has picked up massively. And we saw a really good increase there. We also just launched our online web shop directly on our websites to go direct to consumers. And I think that's definitely be, it's been a lot better than we expected it to be. Yeah. I think it's been great. I think we've been lucky enough to be able to pivot super quickly into digital and into online. And online sales have definitely, for example, Amazon has grown by about 1000% in the last two weeks. So I think for us, yeah, it's been, it's been really, really good. And I'm super grateful for the whole digital movement that's coming. So yeah, it's crazy. It's probably better, that's right, because I guess your profit margins are going to be bigger selling direct. And yeah, maybe I'm sure. And it's interesting. And then how have you found then the distribution? Because presumably you weren't selling much direct to consumer. Now rather than maybe a few wholesaler clients you were shipping to, you have thousands of individuals looking for a few bottles of tonic or whatever. Is that being a big shift though? I think we've definitely seen the community really getting together. Our logistics and procurement partners, it's really pivoted super quickly as well. So actually it's been, no, it's been relatively easier than I would have expected it to be. Yeah, our production suppliers have also been able to keep on with their production schedules. So it's been so far so fine, yeah. Awesome. And then to be given, you've got different manufacturers in different countries. So that's probably been great for you, right? Because it must be challenging getting the product from one country to another right now. Yeah, it's slightly more challenging, but they are, it's possible to go to customs is just taking more time. So while, for example, a load from Belgium to Switzerland would have taken two days and it might not take four days because of customs and delays. But business is going through. So I think governments have been quite helpful with that. Awesome. And then how have you found working with Amazon? I mean, if your sales have come a thousand percent, probably some of those 175,000 people they've had to hire has been taught to package your products. But that's amazing. I mean, if that's a similar story across other brands, I mean, this is crazy for Amazon. True. I've spoken with many other brands and everyone's kind of seeing a really good uplift. So they must be busy packing. Yeah. And I think then a super nice thing, especially about like the food and beverage industries, like everybody really came together, like so many, so many distilleries are now setting up their online shops and they are buying them. Double-dutch, like now we on our online shop are buying spirit brands and like we're all keeping like business within each other. And like, so I think it's been great that everybody's like really supportive from like spirit partners to suppliers to customers. That's really cool. One thing you notice walking around London is, you know, you have you have the recycling bins, like the green recycling bins. I walked around my area, I went for a run and like almost every single recycling bin is like overflowing with like wine bottles, gin bottles, vodka bottles. People like a good drinking lockdown. Yeah, I love it. Literally, either they're getting, they're probably going on, I'm trying to get a fit and going on a run and then coming home and then just going through there, going through their alcohol. There's actually a great guy in my area, I'm in this LinkedIn in London and he does home cocktail deliveries. Nice. Amazing. Yeah, so he sends me the menu on WhatsApp and then you like order your cocktails and then the next day he delivers them to your door. Amazing. It's great. The community pulls together. There's just some guy also that drives a black taxi and he drives around and he delivers like cases of wine to people. It's funny, there's a neighbour nearby that they get a delivery every other day of wine and then you know you see a black car drive up and it's like, oh they've gone through their wine again. It's so funny. What about like, have you found obviously bars and pubs? I mean, they're probably going to be the last ones to reopen, right? I mean, I think we might end up seeing less of them on the high street. I mean, a lot of the pubs were starting to close anyway, I think in the UK. So do you see the future for you more online now? Do you think that's going to be a trend or do you think we'll get back to enjoying a nice drink? I think we'll certainly go back to enjoying a nice drink in a bar or restaurants and pubs and I really hope that most of the people are going to pull through and I think there are starting to become some really good government initiatives. So I do hope that the whole pub and bar scene isn't going to be changing too much when we got out of this, but obviously online is becoming more important and I think there was already such a big trend over the past three years and that's just kind of accelerated massively, but I still think it's just a really different thing to be enjoying a nice drink at home with your family or go to a pub and have like a night out. So I do hope that doesn't change too much and I think if I look at myself once the lockdown is over and the hospitality is open again, the first thing I'll do is start enjoying gin and tonics out of my home and not in my garden again. I think there's so many amazing concepts, especially in London and so many amazing restaurant tours and publications that it would be really a shame if a part of that isn't going to make it and I think lots of of the bigger drinks companies have initiated amazing charity supports for like those pubs and restaurants that are struggling at this moment. So I think it's just it's going to take a while before everything is going to back to normal, but people are social, I mean we're a social animal, so once there is a vaccine you'll all see us back in the pub in a club. Definitely I'm going to be like I'm a survivor or like coddle me I've had corona. I can't wait I was supposed to go to a festival in Malta Friday I wanted to try and go to Ibiza this year I wanted to like you know there's lots of fun things we'll get back to it. You had some good plans this year, Sarevika Ibiza festivals in Malta. It was my friend's birthday in Malta, he's like it was a big birthday for him and like he planned everything and we're going to a nice festival and but yeah I had to cancel everything and then but it will you know it will come back, it's made us even more like you know we'll party even harder once this is over. On the marketing side interested to know what you've like what you've been doing have you been doing anything different have you been doing more content I mean what's been the focus? Definitely we shifted everything to digital so we are doing we didn't really put a lot of focus or effort in digital before we were always kind of saying we should do more we should do more but then you know how it goes so this kind of pushed us to actually do it and I think it's interesting we're investing more in content we're working with a digital media agency we're pushing our social channels a lot more we're trying to find different ways of engaging with our audience we're doing more live things on Instagram and more Facebook lives and I think it's interesting because before the crisis we had about 50 000 followers on Instagram but they were all like organic followers and we always I don't know to say but we probably didn't appreciate them enough and I think now with Corona we're really offering like more different content and you see like engagement that's gone up so much more and I think it's a great opportunity to have like to really get loyal customers and really get a community that's loving everything about Double Dash but also about flavors and new type of content so I think on that side it really has improved our social just made us think about changing it as well yeah yeah it's good it's really good to generate relevant interesting content for your audience not to sell but just yeah yeah yeah yeah educate interesting content engagement how have you found what do you do live then what are you doing on Facebook live we're doing every Thursday at 5 p.m tonic Thursday where we're interviewing we're doing always kind of a live demonstration with someone else so we've had a yoga teacher we had a chef who made some recipes with Double Dash last week we had an artist who made who gave like a demonstration on how to start painting during lockdown tomorrow we have a nutritionist no it's dates we have a nutritionist talking about kind of how to make smoothies in the morning and kind of wellness program so we're doing different stuff every week we're doing a barbecue session in two weeks so trying to not just only about I think just kind of giving slightly more different than interesting content on not just Double Dash and not just the drinks world but other stuff to do in corona I love that did you find it easy to like get the tech learn how to stream live get the mic get the camera we're really not so tech savvy so every week there's a new issue I know it's funny I've pivoted my podcast to videocast and we're going to be doing also on doing live soon too but I've got I went down this rabbit hole of technology of like camera microphone what to use platform it's quite interesting it's great but lovely to speak to you both I'm really really happy to see you both like pivoted quick doing well you both get really happy and enjoying it which is great and look forward to seeing you in your new bar in Soho if you end up taking it thank you so much for having us what's great to talk to you and you and stay safe and healthy you too thank you so much bye bye