 I've always said a lot of the mistakes that people make with their brands is they start marketing something that's not available. People take a liking to it, where can I buy it, but it's not available yet or it's not available here. So I think for us, the biggest thing was opening the right accounts and building a relationship with them and then supporting it with quality content on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. But more than anything, allocating some dollars, we didn't have a big budget, but allocating some dollars to sponsored posts, GEO tagging some of these accounts. And I think that that's what we always talk about, like you can never stop marketing. Even when you're big, you got to keep marketing because the minute you stop, somebody else comes up from behind you and sweeps your spot. This is Started for Storefront, the podcast where we inspire entrepreneurship through truth. Today's guests are Humberto Imbara and Craig Cartosian, co-founders of Mandala Tequila. If it feels like tequila is in a golden age right now, you're not imagining things. Between the plethora of tequila varieties, celebrity owned companies, and competition from its cousin Mezcal, walking down the tequila aisle of a liquor store is sure to present you with any number of options. So if you're a tequila company, how do you stand out? First, you need a good product. What you go without saying. Then you need an eye-catching vessel. If you're at a store that sells Mandala, it's unlikely that you'll miss them. They've got the most ornate ceramic bottles you've ever seen, decorated by hand and featuring designs that celebrate Mexican folklore and culture. Of course it doesn't hurt that what's inside the bottle is also just as memorable. Mandala's journey hasn't all been sun-kissed though, as they very nearly failed to find a foothold in the crowded tequila market. So listen in as we cover everything from how they created their own niche by going against conventional wisdom in releasing their extra añejo first. The initial challenges of convincing restaurants to stock their product. And why there's no shortcut to success in the tequila market. Unless you happen to be the rock. Hang on, hang on. If you're not subscribed, can you go ahead and do that right now before we get on with the video? It helps us out tremendously. That's all we ask. And we're back. All right guys, welcome to the podcast on today's show. One of my special interests, tequila. And we have the founders of Mandala Tequila. And if either one of you can take this question, tell us a little bit about the company, what it is for everyone who doesn't know. So Mandala's kind of a project that started early 2015. Three of us, my cousin and our current partner, producer, Juel Garcia. We were looking to develop a brand and Juel reached out to us. My cousin and myself have been importing since 2012 and developing for the people. By 2014, mid-2014, we're a little burnt out of trying to develop people's brands. So we started working on our own project and Juel reached out to us, telling us that he had the best tasting tequila in the world. And we kind of chuckled at it because everybody says that all the time, especially when they're the producer. And he sent me samples and I told him he wasn't kidding. And that's kind of how the project was born. We started developing the brand, the concept early 2015. And I mean, I'm personally from Jalisco and then my cousin's a lawyer in Jalisco. Juel, his family grows agave, so he's from Jalisco. So it crossed paths and we got the opportunity that we were all working on the same concept at the same time, kind of just wanting to develop a brand. And that's kind of how Mandala was born. And early 2015 and then launched it in November 16, 2016. I want to tell people this too. So you and I met, you guys are doing a friends in LA, like a benefit to support this amazing group here in Los Angeles. And they're all over the country. And so you guys mail us, you know, you mail us this thing right here, which is this cool introduction to the brand. And then the back is all the different tequilas. And this is really smart. And the reason I like this is because a lot of companies during COVID, you can't, we can't do in person anymore, right? And so a lot of companies are like, oh, what are we going to do? We can't interact with our customers. No more tastings at Bevmo or wherever. And so you're kind of locked in the ingenuity that goes behind people doing, you know, kind of simple stuff of like just mail out your goods. And we'd have been doing this with other brands. And so you guys ship four little containers, four vials of your entire tequila line. And then we're doing like a cocktail thing at the end. And it's like really beautiful, really well done. But what got to me was your Blanco is probably the best Blanco I've ever had. And, you know, it's weird because we have a podcast. And so while we try to be objective, right, we're like interviewing different businesses and blah, blah, blah, sometimes I just become a fan. Like I'm like, oh my God, this is delicious. And so to your point of saying the tequila tastes amazing, you know, I have like Casa de Argonis here and a bunch of other high-end brands, whatever. And so I got to tell kudos to you guys. The Blanco is beautiful, next level, so complex, so, so easy. And as I got kind of familiar with meeting like Casa de Argonis founder, and I got to see how they approach the market, right, from a branding perspective. It seems to be that's the hardest part of this, right, of launching a tequila company. It's how are you going to go in? At what price point? Who are you trying to go after? As you guys were navigating that arena, like what decisions are being made to get to the point of this is the bottle, that looks this way, and who's the market, and where you even begin? Like how does that brand start to even move in a certain direction? When we first got the samples, we obviously got samples of everything. The Blanco, the Repo, the Añejo and the Extra Añejo. But with a big demand in the market for Extra Añejos right now, how it's grown in the last couple of years. And with Joel had just purchased a ceramics plant in Morelos, his idea and his vision, he wanted to start with an Extra Añejo. So when people think about Mandala, they mainly think about this brand because we started backwards, we started with the Extra Añejo. Even though we had the rest of the line available, we started with this. And after a bunch of sketches, designs, concepts, this is how this one was born. Obviously a circle because it represents a Mandala, kind of like the ones on the side. But that's kind of how we hit the market. We wanted to start with the Extra Añejo only because the demand is so high. And price point was a big thing, is a little nerve-wracking because for my cousin and myself, it was the first time we were going to launch a brand that was over $100. So it was very uncomfortable and scary, especially approaching our accounts that we had already built the relationship with because we got a lot of pushback at first. But we weren't trying to be like anybody. We just figured we have a great product, we have a great packaging. Let's make our own niche. Like let's not try to be like anybody. Let's just open up our own space and just put in the work and the time and the marketing behind it and then let the product speak for itself. But the vision was always to go into the premium segment and starting with the ceramic bottle. But we love what you said about the Blanco because that's probably closest to our hearts as all the work that we put in. The Extra Añejo kind of speaks for itself. We kind of look at it as like the star athlete, big brother, who succeeds at everything and little brother's kind of there going, hey, you know, what about me? But this obviously brings the attention. But the Blanco for people that really enjoy a good tequila, the Blanco is phenomenal. Little more difficult to draw the attention away from the Extra Añejo, which is fabulous, too, for its own reasons. But the Blanco definitely something that we're very proud of. Yeah, no, agreed. I think for people who don't know, too, can you just walk everyone through? I know you have four of them. So the Extra Añejo you'd put like in the premium category. It's going to be the most expensive one by default. Can you just walk people through how you guys approach the market? Obviously, it sounds like you're starting on the premium end, but then you have four different ones. And so just kind of share people your thought process as to maybe even the timing of each release, starting with the Extra Añejo. I think when we launched the Extra Añejo, I think within, I would say, after the first year of getting some traction with the brand, people started questioning why we didn't have a Blanco and a Repo. So when the market started asking for it and we started getting fans behind the product itself, that's kind of when we figured like, you know what, it's time to release the rest and then design the packaging for the Blanco, the Repo, and the Añejo. Were we going to put it in a ceramic bottle or were we going to put it in a glass? We decided to go with the glass because ceramic is so hard to work with. And we launched the Blanco, the Repo, and the Añejo about two years ago and obviously in the premium category in itself because our Blanco goes for like about 45, 49 bucks, a little higher than some of the big brands like Patron. But it was always the premium segment because we knew we had a premium product. Oil does a really good job in profiling our artiquilla and producing artiquilla. So we were always going after the premium. When it comes to launching a product like this, you have a couple of different avenues, I imagine. You have your direct to consumer and then you have like your more, I call it traditional way of doing it, which is like getting in all the liquor stores and then educating them on how to sell your product. But neither one of these is easy or fast. And so how did you guys approach this? Is it like setting up tastings with these distributors or is it something else? We actually self-distributed. We're still self-distributing across California ourselves. We do all the sales. We do all the marketing. The logistics is done through a third party, but when we started, we went after what we saw with other brands that we've represented in the past be successful is building relationships with some of those premium restaurants and just kind of opening retail around those premium restaurants. So we started with the restaurants and then eventually trickled on into the retail. I think right now because of COVID, the big portion of ourselves are coming out of retail, but strategically we started with restaurants and kind of trickled into the retailer. I want to give people a window into this because I know sometimes it's like, it's a little bit more difficult than it seems. So you meet like a restaurant tour who or not a restaurant tour, but like the person, the director of beverage or whatever at the restaurants. And sometimes this person is like this egomaniac who thinks they know the market better than you. We've got stories. We've got some great stories with that. Yeah, please share a story. We laugh all the time because we're still definitely a small craft tequila, but from today, you know, compared to say a year or even two years ago, our stories have changed drastically. Whereas those appointments to your point, we're grueling. I mean, they can sit there and say, oh, they love the tequila. And it's like, oh, this is great. You're looking at their reaction and they have a great reaction. And then they kind of come back down to earth and they think, well, this is a small company. This is like, how are we going to sell this? Just because I know it's great. You know, now it's my job to let our customers know. And some of them just don't want to do the work to maybe share that or be that market or store that hand sells a tequila as opposed to just letting someone pick a patron off the shelves. So a lot of trials and tribulations with that. Our appointments now are much different, mainly because we do have at least some type of a sense of the market and people know who we are, which is very helpful. But without mentioning any names, we've had a couple of doozies. One specifically that he was doing some training with staff and on a lot of cocktails. We just happened to be in there and just on the side and when he was giving them a break, people started coming over and they saw our bottles and his staff is coming over and trying. They're like, this is amazing. And it just changed the complexion of just the whole vibe within his staff. And it got to a point, oh, you got to talk to, I won't say the name. And he eventually comes over and you could just tell. He was so upset at this point that he, needless to say, he kind of gotten our faces. And I don't know who you guys think you are and kind of shoot us out of there quick. Again, that was over a year ago. So he didn't know who we were, which gives us no leverage. And it's fine. That's part of growing, I think, as a company. That's kind of the stories I love to share because it's the realities of growing the business. It's like you get to meet these people that think they know better than you or they try to just put you in the box. They're like, look, no one comes in here ordering extra anejo. So how am I going to sell this? And then they have, there's no creativity there. They're not like trying to figure it out with you. They're just trying to say, give me something easy to sell so my job's easy. And if I think it tastes good, then you're allowed in the club. Yep, exactly. I want to go back to, you guys said that you started the company in November of 2016. And immediately when I heard that, that's a very interesting time in this country's history. Donald Trump had just been elected. And he ran on a platform of building the wall, organizing and redoing the NAFTA trade agreement. And since you guys are starting a company that is importing a product from Mexico, sourcing the agave from Mexico, what was that like for you guys? And did you run into any problems? Was there uncertainty in that opening few months? It was scary for several reasons. One for that. The other one is we were embarking on uncharted territories for us as far as a premium product. We, I mean, we've done premium products, but nothing at this price point. So there's a lot of things going against us. And another big one is in the industry, the biggest time for any brand, little, medium or large is O&D, which is October, November, and December. That's when you're going to get like the most of yourselves. Originally, we were supposed to launch in July, but nothing ever works out. I mean, when you're building a business, it's hard to set dates because nothing goes as planned. You're always throwing some type of curveball. So we ended up launching week. I clearly remember it was a Friday and we received the product and that's going on with the election. A bunch of stuff is going on and I'm telling my cousin, dude, like it's November, we're not going to sell anything. Like it's going to be close to impossible. I remember being in the office till midnight and it was two pallets. We brought two pallets. That's it of this one. But yeah, it was a lot of uncertainty. It was scary, but I mean, we stuck to our guns and we kind of pushed through it, but there was at the time, there was for sure a lot of uncertainty, not just because of the whole election, but also because of we came late in the game. I mean, we weren't able to launch when we said we were going to launch. It was a market we've never dealt with, which is the super premium market. But yeah, there's a lot of curveballs being thrown at us, but we just kind of stuck to it. Something I've always wondered is when it comes to Tequila or any product, obviously at the premium level, there's a little bit less competition and so to the extent that your product is either on par with taste or quality, you're good, right? And so are there any advantages to attacking the premium market from your perspective? Like, are there anything where it's a little bit easier? I don't think it's easier no matter what segment you're in, to be honest with you, because the Tequila industry, the Tequila market in itself is so saturated and there's so many big players. I think it's finding your niche. I think for us, a little bit of advantage that we had, I had already been in the industry for a while. I already had some relationships with some accounts, so I was slowly able to trickle in and then just kind of back it up with a lot of social media marketing content, geo tagging, just creating awareness for the brand. But I think more than anything is just like focusing on what your objective is and not listening to all the noise because it's pretty noisy out in the Tequila market. Yeah, how did you guys go about doing some of that social media marketing branding? Obviously, being in LA is, you know, I think a massive help. There's a lot of influencers here, some celebrities. And so how did you guys go about that initial push? First was the right placement, finding the right accounts that we're willing to take our product. Because I mean it's, I've always said a lot of the mistakes that people make with their brands is they start marketing something that's not available and then people take a liking to it and work and I buy it, but it's not available yet or it's not available here. So I think for us, the biggest thing was opening the right accounts and building a relationship with them or whatever accounts we already had a relationship with and then supporting it with quality content on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, a couple collaborations with some restaurants and bartenders. But more than anything, allocating some dollars, we didn't have a big budget, but allocating some dollars to sponsored posts, geo tagging some of these accounts, I think the benefit of a lot of our content is the bottle that's, it's a beautiful packaging so it naturally grabs people attention and we just maximized on that, really. Once we open the right accounts, geo tagging them and constantly marketing. And I think that that's what we, we always talk about like you can never stop marketing. Even when you're big, you've got to keep marketing because the minute you stop, somebody else comes up from behind you and sweeps your spot. I know in the whiskey industry each whiskey, the lifetime of each whiskey is about, is almost the same as a human. It's like 50 years, right? Where essentially if I'm like, let's use Patron as a good example where Patron, at least me growing up was like something you would just take shots of and it was like the premium thing to take shots of and it wasn't too expensive and so it was like a nice reach for college kids. And so whether it's a whiskey or something that is introduced to a brand at, when they're like in their 20s, 18, 20 years old, it usually stays with them until they're like 70 and then most of these brands like Johnny Walker, Blue or these things have to, they either die, they sunset or they have to rebrand to catch the next 20 year old. Is tequila similar in that way or not yet? Or do we not know yet? I don't think yet. It's growing so fast and so much that now you're seeing people from 21 to 55 drinking high end premium products specifically tequila. But I think it's growing so much and it's growing so fast within the last couple of years that we haven't seen that because you're still getting a lot of newbies, a lot of new consumers that are turning 21 that are exploring new brands, new tequilas and getting a little more educated because it's trippy. We run into people that know more about tequila than sometimes we do. And it's crazy to me because it's like, wait, you're not even in the industry you know it so well but tequila in itself is still growing that I don't think it's plateaued yet to the point where it's just kind of like people don't care there's too many people exploring it still. I think that's what it is. I think that's an advantage. The one thing like for me like I would I make a lot of cocktails I'm not a mixologist but I might as well be and so I know that's a part of launching a new product too is kind of like you said before meeting with bartenders and seeing what kind of cocktails they can put together but I know some distillers don't like to do that sometimes sometimes they're like no you know this is meant to be drinking neat or with ice and that's kind of like that's the profile we're trying to go for. Did you guys pick sides? Do you have a side that you prefer or no? Okay. I like to tell people drink it the way you enjoy it so from a Blanco to an extrañejo if I'm going to drink I don't drink a lot but if I'm going to drink I drink the Blanco all day every day and I drink it neat if you want to add ice that's fine you're diluting the natural flavors but that's fine I like to tell people drink it the way you enjoy it because then if you're trying to educate people and you're trying to stronghold them and to drink it the way you drink it you're just losing a customer or a fan let them enjoy it the way they enjoy it and every now and then I enjoy a good margarita I mean I won't use an extrañejo I'll use a Blanco but I'm not against a good cocktail because there's some really amazing cocktails out there I know at his brother's restaurant I'm throwing a plug at D'Auto Grill that's one of our partners in his brother's restaurant they make a what is it called? it's an estilo viejo so it's an old-fashioned but with ourñejo and honestly it's amazing I believe that it's amazing so I'm not against a cocktail I don't think you are right no we uh and you said it perfectly we we suggest you know of course we enjoy it the right way we like to say it's not your college tequila mainly because of past experiences I think we've all had from shooting tequila so we don't want to promote that type of a drinking we want to promote more of the history behind it the culture behind it and how it's made so uh sipping that to us is a definitely a part of that culture and tradition yeah because we're big on promoting that it's it's any good tequila is meant to be drank like a fine wine you could sip on it obviously yeah you drink less of it than you would drink wine but hopefully yeah the right glassware and then you just sip on it but I'm not against a good cocktail at all I wanted to ask you so from like a winery perspective like grapes become an issue at some point right there's only so much land and so you have to harvest or you have to buy grapes from other farmers in the area I imagine it's the same for you guys but maybe maybe and I don't know where you guys grow if it's Jalisco or other places but is it is it an issue where you're running into that now sort of like 100% that's why agave prices are sky high right now I think the last time I checked it was about 30 pesos a kilo and um those agave plants those agave da piñas can get really heavy but there's a shortage right now and that's why agave prices are so high so with the growth of tequila and with the shortage of agave that yeah there's there's always fear but at the same time you see it every 10 years and I feel like I don't feel I know that it's a lot of the times it's the bigger brands mass producing and just kind of storing it because you can produce a Blanco and store it or dump it into barrels so a lot of a lot of the big hitters to kind of like siphon out the little guys they'll mass produce to create a shortage of agave and increase the price of agave I know this is the problem like this this is actually a really interesting issue I know there's a tremendous amount of legislation that a lot of these massive distillers have passed to make it impossible for a little guy to exist we were looking at building a distillery in Houston with a buddy of mine he ended up doing it and you know I got kind of familiar with all the legislation that exists and it's crazy it's like if I if I go into production I have to start at this amount and so let's call it t-shirts it's like it's not buying a hundred t-shirts you got to go from zero to 10,000 t-shirts which is an insane amount to a new company it's sad but true it's the same thing so CRT Consejo Regulador de Tequila they control and they govern anything tequila so there's been a bunch of regulations and changes so the little guys have to produce X amount of leaders a year which some of them for these little guys it's impossible like the numbers that they're asking for it's close to it's just impossible for them to be able to keep their norm which is a number that every distillery has that allows them to call their product tequila so what you're seeing nowadays a lot of these small distilleries that can't meet that demand they let their norm go because they just can't like they can't afford it and instead of calling it tequila they're calling a distillate of agave instead of a tequila and that's kind of what the big hitters are doing to kind of siphon out all the little guys yeah it's crazy honestly like when I was getting into this I was like this is a racket and a half but you know I get it from the other side too like if I was a big player why would I what you know I would do anything to keep my loyalty or my brand alive and so it's yeah but from a startup perspective it can make it really tough did you guys have to raise a tremendous amount of capital to get started the truth we did it to me like the crazy way at the beginning our own money when it was just Joel Arturo and myself it was our own money like I said our first shipment was two pallets I had put up some money here myself and we had guaranteed that I was going to get it back after X amount of time but it doesn't ever work out the way you say it is but when we first launched it was our own money so it was super expensive to make extra and yet who are super expensive because it sits in barrels for so long and you lose a lot of it the longer you age the more you lose but we launched with the two pallets literally took us and like eight months just to sell two pallets so it was a bit of a process but at the beginning it was our own money luckily through all the grind and the hard work and creating some awareness within our area locally we grabbed the attention of a lot of fans some of them with money some of them with interest to come into the project and then we ran into Craig's brother which is Kirk Cartosian who owns Goucho Grill it was funny story I always tell it but I went from selling them a bottle to two bottles to them buying three cases like a week at a time and I just I told my cousin doesn't make sense they went really fast and I just didn't get it right and one day I'm walking in with two cases and his brother spots me and he starts screaming from across the room he's like hey it's the Mandala guy he's a little drunk already they had just opened the restaurant he's like hey come here and he's with a group of about 20 people and I'm just like oh hold on I gotta and I'm carrying cases I hand over the cases they cut me a check and I walk over and he's like telling everybody hey this is the Mandala guy and everybody's like hey you got the best tequila everybody's having a good time and his brother goes I dude I really believe in what you're doing I believe in your brand like I want to invest and I look at it and I was like how about you call me tomorrow at 12 when you're not drunk and he starts laughing he's like 12 tomorrow I'm like yes 12 I didn't think he was gonna call me he literally called me at 12 o'clock the next day and we he set up a meeting him and his partner and honestly the rest is history if it wasn't for him as much as he believes in the brand and the money they brought in we wouldn't be here because even our accountant a couple of times told my cousin to be super transparent told my cousin you need to close your doors like it's just like you're bleeding money and I told my cousin fuck this guy he's fired like he doesn't know what he's talking about like like fuck him a week after we fired him is when we ran into his brother and it hasn't been easy it's never easy having partners but we all have the same vision we all have the same goal and I think most important we all have the same passion so we all believe in the product passion I think is key I think that's the word right there because people see an opportunity when they see us they see something they like they look at us like an opportunity we've seen it time and time again not just with people with money but these are influencers you know A-list celebrities so it's come to where when we see that they're more of an opportunity it's not the it's not the kind of money or investment that we're looking for so we've had a lot of those opportunities to partner up that we definitely passed on as some Bertha would say hard pass we take a lot of hard passes but it's got there's got to be passion behind it and it seems like every year we're hitting that benchmark of growth where we're needing to scale and with scale comes money and with money comes you know you've got to partner up with someone else and in comes the big D word right delusion so we've always looked at that as like who wants to delude oh gosh this is terrible when we forecasted where we're heading we're like hey guys we're gonna need to delude our shares and and I think that was the biggest thing for my cousin and myself well not so much for me but when I told him it's time to bring in partners or investors you're talking about delusion I told him like what do you rather own 100% of nothing or 50% of something like you really got to look at it that way and when I put it to him that way he was just like you're right and Kirk and his partner were the right fit at the time and more important is I saw Kirk's passion behind it like he genuinely believed in the product until this day like he'll die by it like he just believes in the product he loves it so much and it felt like a right fit and it has been to this day it hasn't been easy like I said but it's been to this day it's been the right fit for us but yeah at first it was our own money and then it got to the point where we couldn't meet with the demand and it's expensive between production and marketing it's expensive to grow a brand I love the story and this is something I think all entrepreneurs this is like the hard part of entrepreneurship where you have to realize like all you need to focus on is putting in the work and at some point you have enough momentum even if it doesn't feel like you're moving right it's like at some point people will start to love what you do where these investors just kind of naturally find their way into your life or the right people at the right time the right partnership whatever it might be and it does take these conversations with accountants or the people that's supposed to know whatever and you're supposed to be like yeah you don't know anything because they're not measuring momentum they're not measuring energy they're just measuring an excel sheet and that's never the metric for success it's not it's passion it's always passion and people can feel that immediately they can taste it and I think that's that's like the x-factor to entrepreneurship I think personally yeah because I mean if my cousin would have thrown in the towel and I couldn't sell him on what like we gotta keep going we wouldn't be having this podcast right now because my cousin was convinced he was literally gonna throw in the towel and like to be super try I cried and I told him you're fucking crazy dude like no like look at we have momentum let's keep going and when I broke down crime I'm not a guy to cry he's just like dude this guy's serious like he's pissed and I told him he was like guys fucking fired we gotta figure it out and I think his thing was one the money we're bleeding to is letting go of a percentage of something we've built but we were at a point in time where it was like hey do we flop or do we find the money and do we keep going and I think we both were on the same boat and we're like yeah we keep going like we have something good and I mean keep in mind like this this is nine years coming five years of grinding for other people and other people's brands and learning from their mistakes and then four years of our work behind this brand five years if you can consider the whole year that we went through developing the brand but it just doesn't happen overnight and people always ask what's the secret there's no secret it's literally hard working grind that's all it is there's nothing else to it unless there's a rock but there's a story behind the rock I mean he's just using he's just using his his platform there's a story behind him that he went through to get to where he's at today like everybody has a story everybody thinks everybody that's worth millions it happened overnight and unless you inherit it money yes but behind every successful business there's headaches frustration and I mean all kinds of stuff I absolutely love it that's the honesty that we're about I always tell people man the X factor of like when people ask like what's the secret I'm like do something you're willing to go homeless for that's the secret and sometimes that's like love right like you love someone so bad you'll do anything for them and sometimes it's love for a product or love for something that you've created that the market needs to know and that's it and the hard part of that of course is like trying to find that passion while you have life competing with you like jobs kids whatever it might be debt you know whatever your mental mindset is and so it's like find your clarity and then find something you're willing to go homeless for and I think you'll typically arrive at and then there's that nine year thing right and then wait nine years and then watch the tree grow as you guys think about the future like four let's let's say so covid's taught us a lot right it's obviously changed businesses in a dramatic way so as you guys think about the future 2021 2022 is there a retail play where there's like you guys might think tasting rooms become a thing eat like small spaces just tasting rooms is it how do you guys think about the world as we kind of explode out of covid I mean it seems like everything's gonna go back to normal kind of and so how do you guys view you know how you grow in the in the near let's say about the next five years I think really just continue to grind continue to market our brand we're excited about things opening up only because it's one thing to show someone a nice bottle but once tasting rooms open and a lot of these places like Venmo's and Total Wines that have a tasting license is we're excited about being able to get the staff behind it because right now our success has literally been through social media like we've grown a brand through Instagram Facebook Twitter collaborations with influencers but the reality is when we go into these retail accounts and we get the opportunity to have the employees or the restaurant owners try it then once you have them behind it then it's a whole another game because now they're pushing it for you because now there's fans of it so we're excited about that we're hyped on being able to go all across the US or not all of the US but the states we're in and being able to test have the consumer taste the product versus just to look at a nice bottle so I think our game plan is to continue to market via our social media platforms and then once tasting rooms start opening and then everybody's able to go back to normal kind of is just getting people to try the product so that now they become a fan of it because at the end of the day that I think that's the key for us is having them try it and now they become a fan and we get the opportunity to have somebody else market it for us because once you're a fan then now you start recommending the product that's what I'm doing so it's interesting so again I tell you like I drink a lot and I might as well be a mixologist blah blah blah and so sometimes I'll ask my friends why the LA cocktail market is different than Massachusetts and basically what they told me or like a New York and basically what they told me is when there's cold weather people like to drink you know, horse juice they like to drink the whiskeys something darker something more complex and then when it's a warm weather climate like LA or Texas they love the tequilas they love the margaritas the palomas, right? and so is your market kind of following the same way where you're just picking warm weather like Texas comes to mind kind of like avoiding let's call avoiding the northeast in some way or prioritizing it less does the weather play a role in your decision making on this stuff? as far as where we sell it yeah like as where is where you focus so if you have to focus on your top 10 cities you kind of honestly we started with California because obviously that's where we're at and where we're from and then we slowly started trickling but we have to try and allocate we're allocating most of our product that would say 90% of our product 80% of our product for California but slowly trickling into other states like Texas, Arizona, Indiana and then soon enough with New York, New Jersey Connecticut and Florida but most of it we're allocating it to the California market we're trying to ramp up our production so that we can send more into the other states but as far as how people are drinking it here I think I'm seeing more people drink our product meat more people are drinking it straight up it's good it's that I will say it is that good where drinking it need is probably the way I would recommend it to people which says a lot frankly I mean it's special in that way I want to talk about the aging process of it and how you get the flavor profiles like I know that some of your products are aged for 24 months in barrels and then others are aged for seven years and you talked about the dilution factor or the more you age it the more you lose I'm guessing that's due to evaporation of some sort but what is so magical about seven years what is so important about the different stages of how many months or years you age the product it's not so much the time it's more obviously the longer it sits in a barrel the more of the flavors it's going to grasp from whatever type of barrel you use but our partner producer Joel he likes using French oak red wine barrels versus American oak American oak is going to release like earthier notes drier notes and then a French oak is going to release a lot sweeter notes and in order to have the profile we have which is a little sweeter on the palette it needed to be the French oak and then to plus that a little more he went with red wine barrels to call a REPL or REPL you need to rest it for at least two months minimum to up to 11 months he went with eight months because it just felt like the perfect time because like I said the longer it sits the more it grabs his character of the barrel for our niejo he does a minimum of 24 months and then for extra niejo I think I told you this but a lot of people don't know this it's off by three months that it would have been eight years but legally since it it didn't hit the eight-year mark we have to call it seven years but our seven years of blend what it is is five years of French oak red wine and then the last two years it's a cognac barrel and that's that's something that Joann and his brother kind of played with their backgrounds they're agave growers they're one of the largest agave families in Merigrullo Jalisco which is about two hours from Guadalajara and the way the tequila and the formula was born and during the the last time there was a drop in price in agave they were kind of being dicked around on pricing by some of the big hitters and who I kind of told his dad like why are we going to give our agave we know we have good agave why are we going to give it away he's like let me have this plot of land all harvested and let me see what we can come up with and that's kind of how Mandala was born the profile in itself he started playing with batches but he likes to use French oak because a lot of sweet characters it releases and he does like to age them a little longer so it grabs a lot more of the character any thoughts on experimenting with say 10, 15, 20 years I think in the long run right now we're experimenting we have we're working on stuff I don't want to say too much but we're working with Sherry Cask tell the world tell the world what you're doing we're we're experimenting with an Añejo for Sherry Cask so we have something really cool coming like really really soon I think by Q3 no hopefully by Q3 I hope it surprises all our fans but Hoy's coming up with some really cool formulas on Sherry Cask for for an Añejo I personally think our Añejo if people don't usually want to spend a hundred and something you could buy a bottle of Añejo and just enjoy it as much as you would an extra Añejo because it's 24 months it's it's not the same but it's very close on profiles this shows his passion right there before we started this he said let's definitely not talk about our Añejo he's like a little he's like a child he can't even hold it in his excitement as he's explaining the French oak I'm like Nick like I have it right here I'm like staring at it I have a liquor cabinet right here and I'm like Nick you it's something that is so beautiful and I just wish I could like give it to you right here so you could at least smell it because it's it's it's actually kind of amazing it's really nice obviously I'm a big fan thank you thank you much of a fan no of course and and just to wrap guys tell everyone where they can find you here in LA where they can follow you where they can purchase all that good stuff obviously they could follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter hopefully soon TikTok it's literally just tequila mandala at any one of those platforms you could also find us at tequilamandala.com you could find us on our website where to purchase there's so many awesome accounts that without them I mean they've they've done wonders for us but yeah you could find it all throughout Southern California some areas in Texas, Arizona look it's been a pleasure talking to you guys learning more about your brand this is amazing wishing you guys nothing but the best of luck and and obviously we'll keep you in mind for any tequila tasting as at our podcast studio where we might be able to get some some big hitters in the room and do it up we have something coming too with friends LA too we're excited about that one awesome keep an eye out for that one well thank you guys thank you for having us appreciate you guys