In his 1841 essay, “Self-Reliance,” the great American transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed “The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.” And so it is that Victory Cola has zigged and zagged a bit. Yet, we remain on course. We’ve cancelled the Kickstarter campaign because, while not having run its full course, it would not likely have ended well. As of this morning – with just ten days remaining – we had raised less than $2,000 of the hoped-for $30,000. What’s more, the needle hadn’t moved in several days. Our friends have been generous, but we came to the realization that our fundraising goal was “a bridge too far.” In the past few days we’ve had long and heated discussions about “why” the campaign was failing – and we did an autopsy of sorts in an attempt to ascertain the reasons therefor. A short list would include: 1. The Victory Cola plan is difficult concept quickly to explain and appreciate given the public perception of Coke and Pepsi conditioned by a more than a century of marketing; 2. A person living in Milwaukee can’t see a reason to help out a village in upstate New York that he’s never heard of – especially since he knows neighbors in the same situation; 3. The company and its founder seem disconnected from the community at the moment; 4. The company is in its infancy and just is not far enough along to foster a real public interest on Kickstarter; 5. From the Victory Mills/Schuylerville resident’s perspective – “Lots of people have made promises to us before and have let us down – I’m not going to get excited about this.” So, what’s the good news? Well, it’s just what you would expect. We’re altering our course a bit. Yesterday, we finalized our agreement with PowerBrands, a west-coast beverage consulting firm, to formulate, test and source a USDA-certified 100% organic cola for commercial production and retail sale. PowerBrands will also help us finalize the bottle design, caps, cartons and print designs. Finally, PowerBrands will connect Victory Cola with industrial and process engineers to help us select bottling equipment and to design our Victory Mills production facility. The formulation work will begin immediately and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Alex Coffin will fund this himself. Finally, we offer a sincere “thank you” to all of you who have given to the Victory Cola Kickstarter campaign. As we presume you already know, your accounts will NOT be charged by your credit-card company for any intended contribution since the campaign was cancelled and, in any case, was fairly certain of not reaching its stated goal. Over the next few months, Alex and I will be meeting with leaders in the beverage industry to discuss Victory Cola’s strategic objectives. We have a lot to learn about the soft drink business. We will keep you posted. We’ll be bottling cola in Victory Mills before you know it.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 13:37:28 +0000
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