Muddler HQ gets Wimbledon fever

'Tiger' Tim may have been knocked out of Wimbledon, but yesterday the Muddler HQ got its own touch of tennis fever. Being the diligent workers that we are we didn't leave the office to indulge in our new found passion... the phone could ring at any moment with exciting Muddler news.

The reality was that we got bored of stuffing envelopes and we fired up the Wii:


For a collection of people that know me (some say they are 'friends') this will be an opportunity to call me Donkey Kong..... get a new gag!

Needless to say (as I'm writing the Blog) I won the tennis. As per usual it nearly got violent as we threw ourselves round the room.

There was a bit of work done... we made a number of executive decisions such as deciding that on our parcels to the newspapers better not include screwed up newspaper from a rival rag!

Like Henry I'm so happy that it looks like our first batch of product is finally finishing production.... I just can't wait for Tuesday and to actually have our hands on the finished product (fingers crossed and all that)!

Hats off to our sleever (the guy that is putting our labels on)... he is based in South Yorkshire, and although his house is under a severe flood alert the factory is fine and he is squeezing our production into his schedule once again.

So I'll finish on a joke about the weather....

The streets of Hull and Sheffield echo to the cries of:

"Super, Smashing, Great"

as bully's speedboat winners finally get their day

Back to Reality and then Off again

Having had 4 days of unadulterated hedonistic fun at Glastonbury today was the day that I finally came back down to earth. Rupert and I have spent the day stuffing envelopes! As Rupert said 'How do you feel things are going stuffing envelopes at 30?!'

Luckily about 2 hrs in we heard the news we had been waiting for. Our sleeving Co. which is based in South Yorkshire isn't under water and they have lined us up to label our product on Monday next week! This is great news as it means at last (third time lucky!) we will be selling our product within a week's time.

Suddenly the feeling of lethary lifted and I had a rush of nervous energy at the thought of walking into our first pub. What do we do? We've rehearsed our pitch on what we want to say but that's easy, how will it actually work?

So Rupert and I have just spent the last hour rehearsing / role playing to each other. It's funny I don't have too much of a problem standing up and doing a speech but as soon as I have to pretend to be or do something, particularly infront of a mate, I feel really awkward. Put it this way I was always given the non speaking role in the nativitey play at primary school!

It wasn't long though before we were both getting into the roles and throwing in ideas and different ways of approaching things. It was a really good feeling because everything we were saying we passionately believe in. At the end I sat there listening to Rups thinking how can someone not want to buy this stuff? Well next week I guess we will find out.....

One word to Sum up Glastonbury....

.... UNBELIEVABLE, in absolutely every way; from the shear size and number of people, to the variety, quality acts and artists, the drop toilets, excess of pear cider and food, walking or as the case was wading, dancing, the relentless rain, colourful and just plain weird outfits and of course MUD, I've never seen anything like it.

There was just sooo much to do, tooo much in 3 days. The big name acts are just the tip of the iceberg, there are casinos, a circus, theatre, cinema, a whole village doing medieval style things like making wicka baskets and iron mongers, sculptures and wishing trees, not to mention tent after tent full of every type of music you can imagine from cheesy pop and karaoke to full on dance tents and our favourite of all..........the silent disco.

For those of you who have never been to a silent disco the idea is simply brilliant. There are two djs playing different types of music. On entering the tent you get given a set of head phones and you can choose which dj you want to listen to. You then put your headphones on and dance and sing along until your hearts content. There's no big booming sound system so there are no noise issues and the party just never ends. The weirdest bit is when you take your headphones off and just watch a whole load of people dancing, some fast to one dj and some moshing to the other dj, completely in their own little world.

So what of the MUD. Well in true British fashion we weren't going to let that stop our fun! There were people mud wrestling, paddling, rowing dingys or simply rolling in it which was all great fun to watch. The only draw back was in the difficulty of getting around. Moving between two places like the Pyramid stage and Lost Vagueness was like setting out on an expedition to the North pole. For every step you took going forward you would slip and slide backwards. In some places you lost your boots as the mud that held them just wouldn't let go.

This also limited the number of acts we got to see as by the third day we were simply exhausted having spent two days on the biggest man made assault course ever. But I still managed to squeeze in a good few acts. As far as the big ones go I saw Bloc Party, The Killers, The Kooks, Amy Winehouse, Klaxsons, Chemical Brothers, Joss Stone, Pete Doherty, Chas and Dave, The View, Arctic Monkeys, The Fratellis so didn't do too badly but there were so many others I wanted to see...

Most of all I loved the fact that Glastonbury is still so un-commercialised. Apart from Carlseberg lager and the Orange Charge and Chill tent, everything feels like it is made on a local scale, even the water was Glastonbury water! This also meant that there was great variety in the food on offer and it got me thinking wouldn't it be great to get some variety in the drinks too but more on this tomorrow....

Weather and Tax - middle aged dinner party chat!

So what are we up to at the moment? We were hoping to have our stock today, but needless to say there has been a slight delay… we are once again about a week away from seeing the product.

I would like to say that we have been put back a week because we are trying to launch in the sunshine… but the reality is that there has been a further issue with our labels (apparently a few mm count). It is all being sorted at the moment, but it will take a further week for us to get our stock.

As for the weather… that all looks pretty horrific and the sky is grey once again above Muddler HQ! Our stock is currently in South Yorkshire, so I shall be asking them to store it up high!

So I’ve been doing the exciting tasks of trying to get us a VAT number. It has taken the government an amazing 9 and a half weeks to even pick up our application. Then the first thing they do is ask for more information! So this all means the government gets to sit on the VAT we’ve paid out. This is on top of the duty which works out at about 35p a bottle of Muddler (and VAT gets added on top of this). Anyway, enough of my tax whinging!

As well as the excitement of tax forms, I am now stuffing envelopes for our first mail out! Who said that starting your own business was not glamorous?

Tomorrow I shall be trying to get Henry to write about a wet weekend in Glastonbury!

And tonight we get to see what the Fruka they are up to on Tycoon (ITV at 9pm tonight)… maybe they are having label issues!

Muddler Holiday policy?

So it is just me left a the Muddler HQ. Fear not, there has not been any splitting of the founding partnership before we even get the product.... it is just that Henry has gone on holiday again!

He can call his trip to Glastonbury an attempt at PR, but in reality it is a complete holiday. When I spoke to him at 6pm last night he had certainly had a couple of pear ciders. He never switches off though, he was already making all the contacts that we need to get Muddler lined up next to Clarlsberg, Four Brothers Cider and Smirnoff Ice at Glastonbury '08. He reckons it would be perfect. Anyway, the real fun starts for him (and the rest of the 180k crowd) today when the awesome musical line up begins.

Maybe the gods are looking down on him and providing rain for those of us that are still working.

This got me thinking... isn't this Henry's fifth or sixth holiday of the year? Will we have to control his wanderings? Maybe a Muddler holiday policy is required?

Also, I have this evidence of Henry's activities last Friday afternoon:


He may think that wearing the Muddler polo shirt excuses his behaviour... but how does this help with the Muddler Cocktail dream?

If the truth be known I was the one taking the photo (in between hacking up the golf course). The reality is that things are very quiet for us at the moment, everything is in place for the sleeves (aka labels) to be put on our bottles on Saturday. Then on Monday they start their journey South and arrive in our warehouse on Tuesday. We already have our first sales appointments booked for Wednesday, and that is when we expect the pace to pick up and for us to spend every waking hour out there spreading the Muddler message.

So Henry should be nice and refreshed after his weekend away and fired up to hit the ground running.

Do I think we'll ever have a Muddler holiday policy for Henry and I? Quite simply NO. We are too passionate about this, at times the weekends blend in with the weekdays but we truly don't notice. We both have given up so much already, but I know that we will both give up all attempts at holidays for the next couple of years to spread the Real Fruit Cocktail message. The long days will be worth it when you are in control and really believe in your product!

BTW - Congratulations to Caron and Steve who's wedding I'm going to this weekend in Edinburgh. The only question is, will I be on the noisy corner table again.... those tables at weddings tend to follow me around!

Tycoon, more like typhoon

I'm going to talk about last night's airing of the Tycoon TV programme on ITV1 and the alcoholic fruit juice that one 'contestant' was trying to win this 'game' with.

For those of you who missed it, you may want to take a look at the Tycoon website you can even watch the whole episode again online (but I wouldn't recommend it). This is essentially a Tuesday (9pm) vehicle for Peter Jones to show us he's a whizz and can turn a group of people of mixed skills (I'm being polite here) into massive businesses whilst getting ITV to pay him to advertise the products on prime time TV (seems to be a poor and very commercial version of the Apprentice).

We did actually consider going on the show in February (I think it was about then) and looking back on it now I'm glad we didn't. Henry and I left our jobs to be independent and in control of what we were doing and work intensely on something we felt passionate about. These entrepreneurs have had to give up 49% of their company, been made to partake in sensationalist TV and worst of all unless they bow to the 'ideas' of Peter Jones he shuts down their companies. No thanks, Henry and I are doing this our way.

So, more about this perceived competition (I can't tell you the name of the product as that is a whole different issue that they are dragging through to the second week).... Elizabeth 'make things happen' Hackford (aged 35) is embarking on setting up a 'A natural fruit and alcoholic drink for women'. For those of you that want to enjoy (err I mean understand) more about her you may want to try this page Elizabeth on the tycoon website (the video of her is particularly fun) . She seems slightly clueless, and was the one on the back foot for almost the entire first show. Having said that, I'm going to try not to judge her, these programmes are deliberately confrontational. Showing what happens in 2 weeks of business for 6 companies in andhour is always going to lead to some aggressive editing to leave in the choice bits!

I feel that unlike Peter Jones (or even Elizabeth Hackford) we are slap bang in the middle of the target age range for our product (25 - 35 year old women) and have spent a lot of time thinking about the underlying concept. There are several reasons why our concept is different to that which she put forward:

• Juice versus cocktail - when people go out for a drink they don't want something styled on what they had for brekkie, rather a different taste designed for the 25-35 year old drinks market. People want something that has been crafted for when they go out to a pub/ bar. Just calling something premium doesn't make it so (particularly if it is alcoholic juice).
• Vodka flavours - Vodka and simple flavours . We are not ruling out producing a vodka based drink, but it will be because the vodka compliments the cocktail mix rather than it being the alcohol you can disguise the most easily...
• Juice versus cocktail (part 2) - we have blended our juices to come up with a truly great tasting product that fuses with the alcohol. A single juice and alcohol, where's the fun in that!
  
• Alcoholic content - Elizabeth is going to make this drink Alc 4% Vol and has stated that from the outset. We have taken months of taste trials and analysis of the market to fix on the 6.4% we have finalised on. In all of our taste trials people passionately wanted this alcoholic content, they just kept saying that they wanted to taste the enhancing properties of the alcohol. 4% and a single juice flavour all sounds very similar to Quinns that was launched last year and we understand to have not been a success
  
• NFC and watering down - Muddler is Not From Concentrate, but unlike the Tycoon beverage we are NOT watering down our product (as this kind of defies some of the points of being NFC). Unlike the alcoholic smoothie they mentioned on the programme our drink is also not the consistency of a smoothie. In our product the thinner nature of the cloudy apple juice is muddled with the thicker berries to produce the right consistency whilst being 100% fruit based.
• Muddler versus ??? - we have a name that we are proud of. It explains our product, is fun and just sounds right (you can truly imagine saying 'I'll have a Muddler please' across the bar). Peter Jones is trying to get Elizabeth to go for a controversial name (you know 'like Death cigarettes') that will get a lot of publicity. All this smacks of a quick buck, get out there, cause a stir and generate some quick money whilst everyone tries it. Then once people actually taste the product the rot sets in and people realise that it doesn't actually taste good and the name is a PR stunt.
  
• Character - we hope that our product (and Henry/ me as people) have a character that people will enjoy...
  

In summary, I'm once again happy that we are doing the right things and that the competition is obsessed with the facts that mixing alcohol with a natural product will be enough. We truly believe that this is naive ('I want to be the Innocent of the alcoholic drinks world' etc) and that people want more from their drinks experience. They want the complex but delicious tastes of Cocktails and secondary they want to be reassured that the product is 100% natural. In my eyes there is only one product ticking those boxes!

We were left on the cliffhanger of whether Elizabeth's company got wound up.... To spoil the 'fun', I simply don't think this is the case. It is all becoming clear that the film crews at the bottling plant (that resulted in some movement to our production slot) were almost definitely the product that the Tycoon show is trying to get on the market.

She says she could lose her flat if this goes wrong.... well I could lose our merchandise store room (aka my flat) if Muddler goes wrong. However, I truly don't believe that this is going to happen and rather than give 49% of our company to a man we don't think is the answer to everything (Peter Jones). We are going to do this our way.

For once I am going to leave you on a quote, from Elizabeth Hackford herself:
"Ruth Badger and Michelle Dewberry from The Apprentice are really highly regarded and get called in to do inspirational talks. I'll be doing that sooner or later."

If she wants...

personally I'll be trying to spread the message of Real Fruit Fruit Cocktails around the world.

Kate Moss will have to wait...

I'm absolutely gutted. We thought that we were going to have product by now but unfortunately due to a few technical probelms with labels, they're not going to be ready until the end of the week.

Not long to wait you might think but I was really hoping that I was going to be able to take a few bottles to Glastonbury! I had this vision (well fantasy really) of having one of the best PR launches ever. There I am sitting outside my tent with an ice cold Muddler Cocktail in my hand when Kate Moss walks past. 'Fancy a Cocktail?' I would ask and before I knew where I was Kate (do you like the first term names) and I would be snapped by the paparazzi sipping our Muddler Cocktails and be plastered across the front cover of every National newspaper.

Alas, unfortunately, this will never be and Kate will just have to wait.

At least it takes the pressure off and means I can really just enjoy Glastonbury. I've never been before and cannot wait, it's going to be 4 days of non stop partying. Not only that but the day I get back Muddler Cocktails will have arrived so at long last we can go out and start selling it to the pubs and more importantly you can start to enjoy it, bring it on....

All in a days work...

Hello there, I thought that given Henry and Rupert's recent head first dives into the world of blogging I'd better put my 2 cents in as well so here goes...

I'm Alex. I created (and continue to create) all the graphic design for Muddler Cocktails. This has, so far, included the logo and brand identity, bottle labels, print advertising, web-site, promotional photography, boxs and cartons, clothing, and a whole bunch of small things such as post cards, stickers, rubber stamps and even fridge magnets.

All this has been undertaken in the short period since we had our first meeting back in March. Which seems like such a long time ago now, testament to the speed with which business is conducted at Muddler!

Muddler came to me after dabbling in the realms of the big London graphic design agencies and finding it all to be a bit too much. Without wanting to sound big headed, I really believe that for this type of project I have something to offer that a big design company can't, and that's being able to take the time to work with the client and forge a personal relationship whereby your work together on the project over a period of time.

And that's exactly what we've done. We speak, share ideas and look at roughs almost everyday of the week in one form or another and its this interaction which I believe not only creates the best working relationship, but also embodies the Muddler ethos, a personal touch which is refreshing in a world of global, billion dollar corporates. (By the way... if any global billion dollar companies out there want to hire me then I retract that last statement!)

I hope that I can speak for Henry and Rupert when I say its been an enjoyable experience. We're really happy with everything and can't wait to set it all free into the public domain. Of course nothing of this scale ever runs exactly to plan (as Rupert and Henry have used up most of this blog explaining!) but the countless bottle label roughs are a distant memory now that we hold in our hands the real thing at last. The feeling of satisfaction you get as a designer when seeing a finished product for the first time is always a nice moment, but a beautifully wrapped bottle looking all shiny and new beats the normal print designing any day.

Ok well I'm off to play some Nintendo wii... I look forward to Henry and Rupert's next instalments, and I'll no doubt post some more thoughts as well at some point... Take it easy :P

/Alex

The countdown to the Muddler launch is back up and running

Firstly, I don't understand the title of Henry's last post... he does try to be a bit of a ponce about these things!

As Henry said, Friday was a day of highs and lows! My sole focus now is on getting our filled bottles sleeved (or labelled in non-trade language) and finishing off that great look. Yesterday we managed to make some great strides in getting this done quickly and to a high quality.

Praise must go to our sleeve printer (Lancastrian Labels/ Tipografic Print Group) who have worked hard every time there has been an issue. This time they have run around and found the right piece of equipment (a cylinder) of the right size to re-print the labels on. They are now aiming to hammer through this work over the next couple of days. This will mean that we can do the sleeving next week and aim to have the product in London by the middle/ end of next week.

Henry's quest for perfection has not ended at just getting the drink out, he is looking to tweak the labels. Now we have a set of empty bottles with labels applied we have a true test of how everything looks shrunk onto the bottle (everything up until now has just been representations of how the plastic sleeve would respond to be heated up).

So Henry is now testing the bottle with an equivalent Muddler liquid in it and without (the liquid darkens the label) and just tweaking a couple of items (our BBE is on the cap rather than on the neck as we had previously stated on the label). This is all to make sure that it is looking the best it can.

So here is how the bottles look (with the sleeve a few millimetres too tall):


The photo is taken by me (so is rubbish) I should also take this opportunity to to show you my workspace.... some of the features:

• The phone - I spend most of the day on this arguing with Henry and working out the cost of freight! (In fact I've spent 10 minutes this morning trying to work out why it wasn't working and then realising that it was unplugged)
• The golf balls - used on Friday afternoons
• The poker chips - well everything's a gamble isn't it? I'm supposed to be playing poker against Henry and some other guys on Saturday night... maybe I can win complete control of Muddler Drinks Ltd
• The window - my source of natural light. Henry uses his all day for staring into the sky!
• The rum sample - for when things get a bit too much
  
• A copy of the Publican - because occasionally all the market research I do in pubs and bars is not enough and I have to pretend to know what is going on in the trade press
• The notebook - the jotting place for all my thoughts... for example suggested recipes for the NEXT Muddler in the range.
  
• The paperwork - most of this is currently some attempts at me writing Terms and Conditions, because apparently some people may try to avoid paying for the great taste of Muddlers.

This is the desk relatively clean at the moment... you don't want to see it on a bad day!

Anyway, here is a close up of the bottle:


The other exciting news is that great progress is being made on the website itself. The designer (Alex) and a Flash Developer (Alessandro) hammered away at it late into the night last night. BTW Flash is a technical term, not a reference to Alessandro! The work they are showing us is looking great.

However, the main main question is now... can we finish the product in time for Henry to take some cases to Glastonbury (on Thursday 21st June)? Its going to be close, my current prediction is having the product on the Wednesday or Thursday of next week. He's going to be looking for that photo of Kate Moss drinking it... fingers crossed.

The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected!

How true it was. On Friday morning we set off a 6.30 in the Clio to get up to Tyne Tees to see our product getting bottled. As Rupert said excitement levels were high. At last we were going to get hold of the one thing we had talked and thought about for the last 6 months.

But alas, an hour and a half from the bottler, while Rups and I were having a much needed coffe in a service station, the phone rang. There was a problem.....

Not a manufacturing problem, per se, but there was a problem with the labels. They had been sleeved to high which meant the bottles couldn't be capped. Rups and I were left in stunned silence, had we come all this way just to turn around and go back home? Was someone conspiring against us to try to make sure this bottle never got off the ground?

Well we weren't going to let this stop us. We had come to see our product bottled and labels or not it was going to happen.

We set off again and made it to the bottlers in good time to get to the bottom of what was going on. One way or another we were going to make sure things kept moving.

It was quickly agreed that we would go ahead with the bottling but on clear instead of the sleeved bottles. While this wasn't ideal it meant that we would not loose our bottling time and we could oversee the final mix of our product.

A couple of hours and a sausage sandwich later our product was ready to be mixed. This was the moment of truth. Was what we had taste tested a hundred times and tweaked to perfection going to deliver on a big scale....

Rupert and I wait, feeling a little nervous, before the taste test


The product was brought out and we, along with a couple of factory workers, were all poured a small glass each. Before Rups or I could even make a comment the woman from the factory burst out with a big 'ooohh, that tastes really good, what's in that?' The man who had come in with her also started up 'yeah it's not sickly sweet like alot of the drinks we mix here'. Rups and I looked at each other, these comments weren't contrived but the same as the ones we had made when we first tasted the drink all those months ago and decided this was what we wanted to re-create. It was a great feeling and our confidence and mood lifted once more.

Rups and I feeling pretty pleased with ourselves in the bottling factory after the taste testing

Rups sits on some of our sleeved bottles we can't use

With the product now safely secured it was time to think about getting down to South Wales for our mates stag do ( a nice 550 mile round trip in the clio!), but not until we had paid the sleever a visit first, well it was sort of on route and, unsurprisingly, we weren't getting any of our calls returned.

I'm going to leave it there for now and I'm sure Rups will update you tomorrow on how the label saga has gone.....

Bottling excitement

The day is nearly upon us! Tomorrow morning (a bit too early for our liking) Henry and I set off on a long journey up to the NE. This is no Geordie tour, or even for a stag do (that comes later). We are off to see the first production run of Muddler Cocktails.

We have confirmation that everything is in place:
- Our bottles have their labels on (or sleeves as our flash all in one labels are known)
- Our juice is waiting in the chiller
- Our rum has made it from St Lucia
- Our Cartons (or boxes as they are known to the general masses) have been glued together
- Our slot is ready on the production line at around midday tomorrow.

So by the end of day Friday my little Clio will be loaded up with the first half a dozen cases. There is still a little bit of fingers crossed with all this.... I think sleep tonight will be broken by thoughts of thousands of bottles breaking on the floor, the juice not tasting right, the labels going cloudy in the pasteuriser etc. Anything going wrong at this stage could put us back several weeks as all our suppliers get booked up with the pre-summer season rush for juice, booze and sticking things on and in bottles.

Henry and I have decided to be on site, because it is exciting and also because we are determined to get this product perfect. We should be able to taste it as it goes along the production line (not too much!) and ensure that the product looks as we have spent months envisaging.

Having spent several hours in the close confines of Henry getting up to the NE we can then enjoy a run to South Wales. Yes I know we are going on a tour of pretty much the corners of Wales and England, but its not every weekend that we get invited to Chopper (aka Gav) Henry's stag do. Yes that's right, another fine fellow is being lost to the ways of marriage (and emigration for this one).

This means the first group to try Muddler Cocktails will be the exact opposites of who we have designed it for (25 - 35 year old civilised women) and instead will be a rampaging group on a stag do in a decrepit hall somewhere in South Wales. Anyway, many of them are good mates who have put up with use wittering away about Muddlers for several months (and some have reviewed key pieces of the material we have been producing for free). Rations will be being enforced for Muddlers at the stag do as we need the majority of what we can get in the Clio to take to London Pubs/ Bars that we have promised it to!

Not to fear... rations will not be enforced for long, the lorry load with almost all our remaining stock will be making its way down to London and dock with us on Tuesday. Then we will be asking you all to getting your hands on a case!

Only a short post today, as I must go and pack stuff that will fit in meeting one of our suppliers face to face for the first time, walking around a production line, a couple of nights out on a stag do, quad biking and canoeing. And it's women that moan about packing issues!

We'll let you know how it goes... keep looking back at the blog to see the updates (we'll see if we can get some photos of the production line).

Women Gyrating in Cages and the Competition

Yesterday was a truly mixed day of feelings. I think we had our biggest high of Muddler Cocktails short life span and then within a matter of hours our biggest low but I'll talk more about this later.

We went to the Bar 07 exhibition to see what everyone was up to. There were some pretty impressive displays and some very interesting new products there. It had everything from pub furniture, lighting and smell machines to premium spirits, mixers, cocktail shakers, beers and a girl gyrating in a cage in an attempt to promote an energy drink!

It was a little strange in that while there were some business people looking and trying the wares it seemed that the majority was made up of groups of 20 year olds, which didn't look to dissimilar to stag do's, who had thought it would be a good day out and were making the most of the free samples on offer. Unfortunately the samples were so small that we really couldn't see how this could either be enjoyable or quite how so many of them seemed to have got so well oiled. Oh well each to their own.

So what of the competition. Well there were 3 direct competitors that we could find, 2 of which we were aware of and one which was new to us. It's a bit of a roller-coaster of emotions when you come across your competitor. My first reaction is one of dread, B*LL*CKs someone has thought of it already and beaten us to it. But on closer inspection, i.e. trying their product and looking at what they were really trying to do, this sense of dread would rapidly dissolve into a feeling of superior self righteousness!

While the competitors are using fruit juice and alcohol they have missed what we believe is the key to the reason for putting these two ingredients together. You can hear their logic, 'Right, there's a big trend in natural fruit juices, there's also a really big market in alcohol, I know why don't we combine the two, then we will get the best of both worlds!' The million dollar question is, when people go for an alcoholic drink are they looking for a natural fruit juice with alcohol in it? We think probably not. But if you look at the same two trends and think what is it that people already enjoy that can combine the two? Well the answer to this is simple. It's the Cocktail.

By having the cocktail at the heart of what we do this means that we are not just throwing together two types of ingredients but we are first and foremost crafting and infusing ingredients to create a delicious tasting cocktail. It just so happens that in doing this, due to the high quality of our product, everything we use is natural.

The Muddled Cocktail we believe is the key to truly bringing the two worlds together of fruit juice and alcohol. Ultimately it's this that gives us the confidence on reflection to take on our competitors and if anything they have helped us in consolidating exactly who we are and what we want to be able to give to you.

So what was this high I talked of at the very beginning? Well yesterday we got booked in the diary our first meeting with a bar manager who owns several pubs in London, which was further testament to our idea and the product we are producing and a great vote of confidence.
This high was, however, relatively short lived as we were then told by our sleeving company that they have sleeved the wrong bottles!!

I think starting your own company is a bit like a classic English Summer's day. There are moments of blissful sunshine where you are warmed to the core, and then within a moment you can be chilled to goose bumps by an enormous black cloud. The thing is, at the minute, whenever there's a black cloud I can't help but think there's an even better silver lining just behind it.

Media Star

There is now a bit of waiting going on at Muddler Towers... we continue preparations for our launch but continue to wait for the product to appear. Working with companies that actually run physical machinery (rather than the digital world that I have left) means that you end up with delays that sound as if they've come from a mechanic rather my previous world of slipping up with a document or disagreement in a meeting. Everything is being done to get the product on the streets, but I need a little bit longer before I can give you a definite date.

So there are plans a foot for a media onslaught... well attempts to get in a couple of trade publications and if we're lucky a couple of consumer newspapers/ magazines. Henry has recently been leading the charge on this and getting the appropriate journalist contacts etc. However, I have stolen a march on the Henry's attempts.

I managed to get myself in to International Rugby News and although not the target market, all publicity is good publicity and all that. I tried gallantly to get Muddler mentioned in the article, but it's hard to throw details of an alcoholic drink into chat about the structure of the rugby leagues. Anyway, I'm now officially a 'prop' and 'drinks company founder':
(The sideburns are prominent through and I've managed to get this published whilst I'm still under 30!)

If you want to read the full article, there are some scans of the article here (they are quite large pdfs):
page 1
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So having made it to this dizzy heights of media stardom... I've embarked on a further attempt to become an 'it' boy. Over the weekend I wrote a piece on what I'm up to for my old boys news letter (the infamous 'Old Stortfordian'). This is something I would never normally do, but again it is another attempt to look for free publicity. My hope is that they wont edit it down to just saying that I live in SE London and have started my own company... only time will tell.

If he can get off the golf course/ driving range Henry will write another one of these postings tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Henry and I are probably off to a trade show (Bar 07) ... which should mean an afternoon of sniffing out the competition and tasting cocktails. I'd rather have our product and be out there giving it to the public, but then again its not too hard a life as the helm of Muddler Cocktails! Lets pressure Henry into publishing details tomorrow!