The Four Pillars story: The first three months of the “Hendrick’s Killer”
In this edited extract from Four Pillars co-founder Matt Jones’ new book, he recalls the first three months of the business that would set it up for enormous success.
More than 10 years ago, Matt Jones, Stuart Gregor and Cameron Mackenzie launched Four Pillars, which would grow to become one of Australia’s most recognisable gin makers, before the trio sold the business to drinks giant Lion across two transactions in 2019 and 2023. In this edited extract from Jones’ new book, he recalls the first three months of the business that would set it up for enormous success.
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By 15 October 2013, it was all systems go on everything to do with our launch. My focus was firmly on getting ready to launch our first Pozible campaign. Pozible was, at the time, the world’s third-largest crowdfunding platform and the only one run out of Australia. We knew the campaign was going to be a success within hours.
Within a day, we were on the front page of the Pozible website, soon after we’d hit our target, and within four days we’d sold out our whole first batch. We had a great story, well told, with a compelling piece of storytelling on film from Stu and some sensational imagery thanks to my wife Rebecca and the brilliant photographer Anson Smart.
Backed by the support of friends, family and mates in the trade, and boosted by the extraordinary enthusiasm of gin drinkers we’d never met from around the country, we had got our brand off to a flying start.
We sold 420 bottles in just over 90 hours and raised just over $30,000. We built the beginnings of our customer database, with 300 people who hadn’t just clicked ‘Like’ on Facebook, but had actually handed over their cold hard cash and suggested they would do so again. And we now had a proof of concept, both for the demand for great Australian gin and for the power of social media, storytelling and word-of-mouth marketing.
By the start of December 2013, we had sold our first batch (and had recruited our Batch Number One Club of drinkers to whom we promised lifetime early access to every new gin we went on to make). Cam had finalised the recipe for Rare Dry Gin, and we were ready to share the gin with the trade, the media and the world at a series of events in great gin-forward bars, from Melbourne’s iconic Gin Palace to Sydney’s The Rook (both of which would go on to play key roles in the development of future gins).
From these launch parties to private trade tastings to sending bottles to key drinks media, the response to Four Pillars and the final gin that Cameron made was extraordinary. Cameron’s use of fresh citrus gave us a simple signature garnish for a G&T – a big, delicious wedge of orange. This was the contemporary, delicious, modern Australian gin and the perfect moreish G&T we had dreamed of creating, and the reception was overwhelming.
Following our first launch events in early December, Stu and his brilliant PR expert wife Sally Lewis drew on all their relationships and know-how to make sure that everyone who mattered was tasting, talking about and writing about Four Pillars. A great example of the response was a piece by the wine and drinks writer and blogger Drew Lambert, published on January 16, 2014, where he asked, ‘Can an Australian-made gin taste better than Hendrick’s?’ and noted that ‘Gin is supposed to be British, and more importantly, from London! Right?’.
Wrong, he decided, declaring Four Pillars the ‘clear favourite’ in his blind tests against Hendrick’s and Bombay Sapphire, referring to Four Pillars as a ‘Hendrick’s Killer’.
So, yes, we were a tiny player going against the gins of some of the biggest booze multinationals on the planet. And, yes, we had a tiny marketing budget. And, yes, we could only make 400 bottles of gin at a time. But the early signs were good.
This was working. Momentum was building. Pozible customers were reordering. Local bars and restaurants wanted to stock us. Dan Murphy’s not only took the meeting, but they ranged the gin. Our theories were working. We had:
- a world-class gin, but with a modern Australian accent;
- a brand with timeless luxury, quality cues, but a warm, friendly, inclusive, modern Australian tone of voice;
- beautiful bespoke packaging;
- small group trade engagement;
- a social community building;
- human faces (Stu’s and Cam’s, not mine!);
- a sense of being craft, small, quality-obsessed and paying personal attention to every tiny detail; and
- a foundation of higher purpose, helping to define a modern Australian distilling and, in particular, gin-distilling tradition.
Did it nearly go wrong at any stage? Looking back, it seems like there were surprisingly few moments of jeopardy. Like when the ship carrying our first delivery of custom bottles got stuck in the South China Sea and we made the expensive decision to airfreight enough glass to cover the first two batches, and then hoped the rest would arrive before all our momentum ran out.
But, in truth, the bigger risks were in the sliding doors moments, the things that didn’t happen. For example, what if we hadn’t run that crowdfunding campaign? Would we have generated the PR that we did, the excitement that we did and the ‘Ginvestor’ demand that we did? Or what if we had decided that selling gin direct to consumers was likely to annoy the big retailers? Would we have created the consumer demand and excitement that then helped energise our initial retail sales?
The good news is we didn’t walk through those sliding doors, and instead took the path we did. All of which meant that we now had the wind in our sails and confidence in our approach.
And it’s just as well we ended 2013 with such confidence and conviction, because the response to Rare Dry Gin and the launch of Four Pillars was beyond anything we could have hoped for, and we needed every ounce of focus and conviction we could muster to keep us on course. If 2013 had been a madcap rush to create and launch the world’s best gin, the first few months of 2014 were about to take the madness to another level.
This is an edited extract from Lessons from Gin: Business the Four Pillars Way by Matt Jones (Wiley $34.95), available October 30, 2024, at all leading retailers.
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