Ever heard of a Trick-or-Tini? It’s one part coconut cream, one part Stirrings Tangerini Mixer, one part banana liqueur, and a splash of white rum.
But the key ingredient – the one the inventors of the recipe want you to notice – is the Stirrings cocktail mixer.
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Launched in 2005, the Stirrings cocktail mixer line now comes in 15 flavors, from mojito to margarita to pomegranate and wild blueberry.
Bill Creelman and Gil MacLean, whose Fall River company makes the mixers, are Western Massachusetts natives and childhood friends who since 1997 had been running a direct-to-consumer catalog company, Nantucket Harvest Co.
In 2000, while working for Nantucket Off-Shore, a company that made spice rubs, Creelman and MacLean created a line of dry garnishes for cocktail glasses, such as a sugar, mint and lime combination for mojitos. They called them “rimmers” – and they now sell 21 varieties.
In 2002, they purchased Nantucket Off-Shore. Since then, they have continued to grow and gain popularity. Their rimmers and mixers are now used by restaurants, nightclubs, bars and hotel chains and sold in specialty stores.
And their company, now called Stirrings, has grown its revenue by 959 percent in the last three years, earning it the No. 78 slot in this year’s Inc. Magazine list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in the country.
Last year, the company’s revenue was about $14 million. This year it’s close to hitting the $20 million mark. And next year, that hopefully will double, said Paul Nardone, president and CEO of Stirrings.
In June, the company moved to a bigger facility, 20,000 square feet of mill space renovated into offices for finance, marketing, research and development, and customer service. The company also has added 28 employees over the last year, for a total of 67.
Nardone cited many factors as key to Stirrings’ success.
One was simply timing. He said the company entered the market at a time when liquor sales were taking off – particularly for premium vodkas such as Grey Goose, which has been growing at a 6.8-percent annual rate for the past five years.
“We spend a lot of time reading about liquor,” Nardone said. “The fastest-growing segment is the super-premium … it’s on fire.”
That works for Stirrings, because the company markets its brand as a super-premium mixer.
Stirrings was the first (that they know of) to develop a premium-type mixer, with ingredients such as triple-purified water, 40-percent juice, sugar cane instead of high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener, natural flavors instead of artificial and no added preservatives, Nardone said.
“We’re a good example of a first mover,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean the company isn’t pushing to stay ahead of the curve.
This month, in Boston, it embarked on its first-ever consumer advertising campaign, Nardone said.
Stirrings chose Boston as its “media blitz” testing site because “it was our most developed market,” he said, with Stirrings products already in more than 50 percent of the city’s liquor stores, restaurants, specialty stores, etc.
The campaign includes 25 full-page ads, to appear in Boston magazine, Boston Common, Food & Wine, In Style, Travel & Leisure, Elle and others. It also includes displays on two billboards facing drivers headed west on the Massachusetts Turnpike and south on Interstate 93.
In addition, the company plans on hosting 30 cocktail parties for companies and individuals who win contests, because “the No. 1 way people hear about us is word of mouth,” Nardone said.
The whole campaign is an effort to “gain perspective on what’s around the corner in our emerging markets,” he said. Right now, California is one of Stirrings’ biggest markets, and Florida is fast growing.
If all goes well, Nardone said, Stirrings might launch up to six advertising campaigns next year.
The company also has a sales staff of 30 to get the word out, he noted. Six are in-house, and the rest spread throughout the country, but they aren’t traditional in their function.
The 20 outside sales personnel are called business development managers, and Nardone said their “primary role is to facilitate a business relationship between distributors and retailers.” The distributors, he said, “have very large, every effective sales teams. … But our team helps keep our line at the top of the minds of distributors and customers.”
The business development managers knock on the doors of independent stores, restaurants, and other venues, and pull business through the distributors, Nardone said. It’s more of a marketing role, and “a major point of difference between us [and competitors].”
For retailers who are too remote to be served by a distributor or who want to deal directly with the company, Stirrings will set up direct accounts, but they amount to less than 10 percent of the company’s business.
Stirrings products are already in more than 200 bars and restaurants and 75 liquor stores in Rhode Island, said Joe Morenzi, sales manager at Rhode Island Distributing Co., which started carrying the brand about a year ago.
“It’s been selling phenomenally well, right from the beginning,” Morenzi said. “It’s a combination of the quality of the product and diversity of the flavors. They are in tune with the hot flavors.”
And the company has no qualms about taking its “hot flavors” to an international audience. Nardone said one of the founders will soon go to Paris to attend a trade show there. “He’ll spend time in restaurants and bars, find out what people are talking about.”
But the key to the future will be the company’s ability to “do a good job continuing to size up the market,” Nardone said. “As an organization, we still take lots of chances, but we try to get as comfortable as possible with the risks before investing.”
