Packamama
60% of British start-ups fail within the first three years. Thanks, in part, to the advice and investment from mentor and investor Ryan Howsam, entrepreneur Santiago Navarro, CEO of then Garçon Wines and now Packamama, is one such example of a start-up leader who has avoided that dreadful fate.
Within five years, Santiago has taken his fledgling business, rooted in his eco-flat wine bottle innovation, from concept stage to revenue generating and on to multinational success. With more than two million bottles ordered to date, despite the strong headwinds of a global pandemic, the innovation is now taking the industry by storm. Part of this journey has been covered in the TV show Fix Or Fail, to be broadcast on Thursday 20 October 2022 at 8pm on 5Select – then available on My5.
The beginning:
Santiago started the filming process with Ryan Howsam and his team on Fix Or Fail soon after his novel wine bottle innovation, that underpinned the idea for a wine through the letterbox discovery club, had been seen on Pop Up Start Up (CNBC International) in 2017. Aside from generating significant interest from UK wine lovers, the slimline, lightweight bottles caught the eye of significant players in the alcohol industry.
Contrary to the initial concept of a direct-to-consumer UK wine club, Ryan's first piece of advice on Fix Or Fail was to leverage the innovation's larger opportunity by focusing instead on selling it to other businesses.
Furthermore, under Ryan's mentorship the bottle designs were refined, production brought to the UK, 284 design patents across 35 countries were registered for flat bottle shapes, the bottle weight reduced even further to 63g, and pricing evolved. His advice not only led to business growth but also to having a far greater impact in tackling a wider industry packaging problem; round, glass wine bottles are the single largest contributor to wine's carbon footprint due to their heavy weight and spatial inefficiency.
How it's going:
Thanks to Ryan's advice to focus on the largest 27 billion bottle market opportunity internationally and sell the packaging to other wineries, Garçon Wines, as it was known at the time of filming Fix Or Fail, spun off the flat bottle packaging into a new business under the name Packamama. In addition to flat-packing, the bottles are made from 100% recycled PET.
Packamama has secured an impressive roster of wine company customers to use their bottles including Accolade Wines, the UK's no.1 wine company, Moët Hennessy's Château Galoupet, Miguel Torres Chile, and Taylors Wines of Australia. Last month, Packamama surpassed the two millionth bottle ordered having smashed through the previous milestone reached in February of one million bottles – doubling volume in just seven months.
Additionally, Ryan's strategic advice from granular insights have enabled the creation of two business lines. Packamama will continue to address the wine and wider drinks packaging market. Garçon Wines will now evolve and soon relaunch as a sustainable, direct-to-consumer wine brand owner with scope to reinvigorate the initial wine through the letterbox discovery club idea featured in both TV shows.
Santiago Navarro, CEO & founder of Packamama, said “I am deeply grateful to Ryan Howsam for his support in the form of much-needed direction and investment. Fix Or Fail provides an insightful glimpse into the challenges faced by budding entrepreneurs like me. When one's business is their brainchild, then they can benefit significantly from the sage advice of a seasoned businessman like Ryan. We are never free from the risk of failure – no business is – but we have definitely been fixed in the right direction towards a course of multinational growth and success thanks to Ryan's pragmatic mentorship.”
Fix Or Fail on 5Select (Freeview 55)
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