A “DISGRUNTLED quantity surveyor” who quit to start his own business now heads a distillery producing up to 1,000 bottles of gin each week.
Rupert Holloway, 32, built Conker Spirit, which produces its dry gin at Southbourne and has recently branched out to make a coffee liqueur.
“It all stems back to me being a disgruntled quantity surveyor,” he said.
“It was back in early 2013. I'd just kind of realised I was a miserable."
He spent months reading books about business and entrepreneurship.
“There were probably three months of reading and getting excited and looking at lots of different ideas,” he said.
“Eventually I thought, hang on a second, why can you buy local beers nearly everywhere across Dorset but order a gin and tonic and it’s the typical brown and green bottles?
“Then I had the kind of moment where I thought if I don’t do it, someone else will.”
He added: “I essentially handed my notice in and told my bosses, ‘Thank you for everything but I’m going to turn my back on everything and do this.'
“They were quite amazed but they were really supportive and said if your heart’s not in your job, you can’t be doing it. One said, ‘I don’t want anybody here who doesn’t love it’. One of them said, ‘Do you want some money?’
“It wasn’t really a risk because I didn’t have a mortgage and I didn’t have any kids. I have both of those things now. I had an amazing girlfriend who said ‘Let’s do it, we’ll live off my wages for a couple of years and get it going’.”
He started with a £10,000 grant, a £10,000 start-up loan and the proceeds of selling his car. Setting up a distillery involved the lengthy process of getting approval from HMRC.
“It was a whole year until we sold our first bottle. It wasn’t like I left my job and then was down the local market flogging gin,” he said.
Eventually he had to ask his dad for £1,500 for one last piece of equipment, he recalled.
Boosted by marketing via social media, the product found itself favoured by the likes of Harvey Nichols and River Cottage. It helped that it was ahead of the current fashion for speciality gins, Mr Holloway believes.
“When I as showing Conker to people down here, it was a new thing,” he said.
Now, he said, bartenders were inundated with new gins. “One bartender told me he doesn’t even open emails,” he said.
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