Matthew Farmer of the GlenWyvis Distillery explains how the business has grown through community ownership. The distillery was funded in a very unconvential way, which provided a unique challenge in the early days of the operation.
“It was entirely crowdfunded. And I think that when people hear that, they’re like, ‘Oh, like a portion of it was crowdfunded or something’. No, it was entirely crowdfunded.” — Matthew Farmer, GlenWyvis Distillery
Podcast excerpts. Interview by Drew Hendry
Drew: In this episode, we’re looking at the subject of good business through community ownership. And we’re doing that with GlenWyvis, a Highland distillery funded in a very unconventional way and hearing about the unique challenges they face. I’m delighted to be joined by Matthew Farmer. We want to hear about how GlenWyvis was created through community ownership and your own journey to running it. What can you tell us about that?
Matthew: The distillery itself was started in 2015. When GlenWyvis as a community benefit society started it was all crowd-funded. And it was a very easy decision for me to throw a little bit of money into that pool and become an investor and get my t-shirt and all that. I was walking around with my ‘I own a Scottish distillery’ t-shirt and all that kind of stuff.
Drew: You talk about owning a tiny part of it. Of course, it’s a really interesting, funding model that’s been put in place for GlenWyvis isn’t it.
Matthew: Yeah, it was entirely crowdfunded. And I think that when people hear that they’re like, “Oh, like a portion of it was crowdfunded or something”. No, it was entirely crowdfunded.
Some people put in more money than others, of course, but the way the community benefit trust works is that everybody has an equal vote, one member, one vote. We are very reliant on our membership for funding and we would never have been able to get to where we are today without every single person, all the way from the £10,000 investors, all the way down to the £250.
Drew: Well, of course, those are the people who’ve invested the money to get started up, but the other people investing their time, the people that work here, the team that you’ve got, how important is it that they’re invested in the vision, the goals of the distillery?
Matthew: Because you have such a small team everybody influenced the quality of the end product. If your distiller doesn’t care about how good the whisky is, you’re not going to end up with good whisky.
Drew: What are the biggest challenges of your business right now?
Matthew: The biggest challenge is probably funding. When you are a community benefits society, banks won’t really touch you because of that. So, we have to go through some fairly unconventional means of raising money. And of course, whisky just in general ways is a fairly bad business model for the first 10 years.
You’re filling all these casks, but then you’re not selling them. They’re just sitting there and accumulating and accumulating and accumulating and getting more and more expensive. So even in the best of times, the whisky industry is quite an expensive one to start. Never mind if you are trying to do it from this pool of funding that you’re raising from the community.
Listen to the full Podcast to learn more about GlenWyvis Distillery, the unique way it was crowdfunded and the intricacies of managing a community ownership business of 3,500 people.