How Ellen Weigall went from being “laughed out of the room” to building Australia’s only female-owned gin company

Many of us have had those moments sitting around with our friends where we think of an idea for something we want to see out in the world.

“That’s such a good idea, we should start a business!” is the usual dialogue that follows.

For many people, actually creating that business is just a pipe dream. But three years ago, at only 23 years of age, it became Ellen Weigall’s mission.

Weigall was looking for the solution to a problem she’d been noticing in the years that she was “educating her palate” when it came to alcohol. As a self-proclaimed “girly-girl”, Weigall loved a bright pink drink — but she also loved quality.

Seemingly the two were mutually exclusive. High-quality spirits were targeted towards men, while female-targeted products were overly sweet and seen as ‘cheap’.

So Weigall built BABY Pink Gin, Australia’s only female-owned gin brand that doesn’t sacrifice quality or femininity.

As of the last financial year, BABY was turning over $200,000 in revenue with an anticipated growth to more than $1 million in the next few years, and is stocked in more than 40 retailers and liquor stores across the country, including Dan Murphy’s and First Choice Liquor.

How?

It all comes down to not starting from scratch. Instead, Weigall figured out what she knew and what she didn’t know — and then found who could fill in the gaps.

Key takeaways

1. You don’t need to know everything. Being a founder is also about being open to learning

2. Just because your way of doing something isn’t popular yet, doesn’t mean it’s wrong

3. Getting stocked in retailers comes down to one single thing: having a great product

It started with a yearning

Weigall studied public relations at university and, upon graduating, was asked by her mum to join her in co-directing a PR firm, Flaunt Marketing.

While Weigall agreed — she was a graduate in need of a job, after all — she also “always had this yearning” to do her own thing.

“I feel like everyone wants to do something, and everyone’s not too sure,” she said.

“[But] I just knew that once I found that niche, I would know.”

At the time of starting work at the PR firm, Weigall was moving away from consuming sugary premix drinks. Distilleries were also growing in popularity, Weigall says, and Aussies were starting to do tastings at gin distilleries like they would at wineries.

“I felt like if I was going to buy drinks for myself, I was having to make this choice between the products that I identify with, and the products I actually liked the taste of.

“And the more I thought about it with my PR, marketing and branding head, the more I thought ‘this can’t be right’.”

“The alcohol industry is one of the biggest industries in the world, and so much time and money and effort goes into researching the market and product development.

“So why are all the premium spirits super masculine, and all the feminine spirits super sugary and crap?”

Weigall says she just “couldn’t stop thinking about” the gender-disparity of these products, but acknowledges a product doesn’t need to be seen as masculine or feminine with such a gender diverse marketing community in our world these days.

But she also doesn’t want to shy away from being the “girly girl” that she is.

“And I’ve always said I don’t want to sacrifice my femininity in order to be taken seriously.”

Perhaps surprisingly, when Weigall looked into the industry, she realised it’s run predominately by men – “and they essentially think [sugary, low alcohol] drinks is what women want, which is completely wrong”, Weigall says.

“I kind of felt like I stumbled upon this secret.”

BABY Pink Gin. Source: supplied

Want a distillery? That’ll cost you $1 million

Big names such as Gordons were starting to launch pink gin offerings, but there were two red flags that Weigall noticed.

First, these gins were still excessively sugary, and second, when mixed, they lost their bright pink colour.

Weigall had found her niche, but she “literally had no idea” where to even start with creating an alcoholic product, let alone an entire alcoholic business.

“And I realised [an alcoholic] product is potentially the hardest to do,” Weigall said. “Because it’s extremely serious — you’re selling a drug to the public.”

That means before Weigall could even think about distilling the bright pink, quality gin she envisioned, she had to consider the legalities, tax laws, consumer rights and more.

“There’s no rulebook on what things you need to run a gin business,” Weigall said.

After months and months of research, applications and planning to ensure she had all of her legal and tax requirements under control, Weigall started to consider whether she should buy her own still and learn how to distill something herself, or if she should hire a distiller to help her create the product.

But that was going to set her back more than $1 million dollars, and the business has no outside funding — BABY Pink Gin has been built solely from Weigall’s own savings of about $30,000-$40,000.

With so many distilleries popping up around Melbourne — and Australia — Weigall spent months calling and meeting with distillers and people in the industry to see if anyone would help her out.

“But they basically laughed me out of the room,” she said.

“I could see their eyes roll back in their head as soon as I walked in, and it makes you feel like you’re already on the backfoot — trying to justify this product.

“I was almost going to give up.”

A Mountain of help

This was early 2019, so the concept of contract distilling — where you hire a still at a pre-established distillery — wasn’t well known.

Many people discouraged Weigall, too, telling her she’d never be able to find someone who would be nice enough to create a spirit for her when they have their own products to sell.

Yet Weigall finally found the perfect fit with Mountain Distilling in the Macedon Ranges of Victoria.

“They totally got the concept of BABY, and they loved it,” Weigall explained, noting that Mountain’s own product is very much a masculine-targeted gin.

The distillers came onboard, feeling passionate about the concept but knowing — as men — they couldn’t do the product justice in the same way Weigall could.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B4ToZc-gqjm/

Since gin doesn’t take a long time to make, only around half a day to make 1000 litres, Weigall says there’s many million-dollar distilleries around with stills sitting unused 90% of the time.

“Then there’s people like me who can’t afford a still. So it’s the best of both worlds.”

Mountain helped Weigall create the formation while Weigall did everything else, from packaging to labelling and distribution, with the help of family and friends.

After 18 months of research and development, BABY Pink Gin was being sold to consumers in early 2020.

Now, two years since the launch, Mountain takes care of the packaging and storage, and Weigall is on the hunt for sales representatives in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth to help her with the growing business.

With 20% growth in sales from this time last year with only now 26-year-old Weigall at the helm, it’s expected that number will growh with the product continuing to be stocked in Woolworths’ liquor stores across the nation, and soon Coles’ First Choice Liquor as well.

As for how Weigall scored these large retailers, she says she found Woolworths a lot easier than Coles, but she acknowledges she may have gotten lucky with timing.

“Woolworths had a great COVID-19 relief program called Local Luvvas, which supported local distilleries very early into the pandemic,” she explains.

That meant the original BABY Pink Gin product was stocked in Dan Murphy’s and BWS quite early into its life, but getting into Coles hasn’t been as easy as quick of a process.

“But it’s all about having a great product and getting it in front of the right person,” she said, along with the grit, determination and resilience that Weigall knew she had to develop to make it in this industry.

Soon, that one ‘great product’ for BABY will become a whole range with the launch of gin and tonic premix and a gin spritz coming this November.