Sky Wave Gin’s
crowdfunding round
is now closed

Contents

1. Intro
2. Investor Deck (download)
3. Pitch Video
4. Why You Should Join Us
5. What is Crowdfunding?
6. FAQs

Download our Investor Deck here:

View our Pitch Video here.

For more information, please email investors@skywavegin.com

FAQs

Q: This campaign is eligible for EIS. What does that mean?
A: The campaign is approved by HMRC for the EIS scheme.  Government guidance on what this offers is here. Please make your own judgement or take advice on what this may mean to you, as everyone’s circumstances are different. Benefits may include immediate income tax relief on the investment, capital gains tax relief on profits, and tax relief on any loss.

Q: Do you have the capacity to produce the volumes you are forecasting?
A: Yes, we currently have the capacity to produce the liquid for up to 20,000 bottles per month without any expansion.

Q: You don’t start to show growth until 2024. Why is that? 
A: Where we show 2024, we mean our financial year ending in 2024, so these figures are for May 2023 – April 2024. The lead time for bottle production is about 6 months, so we won’t actually launch the new bottle until just into the new financial year – but we need to fund the process from now, including the creation of the bottle mould, to meet those timelines.

Q: Do you have any employees or do you do all this yourself?
A: We currently have 9 employees. The founders are the Business Director (MD) and the Sales and Marketing Director, as well as the distillers. We also have: a distillery manager; a business development manager; a sales manager; a marketing manager; a customer engagement manager; a distillery hand / distillery experience host; and a second distillery experience host.

Q: Is the bottle design protected in any way?
A: We have registered the design with worldwide IPOs.

Q: How did you arrive at your valuation?
A: For the current valuation, we have used a relatively conservative standard industry multiplier (5.8) of our last full-year turnover (21-22) after research across recent funding campaigns.  For example, some have valued as high as 7x turnover, others at 5x. We have also retained a consultant who has launched two distilleries and crowd funded one of them.  For the future valuation, we have used the same approach at the 5 year point; our business plan forecasts out to 5 years, and it is 5.8x this turnover which we have used, again as advised by our consultant.

Q: Will you use the proceeds of the funding to pay off your loans?
A: If we overfund, then yes, we will pay off some or all of the Fleximise loan.  But we will only do this if we overfund because the business case for the new bottle, marketing etc assumes the target figure, and we won’t eat into the project’s funds. In other words, investors are supporting us on the new bottle project and the growth that that will drive across the business, so we will ensure that is fully funded.

Q: What is your strategy to achieve the growth you are forecasting?
A: We have a multi-strand strategy:

• Bigger national distributors, such as Matthew Clark, enabled by the exquisite packaging to make us stand out from the crowd.
• Pub, restaurant and hotel chains, as opposed to single outlets.
• Tender bids (for chains, house pours etc).
• The ‘right fit’ national drinks chain, such as Majestic.
• Premium outlets – Selfridges, Harrods, Fortnum and Mason etc, enabled by the exquisite packaging.  
• The ‘right fit’ supermarket chain, such as Waitrose.
• Export markets, which we have not yet tapped.  However, we have had strong interest from abroad during the 2 years of covid and receive regular enquiries, and we have shipped to around 15 countries, including most of Europe, Hong Kong, America, and Australia. We are currently stocked in independent spirits merchants in Malta, Germany, Belgium and France and are actively pursuing opportunities.

Q: You’re showing a loss for FY 21-22. Why is that?
A: We invested in both staff and facilities last financial year. The staff investment is now showing a return which was not visible in-year, and some costs of our expansion into our new distillery fell into that year also. We are on track to return to profitability in FY 22-23.

Q: Why does gross profit increase from 45% in 2020-21 and 2021-22 to 54% in 2023?
A: As always, it’s a combination of things, but we have seen a number of changes in the business as a result of our growth to date that mean we have cut our cost of production in this FY (22-23, despite rising costs across the board). These include: the ability to buy bottles in bulk, a significant slice of the cost per bottle; and the fact that we have only recently become an excise warehouse, allowing us only to pay duty at the point of bottling and shipping as the product leaves the distillery. These two factors combined are hugely significant. Moreover, with the support of this raise, we will move to a bespoke bottle, and buying these in significantly larger volumes will increase this gross margin even more.