Ten years later

Chemigate and Kyrö Distillery Company celebrated their tenth anniversary in the same year, in 2022. The timing can also be questioned for both companies – and for good reason. Chemigate had already turned 12 years old by 2022 but, due to the coronavirus, the celebrations could only be held last year. In Isokyrö, the copper stills were first switched on in early 2014, but water had already been thrown on the sauna stove at Kyrö back in 2012. This event also inspired the memorable “field running picture” to which the company will forever be linked. That image also lets us get up close and personal with the founding members.

Jouni Ritola, a successful serial entrepreneur and rye evangelist, the CEO of the Kyrö Distillery Company, and an old friend of mine, lounges at the bar in his Hämeenkatu, Helsinki office, looking like a caricature of a distiller. Yes, of course there is a bar counter at the Kyrö office. Next, Jouni surprises me by offering me whisky instead of coffee. I get to sample the Kyrö Peat Smoke whisky. It hasn’t hit the shelves at Alko yet. The taste is strong but refined. Familiar rye can also be distinguished among the smoke. We’ve come a long way from barrel number nine.

I knew Jouni even before we spent the evening together after the 2014 PulPaper fair, sitting in a pop-up drinks restaurant set up by the Kyrönmaa Tourism Promotion Centre (the name was one of the first in a series of brilliant marketing campaigns that Kyrö Distillery has become known for) and tasting drinks made from rye distillate. The evening ended with an impulse buy. I bought a barrel of whisky. I wrote an article about this ninth barrel, which was produced by Kyrö, in this same magazine in 2017.

The brand Kyrö was born out of daring

Although we operate in different sectors, the business models of Chemigate and Kyrö have much in common. Of course, Kyrö is in a completely different league when it comes to image marketing than Chemigate, which mainly offers B-to-B services for forestry companies. It is a pleasure to listen to Jouni talk about the company’s philosophy, summed up in the phrase “dream and dare.” From daring grew that naked ambition, with the initial aim of creating something that no one else had dared attempt. Ever since that streak in the field, making Kyrö stand out has required a large number of deliberate decisions along the way. To illustrate, Jouni mentions that, while their competitors were creating separate brands in the hope of being seen as smaller (and therefore more exclusive), they decided to bet everything on the Kyrö card. Napue Gin is nowhere to be found anymore. The card that was bet on has long since become a high value card, if not even an ace. But how does one build a brand in a country where you can’t even advertise alcohol?

One of the answers to this is brand community. Ever since the beginning, the community has been the lifeblood of Kyrö. I was there when the first barrel owners’ meetings were organised. Since then, the annual Kyröfest has become the flagship of the community, with over 1,500 partici pants last year. Community spirit allows the initiated to gather together with like-minded people and also helps to spread the message outside the community. And of course, it has also created new products. In the early days, product development was carried out with stakeholders. Some examples are the ‘Sirene Absinthe’ and the ‘Helsingin’, which were developed with the help of enthusiastic professionals. Even then, Kyrö was the distiller and the provider of the framework.

There are little details in the Kyrö brand that tie the company to Finland and Isokyrö. “Finnish rye is, of course, the thread connecting it all,” says Jouni. The selection of Kyrö Dairy Cream for the product range back in the day is, in turn, a reminder of the fact that the distillery is located in an old dairy. There are countless similar examples.

A person delivering bulk loads to Stora Enso sometimes stops to wonder whether this really is that important if the purpose is to just taste a good drink and, in a socially acceptable way, get a little drunk. It is. If your clothes were only meant to cover private parts, shirts would be labelled Blåkläder, not Ralph Lauren.

… and then we take Berlin

The Kyrö brand became even stronger when its gin won the title of the World’s Best Gin and Tonic in 2015. The distillery was working long hours, and demand exceeded supply. Going international was a logical next step. Now Jouni is no longer smiling in the same way. His speech is slower, but it is equally clear that these issues have been thoroughly worked through and that the words that come out of his mouth shouldn’t be shrugged off. Kyrö misjudged the competitiveness of the brand abroad.

“Distributors were harnessed and left to wait for orders. At the same time, investments were made in both capacity and infrastructure, perhaps too enthusiastically in retrospect.” Been there, done that, I think to myself, but I can’t bring myself to say anything. I may not have got as far as Jouni in the 12-step program for entrepreneurs. I haven’t yet made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.

In Finland, the distillers quickly realised that the strategy had to be changed. Efforts were directed at the next level. The aim was to try to influence bar and restaurant owners and the choices made by spirits retail chains. In a word, the focus was on the “trade” in the sector’s value chain, rather than on the distributors. Jouni packed up his life and moved to Chicago. The business grew, but something essential was missing.

Jouni calls the current strategy a “hyperlocal export strategy.” Now the aim is to make an impact at a grassroots level. Naturally, this means that resources need to be more carefully targeted. Kyrö chose to focus on Berlin – and not even the whole of Berlin, but parts of it. In Neukölln and Kreuzberg, the Brutally Finnish advertising campaign began to take effect. It was a success, and the concept was expanded. The success was unexpectedly boosted by the coronavirus. The Kyrö Distillery had just signed a contract with Gorillas and Flink, companies that deliver consumer products to customers’ homes within thirty minutes, when the concept of ‘pantsdrunk’ was introduced to the world. Non-Finns should absolutely google the meaning of that.

This year has brought about inflation, and with it, a downturn. The above-mentioned investments in infrastructure and the need for capital due to the investment in whisky have put the screws on. “We have 1.5 million litres of whisky in stock in Isokyrö.” I am thinking that the whisky stocks must be eating up a huge amount of capital.

However, the situation at the distillery looks quite good. After all, you can’t just regard the ageing whisky in barrels as a stock of raw materials. It can just as well be seen as an investment for which financing has now been obtained. This investment will result in products such as the Peat Smoke whisky, which has already disappeared from my glass but will soon be found alongside Kyrö Malt and Kyrö Wood Smoke whiskies on the shelves of self-respecting spirits retailers. A major deal has also just been made with Finnair. Jouni chuckles like a kid at a candy store when he tells me about this.

What we believe in

The memories of the early days have been gilded by time and the smoke-scented drink. While the lack of resources and the burning of a candle at both ends, bought with bank money, caused sleepless nights, they also gave clarity to the mission in life: to survive or die. The time has now come to grow up. The Kyrö brand has built a strong position in Finland, so it has to stand for something. What are the values that both the distillers and the drinkers can stand behind? Again, we find similarities with Chemigate. Responsibility. It won’t only be recognised but taken as a positive challenge and defined so that it can be measured. For Kyrö, responsibility has always meant environmental and social responsibility.

Today, there has been a row of bottles on the desk. They are being turned over and wondered about. Packaging is a difficult thing in image marketing. Kyrö’s drinks are definitely not bottom-shelf products. Therefore, aesthetics and style matter. On the other hand, environmental responsibility places high demands on packaging. Kyrö is currently launching a new product. No other details were revealed to me, except that the bottle may contain 70% recycled glass.

The company is also going through a kind of change of generation. “We want to maintain the entrepreneurial spirit, but it should no longer be as owner-dependent.” The idea is to distribute responsibility to the capable professionals who have been hired and who have embraced the culture of the company.

I remember jumping into a taxi in Isokyrö years ago. The driver talked about the honour of being involved in the distillery the whole way home. I wasn’t at the distillery auditing that evening either, but I have to say that the social responsibility situation can’t be very bad when even the taxi drivers are praising local entrepreneurs.