Challenge Accepted

Challenge Accepted

With skills in advertising, a healthy appetite for risk and a big dose of New Zealander grit, Justine Troy has achieved business success many small business owners would only dream of. As the co-founder of vodka brand 42 Below, she proved herself an industry disruptor.

She has taken the same attitude into every project since, from skincare and fragrances to her current legacy project, sheep farm Lake Hãwea Station. Justine and her husband Geoff Ross have proven they are the grassroots challenger brands disrupting sectors.

Justine and her husband Geoff Ross

As New Zealanders and Australians, we like to be jack of all trades – but we can’t do everything. It’s important to identify what your superpowers are, and then partner with people who have adjunct skills sets.

This November, Justine Troy will travel to Australia to present at FBAA’s National Industry Conference. Her name may not be immediately familiar to finance and mortgage brokers, but to those who appreciate good vodka or an even better homegrown David and Goliath business story, Justine Troy is a name well-known.

Her story is one of self-belief. Of building something from nothing. Of seeing an opportunity and backing yourself, even if it means breaking the rules.

Taking us back to the nineties, Justine and her husband Geoff Ross were both working in advertising in Wellington. Justine had completed a postgraduate course in journalism in London, with the goal of finding a new career as a documentary researcher and writer back in New Zealand. Meanwhile, Geoff had been working in the US, and noticed an American vodka advertisement that inspired him. “The ad didn’t sit well with Geoff,” recalls Justine. “The industrial nation of the US making their own vodka felt uncomfortable to him. He thought vodka should come from a clean, green, waterfall environment – like New Zealand.”

With Geoff still working in advertising, and Justine job hunting, she got busy experimenting with vodka. “We were in our mid-to-late twenties, and drank a lot of vodka, so I started researching. I bought a still, and set it up in our rented home’s basement. We wanted a wheatbased vodka, and we experimented with taste profiles. It wasn’t long before we brought on a chemist to work with us.”

In 1996, Justine and Geoff were ready to get their product into bars, and were living the authentic startup life. Geoff still working full-time in advertising, and Justine pregnant. They sold a piece of land they owned to fund the business, and kept making the vodka in their basement. “Our rental was on the 42nd parallel south, which is where 42 Below vodka got its name.

“I’d drive around Wellington, pregnant, doing drop offs at midnight with my mother. It was a real family affair.”

It wasn’t long before Justine and Geoff’s little grassroots business had outgrown its basement home, and needed proper funding to scale. They partnered with Grant Baker, an investor experienced in managing rapid growth. “We wanted to take our little challenger brand to the world.”

Justine saw the vodka category was in growth globally, but New Zealand was better known for its wine exports. She and Geoff approached people in the wine industry and proposed piggybacking some wine exports. “Every bastard said no – which is how I got the title of my first book, which details our 42 Below story,” says Justine. “They all said it would never work.”

This was a time when in New York City a new vodka brand was launched every week. “Those brands’ marketing budget for the launch party was bigger than our marketing budget for a whole year.”

But 42 Below had won a blind taste test early on, so Justine knew their product was exemplary. “We started winning blind taste tests around the world, it was a really clear sign we had in fact crafted an exceptional vodka. You simply cannot build a world-class brand unless you have a quality product.”

After New York, they pushed into Singapore, then London, then the world. “We always made sure our ambassadors went out into market with a bottle, a business card and the story of our little challenger brand from the 42nd parallel with its beautiful taste profile.”

Importantly, Justine says team had nurtured a culture of self-belief and energetic uplift. “We gave our team a huge amount of rope and a whole lot of love. Geoff and I were always very visible in the team too. We were all in the trenches together. We took our business incredibly seriously, but we also had fun.”

The brand continued to grow through the early 2000s, with a cheeky brand personality known for its viral emails, risque advertisements and edgy displays. “We became very famous around the world for being an irreverent, cheeky, brave little challenger brand. That’s how we got noticed by Bacardi.”

In 2004, 42 Below listed on the NZX purely for growth capital. In late 2006, Justine and Geoff sold 42 Below to Bacardi, the world’s independent liquor company, for $123 million ($NZ138 million).

While Justine’s story of starting up, scaling and selling her business ended with great success, she says there were many lessons learned along the way. “I didn’t even know what EBITDA was, I had to learn so much along the way,” says Justine. “We did not know how to manage rapid growth, nor did we have the really gritty sales skills that are required to build a brand. That’s why our relationship with our initial investor Grant Baker was so very important.

“As New Zealanders and Australians, we like to be jack of all trades – but we can’t do everything. It’s important to identify what your superpowers are, and then partner with people who have adjunct skills sets.”

Justine and Geoff’s 42 Below experience set them on a new journey as serial entrepreneurs. Their next venture was to invest in Australian scented candle brand Ecoya, and purchase New Zealand skincare brand Trilogy. “The skincare and home fragrances category was in rapid growth at the time. When looking at any business for acquisition, the questions to ask are, is it scalable, and do my skills play well in this environment? Everything aligned. We listed the company, and in 2018 we sold to CITIC Capital.”

After dabbling in craft beer, Justine and Geoff decided to return to their roots. “My parents are from an orchard and a dairy farm respectively, and Geoff’s from a deer and dairy farm. We always thought we would come back to the rural sector at some stage, so about eight years ago we bought six and a half thousand hectares on the South Island near Queenstown, and we set about disrupting the agricultural industry.”

Lake Hãwea Station is a working sheep and beef station, however Justine believed the shearing model wasn’t working, the animal welfare model wasn’t working, and that it was time for regenerative farming to take the lead in New Zealand.

Justine and Geoff have been staunch campaigners for the environment for close to 20 years. In 2008, they were founding trustees of Pure Advantage (originally The 100% Plan), which is a group of business people who lobbied the government for the business case for New Zealand to be greener and to cloak our country and natives.

“Stories are so important in brand building. We have always believed if you can get the provenance story, then you stand to do well in any category. We wanted to change our national story.”

Lake Hãwea Station is a fully regenerative farm, and Australia’s first certified carbon positive farm. “We take our products, our community service, our staff, our land care and our care of the environment very seriously.

Justine’s shearing model is not about the throughput of animals, it is about ‘slow shearing’. “We focus on the care of the animal as they get processed through shearing, even painting our floors white to ensure the animals are not nicked during shearing. We have very strict animal welfare practices and end of life paddocks.

“We get paid a premium because of our quality, environmental credentials and the way we go about farming. Our clients in London, Italy and New York pay us almost double what they pay other wool suppliers,” reveals Justine.

“I think once you can monetise something, you can change behaviour. That’s our goal – to disrupt farming.”

It’s certainly an ambitious goal. After being featured on national television sharing their approach to farming, Justine and Geoff received death threats from the farming industry.

“Bastards will say no, and it’s tough to be someone who does things differently. People are not always kind if you come with a different lens and you try to change things. But for us, it’s about that self-belief, and building a legacy. That’s just who we are.”

Last year Lake Hãwea Station’s guest cottages received a prestigious Condé Nast gold award. “We have a chap with a Masters in Wildlife and Biodiversity who talks with our guests about the loss of biodiversity we’re experiencing right across the country, our guests can also talk to the shepherd, farmer, or professor during their stay, often while sitting around the fire with a glass of red wine,” offers Justine.

For all of her businesses over the past almost 30 years, the recurrent theme has been that Justine and Geoff are disruptors. “We see an opportunity and ask ourselves, ‘How are we going to build something that might have some relevance, might create some momentum for the category, and for our country?’”

Justine has authored two books, Every Bastard Says No, which tells the 42 Below origin story, and Meet You at the Main Divide, which tells Justine’s story of leaving the city to disrupt the agricultural sector.

See Justine Troy speak live at FBAA’s National industry Conference on Friday 1 November, at the Gold Coast.

Register Now https://fbaaevents.eventsair.com/fbaa-national-industry-conference-2024/delegate-registration/Site/Register