Chris Charteris, left, and Simon Wilson, from Imagination Distilling.
Electra Business and Innovation Awards profile: Imagination Distilling.
Good mates Chris Charteris and Simon Wilson were home brewing beer when they decided to change tack and have a crack at making gin.
Chris has been living in the United Kingdom and seen how popular gin was.
They bought a small column still and by carefully going through an online recipe created their first brew.
Despite thinking they had stuffed it up, people were enjoying it when they took it to barbecues.
After about a year of trial and error they gravitated back to their first brew recipe, believing it had a unique selling point in terms of its flavour profile.
Moreover, they wanted their gin to be smooth and flavoursome enough to be drunk on the rocks or with a bit of soda water.
The recipe was refined with various blind tastings and then they started operations at the original Tuatara brewery in Reikorangi.
Imagination Distilling, with marketing whiz Gavin Bradley on board as a minority shareholder, went from strength to strength.
The company is now a finalist in the upcoming Electra Business and Innovation Awards.
"We were stoked," Chris proudly said.
Although it hasn't always been plain sailing.
Not long after they were up and running there was a cultural backlash in some quarters to the company's original name Indiginous.
It led to a rebrand, during lockdown last year, which led to Imagination.
"We changed tack quite a lot and started to take on staff members earlier than we anticipated just because we had to get our new brand out there and get our shelf space back.
"It made us take on a lot more risk than we wanted to but it has all paid off and ever since then we've been going from growth to growth which has been really cool."
The brand saga was devastating at the time though.
"It's wasn't about what Simon and I are about and definitely wasn't what the brand was about.
"It was just a fight we didn't want to be involved in, although it wasn't our fight to start with, so we thought the best thing to do was to apologise and just move forward with something new."
Chris was thankful for all the support which had helped Imagination "get to where it is now".
"It is slowly taking on a life of its own which has been really enjoyable to see."
Imagination has a range of six gins — three of them stocked all year round, and the other three seasonal.
"We're looking to hit about 20,000 bottles [700ml] this year."
The gin was in about 300 bottle stores throughout New Zealand.
"We have a South Island distributor and then two sales representatives in the North Island who are growing our reach in the last 12 months quite dramatically."
Chris also praised the fulltime staff in the distillery as well as others who helped on a part-time basis.
Going forward the company wanted to target Auckland more before looking at the export market.
"And at the same time keeping people interested in the brand.
"If we can keep capturing people's imagination, excuse the pun, then we can grow both the brand and the sales line."
