Green & Pleasant, founded by brand creatives Fleur Emery and Jamie Anley is a craft lager company with a difference. With one foot planted in the brewing traditions of the Trent Valley and the other in the design world of Soho the founders see the business as an artistic project with the aim of supporting UK heritage craft tradition and emerging creative talent. Having raised seed capital from friends and family and located their dream brewing partner, the prize winning Freedom Brewery, they came to Crowdcube to realise their dream.
We caught up with Fleur to see how the business is shaping up and their plans for the future.
Green & Pleasant raised £122,440 from 56 investors in the spring of 2013 and wasted no time in bringing their concept to life. Brewing commenced in the early 2013 under the expert eye of the Freedom development team, their Lager and Lemon Shandy products ready to go six weeks later. The launch party at Shoreditch House made use of Fleur’s contacts from her previous incarnation as a 90’s club kid and saw Rob Da Bank and the Beta Band DJing into the early hours. Copious amounts of beer were drunk, break dancers from The Trinity Laban Academy battled it out on the dance floor and the odd Hollywood A lister was spotted in the crowd although Fleur is tight lipped about exactly who…
The Beer
After the dust settled it was straight down to work, the first job being the beautiful branding job undertaken by Fleur’s boutique design agency www.emerybarnard.com The labels and website have a beautiful ethereal quality to them which is attracting the eyes of their target market – the stylish hip London crowd and if you look carefully you’ll find Fleur’s beloved pug Mr Beebe featured in the artwork.
The brand positioning has been executed marvellously and you’ll now find Green & Pleasant being sold across all Soho – The wonderfully eccentric list of stockists includes erotic bookshop and art salon The Society Club, Auberon Waugh’s Literary Club, The Academy in Lexington St and the Soho House Group. Thanks to their friends at Soho Wine in Percy Street stocking their products (Fleur calls them the most beautiful off-licence in the world) the beer caught the eye of the bar manager at The Ritz Hotel where you can now see Green & Pleasant Lager alongside only two other beers.
Plans for 2014
Fleur and Jamie are delighted at the success of the project so far and have recently recruited Hugo Scott Russell from Home House to join the team. They talk with real excitement about their strengthening relationship with Freedom Brewery who have now become stake holders in the business. Located in the Trent Valley, Freedom Brewery have set a goal to reduce their carbon footprint by 30% with plans including building an ancient reed bed filtration system and wildlife set-asides. There are also big plans afoot to help save the honeybee – hives will be installed in the set aside making honey to eventually be added to Green & Pleasant lager!
Supportive of emerging creative talent, the company is keen to shine a light on Britain’s design future and craft tradition by sponsoring emerging artists. A project close to their hearts ‘The New Craftsmen’ a Mayfair based business curating the very finest British traditional crafts, encouraged by Fleur is currently pitching on Crowdcube to fund their relocation to a permenant home in Mayfair. No doubt the opening night will be celebrated with Green & Pleasant beer!
Crowdfunding
Having raised their funds with Crowdcube, Fleur is a real advocate of the crowd funding industry and she regularly meets with start ups to encourage them to engage with the process. Managing numerous investors has never been an issue for the company; a conscious decision was made when the funds were raised that they would embrace the number of shareholders that the crowd funding round presented them with, considering them assets to the company and ensuring that they had a role within the company as brand ambassadors. They were also keen to ensure that all investors would be treated equally, regardless of the amount that an individual had invested, and everyone’s views are taken into consideration when decisions are made.
This ethos has worked well for the duo. A great example is the case of one investor who invested £10 and was in regular email contact with Fleur and Jamie. At this point many people could consider ongoing email communication with someone who “had only” invested £10 as a drain on resources, however, as a result of Fleur and Jamie’s respect for all their investors and listening to what they had to say, this particular investor has now invested a further £4,000 into the company, this time as a gift for family members.
Recently the company raised another £80,000 through their own investor base to put into promotion and marketing, ensuring that the company grows and continues to flourish.
We wish Green & Pleasant the best of luck for 2014 and are looking forward to sharing their success with all Crowdcube members.
For those of you who want to sample Green & Pleasant for yourselves, you can now buy it online. Go to the newly launched Freedom Brewery website.
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