It was on a trip to Italy back in 2007 that Tom Maclean fell in love with the Aperitivo, the classic Italian cocktail. This inspired Tom to return to Australia and found his own company, SOFI Spritz, that would put an Aussie twist on an old favourite.
Since starting the company in 2013, Tom has experienced exponential growth domestically, growing from their initial launch at the Bondi Farmers Market to being stocked in over 2000 locations Australia-wide, including Dan Murphys, BWS, Vintage Cellars, First Choice, and even on Virgin flights.
In 2016 Tom appeared on the Australian series of Shark Tank, catching the eye of tech investor Steve Baxter and Greencross founder Glen Richards, who joined forces to offer $130,000 investment.
Going from strength to strength, they went on to win the Best Innovation award at the 2017 Australian Drinks Awards.
Their next challenge? Building a sales team to tackle worldwide distribution.
“It’s been hard enough to get distribution across Australia, let alone the world” says Tom, “but we would love to see SOFI become a world class brand.”
With demand for their brand growing and new, high profile deals they needed capital fast, turning
to fintech, to provide a unique combination of working capital and equity funding.
“Timelio and Equitise both had experience in our space, working with innovative drinks companies,
and Equitise had run multiple campaigns for alcohol brands.”
Raising $550,000 on equity crowdfunding platform, Equitise, enabled Tom to get the investment he
needed quickly from a large community of investors. This injection of capital, together with Timelio’s
invoice finance, has provided funding that is proportional to their peak periods and eased cash
flow strain.
“Timelio is a great fit for our needs, allowing the flexibility to access capital when we need it and
providing the funding to grow with us. Finding the right funding partners while we grow has been
critical to our success” says Tom.
Regarding their plans for the future, Tom shares “We are just beginning our export journey which is
super exciting and we have some amazing new products in our development pipeline.”
Read more on Equitise here.
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