We started Loveday in lockdown with a 1L still, a lot of curiosity, and no real sense of how much we were about to learn the hard way. (Bless us)
Five years in, some things have worked better than we ever expected. Some have taken far longer than they needed to. And a few, if we’re honest, we’d probably approach pretty differently if we were starting again tomorrow.
But then again, most of what’s shaped this business has come from doing things the long way round, so maybe we wouldn’t change all that much.
Here are a few of the things that have stuck.
1. Done is better than perfect
Hi, recovering perfectionist here!
There are recipes we sat on for weeks that were already more than good enough. Bits of content that never saw the light of day. Decisions that got pushed back again and again because they didn’t feel quite finished.
At the time, it all felt like care. Like having standards.
Looking back, a lot of it was just hesitation in disguise.
The things that have actually moved us forward haven’t been perfect, polished, or overthought. They’ve been the things we finished, shared, and let evolve from there.
2. Community is the whole point
(Not just a nice bonus on top.)
Other producers we admired have become friends. Customers have turned into familiar faces, and then into people we properly know. The distillery has become somewhere people gather, not just somewhere things get made.
The drinks matter, of course they do, but they’re only ever part of it. The real value sits in everything that happens around them.
3. Don’t believe the noise
There’s always a running commentary about what’s working and what isn’t. Spirits are declining, people are drinking less, gin is having a wobble.
And yes, people are drinking less. That part’s true.
But they’re also choosing more carefully, and expecting more from what they do drink.
From where we’re standing, that’s a good thing!
We’ve grown by leaning into that shift rather than worrying about it, because people aren’t turning away from good drinks. They’re just less interested in average ones.
4. Your co-founder relationship is the business
We've been friends for over 30 years, and spend over 50 hours a week together, which is more time than most people spend with anyone.
For a while, we treated the business as the thing that needed all the attention, assuming the relationship would just hold steady alongside it. It doesn’t really work like that.
The way we communicate, how we handle pressure, whether we actually make time to step outside of work for a minute, all of it feeds directly into how the business runs day to day.
Once we started paying attention to that properly, things got noticeably easier. Not perfect, but easier, and a lot more sustainable.
5. Consistency wins. Every time.
It’s not the most exciting lesson, but it’s probably the most reliable one.
It hasn’t been a single big moment that’s shifted things for us. It’s been the accumulation of smaller, repeated actions over time. Sending the emails, showing up online, following up with people, keeping things moving even when it all feels a bit flat.
The temptation is always to look for the one thing that will change everything. In reality, it’s usually the things you’re already doing, just done consistently enough for them to compound.
6. Stop trying to do everything
Don’t confuse being busy with being useful.
We love a new idea. A new direction, a new product, a new way of doing something. We’ve tried most of them at one point or another.
The problem is, when you try to do everything at once, everything starts to lose a bit of clarity. At one stage, it felt like we were trying to sell a hundred different things to a hundred different people in a hundred different ways.
It sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but it’s surprisingly easy to fall into.
What we’ve come back to, again and again, is that the things that work tend to keep working for a reason. The products people return to, the messages that land, the moments people remember, they’re usually quite simple and quite clear.
Trying to be everything to everyone just makes it harder for people to understand what you actually do.
7. You don’t need bespoke everything
Or: stop buying expensive sledgehammers to crack nuts.
We have, without question, wasted time and money here.
Custom website code when a good template would have done the job perfectly well. Hours disappearing into tweaking things that no customer would ever notice. Packaging decisions that felt like they needed to be completely unique, when in reality a well-chosen off-the-shelf option with a bit of creativity would have been more than enough.
There’s a version of starting a business where you feel like everything needs to be built from scratch to be taken seriously. As though “proper brands” don’t use templates, or standard formats, or anything that already exists!
What actually matters is how it feels to the person on the other end. Whether it’s easy to use, clear to understand, and enjoyable to interact with. Most of that has very little to do with whether something is bespoke.
If anything, overcomplicating it just slows everything down, and yes, for the record, you do not need a fully custom gift box when you’re starting out. Get a good one, make it yours, and move on!
Most of this we’ve learned slowly, and usually after getting it slightly wrong first.
But that’s kind of the deal. If you’re going to make something the long way round, you have to be willing to learn it that way too!
