The plan after delivery day was pretty simple: get Make It WHET out of the storage unit and into as many hands as possible. We hadn't produced our first run expecting to make the money back, and we certainly hadn't built a sales forecast around it. We'd treated the whole thing as an investment in finding out whether Make It WHET actually had a future.
Friends and family had tried the development samples, we'd drunk more Strawberry, Lemon and Pineapple than we could possibly remember, and Lawrence had been incredibly positive about what we'd created. But none of that answered the question that mattered most. What would happen when we handed a can to someone who didn't know us, didn't know the story and had absolutely no reason to tell us what we wanted to hear?
So we started loading boxes into the car and taking Make It WHET out into the world. Some went to friends and contacts, some to places we already knew, and others involved us simply walking through a door with a few cold cans and asking someone if they'd give them a try. There wasn't much of a sales pitch because we weren't really trying to sell anything. We wanted people to taste it, tell us what they genuinely thought and, if they didn't like it, hopefully tell us why.
The slightly terrifying bit
There's something surprisingly nerve-racking about watching somebody try something you've created. Gary has spent years presenting design work to clients and is pretty comfortable putting creative ideas in front of people, but this felt completely different. You can explain the thinking behind a piece of design. You can't explain somebody into liking a drink. They take a sip and you suddenly become incredibly interested in every tiny movement their face makes while trying desperately not to stare at them.
Thankfully, the faces were generally good.
The feedback started to confirm some of the things we'd hoped we'd got right. People talked about the amount of flavour, the fact that Make It WHET wasn't overly sweet and how refreshing it was. Some immediately had a favourite flavour, while others surprised us completely with the one they chose. We were also seeing it work in different situations, whether that was someone grabbing a cold can on its own or trying it with alcohol, which had always been part of how we'd imagined people might drink it.
But the biggest surprise wasn't what people were saying. It was what they started asking.
They wanted to know how much it cost.
We'd turn up somewhere thinking we were dropping off samples, they'd taste Make It WHET and the conversation would suddenly change from feedback to whether they could actually order some. We'd gone out expecting to give cans away and somehow found ourselves selling them instead.
From samples to stockists
The Neighbour became one of our first stockists after we'd taken some cans in for them to try. Before we'd really had time to process what was happening, a couple had already sold and that turned into an order for five cases. Five cases isn't going to transform the drinks industry, but to us it was a massive moment. Somebody had tasted what we'd created and decided Make It WHET deserved space in their fridge alongside brands people already knew.
The Lookout Café at Biggin Hill Airport followed, taking all three flavours. Suddenly we were filling out supplier forms, receiving a purchase order, raising invoices and arranging a delivery. These were all completely normal things for a drinks company to be doing, except we still weren't entirely sure when we'd become one.
Then our friend Rob at SUPventures took Make It WHET for his paddleboarding sessions. That one felt like a particularly natural fit, and we loved hearing that customers were making the connection between the name and being out on the water without us needing to explain it. The whole point of the name had always been that little play between WHET and wet, so seeing people discover that for themselves was pretty satisfying.
Those first stockists also started to change the way we thought about what we'd created. Make It WHET wasn't just sitting in our storage unit waiting for us to hand it to someone anymore. It was sitting in real fridges, in completely different environments, with a price attached to it. People we'd never met could walk in, choose one, pay for it and make up their own minds about whether we'd created something worth drinking.
Since then we've kept doing much the same thing: talking to people, opening cans and seeing where the conversations lead. We've visited cafés, pubs, shops and other places that feel right for Make It WHET, made new connections through friends and customers, and started learning where the drink seems to fit naturally. Every conversation teaches us something, and every time another box leaves the storage unit because somebody has actually paid for it, the original idea of this being nothing more than a test gets a little harder to maintain.
This wasn't really the plan
We're still very conscious of how early this is. A few stockists and some great feedback don't mean we've cracked anything, and this first run still has exactly the same job it had when we started: help us learn. We need more people to discover Make It WHET, buy it, come back for another one and tell us what they think. We need to understand which flavours people reach for, where the drink works best, what people are prepared to pay and whether there's enough genuine demand to justify doing all of this again on a much bigger scale.
What we hadn't anticipated was how quickly those early signs would start changing the conversation between the two of us.
Until now we've been building Make It WHET around the rest of our lives. Gary has his life and work in Canada, Lou has hers in England, and somewhere between flights, family, the boys, our normal jobs and an extraordinary number of FaceTime calls we've somehow managed to create a drinks brand together. That was just about manageable when Make It WHET was an idea and even while we were developing and testing it. If it starts becoming a proper business, we're beginning to realise that arrangement probably isn't going to work forever.
That's led to some pretty big conversations about what happens next, not just for Make It WHET but for us. If we're serious about giving this a proper chance, there may need to be some fairly major changes to our work, our lives and the 4,500 miles that have separated us for the last few years.
We're not quite ready to share all of that yet because there are still a few pieces we need to put into place. But it's funny to think that only a short time ago our biggest question was whether anybody outside our little circle would actually like Make It WHET.
Now people are buying it.
And that's created a whole new set of questions.
