Page 27 - BrewDog Case Study

Growth: Finance & Crowdfunding

In April 2007, BrewDog was founded in Fraserburgh,

Scotland by school and university friends Martin Dickie
(24yrs old, studied brewing and distilling at Heriot-Watt

university in Edinburgh) and James Watt (24yrs old who also

studied at Heriot-Watt university). Dissatisfied with existing
beers and ales Watt and Dickie first began experimenting

with their own brews in early 2006, Dickie had been working

at a brewery in Derbyshire called Thornbridge, where he

had just helped develop an award winning, ground-breaking
beer called Jaipur whilst Watt had been employed on a

fishing boat.

They pooled their savings, quit their jobs, and obtained a

£20,000 bank loan They then bought second-hand brewing

equipment and rented a work unit from Aberdeenshire

council.

They brewed their US-style craft beer (sweet-tasting ales

with high alcohol levels and very large amounts of US hops,

which gave them a bold, fruity, even perfumed flavour), in

tiny batches, bottled them by hand and sold them at local
markets and out of the back of their beat-up old van. Their

mission was to make other people as passionate about craft

beer as they were.

"We were selling a couple of cases on a good day, and losing
money," said Watt.

In 2008 BrewDog enter supermarket group Tesco bottled

beer competition and won first, second, third and fourth