Step 4. Building the Business foundations
This is when you start drawing the line in the preverbal.
Up until now, detail has largely been academic. As a business owner, I could make decisions based on my imagination, and it felt exciting and wild, or as modern-day dogma would term - organic and intuitive.
Now that I had a sellable product, I felt the need to place some scaffolding around the seedling of a business so it could grow.
Business plans stopped being an academic exercise in discipline and more a playbook on how I would do business. Lines needed to be drawn on what this business would represent, fundamentally, not just what I produced but how I did it. Brand promise and brand identity are the phrases (purely marketing to me until now) I needed to create and live up to. (to this day, my outer shell cases are printed in white chalk ink with the mission statement of Dark Forest Beverages - Improving Global Wellbeing). I kid you not.
Being a natural optimist, I turned to the UN Compact for guidance, ten principles addressing strategy, policy and procedures designed to establish a culture of integrity for companies to uphold essential responsibilities to people and the planet and set the stage for long-term success.
Based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Labour Organization's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, and the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, I thought if I could establish my business on these principles, I would join moral giants of industry and ready the ship for unimaginable success.
And so it came to pass: the Dark Forest Playbook, designed and created to communicate everything from how to wash your hands to vendor selection, national product recalls, and employee and client onboarding. What follows is the detail I considered:
Business Name: I was creating products from nature - I couldn't use organic in anything I did because, as my mum's beautiful friend would say, "IT'S ALL ORGANIC" (yes, the capitalisation is appropriate for all of those who knew and loved Ruth), so organic was out but Dark Forest would do the trick - to convey that the product was going to delve into the mysterious world of fermentation and be as complex as the ecosystem of a forest, not to be mistaken for a planted woodland or manicured garden. Trading as Dark Forest Beverages, the business name would tell the audience what the business was - a beverage business.
Secure the URL: The first thing to check before proceeding is whether the URL is available. In the context of "Good, Better, Best", - you are aiming for the Best - the exact business name with all extensions - you can't rely on the general public to remember your extension details - they won't; they will search for you in Google and the best you can hope for is that your business name comes up in the search return, ideally organically (sorry Ruth) on the front page but at least not with unsavoury results.. icky by association, for example. And people can't spell, so try to cater for the lowest denominator. This will become important when you pull together your SEO (search engine optimisation) strategy, but it is best to start thinking about this early.
Once you have secured the URL, email addresses, and social handles, you will be drawn to create a logo, one small but very visible part of your total brand identity. First, use a platform like 99designs, where designers from around the world develop samples based on your brief. The brief outlines all the elements you want to convey in the logo - character, tone of voice, colour pallet, etc. I knew that people have an affinity with animals when considering FMCG products, so I commissioned an illustrator to draw Hunter, Dark Forest's mascot, a deer who is a little cheeky and would be unique to my business. Most designers on these platforms will choose the path of least resistance, so be careful not to get a template from past designs. You want something as unique and straightforward as possible without going nuts.
Trademark: I didn't want anyone to see my great idea, genius play on words and come over the top of me to hit the market with Darker Forests or Darkes Forest (a suburb literally up the road geographically to where I started the business and the location of a cider producer also named Jo... again, more on pissing off your neighbours later)
Trademarking in Australia can be costly, so if you think you can get away with not doing it, know that the law inherently protects you if your brand has created value and your competitor hasn’t. For example, a random business can't purchase the URL darkforestbeverages.com when I, owner of Dark Forest Beverages, a company registered with ASIC and ATO, own darkforestbeverages.com.au. The URL reseller will request paperwork to support the purchase before finalising the sale. This is a great thing.
Legal entity: Company vs. Partnership structures in Australia allow for different tax schemes, profit sharing and liability, so getting clear on this is essential. It was easy for me because I was a self-funded solopreneur with visions of grandeur. If you want to get funding from investors - create a company; if you're going to grow with someone and share the rewards and responsibilities - create a partnership with a robust partnership agreement detailing everything from dispute resolution and procurement policies to recruitment and exit strategy! Don't plan for happy days; plan for when the shit hits and you can't look at each other.
Ok, this is a good place to stop until next time when I share my lonely journey on the high road of packaging. Remember my ethos - "Packaging ain't product!" Yeah, but it is marketing, and if your product doesn't look good, why would anyone want to buy it? Think book covers, wine labels, little blue boxes, columbines, so many examples - why did I think I would be different?