Brand strategy, product & commercialization
Oaxaca, MX / United States
Beverage brands / Regulated CPG
Alchemy develops and repairs beverage brands—connecting consumer, positioning, pricing, product, packaging, compliance, production, logistics, and route to market.
See the whole system ↓
The whole commercial system
The brand has to earn attention.
The business has to earn its place.
A beverage brand is a commercial system. The customer, price, liquid, package, margin, compliance, production, and route to market have to make sense together.
That is where brand thinking meets regulated consumer packaged goods experience.
Selected work
Cuentacuentos / Premium agave spirits
The challenge: Create a brand architecture capable of holding rare liquids, individual producers, and multiple releases without flattening their differences.
The work: Positioning, identity, packaging, producer relationships, compliance, import and distribution planning, and launch. The first pallet arrived in Colorado in 2018; today the line is sold in the United States and abroad.
El Barro / Mezcal de la casa
The challenge: Build the best-tasting well mezcal possible at an honest price for restaurants and bars.
The work: Align the liquid, production method, target cost, identity, and package. The solution combined a copper ordinario distillation with a second pass in clay and led to the installation of four clay stills in Santiago Matatlán.
Tso’ok / Oaxacan rum
The challenge: Bring fresh-cane rum from indigenous Mixe producers in the Sierra Mixe cloud forest to an international market without losing what made it distinctive.
The work: Brand development, packaging, producer coordination, cross-border logistics, and route to market. Tso’ok was listed #31 on VinePair’s Top 50 Spirits of 2023.
What we do
Some clients need a name and package. Some need a producer, bottles, compliance, freight, an importer, and someone to keep the entire thing moving.
We meet the project where it is.
Freight, logistics & Mexico operations
Someone has to coordinate the producer, paperwork, freight carrier, customs broker, importer, warehouse, and the surprises that appear between them.
Alan Lara has worked across the mezcal supply chain since 2013. He is especially good at cross-border freight and logistics—the unglamorous, essential work of getting product out of Mexico and safely where it needs to go.
That work is part of the brand, too. A beautiful bottle that never arrives is not a successful project.
Who we are
Alchemy is led by Read Spear and Alan Lara. Read brings entrepreneurship, project management, regulated consumer packaged goods experience, and years spent developing spirits brands. Alan brings deep Mexico-side supply-chain knowledge and an ability to get difficult operational work done.
We bring in the right producers, artists, designers, lawyers, printers, bottle suppliers, freight carriers, customs brokers, importers, and distributors as the project requires.
Have something in mind?
Bring us the idea, the existing brand, the commercial problem, or all three.
Start a conversation ↗