How This Immigrant Turned An $18K Personal Loan Into California's Largest Independently Distributed Tequila Brand
Hello! My name is Carlos Soto and I am the founder and CEO of Nosotros Tequila and Mezcal. We are a small-batch agave spirits brand, headquartered in Los Angeles, with all of our products produced in Mexico.
Our first product was our Blanco tequila, our baby. This is the juice that put us on the map after winning Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition just a few months after hitting the market. Our juice is unique because it is a 50/50 blend of agave from the Highland and Lowland regions. The Highland agaves are sun stressed and provide citrusy notes, while the Lowland agaves are rainforest agaves with earthy and peppery notes. The blend of these two types of agave yields a tasting experience that you have likely never had before – perfectly balanced and smooth.
Following the success of our Blanco, we decided to age our special juice and create our Reposado tequila. Aged 11 months in White Oak barrels, our Reposado tequila is just shy of becoming an Añejo. This aged spirit draws flavors of toffee, cinnamon, and nutmeg from the White Oak barrels, and won a Gold Medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, following in the footsteps of Blanco.
With our Mezcal, we have again blended two agaves in order to create a smooth and approachable tasting experience for consumers. Espadín is the staple of mezcal, while Tobalá is rare and wild, and adds hints of fruit to our smoky spirit. This unique blend we have produced provides a balance of apricot and citrus, surrounded by the staple campfire finish of mezcal.
We are really proud to have created products that are premium and made to be sipped, and that we are able to bottle them in 100% recycled glass bottles. All of our products are 100% agave, and they are completely additive free. Health is a huge brand value for us, so being able to create a product that tastes great and is healthier than a lot of products on the market, is a win-win for us.
Once our Blanco won Double Gold, prospective retailers and hospitality partners who turned me away from months started calling me back. Struggling to sell a bottle was back in 2017, and since then, we have doubled our business every single year through the present. We now work with thousands of retail and hospitality partners across our eight markets or across all of our markets. We expect to double that growth as well. To our knowledge, we are the largest self-distributed brand in the state of CA.
Let’s just say, we have come a long way from the college classroom we started in…
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I am an immigrant originally from Costa Rica and came to America when I won a scholarship to attend Loyola Marymount University (LMU) here in Los Angeles. When I was a senior at LMU, a business professor told my class to come up with a business idea that was not tech based – I think he was sick of all of the apps being created back in 2015!
The night the project was introduced, I was at a bar, as your average college senior would be, right?! That night was the first time I paid attention to how many people ordered tequila. Coming from a primarily rum-drinking country, I was not aware of how popular tequila was in California until I lived here. I looked down at my drink and thought “I could be drinking my stuff right now,” and from there I figured out how to make it happen.
I went down to Mexico to learn about agave harvesting and tequila production and came back to Los Angeles with Blanco samples. I sat down with some friends and did a blind tasting, and when 13/15 friends chose our current Nosotros Blanco, and the other two placed it second, I knew I had something special on my hands. I tapped my friend Michael Arbanas as my Co-Founder and CFO, and we hit the ground running to make Nosotros come to life.
Take your business seriously without taking it too seriously. Find ways to have fun with it and remain human in the process.
In order to start Nosotros, I had to take out a personal loan from the bank. The highest amount I could withdraw was $18,000, so that is ultimately all I used to start Nosotros.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
At Nosotros, we are constantly trying to do things differently and stand out from other brands on the shelves. This is why we use a blend of Highland and Lowland agaves for our Blanco, why we use white oak instead of red oak for our Reposado, and why we blend Espadín and Tobalá for our Mezcal. If we do not stand out from other brands, what are we doing? If we did not want to be different, we would just copy what every other brand was already doing.
After nailing down the formula for our juice, I tapped into Silvana, a friend from Costa Rica who went to the Savannah College of Art & Design. We went back and forth wanting to find the branding balance between modern and rustic, which is what we still strive to create. It was important for us to retain a new-age vibe while remaining true to the history of tequila and mezcal. As things are ever changing, we try to remain open minded and change as we sit fit as the market grows.
Describe the process of launching the business.
A phrase that has always stuck with me since early on is “If the heart’s not beating don’t worry about the bleeding.” Really this translates to focusing on sales and MVP (minimum viable product) and just listening to what the market has to say. If there is a good opening and you have a good product, keep your head down and just keep moving forward. Realistically the best thing you can do is spend time doing sales rather than brand building, especially when you are just starting, and cash is tight. Sales should be the first focus in getting a brand off the ground.
Launching a social media presence is always tough because, at the end of the day, social media is what is leveling the playing field. That is how a brand can reach a lot of people with minimum spend. For us, it was all about finding the sweet spot of not being too salesy in our social media approach and creating content that people want to receive and interact with.
Be ready to welcome change. Almost nothing goes as planned for a startup or small growing company.
Similar to products, social media is ever evolving, and we are trying to stay on top of the most effective ways to reach our audience and stand apart from other brands.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Starting a business has a lot of trial and error, because an approach that works for one company, will not always work for another. The way that we have found the most success is by being good partners to the bars, restaurants and retail stores that take the risk to put Nosotros on their cocktail menus, back bar, and on their shelves. A lot of larger brands do not make the same effort that we are willing to put in to ensure that these partners succeed. We do staff trainings, product tastings, run events, and show up to make sure that they are successful with Nosotros.
At the end of the day, our biggest customer retention tool is our product – once people try it and hear our story, they love it and want to continue supporting a small brand. Being in an industry, and more specifically the tequila category, that is flooded with celebrity brands, has forced us to think innovatively about how we reach consumers. When we can stand in front of potential consumers and run a tasting and tell them about why we do what we do, that is our biggest touchpoint.
Beyond that, we try each and every day to offer value to the people who follow us on social media – our organic social strategy is the cornerstone of how we reach a larger audience at scale.
We work with tequila and mezcal every day and see the best bars and restaurants in the markets where we are distributed, so we highlight what we think people who follow us will find interesting – things like cocktail recipes, education on tequila and mezcal, and great local spots to check out if they are headed out with friends.
We run paid social as well and spend to boost certain Instagram posts that we see are getting organic engagement, to hit audiences in our new markets. This has helped us grow in an efficient way, especially this year after the changes with IOS 14. Our Instagram following has been growing steadily with this strategy. While we use Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Pinterest regularly, Instagram is by far the platform where people engage most with us.
Recently, we have been revamping our influencer marketing program to increase brand awareness for both Nosotros and our hospitality partners. We engage with influencers by sending them to one of our Nosotros accounts in their area to enjoy drinks and food and help raise awareness amongst consumers about our story and where people can find our products.
As a small brand, we are always trying to think of new ways to engage audiences and be innovative with our approach to telling our story.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
The future looks bright for Nosotros. We are currently working on introducing our Madera line, which will begin with our Añejo next month. After that, we have another product in the works that will be launched under the Madera line in limited quantities for a once in a lifetime product. As a teaser, this product is something that has never been done by a tequila company before.
We also have plans to expand into new markets later this year. We are currently sold in eight markets across the U.S., plus Costa Rica, Honduras, and Mexico, and are continuously working to determine what the next market is going to be for us, as well as how we can continue to scale our current markets. We are always on the search for new retail and hospitality partners that can bring Nosotros into their offerings. As we open new markets and expand our offerings, that also leads to the ability to have our team grow. We currently have a team of 20 full-time employees.
As we continue to grow, we have two big goals. The first is to be the staple tequila of California. This is our home base and we have always said that we have planted our flag here and want that to stick as we continue growing into other markets. Born and raised in California, we want to be the state’s “baby” by way of tequila. The second big goal is to continue growing our brand awareness across the United States and beyond. We recently pulled an IRI report and our growth and value to a retailer put us in the top 20 tequila brands in California.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
In an alcohol category overwhelmed with celebrity brands, it can be hard to stand out. Being able to say we built this company on our own fills us with so much pride. We are where we are because of the hard work, hustle, and dedication that we and our team have put in.
Starting a business is not a walk through the park. There are late nights, activities with friends that you have to turn down, frustrating moments, and not knowing what the future holds for the brand. Putting in those hours and believing in our product and our team was done without question because we love the community we are building at Nosotros.
My biggest piece of advice for other entrepreneurs is to take your business seriously without taking it too seriously. Find ways to have fun with it and remain human in the process. For us, one of the ways we do that is by bringing people together. We host an underground comedy night once per month and that really grounds us. Nothing can bring you to the present and show you what you have been able to build better than a room full of laughter and people who support you and your product.
There are a lot of things I could have done differently, maybe even better, but even those moments where I maybe did not do things perfectly, have led me to where I am as a CEO. The most important thing to remember is that successes and mistakes all impact you as a person and contribute to how the business grows. Overall, I can look back at our whole brand journey with a smile and say very confidently that I am proud of what we are building and look forward to seeing what we continue doing.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
With a small team that runs lean, we all wear a lot of hats, and everyone pitches in. It is essential to us that our platforms and tools are simple, integrate well, and get the majority of what we need to get done accomplished without extra features that larger organizations might use.
I am on the road often and we sometimes find ourselves working across time zones. As an alcohol company, we have an e-commerce partner called Speakeasy that runs our DTC store – they use Shopify, which we find helpful because it integrates well with Klaviyo, which is our email and CRM platform.
We find it easier to work directly on the Meta, Twitter and TikTok platforms versus investing time and resources by layering on an additional social media tool. We find that we are able to more easily respond to people and run our paid social directly through the native platforms.
From a sales standpoint, we use a CRM tool called Repsly, which is very specific to our industry. All of our sales team members are managing their books of business in this tool and we have found it to be very effective. Park Street Imports is our licensed importer. They also help us manage a lot of our operations and the back end of our business.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
On a personal level, the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari has been impactful for me. The book helps you understand people - what triggers us, and why we operate the way that we do. It also gives a great understanding of human evolution. At the end of the day, marketing is the emotional reaction to a product, so it is crucial to understand how people think and digest information.
The podcast All-In has also been a really helpful tool in staying on top of the current markets and the overall state of the world. It’s also refreshing to hear news analysis without some traditional media bias (left or right).
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Always remember that your brand vision will grow and evolve, but let your values keep you rooted. The pura vida lifestyle of Costa Rica has stayed with me this whole time and fuels so much of what we do and value as a brand.
Be ready to welcome change. Almost nothing goes as planned for a startup or small growing company. You have to be constantly ready for things to change and understand how to adapt, and work with your team to use the change to your advantage. Sometimes, the unexpected even leads to some of the greatest work or ideas.
You are always ‘on.’ You never know who you are going to run into and how they are going to fit into your business. Just a few weeks ago, I was in Costa Rica and someone saw a Nosotros sticker on our Chief Revenue Officer’s laptop, and then all of a sudden we found ourselves talking to a beverage director at a potential account. Always be ready to network and build connections.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We are not currently hiring for any full-time positions, but we are looking for content creators to help create content for our social media channels.
Stay tuned though, as we continue expanding into new markets, we will be looking to add new members to our team.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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