At Lotus Vodka, it's all about the BlackBerry. Though the company has an office in San Francisco, you won't spot more than one or two employees there -- instead, they're on the road, promoting their vitamin-enhanced liquor. Founder and CEO Rob Bailey explains how his company relies on technology to keep its staff on the road, garnering sales.
It can be tough to be an entirely mobile business. And even the most mobile ones often have some form of headquarters. Lotus Vodka is one of those. The eight-employee company keeps a San Francisco office, but rarely are more than one or two people there at a time. "The team is virtual," said Rob Bailey, CEO and founder of Lotus Vodka. "We cover a lot of territory geographically, so technology is a crucial part."
To keep mobile, Lotus Vodka employees count on BlackBerrys, mobile phones, and wireless Internet on their laptops. The office doesn't have a single desktop computer, and it has just one landline telephone. "I hate having people in the office, because it means the team is not out there selling," Bailey said.
Bailey is an entrepreneur at heart. He formerly did business development for Yahoo, founded a company called Delicious Brands, and has partnered with and helped launch more than 30 high-end restaurants and lounges. Lotus Vodka launched in 2007 with vitamin-enhanced vodkas.
"We try to bring what we know from the Web industry to liquor and be competitive," said Bailey, who shared with bMighty the tools his company uses to stay mobile.
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bMighty: Why did you choose to start a company that makes vodka?
Rob Bailey: I'm a serial entrepreneur, I love building businesses. I saw a huge opportunity -- I was traveling internationally and would come back, and all I wanted was an anti-hangover vodka so I could take meetings the next day.
bMighty: How have you used technology to build your company?
Bailey: Using technology is core to who we are. We use a bunch of stuff. We use the Internet and have a Web site. We use hosted e-mail -- we have an outsource provider in Intermedia. It's a great solution for a company that doesn't have an IT department.
We also use Xobni, which is a free plug-in to Microsoft Outlook. It's a fantastic way to provide more effective Outlook searches as well as data tracking on e-mail. I can track e-mails so we can send e-mails to investors at the right time. With Xobni, I can see that, say, regarding the beverage director from the Hilton -- what is the best time to send him an e-mail? What is the average number of days it takes him to reply?
We use Facebook with people who are fans. We worked with AdNectar, a startup, small app company, which made a campaign to give friends virtual Lotus cocktails, and 200,000 people did it. It got the name out there. So we use Facebook and MySpace -- they're a core part of what we do. We have a pretty big investor pool, and we use Facebook to regularly update them on what we're doing. We use also Facebook to invite people to private tasting events.
We use Twitter -- we use an app called TwitterBerry -- it's a supereasy app on the BlackBerry that enables people to update their Twitter page. We use Twitter as a different communication channel to update people. We tweet about events and when we've tried a new cocktail.
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