I began toying with the idea of producing rum and starting my own company.
"After rejoining the family business in 2013, my father (owner of Orkney Wine Company), was gearing me up to take over the company. However, in 2015 I began toying with the idea of producing rum and starting my own company.
Fast forward to 2017 after a full year of applying for licensing with HMRC, the stills arrived, and I finally started producing rum. The spiced rum was launched at the end of 2017, winning several awards at the IWSC in 2018. The first aged rum was launched at the end of 2018, a chestnut cask aged rum.
In between rum production, travelling up and down the country, attending tradeshows, rum festivals and promoting the brand. I also design all the labels and graphics, run the website and deal with all the HMRC paperwork. Which doesn’t leave much time for the accounting paperwork.
This is where CRC Accountancy comes in. Before working with Calvin, I was using a very old school manual entry system that involved a lot of paper. He’s since switched me over to an app/cloud-based system that allows me to take photos of invoices and receipts and upload them to the system where ever I am. This has halved the time it used to take me to process all the invoices and receipts and allowed me to stay on top of the accounting, so I can get on with running the business and more importantly making rum!"
Thoughts from CRC...
Taking a leap into the drinks market against some long-established competition is no mean feat. The fact that Collin's rums have made such an impact at a competitive level in such a short space of time, is testament to his passion for his produce.
If we can ease the backoffice pressure, creating time for Collin to make rum for us all to enjoy - that seems like a pretty good outcome!
You can check out (and more importantly, purchase) J. Gow rum on their website, on Facebook and on Instagram!
