Used mainly to fund their offline expansion, Wishbeer looked for saviour in the most likely place: Their own fans and customers

Starting off as an online platform that enables users to get beer delivered to their home, Thailand-based Wishbeer has been making effort to strengthen their offline presence by setting up its own flagship stores in various locations in the kingdom.

Starting off with a pop-up store in Bangkok in 2015, the startup then opened its flagship store Wishbeer Home Bar, which also serves as a warehouse to store its supply of beer, wine, and spirits.

Wishbeer founder and CEO Jerome Le Louer dubbed the effort as part of its marketing and branding strategy to get in touch with their customers.

“[It’s] the omnichannel approach in our business,” he told e27 in a phone interview.

A Wishbeer Home Bar outlet

Having secured a seed funding round from 500 Tuk Tuks and 500 Startups, the company then set off on a journey to grow their business and raise a Series A funding round.

“In 2017, we have started to look for our Series A to expand our business both in Thailand and abroad in Southeast Asia. In the meantime, we also want to keep the business growing both through online and offline channels, but the easiest way for us to grow without investing too much is by adding more stores,” Le Louer explains.

“As we know, e-commerce has lower margins and is quite advertising intensive. We also know that we have many followers and fans; most beer drinkers in Thailand know Wishbeer. So if we want to expand offline and open our stores in a quick way, the only solution is crowdfunding,” he adds.

Also Read: Wishbeer grabs title of Echelon Thailand 2014 Most Promising Startup

But there is one catch: The Bank of Thailand is yet to finalise the regulation on crowdfunding platform licensing.

As a solution, the startup then began posting Facebook Ads to call for their customers to invest in a bar.

Using copies such as “Open you own Wishbeer Home Bar” and “Become the owner of our next bar,” the ads led users to a simple form that they can fill with their contact details.

The Wishbeer team then followed up by contacting them one-by-one and generate an offline conversation with them; each potential investor go through all the required process such as signing term sheets and agreements.

Out of the 1,000 potential investors, Wishbeer successfully made deal with 25 of them and raised THB10 million (US$300,000), half of their targetted THB20 million (US$600,000).

The funding has enabled the startup to open three new bars within the span of four months, with more coming up.

A sense of ownership

Wishbeer’s decision to take this route was based on the idea of working with what you know best.

Though there are other alternative fundraising method, such as ICO, Le Louer felt that his team’s strength lies in digital advertising.

An example of the Facebook Ad

This fundraising method also has several other benefits, such as building a stronger sense of community between the business, its loyal customer, and eventually its potential investors.

Also Read: Meet 8 CEOs steering through the Thailand startup ecosystem

“This campaign, [while] the main goal is to bring funds, it is also a PR activity that allows us to see if our customers like us or believe in the branding. And there is a good feedback from the crowd,” Le Louer says.

“We also wanted to involve our customers and fans in the development of our business, so we can benefit from the networking effect. If you have 100 people becoming a part-owner of your business, each of them might bring another 10 people on board. Then we can have 1,000 people involved in the business. It creates some kind of a butterfly effect,” he continues.

The fundraising process remains open today as the company aims to close the remaining US$300,000.

In addition to that, Wishbeer is also working on raising its Series A funding round through the more conventional method of venture capital funding.

While the funding raised through the Facebook Ads was meant to strengthen its offline presence, the Series A funding round will be focussed on expanding the business abroad.

The startup is looking forward to enter other markets in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

“We want to replicate the online and offline business model in other countries,” Le Louer closes.

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Images Credit: Wishbeer

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