Solbevi: Shining like the sun

For eight years after leaving school, Di Benedetto worked for one of the country’s largest construction companies full time, while also studying a full subject load at university.

Not quite the expected backstory for a beverage start-up, but one Di Benedetto says taught him the fundamental rules of hard work and determination.

He then spent a couple of years working with a relative, helping them get their business started. Interstate travel in a sales and business development role taught him about how sales work and gave him the confidence to speak to people.

But behind the scenes, Di Benedetto had a hobby making limoncello and developing a spritz using the liqueur as its base, which he called Sunday Spritz.

“The limoncello is the result of years perfecting our family’s recipe that has been handed down through the generations from Italy to Australia.

“Then, about three years ago, my best friend – and silent partner – came up with the idea of creating a limoncello spritz in a can. I spent the next two years working out how to do that on a commercial scale and developing the brand.

“I had a meeting with a consultant who basically said I was an idiot and going about it all wrong! He was encouraging though, telling us it could be a global business. So, we scratched everything and started again.

“We called it Solbevi, sole and bevi mean sun and to drink in Italian,” he says. “Launching the business was contingent on the spritz being our primary product because that would get us the attention we needed.”

Into the can

Once the recipe was perfected, the next challenge was finding a contract manufacturer willing to take them on.

Di Benedetto said lots of manufacturers turned them down because it was a start-up, had no proof of concept, and couldn’t meet the minimum order quantities (MOQs).

“The company that took us on said they believed in the product because it was the first limoncello spritz in a can.

“Their MOQ was still 5000 litres – 20,000 cans – which was a very big risk for us as ‘market research’, but it meant we had no choice except finding a way to sell it.

“At the same time, someone who had tried unsuccessfully to launch a beer said to me, ‘if you don’t sell all 20,000 in the first three months, you’ll fail’. I didn’t know he was just saying it to motivate me, buy hey, it worked,” Di Benedetto says.

The power of persistence

Within days of launching, Di Benedetto had secured ranging in nine Dan Murphy’s stores through a campaign of “pestering, apologising for pestering, then pestering again”.

“I found out the category manager’s name and just kept emailing her requesting a meeting and telling her about our point of difference.

“Eventually she agreed, saying it was our can design that got us over the line. She hadn’t seen a new product’s design that she had liked for a long time, so she agreed to a quick meeting with no promises,” he says.

The can design got Di Benedetto across the threshold, his passion and tenacity got Solbevi Limoncello Spritz onto the shelves.

Di Benedetto was then introduced to the manager of local ranging.

Local ranging

“The head of local ranging gave us a handful of stores to test in based on my enthusiasm. He said that to succeed through January, a brand needs someone passionate behind it, pushing and promoting it to consumers,” he says.

By this point, Di Benedetto had quit his job and had $5000 in the bank. He travelled to Brisbane and Sydney introducing Solbevi to as many Dan Murphy’s he could see, asking them to request ranging.

In his hometown of Melbourne, he visited every single Dan Murphy’s in the city.

“A lot of the stores did request stock, showing Dan Murphy’s HQ that stores were keen.

“We’d been in the market for two months and I was back basically begging them to give us ranging in Queensland and Sydney because it was summer and it’s such a summer drink.”

While the team at Dan Murphy’s was adamant Solbevi had already been given an early break, they couldn’t deny the sales figures. Australia’s first canned Limoncello Spritz went from being stocked in nine stores to 106 stores.

In the five months since it launched, Solbevi is now in 109 Dan Murphy’s stores across Australia, 15 independent bottle shops, and 65 on-premise venues in Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia.

“Some of our key venues in Victoria include The Continental Hotel in Sorrento, Arbory Bar in Melbourne, Caulfield Racecourse, and Captain Baxter & Republic in St Kilda. In Queensland we’re in Summa House in Fortitude Valley and in New South Wales we’re stocked at The Clovelly Hotel, in Sydney.

“In the first five months we sold just over 25,000 cans of Limoncello Spritz and 2500 bottles of Limoncello, and we are on track to double that by the end of February,” Di Benedetto says.

And now, growth

After its first canning run, Solbevi jumped to 15,000 litres to produce 60,000 cans, and the next planned run will be 25,000 litres or 100,000 cans.

It has also had three production runs of its Limoncello, producing 3000 bottles each time.

“It is selling so quickly, we started to produce 20-litre drums and 50-litre kegs for pubs to keep up supply,” he says.

Di Benedetto is also finding the balance between tight scheduling and being able to work flexibly and fast with his customers.

“Wednesdays and Thursdays are my designated sales days when I get out and visit venues and potential stockists to get the brand out there and start building those relationships. Some of our biggest customers have come from a random email or word of mouth.”

He says he has learnt how the industry is a volume-based game involving working out how much volume you need to be a viable business against having product sitting in a warehouse.

“My focus is on getting as many customers as I can and supplying as much volume through those stores and venues. It’s very different from the construction industry that works on monthly progress claims.

“We’re in over 165 shops and venues now and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel – it’s all about growth and scalability. We’re spending money, then trying to make money in the shortest amount of time possible, to spend it again and repeat,” he says.

Big audacious goals

While Di Benedetto is deep in the grind of growing Solbevi on home soil, he is also looking further afield.

A four-day trip to New York with back-to-back meetings from New York to New Jersey has put the brand on the radar of a major sporting team, and a large organisation in Thailand has also expressed interest.

Meanwhile, he also has global plans for the Solbevi Limoncello.

“Every bar you walk into has a bottle of Campari and Aperol on the shelf, the red and the orange, but never a yellow. We want to change that, so when you walk in there are three bottles on that shelf – the Campari, Aperol, and our Limoncello. We want to explode the market for Limoncello exponentially like we’ve seen for Aperol,” he says.

Such bold goals are matched by Di Benedetto’s ruthless determination to succeed and his commitment to the hard work to make that happen. Here’s hoping he takes time for a drink in the sun.