William Deane, 20, speaks to Aimee Shaw about his motivations for starting an alcoholic drinks company with his brother and helping to save rhinos facing extinction
Part Time Rangers is the name but it is also the idea. Essentially, we want to make it so people can buy consumer goods but also do something good at the same time. Instead of buying a box of RTDs, you are buying a box of RTDs and donating to an environmental cause — and paying roughly the same for it. We have two products. We started with White Rhino which is a gin, lemon and sparkling water, 10 per cent of profits from which went towards Saving The Wild, a nonprofit organisation that dismantles poaching rings in South Africa, particularly around rhinos.
What was the motivation for starting it?
My brother Oliver, 23, and I run it. Basically, our family has always been really involved in non-profit and charitable causes. I spent time in Ethiopia teaching and volunteering and so has Olly, and one of the times we went over to Ethiopia we went with our family to Tanzania to do a safari. Throughout the entire two weeks we saw one rhino. It was a black rhino, and it was about 2km away. We were wondering what was up with that and found out about how this beautiful species is getting decimated. In January 2017, we started building the business around donating to Saving The Wild. Recently it has expanded to Zimbabwe to help prevent elephant poaching. We have joined and introduced our African Elephant vodka, lime and sparkling water drink that supports that part of the organisation.
Where did the idea for the business come from?
Olly was more into running his own business. I, initially, went to university and did law for a year, didn’t really like that so started doing business. My brother, he did his degree in geography and marketing. He’s always been like a salesman, and in my second year of uni I went to stay with him in Dunedin. It was orientation week and I really wanted to go out with my friends so we tried this mix of gin, lemon and water and thought “this is pretty good, let’s put it in a can”. A year later we launched in Dunedin.
How has the business been doing in that time?
It’s been awesome. It’s been a huge learning experience but it has been really cool to use what we’ve learned at uni and learn so much more. Our dad has helped us a bit with decisionmaking and introduced us to some great people. Overall it has been fun and it’s cool to talk to store owners all across the country. We got to do Rhythm & Vines recently — we were the exclusive RTD for it so it was pretty cool for us as a small, new independent company to get that spot over larger organisations. We sold more than 100,000 cans during the festival.
What are your plans and goals for the year ahead?
Our key focus is distribution. We’ve got 90 stores signed on across the country who are stocking us and the goal is to get everywhere by the end of the year. We’ve just brought on a distributor to help us out with that. There are also a lot of brilliant causes that I want to support and bring it home to New Zealand. We want to increase our drinks line and build a big, strong community of New Zealanders who are part-time rangers helping our planet. We’re fulltime Part Time Rangers and anyone who drinks it is a Part Time Ranger.
How much did you invest to get the business up and running?
We started with a loan from BNZ for $50,000 and we’ve just built it from there. We started making 3000 boxes and then we’ve made more each time.
What challenges do you see for the year ahead?
We’ll need to be quite tactical with how we spend money. Another big challenge is getting our name out there and increasing distribution. What we want is our entire range in somewhere like Liquorland where they put us in every store. There’s a trial period where, if you sell well, you stay, if you don’t, you’re out, so that’s going to be a big challenge — getting the opportunity and staying in.
What advice do you give to others thinking about starting their own business?
Make sure you’re passionate about something. If you’ve got the passion and a good team around you, just do it, There’s no point holding off on your dreams, give it a go.