Author: Emily Ludolph / Source: 99U by Behance
Hyper masculinity had better watch out: Alix Peabody is on a mission.
The first-time founder has a plan to shake up the male-dominated alcohol industry with an eye-popping coral canned rosé called Bev. Her secret weapon? A “Break the Glass” message that takes aim at the toxic world of tech parties, date rape culture, and hyper masculinity.
Peabody drained her life savings and bought 300 gallons of rosé to launch Bev in 2018. Now, she arrives at 6 a.m. sales pitch meetings—where distributors are used to seeing men in flannel shirts explain the new Sam Adams lager—with a team of 10 women who bombard the room with decks of memes, boombox-led stretches, and pink donuts. It looks like she’s selling a brand, but really, she’s trying to reshape an industry.
“For so long, the alcohol industry has capitalized on people’s insecurities rather than their strengths,” says Peabody. “It has perpetuated a culture that is so unhealthy and unfair to both men and women. We want to redefine what that culture looks like.”
Now, she’s landed a partnership with Reyes, the biggest beer distributor in America. We got in touch with Alix to hear about going from $12 in the bank to a fundraising round of $2.2 million, and how she’s popping the top off of a beer-dominated market.
Q. Bev came about in an unlikely way. Tell us how it started.
A. I’d had these weird health issues that nobody could figure out. I’d had six surgeries in 18 months and was $20,000 or $30,000 deep in medical bills. So I started throwing parties to help pay off my medical bills.
They were basically ragers at my aunt and uncle’s house in Sonoma. These were 200-person parties and they were during the day so they were called the Sonoma Daygers. You’ve read all about all the kinds of parties that go on in tech land in Silicon Valley: dingy and creepy, with women flown in from LA and paid to be there. The Daygers were the opposite. We would get crazy costumes, like boas and sparkly hats, and by the end of the night everyone was wearing something random and bright and dancing the funky chicken like nobody cares. If I were to liken it to anything, it would be Burning Man: radical self-expression, inclusive, everyone’s having a good time.
Q. When did you sense there was a business opportunity here?
A. I got addicted to the idea of the “female-owned party.” I wanted to build it, but I didn’t really know how. I quickly realized that if I wanted a brand that was going to take flight, I needed something actually tied down to a product. I had this ‘aha moment’ where I realized that the lowest common…
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