Page 4 - BusinessWest June 17, 2024

At a Tipping Point
V-One Owner Charts Aggressive Course of Expansion, Growth
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
[email protected]
hen asked about all that has changed since he first start- ed finalizing plans for cre- ating his own vodka label 20 years ago, Paul Kozub chose to start with the per-
sonal side of his life. “Back then, I was a single guy living alone
with not many cares in the world; now, I’m married with four kids under the age of 10,” he said, adding that this reality explains why he only visits the dis- tillery he owns in Poland maybe once a year instead of three or four times, as he did earlier, and why he presides over maybe 20 in-store tastings a year instead of the 50 or 60 he was averaging a few years ago.
“For me, V-One is
at a crucial tipping point. We’re either going to stay small — a Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island business — or we’re going to get bigger, and a lot bigger, as a national brand or even
an international brand.”
As for the business side
of the equation, there have
been equally significant
changes. He started with
one flavor in one region
of the Bay State, the 413.
Now, there are 10 flavors,
including a lemon that changes colors and a hugely popular double espresso. And they are now available in eight states — the six New Eng- land states as well as New Jersey and Texas — although they can be shipped almost anywhere, as we’ll see.
And there’s that distillery in Poland, which Kozub now owns a 51% share in. He made that investment in 2019 in a critical step that saw him move from outsourcing production to over- seeing (officially if not literally) every step in the process.
And while there have been huge leaps in overall growth — from 700 to 1,000 cases pro- duced and sold per year early on to more than 20,000 today — there have been myriad chal- lenges as well, everything from a global pandem- ic to the war in Ukraine (the distillery is only a few miles from the border); from huge swings
in the cost of getting containers from Poland to the U.S. ($4,200 per shipment to $16,000 back down to $4,200) to the burgeoning cannabis industry (in states where cannabis is legalized, there is an accompanying decline in alcohol sales, Kozub reported).
Paul Kozub with his children, from left, Weston, Ela, Augustin, and Vincent, at the distillery in Kamien, Poland, that he acquired in 2019.
4 JUNE 24, 2024
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