Page 6 - BusinessWest June 17, 2024

Paul Kozub says the need to keep the distillery in Poland busy — busier than it is now — is fueling the company’s aggressive plans for continued growth.
It’s an intriguing next chapter in a story that has featured a number of plot twists and turns but a continued focus on the proverbial big picture and how to make it become reality.
For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Kozub about the latest, quite significant adjustments to the V-One business plan and how they pro- vide more proof — yes, that’s an indus- try term — of how those original plans haven’t exactly changed. They’ve just been supersized.
Proof Positive
By now, most people around here know at least the basics of the V-One
story.
With a small, $6,000 inheritance
from an uncle and some entrepre- neurial vigor that ran in the family (his father started Janlynn Corp.), Kozub put aside a career in banking — he was a commercial lender with TD Bank — to fulfill a long-held dream to launch his own vodka label.
“My next goal is to get V-One in at least five more states in the next 12 to 24 months.”
That was in 2005. He started with a small still in his basement and soon made his way to Poland to meet with a world-renowned vodka expert for advice, but also inspiration. He made the critical decision to become the first producer of vodka made exclu- sively from organic spelt wheat (most other vodkas are made from corn).
Over the next 19 years, V-One has grown and evolved, adding new fla- vors, winning several awards, expand- ing its reach across New England and beyond, and increasing the number of cases sold each year. Along the way, there have been several milestones
— from the opening of V-One’s world headquarters in the former St. John’s Church on Route 9 in Hadley to a rebranding that saw a new look to the bottles, to the acquisition and subse- quent expansion of the distillery in Kamien, Poland, a multi-million-dollar investment fueled by a desire to take more control of the process.
BusinessWest has chronicled the story, and along the way, Kozub has earned two of the magazine’s awards — inclusion in the inaugural 40 Under Forty class of 2007, then being named the magazine’s Top Entrepreneur for 2016.
As he noted at the top, he now has four young children — “life has gotten a little more complicated” — so that means fewer trips to Poland, although he was recently there for some end- of-fiscal-year matters, and more Zoom calls with his master distiller there.
“He has things handled pretty well as far as production goes, so I
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JUNE 24, 2024
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