How the Artisanal Spirits Company turned its members into shareholders.
ART rebuilt its investor website as an interactive hub, then used shareholder identification and an enhanced benefits programme to convert loyal customers into investors.
- Industry
- Consumer goods
Problem
ART faced a disconnect between business value and share price, driven by low liquidity on AIM. The infrastructure to maintain and scale company-member relationships simply didn't exist, and low liquidity is a vicious cycle: without it, institutions can't commit, and without institutions, liquidity stays low.
Impact
Around 10% of existing UK members invested more than £1,000 in shares at its initial public offering (IPO), raising roughly £3m from the membership base alone, a portion of the raise that was oversubscribed. ART now manages thousands of shareholders enrolled in its benefits programme, has built a positive liquidity flywheel, and even discovered a few hundred investors who weren't yet members.
- ~£3m
- Raised from members
- ~10%
- Of UK members invested at IPO
- Oversubscribed
- Membership portion of the raise
- Thousands
- Shareholders in the programme
It definitely works in both directions. You take members and bring them even more into your world by making them owners, but we also found a few hundred investors who aren't members yet. There's another opportunity.
Step by step
How they did it.
Three moves, in the order Artisanal Spirits Company made them.
- 1
Rebuilt the investor website
The old IR site was no longer fit for purpose. ART rebuilt it as an interactive hub, taking the 'funnel view' of a direct-to-consumer business, simple, focused and easy to act on.
- 2
Identified the shareholder base
Understanding beneficial owners is hard for any listed company. ART used InvestorHub to build a clearer picture of who actually holds shares and how that ownership changes over time.
- 3
Relaunched the benefits programme
A two-tier shareholder benefits programme, designed to be easy to operate and sustainable: discounts on membership renewals, targeted 10–20% product discounts, and exclusive limited-edition bottlings for shareholders who invested in specific windows.
The flywheel
Each turn makes the next one easier.
None of these are needle moving by themselves, but together and over time they combine and grow on each other to make each move more and more impactful.
- Attract
- Reach the whole register directly, rather than the twenty holders who take the calls. More of the register hears from you, so more of it can respond.
- Understand
- Every open, read, click and question is a signal about who is actually paying attention, and to what. The register stops being a list of names.
- Engage
- Answer what shareholders actually asked, while they are still asking it. That earns the next open, which is what makes the next turn sharper than this one.
Which is why the wheel doesn’t just keep turning, it gets better at turning. The register you engage this quarter is the register you understand next quarter.