In some ways, Shire City Herbals had to lose before it could start winning.
Since its founding in 2010, the Pittsfield, Massachusetts-based company has built its brand around a single product: a spicy apple cider vinegar infusion called fire cider, designed to be used as a daily wellness tonic. In 2021, it remains the brand’s flagship item, but the context around it has changed: after years spent fighting challenges to its trademark for the term “fire cider,” in October 2019 Shire City was ordered by a Massachusetts court ruling to give up its rights to the name, which is considered a generic term.
Reflecting on the issue now, Shire City CEO Kim Allardyce is candid in her assessment: “Quite frankly, we made a mistake,” she said in an interview with BevNET earlier this week, attributing the issue in part to its founders’ relative business inexperience. Yet for Allardyce, who recently took the helm at the company after over three years as VP of Business Development, the end result of the process has put Shire City in a position to ultimately grow and evolve beyond its previous identity, which kicked off last spring with a complete brand overhaul.
“In the end, losing the trademark was the best thing possible,” she said. “There’s no more conflict — it was just able to be resolved.”
Without its exclusive claim to “fire cider,” Shire City had a clean slate with which to introduce its new visual identity and branding, which had been in the works prior to the court’s ruling. In June, the company debuted a new design for its 8 oz. and 16 oz. glass bottles featuring a smaller callout for “fire cider” (now with the registered trademark removed) and a more prominent placing for “Shire City Herbals.” The quirky apothecary vibe of its previous labels was swapped out for a lighter and brighter aesthetic that is more inviting to new consumers, Allardyce said, an issue of particular importance for a product that requires some level of education. To that end, the label copy was also revised to be more concise, along with a callout for daily recommended use.
“I think that’s one thing that sometimes is missed in telling the story of what did happen is that the whole aim was to create accessibility to the product,” she said, noting that the previous branding created some “disconnect” between both consumers and buyers on what the product was. “As we look to increase the accessibility of the product, people need to be able to look at the label and understand what it is, how to use it and who we are.”
As the brand banner becomes more prominent, Shire City is aiming to go beyond its signature drink. This spring, the company will release Elderberry Tonic, an apple cider vinegar-based tonic featuring honey, elderberry juice, ginger, tulsi, cinnamon and clove. A second innovation should be ready for the fall.
“The Elderberry Tonic is along the lines of immunity and wellbeing which is front and center for our society as a whole right now, so our products have never been more relevant than right now,” Allardyce said. “It’s more palatable to a broader range of folks who may or may not like spice.”
Elderberry Tonic will be available in 16 oz. bottles and 1 oz. single-serving packets exclusively on e-commerce, a channel that Shire City is increasingly focused on in order to fuel growth and offset some of the declines seen in retail sales. Allardyce said the business is split roughly in half between direct-to-consumer and wholesale, with national retail partners including Sprouts, Fresh Thyme, Vitamin Shoppe and Wegmans, but the struggles of independent accounts, along with the perception that consumers are spending less time exploring and discovering products while in stores, has shifted the company’s thinking.
“We’ve set the foundation, we have a base to stand on, and now we need to build that more strategically and more prominently,” Allardyce said, adding that the company hopes to bring on an e-commerce specialist by the end of this year. “We need to do even better with ecomm than what we are currently doing.”
That shift mirrors Allardyce’s own ascent within the company: as VP of Business Development, she helped create Shire City’s direct-to-consumer platform and overhauled its Amazon business, driving triple-digit growth for the brand in that channel. With founder and previous CEO Dana St. Pierre focused on his passion for R&D and formulation as its board president and Chief Product Officer, Allardyce said the change was “organic,” with her doing “more of the same” to drive overall growth, but now also with a greater focus on operations. She’s also leading the company’s fundraising efforts for its seed round, for which it is in talks with a potential lead investor.
“All things considered, pandemic aside, it’s really nice to be moving forward in a way that’s hopefully helpful to the current scenario of COVID-19 and helping keep people moving through this current situation,” she said. “We hope to be part of people’s lives for the long haul, so that’s what we are really setting up for.”