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Singaporean Yiping Goh, 39, and her Spanish husband Carlos Bañón, 43, would journey to Spain twice a yr to go to their household and associates throughout pre-pandemic occasions.
With Covid-19 proscribing journey nonetheless, they couldn’t journey to Spain for the previous two years. Besides household and associates, native delicacies like Spanish wines and meals like freshly sliced jamon iberico (Spanish ham), olives and cheeses, was one thing they really miss.
“It [became] a project for us to directly import our favourite Spanish delicatessen and wines to satisfy our own cravings and also to share what we know about Spain with our friends and family. We also saw a huge underrepresentation of Spanish gourmet and wines here in Singapore, despite it being a food haven,” mentioned Yiping.
“Everytime we share our private stash brought back from our travels in Spain, our friends love them. So for a few years now, we have always thought Spanish food and wines have an untapped opportunity here. Finally, the travel lockdowns triggered us to take action.”
The couple went on to ascertain CasaJulia — named after Carlos’ late mom — in October 2021, which is usually a “passion project” that was born out of late nights feeding their second new child.
They are not any rookie entrepreneurs
The duo could be inexperienced to the F&B scene, however they’re each not new to the enterprise world.
Yiping is a serial tech founder. She is the previous co-founder of AllDealsAsia and MatahariMall (Indonesia) by Lippo Group — the identical group that produced unicorn OVO. Now, she is a enterprise capital investor and a companion at Quest Ventures, which has backed family names the likes of Carousell, StoreBack, Carro, 99.co, Style Theory, SGAG and Ion Mobility.
Meanwhile, Carlos owns an award-winning structure agency known as Subarquitectura, and can also be a professor on the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD).
They had already performed some analysis legwork since a couple of years in the past, so as soon as they put all the opposite bits and items collectively, they had been lastly able to kickstart the enterprise.
However, though they’re each seasoned entrepreneurs, that they had some challenges navigating the enterprise of importing and F&B, which is one thing “quite alien” from their common work in tech and design.
For occasion, that they had issue discovering the correct companions in Spain to work with, particularly since they’re nonetheless a fledgling startup and couldn’t fulfil any minimal buy quantity set by suppliers.
“We had to convince our suppliers that Singapore is a worthwhile new market to pursue and tread that fine balance,” mentioned Carlos.
In explicit, the couple feels that Asians’ palate preferences are just like Europeans’, and our tastebuds are suitable with Spanish meals.
“We love our seafood, meats, rice, cold platters and enjoy good wines. But because the Spanish culinary scene in Singapore is newer compared to the Italian and French, there’s still a lack of knowledge of Spanish food,” he added.
“Spanish wines are as good, if not better, than the other old world wines, but it’s less known and underrated. In fact, for similar quality, Spanish wines usually cost less.”
Bringing a bit of Spain to Singapore
CasaJulia is basically an internet market that straight imports Spanish meals favourites like jamon, uncommon wines, olive oil and cheeses, delivering them proper to the doorstep.
For these unacquainted, jamon is touted to be the best ham on the planet and has been dubbed as one of many nationwide culinary treasures of Spain. Like how Japan has its Kobe beef and prized sashimi, Spain prides itself on its Iberian ham.
Much like many different delicacies, they’re on the costly aspect — costs can go above S$1,000 for about 8 to 9 kilograms, relying on its grade, which is set based mostly on the parentage of the pigs, their feed and their ageing length.
“They (Iberian black pigs) are reared in the most humane and free range conditions, [which] some say [are] the most luxurious conditions,” mentioned Yiping, justifying its price ticket.
According to the couple, each product featured on their platform has been tried and tasted to their Spanish and Singaporean palates. To date, their bestsellers are their jamon iberico legs, sliced packs and wines.
In truth, the couple has noticed a gifting development for jamon throughout festive seasons like Christmas.
“For Chinese New Year, we are seeing more friends nicknaming our jamon as the Spanish version of bak kwa, or ‘atas’ bak kwa, this season, especially referring to the sliced packs. It is funny, but it has a certain resonance. They are also way healthier, yet super delicious.”
When it involves their wines, they’re sourced from throughout Spain, together with these from “under-discovered” areas and up-and-coming boutique wineries, whose first batches solely consist of some hundred to few thousand bottles.
“We import [our wines] directly from Spain, working with top and off the regular cuff sommeliers there,” shared Carlos.
“In particular, we have this crazy rare underwater wine, Attis Mar, which had been submerged under the Atlantic Ocean for its ageing process — something that is unique and makes the white wine way more intense and has a really long finish.”
Yiping careworn that CasaJulia helps to bridge the hole for purchasers to take pleasure in freshly reduce jamon and discover unique wines which might be infrequently exported out of Spain, as a lot of them solely serve their home markets.
“We really want to bring that experience of traveling through Spain without being physically there, or to nurse the withdrawal symptoms of someone who’s been to Spanish cities before and miss wines from there,” she added.
Achieved a five-figure income in two months
Covid-19 has negatively impacted many companies, however it has additionally spurred the emergence of recent ones — CasaJulia being one in all them.
When requested how the pandemic has affected their enterprise, Yiping mentioned that it’s a double-edged sword because it serves as each a enterprise menace and alternative.
“People are looking forward to trying out new experiences when they can’t travel as much. They see trying out new culinary experiences as a way of traveling, and [it helps] that more people are hosting [meals] at home these days.”
She additionally acknowledged that tightened Covid-19 restrictions on family guests can result in extra hesitation on the subject of shopper buy, however as an entire, she feels that the alternatives outweigh the threats with the increase of e-commerce.
In truth, the bootstrapped enterprise has already damaged even, and inside two months, it achieved five-figure gross sales with no advertising spend.
This is a testomony to CasaJulia’s regular development, however the couple are usually not resting on their laurels. After all, the F&B area could be very saturated and aggressive.
To final within the sport, they really feel that it’s necessary to “find their own niche and stay ahead of trends”. At the identical time, they’re making it some extent to repeatedly enhance their choices and repair high quality to win clients’ hearts.
“Most importantly, while we made our calculations, and checked several key assumptions over and over again, we chose not to overthink and decided to just start [because] we know that if we have a long list of criteria that a startup idea must meet, we will never start,” mentioned Carlos.
“With CasaJulia, we followed our hearts, but we also followed opportunity gaps that this pandemic presented and is still unravelling. We went with starting small first, doing little experiments, and iterating along the way.”
In the subsequent few months, CasaJulia plans to increase the enterprise line to incorporate different Spanish product reminiscent of introducing a variety of sea salts that’s uncommon to come back by right here.
Sharing different future enterprise plans, the couple additionally mentioned that they’re exploring the thought of establishing offline pop-up occasions, collaborations with eating places, and ultimately arrange a bodily retailer when the time is true.
“Our ultimate goal is to be the top-of-mind choice for consumers when it comes to Spanish gourmet and wines”.
Featured Image Credit: CasaJulia
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