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When Shivam Mallick Shah and Lindsey Davis Stover founded the tequila brand 1953, they wanted to make moves in an industry that was becoming increasingly popular among their own demographic while also opening doors for other women.
As the brand proudly states on its website, 1953 is “Founded, Farmed, Distilled, and Led by Women.” On Yahoo Finance’s The Big Idea podcast, the two entrepreneurs shared how they managed to pull off such a feat in a historically male-dominated industry. (Watch the full episode above; listen-only below.)
“I just kind of got down this rabbit hole of where the women in tequila are, unfortunately, really hard to find. So that kind of led us to this idea,” Davis Stover, a Texas native, said on the podcast.
“We were drinking tequila. Every woman we knew is drinking tequila,” she continued. “So we wanted to create a company that was founded, farmed, distilled, and led by women at every single level. Even our name, 1953, is the year women earned the right to vote in Mexico. I think that is just the essence of our company and providing opportunities for women.”
“People didn’t think it was necessary to have a female-led supply chain,” Shah said. “They didn’t think that it would make a difference in the quality of the product, and they didn’t think that, frankly, we could do it. They had a lot of strong opinions on what we could do, and it was different than what we wanted to do.”
Shah and Davis Stover tackled their mission by completing their search in an “organic way,” talking with people who worked at distilleries and farms in Mexico. Eventually, they found Carmen and Adriana, who ran the family-owned distillery that 1953 would eventually use.
“Their family has owned this distillery for over a hundred years, and they have trained a female master distiller, Rocio Rodriguez, who signs every bottle,” Shah explained. “She had this incredible story of having come to this distillery when she was pregnant. She was trained as a chemical engineer, but she was worried about losing her job. Carmen and Adriana’s families decided to build a nursery so she could come to work and bring her whole self, which has, of course, changed her life, but it changed so many people’s lives.”
Though their journey to creating a brand with a strong female focus had its roadblocks, the biggest hurdle was finding a woman-owned agave farm. Traditionally, agave farms in Mexico are passed down from father to son, but Carmen and Adriana helped the entrepreneurs find the farm they partner with today.
“We could not find an agave farm owned by women,” Shah said. “Carmen and Adriana helped us find a gentleman who only had four daughters. We met with them, and we talked about what we were trying to build. We asked him if he would consider passing his farm down to his daughters if we guaranteed purchase of agave from their farms for 1953.”
After a family meeting in which the four women discussed the proposition with their husbands and father, they ultimately agreed, deciding to take on the responsibility and risk to help complete 1953’s women-led supply chain.
“They had grown up on this farm, and they knew it like the back of their hand, but they never saw themselves as CEOs. They never saw themselves as the people in charge of running the farm,” Shah explained. “What made them think differently was the high school down the street and all the girls who were in that high school, just like they used to be, and wanting to let those girls know that there was nothing they couldn’t do. … It was a motivation we all shared, and we knew we had an alignment of our values, which told us we were in the right place. And that really completed our supply chain.”
Every Thursday, Elizabeth Gore discusses real-life stories and smart strategies for launching a small business on The Big Idea podcast. You can find more episodes on our video hub or watch on your preferred streaming service.
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