Vertically Integrated. Good or Bad?
Mike hit the ground running from a young age, steadily working jobs from the first chance he got at 14 years old and making his way through high school with a focus on business and fine art. He then made the move to New York to attend the School of Visual Arts, spending those years freelancing and developing the knowledge and skills that would lead to a Bachelor of Fine Arts in computer art.
Countless projects later, the desire came to move away from creating commercial content for others and channel his energy, enthusiasm, and expertise into something more tangible, to build something from the ground up that inspires and empowers people and makes their nights at home special and memorable. Intrigued by the format of wildly popular meal subscription services, Mike—something of a craft cocktail hobbyist himself—drew up the plan that would lead to the founding of Shaker & Spoon.
From this moment of conception, all the way through to today, Mike’s long-fostered skills in design, video editing, packaging, branding, networking, and management have found their rightful home at S&S. And after just a few short years, this company—scaled 100% via bootstrapping and having taken on no debt before 2021—had already garnered many corporate partnerships, countless all-star collaborations, an ever-growing subscriber base, and a fiercely dedicated social media community, even before the cocktails-at-home craze of 2020.
Having overcome a tumultuous childhood amid unrest in the former Soviet Union, Anna Gorovoy’s drive for achievement and self-starting nature emerged quickly upon her family’s move to the US. Her high school’s valedictorian and a graduate of Yale University, she immediately applied her skills in detail-driven design and her love of the written word throughout a series of internships, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, before an impressive stint designing best-selling books at Macmillan Publishers.
Lured away from office life by an exciting chance at entrepreneurship and determined to challenge herself by building something new, Anna stepped into the role of Chief Brand Officer and Co-founder of Shaker & Spoon. Her years in publishing, during which she flexed her creative muscles and trained and mentored new hires, equipped her with a valuable skill set for molding the company’s fun, educational, and approachable brand identity.
While Shaker & Spoon’s delicious drinks in a way speak for themselves, it took Anna’s sharp, disciplined eye and cheerful spirit to create a fully cultivated, professional, and trustworthy voice and visual style from day one. And as the company has grown, so too have the teams she leads, now including customer experience, distinct experience (bulk and corporate sales), and all matters of marketing, copy, and content.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Mike Milyavsky’s art and entrepreneurial background
Anna Gorovoy’s fine art and graphic design background
How they created Shaker & Spoon
The services they offer through Shaker & Spoon
Why they operate on a vertical integration model
The production and supply fulfillment challenges in their business
The artistry of the cocktails and how that affects ingredient sourcing
How award-winning mixologists factor into their company
What Mike and Anna have planned for Shaker & Spoon in the future
In this episode…
Mike Milyavsky and Anna Gorovoy were born in the same city, in Minsk, Belarus, and both their families emigrated to America when they were young. But the two wouldn’t meet until arts high school in Maryland, Baltimore. They started Shaker & Spoon, their cocktail subscription service, in 2015 based on an entrepreneurial idea of Mike’s.
Both Mike and Anna were and are artists. Mike pushed his creative expression into the business endeavor while Anna still uses much of her artistic instincts in the brand work. They explain how art still greatly informs Shaker & Spoon and how exactly they combine the artistry with the business side of the company.
In this episode of What CEOs Talk About, host Martin Hunter and guests Mike Milyavsky and Anna Gorovoy discuss the technical structure of Shaker & Spoon and how it was built to make it profitable. Mike and Anna explain the demands of sourcing unique ingredients, how the production team expands with seasonal labor, and they speak to the future of pushing Shaker & Spoon farther into the B2B space. The structure of vertical integration and the demands of in-house production are explored in detail in this not-to-be-missed episode.
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