October 20th, 2009Alan WalshComment

After a  few days of anticipation and some debate as to whether or not to make the journey to London for Brewdog’s grand announcement, we today learned exactly what James Watt and Martin Dickie had in mind when they proclaimed last week to their mailing list that Brewdog were about to change the World.

There was much speculation on forums and message boards but now we know. If we want our World changed alls we need to do is exchange £230 of our hard earned for a 0.0009 share in what is admitedly one of the UKs most innovative and exciting craft breweries. The aim of Brewdog is to raise a couple of million in order to expand to larger premises that will be, depending on the capital raised, as ecologically neutral on the surrounding environment as possible. I can only assume it is this ecological dream that is the world changing aspect because I know that shares can be purchased in The Black Sheep Brewery which, although not directly comparable with Brewdog, is certainly not a large listed company of the Scottish & Newcastle type.

The first thing I considered when trying to decide whether or not to try and scrape together £230 is what chance there is of seeing any return on my investment. Realistically anyone popping £230 into Brewdog is likely to lose some of that capital upon disposal, that is if you can sell the shares at all (although Brewdog have said that they hope to allow shareholders to trade on their website which would certainly boost liquidity of the shares). But, unlike if you were going to invest in Black Sheep (or any other brewery in an attempt to make profit), this is largely irrelevant.  Your £230 is buying you access to an idea, the Brewdog idea, and I will not be investing because I don’t want to throw that sort of money down an idea. Many people will feel otherwise and good luck to them. For there committment to the cause they will earn a vote at the AGM, the opportunity to exchange views and ideas on a shareholders forum, a 20% discount in the Brewdog online shop and the opportunity to go to the bar and bring back a round of drinks from ‘their’ brewery.

All of these are nice touches and if the opportunity existed for £50 I would be falling over myself to get some of the action. The problem is that I cannot reconcile spending £230 on a novelty that offers only remote chances of (most likely extremely) long term gain. So why did Brewdog not offer the same deal for a smaller shareprice? Simples. They have set themselves a target and this is how much they need to meet it. Credit to them, the Brewdog way is to grab the bull by the horns. Convincing 10,000 people to part with £230 might be harder than they think and my head is telling me that they might be stretching themselves too far too quickly. My heart on the other hand tells me that, with the business knowledge and experience that has come on board, plus some belting brews and the balls to take the plunge, Brewdog might just be able to pull this one off. I certainly wouldn’t take the £230 and bet against them making a job of it.

Anyway, there might be 10,000 people out there who don’t think £1,150 is too larger target for recouping the full £230 in the Brewdog shop!!!

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Tags: BrewDog, Brewdog Changes The World, Brewdog Shares, Equity for Punks, James Watt, Martin Dickie, scottish