When starting a brewery, it is about 90% paperwork, financing and other boring stuff. Ten percent is actually about the beer. During last couple of months, we have been looking for solutions how to execute the share issue. It’s quite simple here in Finland, but doing equity based crowdfunding in Estonia is a totally different story. Almost no one in Estonia has any experience about equity-based crowdfunding, so it has been a slow process. It is always fun to be the first one!
We have been meeting lawyers, business consultants and other experienced people during the last few months. We were hoping that we could do the whole process through Sori Brewing Estonia.
However, to save money and especially time, the share issue will be carried out through Sori Brewing Finland. It will become the parent company of Sori Brewing. This way we get things rolling faster and the result is the same – a great craft beer brewery in Estonia.
Why this way?
In Estonia, if a company is marketing its shares to over 150 people and the desired amount is over 100 000€, the company has to do an official prospectus. A very long and specific paper needs to be approved by the local authorities in advance. It takes lots of time and lawyers that costs a lot of money. In Finland, it is not necessary, if the desired amount is less than 1.5m€. We just need to present all the relevant and equal information for everyone interested.
Secondly, it is not that simple to be a Finnish shareholder in Estonia. It means that the investor would have to travel to Tallinn, sign the paperwork and open bank and securities accounts there. Unless we would use lawyers as a proxy, that would cost a lot of money. We want to use that money to build this brewery rather than use it in useless bureaucracy.
We were hoping that we could have done everything through the Estonian company. It would have been a smarter solution in the long run (since we feel Estonia is more encouraging environment for a company like us). However, you’ll always have to make compromises. This enables us to start the whole thing faster and with less paperwork.
At the end, we will have Sori Brewing Finland, which will be the parent company. Then Sori Brewing Finland will invest equity into Sori Brewing Estonia, that will be the production company. This is the easiest way and causes less hassle to investors and gets things rolling faster.
What’s next?
[pullquote align=”right”]So all the Finnish, Swedish and Estonian brewers out there: if you have free capacity or just want to support a good cause, we are very interested![/pullquote]We will start the share issue in December or in January. The Investor portal will contain specifics and information about the future of the company.Secondly, we are pushing it that the first commercially produced batch of Sori Brewing Investor IPA would come out in December. We were already really close to this goal. Actually, Investor IPA should already be in taps. But then the unexpected happened, and we were pushed back to the starting point. We are meeting people during following weeks and we’ll see how it goes.
If everything fails with the contract brewing plans, then we will put Samu into work. He will brew like crazy with his 40 liter brewkit and we’ll arrange tasting events in Helsinki and Tampere.
We promise that there will be beer!
So all the Finnish, Swedish and Estonian brewers out there: if you have free capacity or just want to support a good cause, we are very interested!