TED Werth C/W’94 calls himself “a chronic entrepreneur” –an accurate description considering his string of business ventures, which have ranged from creating a “webzine” and launching a live-concert site in cyberspace to becoming partner in Original Sin, a hard-cider company.
To do the latter, the New York resident teamed up with a Cornell graduate who was already manufacturing the product in small batches with a limited distribution. Werth, now a principal and director in the company, helped raise more capital, rewrite the business plan and devise a marketing strategy to increase sales of the apple-based, six-percent alcohol brew.
“We’re giving a new image to cider,” he explains. “Most of the other cider in the market is branded in a very rustic, masculine way. None of them are cosmopolitan, so [the typical cider drinker] would either choose a Bud or a Woodpecker [cider]. We’re branded so you would either choose an Absolut and tonic, or Original Sin Hard Cider.”
To accomplish this, they switched to a manufacturer in Vermont with access to higher quality ingredients. The rest, Werth admits, “is marketing and image, associating with the right events, the right parties, the right scenes to give it the feel of a superior cider.”
The Penn Club of New York has agreed to stock Original Sin, and more than 90 restaurants, bars and grocery stores have added it to their menus and shelves in the past few months. Next, the partners hope to raise money to distribute the beverage in Philadelphia and other cities.