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Walnut shade distillery writing recipe for Springfield move

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For Copper Run Distillery LLC, 2015 has been a year of making moves. But the biggest may be just around the corner.

Jim Blansit, founder of the Walnut Shade spirits maker, is pursuing a move to Springfield from the company’s home in the hills west of U.S. Highway 65.

Talks the last year have led him to seek investors to help make it happen.

“I feel confident we should have a direction in mind by the first quarter of 2016,” Blansit said. “I need more help than just the capital. I need help taking the business to the next level.”

Though traditional financing is an option through Arvest Bank, he’d offer ownership interest in the company to parties who can bring sales and marketing experience for Copper Run’s next phase.

Blansit said production is at capacity at the 5,500-square-foot distillery on his family’s Walnut Shade farm, but he’s unwilling to turn more earth.

“It seems like the place where you should have a distillery, but he can probably get more traffic,” said Mark Miller, a principal with the Springfield office of Seattle-based GeoEngineers Inc., which purchased a 20-liter barrel from Copper Run this spring to produce about 40 bottles of whiskey as holiday gifts for clients. “He’s not that far off the beaten track, but where he’s at it does seem a bit limited.”

In a move, the plans call for increasing the distillery to an estimated 7,000 square feet – with roughly three-quarters of that dedicated to distilling operations.

“We saw this coming, with the limitations of being a Branson tourist-based company,” Blansit said. “We wanted to be less reliant on that.”

Roll out the barrel
This is the first in Copper Run’s 6-year history that retail sales grew only marginally – another sign, Blansit said, to consider hauling stakes.

Declining to disclose revenues, he projects the retail segment will comprise about 40 percent of business by year’s end. Just two years ago, retail sales represented all of the company’s income, but self-distributed wholesale operations now make up 40 percent of revenue.

The remaining 20 percent is the result of contract distilling relationships with other companies and individuals, as well as co-marketing ventures Blansit expects to become more frequent and fruitful with the move 35 miles north. Copper Run this year rolled out a Signature Barrel Program, allowing customers to concoct their own recipes, label and choose the types of barrels to age the whiskey.

GeoEngineers and other businesses use the program to create holiday gifts for clients, ranging in cost from $1,180 for 40 bottles to $9,000 to produce roughly 400 bottles. Blansit said the program, also utilized by O’Reilly Automotive Inc. to produce 400 half-size bottles for client gifts, charges half the cost upfront.

“Being a small company, cash flow is critical, and when you’re making whiskey that’s to be aged for three years, that’s a long stretch,” he said, noting if customers back out during the aging process, Copper Run guarantees repurchase of the product – worth three times the original price when finished.

“No one has done that yet,” Blansit added.

Also among the half-dozen businesses in the program are Hickory Hills Country Club, area Macadoodles liquor stores and Dells Distillery in Wisconsin Dells, Wis.

Brian Blankenship, general manager of the Branson Macadoodles who participated in Copper Run’s small-batch blend, said the private-label offering has been on store shelves two weeks at nearly $30 per bottle.

“We’ve been through about two cases already, and we’re averaging about a bottle a day,” Blankenship said. “For a small-batch whiskey in this price range, we’ve had great success with it so far.”

Blansit said word of the program is spreading, and Copper Run was hired by Wells Fargo Advisers LLC to cater drinks for the inaugural Gateway Gala held Nov. 20 in St. Louis. During the fundraiser benefitting nonprofit Concordance Academy of Leadership, formerly known as Project Cope to assist released prisoners, a signature barrel will be auctioned.

The next batch
Another factor in the pending move is co-marketing opportunities similar to the 2013 and 2014 collaborations with Mother’s Brewing Co. and White River Brewing Co. Blansit said Copper Run currently is preparing a product with Buffalo-based Leaky Roof Meadery and is in talks with Bucyrus-based Piney River Brewing Co. to partner on a beverage.

“The move enables us to work more closely with other companies,” he said. “That co-marketing that works so well gives us the ability to expand our reach and our capabilities.”

In May, Blansit anticipated company growth would necessitate construction of a barrelhouse for aging. If the move goes as planned, the barrelhouse would likely take shape at its own offsite facility, he said. He declined to disclose the estimates of what a move would cost.

Yet with the search for relocation, investors and new product lines, Blansit said the company’s main goal remains the same: distilling more than Copper Run sells in order to stockpile the premium-priced, aged spirits.

“We literally make one barrel at a time,” he added. “It makes sense to do that in Springfield.”

Blansit has no plans to sell the family farm.

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