When Kofi Ti got bigger and we couldn't fit in the production space in Buftea anymore, we made a compromise. We rented a hall in Crevedia, where little by little, in recent years, we have come to keep everything - raw material (ingredients, bottles, labels), accessories, but also the finished products, when we produce larger batches. But because the roads between the two locations were making the whole production and sales process more and more difficult, we had been looking for a new space to move to altogether for some time.
And one day I found a perfect place. Too good to be true even. We signed the lease, took out new loans, bought bigger equipment to make production more efficient, and got down to fitting out.
Then, completely out of the blue, the owners of the new production space demanded termination of the contract. With luck, with alas (more precisely with the help of lawyers, when common sense did not pay off), we managed to recover our guarantee and close this ugly chapter. I stayed with the new equipment stored at friends and restarted the search for a new space.
But life sometimes has a sense of humor that is hard to understand. We hadn't even undressed well, when we had a new surprise.
Last Friday a fire completely destroyed the hall in Crevedia, incinerating everything we had there - refrigerated boxes, pallets with thousands of bottles, thousands of packaging, tens of thousands of labels and caps, raw material worth thousands of euros, the stands with we used to come to events, the Wheelys bikes that Kofi Ti started with, and more.
The damage is still difficult to estimate, due to the fact that in recent years prices have doubled or even tripled for some products. We're talking about at least 50k euros gone in minutes.
But it seems that the cold-pressed Sicilian lemon juice, cold-pressed elderberry juice, lavender, kola nuts and the other premium ingredients chosen on the brow make our soul hurt the worst.
Due to the damage, unfortunately there will be a complicated period before we can restart production. We are looking for a new space, we are trying to place orders for raw material (which as you know we bring from all over the world), labels, packaging and we hope to be able to start production as soon as possible.