Under The Hood: Lily From Figlia

Lily, give us the backstory on Figlia - how did you come up with the idea? What drove you so much to build a business around it?

Lily: I came up with the idea for Figlia during the pandemic when I found that everyone around me was drinking booze more than ever and I was looking for ways to make my own non-alcoholic options. I had also tried a bunch of alternatives that were on the market and couldn’t find anything that I wanted to have every night.

Separately from this, I had spent most of my life growing up with a parent who had battled with alcoholism and found that there weren’t many sophisticated options for the non-drinker back then. I really wanted to change that with Figlia in the sense of offering a non-alcoholic option that felt sophisticated but did not mimic the taste of alcohol so that it wouldn’t trigger someone in recovery.

You’re building in a very hot category. How do you think about balancing building your “moats” and advantages against competitors vs. just growing with the category?

Lily: I think with Figlia we are already onto something completely different from our peers in the space, simply because we are discussing the hard stuff around alcohol. I don’t find many other brands in this space discussing these things openly or working closely with an organization to provide support to those in recovery and their families.

So I try to not spend too much time worrying about “us vs. them” and actually really enjoy talking to other founders in the space and working alongside them as I believe that rising tides raise all ships. I also believe that this category is still fairly new and is something we as founders are still navigating so the more I can bounce off of another founder and swap stories, helpful tips, etc., the easier this can feel at times.

How do you think about driving demand in retail settings? What are some key tactics or strategies you’ve seen work successfully? 

Lily: I think this category still takes a lot of education, especially when it comes to a non-alcoholic aperitivo. It is much easier to say you are a NA wine or beer, because everyone pretty much knows what that is in it’s original state.

So I’d say it’s been best for us to show up for as many demos as possible and to actually have people try the product for themselves and to also educate them on what the product is/how they can use it. I also think that it is helpful that there are so many incredible NA options on the market that we have carved out the shelf space as a category, which does a lot of the explaining for us in many cases.