I think I've lived with it forever. My father, although in his early days he built the very first computers in the seventies, very soon after that - I think I was 10 years old - he realized corporate wasn't for him. So he left and he designed a part of the fingerprint technology. I remember him on that process and that journey, having resigned, my mother didn't work and I guess he was the only breadwinner and we'd moved out to a smallholding outside of Pretoria. I remember him sitting in the passage, he set up a desk and he was designing an IT product. I remember late nights, in fact, all nights, of him sitting in the passage, working.

So I got to touch every brand at FoodCorp. I headed up innovation for them, and I built the seventh-floor Innovation Centre, which was a groundbreaking space for corporate to invest in. I was told to go find a building in Cape Town, away from all the factories, away from all the technologists which were all in Joburg in gritty areas like Randfontein and to build an innovation centre that would develop groundbreaking innovation. It was a cost centre, I had to make no money for anyone. And my CEO at the time, Justin Williamson said, "Here's R7 million, go and create the impossible." So it was a fantastic brief, but a huge responsibility.

I think consumers really want stories. And the success of gin is stories. Consumers might initially respond to the brand, but if there's nothing more for them to hook on to, then it's lost.

For me, a brand is a mark that you develop with a story behind it and a set of values, and then you attach it to a range of products.

I think it's really hard, from scratch, to know what the consumer's going to resonate with. For me, I just focused on my story - it's my surname. The stories are around my grandfather - I knew him, he died a year before I started this business. He was 97 and I knew his story, so the success that we've had is because I know that story.

I do a keynote address and one of the themes in there is 'Incidental accidents' because, to be honest, none of this was planned. I was getting retrenched. I needed to support my kids on my own, I saw a gin trend and I thought, "I've got a great story. I want to get out of peanut butter and mayonnaise and I want to do something sexy for once in my life." And I thought, let's go for luxury. I felt the luxury in my story and so the story, for me, was absolutely everything. But most of this was an incidental accident and that's when you embrace accidents that come along on your journey and make them look intentional.

The fun part, for me, is the product - I love beautiful products, I'm a great shopper too, so I can walk around and find all the beautiful things I want to use to create these products. The challenge was the bottle and I think, again, it was an accident. 

You know what, you can break a few rules along the way. So I got away with having no license for a year because I wasn't distilling, I wasn't distributing, I was just talking about a brand. So everyone around me had to have the licenses, but I actually didn't need one. And that got me to launch my product without a liquor license. And I was totally legitimate because everyone else had the documents. When it came to the business growing and needing to warehouse and distribute a little bit ourselves, that's when I got the distribution license. So, find the angle that allows you to do it.

I think getting into the alcohol business specifically is a very tough space now. The gin category was open for me so I found the opportunity in something that was quite open. Where the doors are very closed may not be the right place and to just find the gap, I think we really found the gap in terms of timing, product, trend, story. So finding the gap that is easier, but that's not to say don't go for the difficult stuff. Just find that gap, and there's always a gap everywhere that you want to look.

We are not the only pink, we are one of 10 pinks. And I think it's, again, being true to our brand. So we were the first - being first is always a good position to be in. We've been very consistent and we'll just continue to do that and do what we do best. Our product and our brand will win if we continue to be consistent.