Zippo CEO Greg Booth is solving a problem most executives would eagerly share. The company’s flagship product, the iconic windproof lighter, is too well known. Don’t laugh. How can Booth successfully launch new products when Americans aren’t used to accepting Zippo the lighter as Zippo the brand?

Yet the company identified a need for diversifying its product line. Lighters are generally used in connection with tobacco products, and Zippo executives haven’t missed what Booth calls the “significant decrease in smoking” that began in the 1980s and ’90s.

“Of course, we immediately realized it was a trend that we needed to face, and face immediately to ensure the company would remain strong,” he says. Zippo reacted by committing significant resources to “determining how we could evolve beyond just being known for our windproof pocket lighters, and laying out a strategy for product line expansion that would be accepted by our consumers as ‘Zippo.’”

That strategy of recreating Zippo’s domestic image starts overseas, test marketing new products before bringing successful trials back home.

A full 60 percent of Zippo sales are overseas in more than 160 countries. These markets often resemble the end goal for the American Zippo experience: Up to 90 percent brand recognition bolstered by an openness to products that, believe it or not, don’t generate a flame.

“We’ve found that consumers in markets such as China, which is actually our number one market outside the U.S. representing 10 percent of our business, are very receptive when it comes to other products we’ve introduced,” Booth says. “Here in the U.S., the domestic consumer is very much focused on Zippo the lighter company—so we have a lot of work to do.”

Zippo has flirted with other product lines for a while. “The company has always taken strides to expand beyond [being solely known as a lighter company], introducing such products as tape measures, a pocket flashlight called the ZipLite, pill boxes and even golf balls, but these tangents never took off,” says Booth. “They weren’t true to the core values of our brand or what Zippo stood for.”

Those core values—quality, durability, ruggedness—are what Zippo has zeroed in on with its latest product expansions. And while the renewed and concerted effort to diversify may have been sparked by fears over trends showing decreased smoking, that trend never really amounted to falling sales. In fact, sales never faltered much at all, excepting the time surrounding 2007, when sales of everything were down, outside of perhaps alcohol and rope.

“The motivation is not to offset a decline in the lighter business,” says David Warfel, Zippo’s global marketing director. “The diversification strategy began 10 or 12 years ago with just some concepting about, hey, in addition to great brand recognition, we have a sales channel that’s in place. We certainly have manufacturing capabilities.”

Warfel points to a strong collectors market, foreign sales, custom design and positioning the product as an accessory—rather than just a cigarette lighter—as top contributors to not only sustained, but rising bottom lines. “Our lighter sales for the past three years have grown approximately 20 percent each year,” he says. “Our lighter business has never been bigger, better or stronger—and I know that sounds crazy but it’s the truth.”

That’s saying a lot for a company that famously manufactured its 500 millionth lighter in July of this year, after more than 80 years in business. That bears repeating: 500 million lighters. Is it any wonder that the little metal rectangles are the first thing called to mind whenever the word “Zippo” is uttered? Or is it a surprise that such an iconic company would want to trade on its flagship product’s key traits—quality, durability, ruggedness—to start entering new verticals? Certainly not.

The surprising part is the products—and places—Zippo decided to venture.

Buon Giorno, Italia!

The lessons of how to leverage the international marketplace as a launching pad for new products begins with an important understanding: “Middle-aged white men in Bradford, Pennsylvania, cannot be making consumer opinions for Delhi or Beijing,” says Warfel, a middle-aged white man in Bradford, Pennsylvania. “It’s very easy to have opinions. You have to put those aside.”

Warfel’s approach is much smarter and solves two problems at once. To collect market data, advice, trends and the like from countries around the world on the local level, he relies on a PR firm, namely, SLAM. His reasoning is important: Yes, you need localized information worldwide, but you also can’t spend all your time communicating with dozens of PR firms—you need a single firm with tremendous reach, one that can consolidate information and transmit it in a fraction of the time, freeing Warfel up to strategize on that question we keep coming back to: How can Zippo diversify its product line?

In Italy, he was told, Zippo’s answer is fragrance. Zippo fragrance? Yes. Zippo fragrance—and no, it doesn’t smell like butane.

“The fragrance is an excellent example. The brand perception of Zippo in Italy is somewhat— ” Warfel stops short, tussles with some descriptions and final settles on this: “There’s a cool factor to it.

“[Italy] was the ideal place to begin extending out into this ambiguous ‘lifestyle’ category,” he continues. “And there’s nothing that speaks of lifestyle more dramatically or as quickly as fragrance. That’s what lifestyle is.” Warfel says fragrance sales began in Italy because, when an Italian fragrance company came knocking with enticing news about a new opportunity, Zippo knew there would be a predisposition to accept its brand beyond just windproof lighters—thanks, of course, to its friends at SLAM.

“We partnered with a leading Italian perfumery to design the scents and packaging and it’s absolutely resonating with our consumers in Europe,” Booth says. “With success such as this, the fragrance line is without question ready for prime time here in the U.S.”

Zippo can now turn to its domestic distributors with the idea of adding a fragrance line not sounding so far-fetched. “We will be using data and consumer acceptance overseas to demonstrate viability to key U.S. accounts,” Booth says. The company has already gone this route with Zippo-branded watches, also launched in Italy and currently on sale at select men’s stores that carry the company’s wares.

Watches were a logical extension of the Zippo brand in its existing distribution channel. For one, they didn’t take up very much room in the transportation process, and resellers already carrying windproof lighters wouldn’t mind picking up a dozen Zippo-branded watches. “If someone was predisposed to buy a Zippo lighter, they’re in the store, they look over and they can also get a Zippo watch,” Warfel says. “Maybe that’s a nice add-on purchase.”

Ni Hao, China!

China has been kind to Zippo, accounting for 10 percent of total company sales. The company couldn’t be blamed for rushing to offer more of its products to such a successful market, though it suffered a tough lesson in the perils of hastiness.

“We are just like lots of people venturing into new markets for the first time,” Warfel says. “We’re beginners, too, in certain categories.” One such category was sunglasses, which had become quite a successful accessory back in Italy, where Zippo seems to launch many of its introductory products. When a Chinese distributor asked for rights to sell the eyewear in its market, Zippo saw a great opportunity and had “a bunch of glasses” shipped right over from Italy. The only problem? They didn’t fit. It turns out that the head size of the average Chinese consumer is roughly 20 percent smaller than an Italian’s. “Talk about missing the obvious,” Warfel laughs. “But something as simple as that, making sure the sizing is correct….” The company abandoned the idea of marketing sunglasses in China, deeming the small scope of projected sales less enticing when accounting for doubled manufacturing costs.

It was an error Zippo would not repeat while using China as the testing ground for the launch of its luxury clothing line. The addition, which the company has been working on for more than two years, culminated with the recent launch of a Zippo-branded store in Qingdao. The idea had surfaced nearly four years ago when Warfel conducted a survey and found that Zippo already carried 50 percent aided and unaided brand recognition—what he calls “a good head start.”

“Before we began we already had resellers lined up to carry the brand line,” he says. The company was meticulous in its research. “We said, ‘Where’s the space that Zippo should play outside of the lighter market?’ Clothing came up. And as we examined the market, we found that it was the white space. We’re not competing with everyone else, we like to think that we found the white space where Zippo can fit where nobody else is playing.”

He likens Zippo’s clothing brand quality to that of a Nautica or Timberland—“maybe not a Ralph Lauren,” but rugged and aimed at outdoor types. As part of that aiming, Warfel has helped to develop a marketing strategy that strikes at the heart of his desired current and future audience, with the main goal of edging Zippo back to relevancy. Partnering with entertainment company Live Nation to sponsor a series of concerts, Zippo drew on local talent to create a run of battle of the bands-type shows, as many as six per year until it grew into a larger event. “It was sort of the monkey move-up. Based on online endorsement, [bands] would advance to the next round,” says Warfel.

“We had product, signage, lots of promotion surrounding it,” he explains. “It’s been very successful.” Part of his surprise stems from an observation that, in China, big crowds are typically not well-received, so a stadium full of rock music enthusiasts could have been a tough sell. “We would have anywhere from 700 to 2,000. But because it was unique for the market, it gained an awful lot of attention. In fact, we did that type of promotion for two years and we became a feature on MTV [in China].”

The success of the Zippo Encore Program, as the company calls it, depends on “ground activation” and co-promotion with local media, such as, “Call in the next hour and get two tickets plus a Zippo something for the upcoming concert.”

“Any event has a beginning, the event, and a follow up,” Warfel explains. “We look at an event not as a singular activity, but as a campaign, and that’s sort of the crown jewel.” Zippo’s participation in these events gives it more to talk about than just product. The company becomes an interesting story, engaging and—here’s that word again—relevant. “But we’re not talking about product,” he reiterates. “We’re not saying ‘go out and buy a lighter. Go out and buy a pair of jeans.’ People talk about it because it’s cool, it’s fun.”

Fun. It’s a word that hasn’t been bandied about much here in the States when Zippo is the topic of conversation. Or is it even the topic of conversation? Perhaps, and perhaps not. But there’s little question of whether their cornerstone product is cool. As Warfel points out, have you ever seen a Bruce Willis flick in which he didn’t light up with a Zippo? And aren’t they used in every episode of Mad Men ever made?

“We have a very rich history and it’s romantic and it’s World War II and it’s Vietnam and it’s movies,” says Warfel. “I finally said, ‘No more.’ I don’t want to talk about the past. I only want to talk about the future.” Can you blame a guy for such sentiments when he’s tasked with breathing new life into an iconic brand via new—and often unlikely—products?

“We had the potential of becoming Pepsodent, Texaco. One of those famous names from out of the past. I’m not going to let that happen. And the first thing we had to do is, we had to become relevant.” Again: Relevant. And it’s as simple as reconnecting the youth of today with the classic cool Zippo came to signify yesteryear. Which is why the Mad Men placement is so brilliant—it’s retro, but retro is young now. “So often people talk a lot about Zippo in World War II. The fact of the matter is, when soldiers embraced Zippo in WWII, they weren’t 60-years-old. They weren’t your fathers and grandfathers. They were 18-, 19-year-old kids. Those are the people we have to engage now.”

They’re already being engaged in China and Italy—just two of Zippo’s 160-plus foreign residencies. The final phase of the company’s master plan is only just now beginning to play out. “Market conditions will always change and force you to adapt,” says Booth, “but remaining true to the principles that your company was founded on and the core values of your brand will always inform the best direction.”

With fragrance, watches, clothing and more inching into local chains as the culmination of a successful expansion strategy that began overseas, the Zippo brand is truly headed in the best direction: Up.

“That is etched in my mind,” Shane Cooper says of his company’s first sale back in 1992. The musician-turned-cyclist-turned-owner of DeFeet International, maker of competitive cycling socks, had contacted Cannondale looking to sell the bicycle brand customized socks emblazoned with its famous logo. His ambitions were fairly modest: Make enough cash “peddling” socks to fund his amateur racing career.

Today, Cooper says, the cycling apparel industry is like NASCAR, with companies eager to stamp their logo on whatever they can coax onto a racer. That wasn’t the case when he called Cannondale, unaware he was about to tap into a wide-open market—so long as he didn’t alienate his early customers.

“I remember trying to tell the lady who I was on the phone with, who was a designer for them, that they needed to take this logo the way that I thought it should be, because that was the best way,” he says. “Finally she stopped me and she said, ‘Shane, do you realize that I’m the customer?’ And I backed up and I said, ‘Yes. What would you like?’”

After Cannondale, Cooper picked up accounts like money strewn across the ground. “It was just a floodgate. And for nine years it was that way—it was grow, grow, grow. It was 50 percent growth a year, paying off machinery as soon as we bought it, paying off the building as soon as we made an addition. I got kind of cocky there for a while. Every product we came out with became an instant success. We didn’t have any failure until we burned down in 2001.”

Yes, burned down. “Had it not been such a strong product, DeFeet would not have survived the fire,” says Lynn Moretz, vice president for international distribution. It’s a story that rivals those of the Old Testament: After its rise from the ashes, DeFeet would overcome a flood, a $250,000 theft and, scariest of all, an IRS audit to take home a 2012 Presidential “E” Award for Exports.

Meshing of Talents

DeFeet represented the intersection of Cooper’s interests and talents, with the first avenue paved back in Stapleford, England, where his father cultivated a career as a knitting machinery distributor, mechanic and salesman. Working his way up from an apprenticeship, “Dad saw America as the land of opportunity,” says Cooper. When Shane was four years old, his father brought him to America and took over distribution for Bentley knitting machines during a time when the company’s workforce dropped from 5,000 to 90 employees.

In time his father came to run a hosiery mill in North Carolina, and it was here that Shane took his job as a “yarn boy,” leaving his post as “bag technician” of the local grocery store. “I rode my bicycle to work, so I always had the bike in my life and didn’t know it,” Cooper says. He spent four years at the hosiery mill, mentored by Harvey Franklin, an employee of his father’s, and became a trained mechanic “by mistake.”

Cooper was dyslexic and struggled in the classroom. After high school he joined a band and toured the southeastern college circuit. He kept his bike in the equipment truck and would “ride with the frat boys” in his spare time. As the dream of rock stardom waned, the bicycle took center stage. He was an amateur racer and told his father he wanted to open a bike shop, to which his father responded with wise advice: Why not work for a bike shop for a while, see how you like it? The younger Cooper complied and through the bike shop he met his wife, a triathlete. When his father was diagnosed with colon cancer, Cooper left to manage his business, ultimately hatching the idea to use his hosiery experience—and a spare knitting machine in his father’s 5,000-square-foot facility—to engineer cycling socks in a fashion the world had never seen.

It’s interesting to wonder whether dyslexia played a role in the genius of what came next.

“The way we make our socks is completely backwards from what most people make,” Cooper says. “And it’s because the material at the time that became available was CoolMax, and it was space-age material. The way you normally make a sock is you put the sock material to the outside and the rebar-nylon to the inside. And I thought, ‘That’s ridiculous!’ If this material is moisture wicking it should be next to the skin—put the nylon to the outside, CoolMax to the inside. The nylon acts like rebar on the outside, so it creates a durable sock.”

The simple concept hadn’t occurred to anyone else, and if it had, they still would have had to deal with the difficulties of actually manufacturing it. “We had to re-engineer our machines; we had to retrain our employees to tie yarn on backwards, and that gave us a unique advantage 20 years ago.” That unique advantage coupled with a mastery of the difficult process of tediously knitting logos into each sock afforded an incredible and uninterrupted nine-year boon of 50 percent year-over-year growth from 1992 to 2001.

“My father used to say ‘Life’s a roller coaster, isn’t it?’ It certainly is,” Cooper laughs. “If you like uphills there’s downhills coming and if you like downhills there’s uphills coming. That’s the way this business was. For nine years I was enjoying the ride, and in year 10 all hell broke loose.”

Year 10

Through nine years Cooper could do no wrong. After its first year in business, DeFeet socks were on the feet of the world’s top cyclists, including his hero, champion cyclist Greg LeMond. In 1996, a Belgian distributor met Cooper at Interbike, an annual cycling trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada, and partnered with Cooper to make DeFeet an internationally distributed brand. The U.K. followed, then Australia. After five years, Cooper had quite a lot to balance.

Through an employee, Cooper was introduced to Lynn Moretz, an off-and-on teacher of international business at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, who had previously won an “E” Award for another sock maker. Moretz was a man with a plan, a professional who had been there before, knew what to look for and how to take an international program into overdrive.

“DeFeet was so good, such high quality, functioned so well and lasted so well, that word of mouth spread through the very elite categories of cycling,” says Moretz. “Greg LeMond and other pro cyclists just basically spread the word amongst themselves. It was just amazing to me.” As he sat down with Cooper to assess exporting prospects, Moretz was shocked by the company’s financials. He saw that DeFeet had financed itself from internal sales growth and was even more impressed that it done so without advertising. Says Moretz: “I saw nothing but opportunity.”

Moretz was to take over the international program immediately. Then Cooper’s phone rang at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning, alerting him to a fire at his facility. Any disbelief would be understandable; one week before—6 a.m. on a Saturday—another call signaled that the facility’s burglar alarm had been triggered. Cooper arrived to find a couple doves fluttering around and ended all threats by bravely shooing the savages out. But this Saturday wouldn’t be so easy.

“As I drove up the road to get to the facility, I saw smoke probably about a half mile away, and I thought, ‘Oh my, God,’” Cooper says. “That was when things changed.”

DeFeet had done some expanding since Cooper began knitting socks on a single machine in his dad’s 5,000-square-foot facility. The company expanded to 15,000 and again to 50,000 square feet, adding an unattached wing that, luckily, housed several knitting machines kept safe from the fire. It was all Cooper needed to begin staging a comeback.

The Phoenix

What do you do when nine years of hard work and off-the-charts success goes up in smoke? “I didn’t even think about folding up,” Cooper says. “Don’t get me wrong, I broke down and cried like a baby for five minutes, and as soon as I stopped crying I just started fighting.”

Cooper hit the road, seeing clients face-to-face, shaking hands and giving each a gift bag with specialized socks featuring a phoenix, a card and a promise that DeFeet would be back. He was on the road for months at a time making up to six stops per day.

Before the fire, DeFeet had ordered 10 new knitting machines from Italy. They were destroyed in the fire, just ahead of the insurance agent’s visit to reassess the company’s property and add the machines to the policy. DeFeet was out $500,000 in machinery.

Meanwhile, another insurance battle was taking place in court over what DeFeet would be owed for its business loss insurance. After nine years of 50 percent year-over-year growth, the insurance company offered what most would regard as a punchline. “They came to the table and said, ‘We’ll give you three percent on what you earned last year.’ I said no way. It took us three years and we settled for 33 percent.”

The settlement reached high six figures and—as if DeFeet wasn’t having enough fun already—triggered an IRS audit the next year. Luckily, it was easier to survive. “We passed it within like one day,” Cooper says. “They got out here and saw what had happened and just kinda shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Sorry.’”

Back on Track

DeFeet clawed its way back in the ensuing years and by 2003 it was time for Cooper and Moretz to pick up where they left off. Moretz came equipped with a plan.

“The strategy basically was to use importer-distributors, as opposed to working directly with retailers,” says Moretz. “If you work directly with retailers, it would be so difficult because there typically are so many of them. Making small shipments, it’s not economic. A distributor, on the other hand, can take goods in much larger quantities, often in sea container loads. The transportation cost per unit is much lower.” Moretz told Cooper he believed DeFeet could add 20 to 25 percent in sales by expanding overseas without cutting into the existing business. “And it has turned out that way,” Moretz says.

But the universe wasn’t through testing Cooper. DeFeet was flooded the next year when a retaining wall behind the building gave way in a heavy rain. “The mud from the hill clogged the drainpipe and the water had nowhere to go,” Cooper says. About four or five inches of muddy water seeped into the building. “We were very lucky to catch it as it was happening. We reacted very quickly and saved our company from what could have been a huge disaster,” Cooper recalls. He rebuilt the hill and drain pipes and recovered from about $25,000 in damages.

In 2007, an employee would steal a quarter of a million dollars in merchandise—20 dozen pairs at a time—and sold to truckers along I-95 for a dollar per pair. Two years later, an accomplice blew the whistle saying, “God told me to come clean,” admitting to storing the stolen goods in his empty warehouse. DeFeet is still getting subpoenas and police arrested the former employee, but it has not yet gone to trial. Twenty-four thousand pairs of socks had been lost in the heist for a total retail value of $250,000. Cooper’s reaction via email: “On the bright side, the truck drivers love the socks.”

Award-Winning Shipper

With Moretz’s exporting plan under way, he persisted, methodically choosing international distributors that led to his many successes. He immediately recognized that DeFeet’s partners in Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg) and Australia were not producing at a satisfactory level and replaced them. How did he see it coming? “Basically, it’s numbers,” he says. “For example, they may buy too heavily to start with and everything looks great, but then you go six, seven, eight months and there’s no purchasing.”

Moretz says it’s important to avoid being seen as too impatient with your international distributors and to respect the investment made on their end by giving the company ample time to succeed. “I feel that it’s only fair to give them two, two-and-a-half years, because they have invested, and it’s never a surprise. I have never terminated any distributor other than amicably.”

The pattern for developing successful distributors seems simple: “Monitor carefully, set goals and help them build their business. That’s what we do,” Moretz advises. He looks for a particular type of company: “Ideally, someone who’s been in business for at least several years that has excellent quality product lines that are complementary. For example, a good, strong bicycle shoe line, or other bikes or bike parts. DeFeet is a top-notch product in its category, and I want it to be associated with other such products.”

Once a distributor is in place, DeFeet typically will use a freight-forwarder preferred by the importer. “If they don’t [have a preferred freight-forwarder], we will get quotes for two or three and let them make a choice.” Of the 36 countries DeFeet ships to, only two markets require sea containers—Japan and the U.K.—and the company typically goes through the port at Charleston, South Carolina, its nearest major port. They use trucks to get to their other top market, Canada. Moretz says the company often relies on D.B. Schenker to move its goods.

For every other market—and even for Canada, where DeFeet has both a distributor and a direct relationship with Mountain Equipment Cooperative, a large retailer supplied via truck—the company ships smaller boxes through UPS, DHL, FedEx or even USPS. “They tend to be the least expensive,” says Moretz. “And it has worked well going to South Africa. However in Scandinavia, particularly Norway, we’ve had some delivery problems.”

How DeFeet Snatched Victory

By 2008, DeFeet had finally clawed its way back to profitability, due in no small measure to the strength of its export program, which was adding more than 20 percent to its bottom line. The popularity of the brand, however, is a result of what Cooper calls “Punk Marketing.” In the same way punk music has allowed artists to make music without being necessarily skilled musicians, Punk Marketing is a method of generating great interest in a product without a formal marketing degree.

“If I go to a bicycling event and I have my iPhone, I can take a movie, I can interview somebody, I can take a picture and I can send that right back to my company and we can Facebook it, Twitter it, use it on our website, and all the sudden you have a brand-new, dynamic from of marketing. Advertising in the palm of your hand,” Cooper calls it. “And that, to me, is giving the tools to an untrained musician, if you will. I don’t study marketing, I study my market and I understand it.”

In many ways this represents the definitive Shane Cooper: Incredibly adaptable and with the honesty to recognize his own shortcomings, measure them and course correct. For a man who willingly characterizes his former self as cocky, he demonstrates real humility. It comes through in a simple admission of failure about a man he holds dear—Harvey Franklin, the mentor assigned to him by his father back in Cooper’s “yarn boy” days. Franklin came to work at DeFeet during its rapid ascent, a skilled engineer capable of making Cooper’s strange sock visions a tangible reality. After the fire, however, a management team swept Franklin out as the company scrambled to stay afloat. Cooper lost sight.

“My father put me with him to learn work ethic. And in recent conversations with this man, he told me that and it brought a tear to my eye that my father thought that much of this guy and then I let him go. I didn’t take care of him when I should have. I should have led better,” Cooper says, and for the first time in a conversation spanning nearly two hours his voice drifts off for a moment, strained.

Only to come back full force: “When does this go to print?”

October.

“Well, hopefully I’ll have him back by then!”

Being Dan Aykroyd is nice work if you can book it. Comedy pioneer, movie star, Blues Brother, nightclub mogul and, now, vodka impresario—it’s a pretty sweet gig. But good luck prying it away from the guy who presently holds the position any time soon, because if anything has distinguished Dan Aykroyd’s working life, it has been his willingness to, well, work.

As an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, he never settled for easy punch lines. Instead he earned laughs by creating full-bodied, sometimes otherworldly and reprehensible (Where have you gone, Irwin Mainway?) characters, hilarious to everyone but themselves.

As an actor he did the heavy lifting of making others look good, whether they were Eddie Murphy (Trading Places), Bill Murray (Ghostbusters) or Jessica Tandy (Driving Miss Daisy, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award).

And one can only imagine the personal industry required to produce a blues album that goes to No.1—the Blues Brothers’ Briefcase Full of Blues—when you have been saddled with the near insurmountable, non-bluesy obstacle of being the son of a policy advisor to Canada’s prime minister.

Now, in his latest turn as co-founder and principle point man for Crystal Head Vodka (CHV), Aykroyd has kicked in his (over)drive again. How driven? Go to YouTube, type in “Dan Aykroyd, Crystal Head Vodka” and see what you get. Go ahead, we’ll wait . . .

See? Dozens of video clips of Aykroyd discussing, promoting and educating about CHV in official company spots, at public and Internet appearances as well as in guest spots on various Good Morning Small-to-Middling Media Market TV shows, dutifully answering questions about Coneheads only to quickly double back to how CHV is distilled four times then filtered three times through what the company says are 500 million-year-old Herkimer diamonds, and why, after all that, it’s poured into a human skull.

Like so many times before, it appears that Aykroyd’s hard work is paying off. Launched just four years ago from Newfoundland (for the purity of its water), Crystal Head Vodka has not only penetrated all 50 states—and in record time, according to the company—but is now sold in European markets such as the U.K. and Germany, and in Asia, including China and India. Most recently, CHV became available in Australia.

The brand came about when Aykroyd and artist John Alexander were musing on a favorite subject, Mexico’s “Day of the Dead” celebration. Alexander said he’d been thinking about how cool it would be to produce a quality tequila sold in a glass skull. Being a well-known aficionado of the paranormal, Aykroyd was drawn to the idea of a glass skull bottle, given his knowledge of the legend of the crystal skulls. Purported to have been found around the world and have ties not only to the ancient world but perhaps worlds outside our own, some say the crystal skulls possess significant powers.

The Crystal Head website explains:

“A controversial archaeological mystery, 13 crystal heads have been found in regions around the world, from the American Southwest to Tibet. They’re dated between 5,000 and 35,000 years old and were supposedly polished into shape from solid quartz chunks over a period of several hundred years. Although, according to Hewlett Packard engineers, they bear no tool marks to tell us exactly how they were made. The heads are thought to offer spiritual power and enlightenment to those who possess them, and as such stand not as symbols of death but of life.”

All of which is great and no doubt appealed to Aykroyd’s spiritual side. Still, the side of Dan Aykroyd which is well-versed in business knew he already owned the rights to import Patrón tequila into Canada. He suggested they pour vodka into the glass skull instead, and Crystal Head Vodka was born.

While it’s easy to lay CHV’s success at the feet of Aykroyd’s celebrity—hey, I just did—or reference what must be the coolest bottle in the booze industry, Aykroyd himself is prone to look inside. The bottle.

“My celebrity may have helped open some initial doors in the industry,” he says, “and there’s no doubt that when we first launched CHV the bottle took a lot of attention. It was important for the trade to see that the product wasn’t just another pretty face, so to speak. That the liquid was just as outstanding as the bottle itself, because in the long run it’s the liquid that will make us a true success, not the bottle or the celebrity owner.”

Concerned that some of the product’s strengths—celebrity owner, beautiful packaging—could in fact work to CHV’s detriment and cause the vodka to be viewed as more of a poseur than serious spirit, Aykroyd and his partners set about gaining credibility through tasting competitions, garnering significant industry cred when CHV took home a double gold medal in a competition with more than 200 other vodkas.

When the time comes to select where Crystal Head Vodka will be sold next, Aykroyd says, “the markets we choose to expand to really have nothing to do with my celebrity or fan base.” Decisions are based on vodka trends, consumption numbers and current economic and cultural opportunities.

Make no mistake, Aykroyd isn’t shy about using his celebrity to promote CHV. As the pure cyber-tonnage of YouTube videos shows, the man will talk to just about anyone, chuckling politely when they comment that this is one wild and crazy bottle, only to promptly redirect the conversation to how good he believes the actual product to be. His belief in the vodka is one reason CHV hasn’t deigned to add flavors.

“It’s almost like you’re walking into a candy store when you walk into a U.S. liquor store,” he says. “Everyone is flavor crazy; there is bacon vodka, marshmallow vodka. . . . The serious vodka drinkers appreciate quality and purity.”

Aykroyd and his partners believe those serious vodka purists are not only CHV’s market but will lead the way for the more casual vodka drinker and long-term success, even if it doesn’t come from Europe or, vodka’s holy land, Russia.

“I think Canada is viewed as a very clean, pure country that makes quality products,” Aykroyd says. “Our vodka actually plays right into that stereotype. We are completely pure, clean and of the highest quality. I also think that vodka consumers are not as concerned with the geography of their vodka as, say, a wine consumer is. Good vodka is not determined by geography. A good vodka can be made virtually anywhere in the world, if you use top quality ingredients, incredible water, a great distiller and top-notch equipment. Add a large dash of passion to it and geography really means nothing.”

Perhaps not, but it means everything when it comes to selling your product overseas.

Though CHV has had relatively quick success, selling more than 3 million bottles in its first four years, its owners say they aren’t interested in making a quick buck. Rather, they have become mindful that long-term success in the spirits industry, like so many others, is built on long-term relationships.

CHV vice president Jonathan Hemi says the company hopes to be in about 20 markets over the next few years, but is in no rush.

“Our plan is to move into a few more markets in Europe and then stop for a while so we can focus and manage our markets effectively,” Hemi says. “It is more important for us to develop a market properly then open up as many as possible.

“An important lesson I have learned is that in today’s world of iPhones and Blackberries and insane technology, nothing trumps a good relationship with your customer. Treat your customer the way you would like to be treated. Be honest, give them the best you got and treat them with respect.”

Indeed, even though the spirits industry has counted people like Al Capone among its lot, Aykroyd says he has found the industry to be one of the most “ethical” he has ever worked in. Which says a lot about the spirits industry and perhaps even more about show business.

“I’ve learned that the spirits industry is driven by personal relationships,” he says. “Once people are introduced they tend to stay in touch, and longevity of interaction becomes the norm because people grow to consider each other friends. A sense of trust is allowed to develop and written contracts are rarely needed.”

Oh, there’s one other thing that Hemi has learned. When it comes to actually shipping your product to where it needs to go, you might want to think about planting roots somewhere other than Newfoundland. But since CHV can’t maintain its quality without ignoring its own advice, the company employs the help of global beverage logistics provider, JF Hillebrand, which has more than 125 years in the industry and an office or representative in every major beverage market in the world.

“Yeah, making your vodka on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, 1,200 miles away from the nearest city. . . . Could we have picked a harder place for our distributors to pick up our vodka?!”

Actually, CHV is produced in two locations. The vodka is made to be 96 proof on the Canadian mainland, then shipped to Rock Spirits, run by Newfoundland Liquor Corp., a third-party plant that marries the vodka with the pure Newfoundland water, bringing the spirit down to the 40-proof level required to sell throughout the world.

Having not only a third-party producer, but one that sits so far off the coast, makes quality control critical, especially when quality is one of the things you’re selling.

“We have 30 people on the line and every one of them is involved with quality control,” says Kenton Tasker, CHV’s director of sales and marketing. “We’re always checking it, making sure there are no issues in the mechanics of the line. Those people [in Newfoundland], there’s a real pride in what they do. For instance, they put all the labels on by hand and they’re very precise with how they do it.

“Quality control is taken very seriously. Not just with the spirit, but the whole. Do you think a perfume company is going to send out an inferior bottle? We realize it’s the bottle that is probably first going to attract people, so that has to be right. But if we don’t put a good spirit in that bottle . . .”

Having produced 3 million bottles in just four years speaks to what’s inside. JF Hillebrand ensures that those bottles are sent from Newfoundland by ocean ferry to Nova Scotia’s Port of Halifax, one of the world’s largest and deepest natural harbors. From there they are loaded onto container ships and taken to customers in nearly 20 countries around the world.

Tasker says the company is poised to have its best year yet. But when it comes to expansion, CHV is taking a slow approach. When and where they decide to expand is to be determined not only by demand but potential partnerships.

“Like most new brands, your distributor is more important than a marketing campaign,” Hemi says. “The first step is getting the right distribution in the right accounts. That is 100 percent distributor. Once that is established, marketing becomes more important. In the end, nothing beats a committed distributor. At least in the first few years of a brand’s life cycle.”

As far as whether he’d prefer those partnerships occur in Europe or Asia?

“Both markets are important,” Hemi says. “The key for us is to fish where the fish are, so to speak. So if the conditions are more favorable in Europe over Asia, then Europe will become a bigger focus for us and vice versa.”

And what about selling vodka in Mother Russia?

“I think eventually we would like to be in every country that wants us,” Aykroyd says, “including Russia. If we do try our hand in Russia it will have to be with the right distributor.”

So there it is: Dan Aykroyd’s Crystal Head Vodka presented to you without one cloying, star-struck question. Until our editor just emailed and demanded we ask this: “Um, Dan, are there any plans for (gritting teeth) a Crystal Head in the shape of a (closing eyes, turning away in shame) of a, a … Conehead?”

“In the Steven Spielberg movie Indiana Jones and The Crystal Skulls, the alien crystalline creatures had cone-shaped heads. I loved this when the movie came out and if our 1.75 liter bottle were not so beautiful a Conehead bottle would certainly serve to carry the volume needed to satisfy many bar operators.”

That’ll work.