Cashing in on a craze

RoxiSpice, a Reno-based maker of drinkware rimming systems, has thought anew about a 50-year-old basic of the bar business and hopes its method of frosting margarita glasses will soon become the industry standard.

Chief Executive Officer Marc Radow, who has been with the eight-year-old company for six years, recently displayed a new product at two industry trade shows and has already sold out his first 1,000 drinkware rimming towers even though the product has yet to be mass manufactured.

The tower offers five refillable salt or sugar "spices" that stack in the same footprint as the ages-old three-tier margarita rimmer commonly used in bars today. RoxiSpice has three patent applications on the design, with others pending, and seeks a patent for a rimming syrup that helps spices stick to glasses. Cost for the tower is $40, while spices are $10 per nine-ounce container.

"Bar space is key. Big spirit manufacturers spend millions to get inches of bar space," Radow said.

The company is leasing an additional 2,000 square feet at its south Reno headquarters bringing its total space to 4,500 square feet for distribution of its products, which are manufactured in Los Angeles.

"Companies for many years have tried to put colors onto salt and sugar, but the systems that were out there before RoxiSpice were really just inadequate for multiple colored and flavored salt- and sugar-type products."

RoxiSpice originally sold bulk spices to stock standard three-tier rimmers. To make re-ordering easier it began selling single-serving spices packaged with a sponge rimmer as the flavor-craze blossomed.

However, that meant bar owners needed as many rimmers as they wanted flavors, and RoxiSpice offers nearly 20.

So they went vertical with the containers. "This is something that is so simple, but to apply some intellectual property to it creates phenomenal opportunities," says Radow.

Society's increased appetite for flavored martinis and similar drinks meant sales of $1 million in 2005 for RoxiSpice. However, sales slipped below that mark the past two years as the company focused its efforts on research and development of the tower.

Radow expects the tower - and that would mean its eventual copycats - to displace standard three-tier rimmers, which typically cost between $10 and $20. "Every bar doesn't have to have it, but it certainly makes sense for them."

RoxiSpice's primary means of increasing distribution are state restaurant and beverage associations and industry trade shows. "Those people look to be on the wave of new trends," Radow says.