In 2009 Garrison Brothers Distillery was a small fledgling business with no money. We were really struggling to pay our bills and make bourbon. Donnis, Fred and I were the only employees. My significant credit card debt and Nancy’s loans were keeping us afloat.

A friend of mine – may have been Richard Hojel – sent me a link to a winery website in California. The young business had started a wine club and was using member contributions to fund their operations. Members who joined the club were promised they’d get free or discounted wine in the future if they paid a few thousand dollars now to join the club.

With that in mind, we welcomed Old 300 members to join. Individuals or couples could join for a $2,000 contribution. To celebrate their membership and our bourbon, we offered an annual Bourbon Camp event at the ranch with dancing, music, amazing food, bottling and skeet shooting, bottling and a pub crawl. Additionally, Old 300 members were invited to come hunting on the ranch (this benefit later had to be rescinded due to insurance liability reasons). The Old 300 were also allowed to pick and sign their own barrel. When their barrel was ready, Donnis was giving each of them the opportunity to buy the bottles that came from their barrel through the Single Barrel program or just enter the liquid from their barrel into our next Small Batch release.

This program went great for the first 8 years of the business. Each bourbon camp was more fun than the previous one. But in 2016, we had to make a change. Bourbon Camp had so many attendees – often more than 100 – that it had become an extremely expensive event to host, costing as much as $30,000 with no corresponding revenue gains.

Over the years, many Old 300 members have fallen out of touch, though we try hard to keep emails lists updated. And recently, some senior Old 300 members have said they are feeling out of touch with the company. Plus, many more have expressed an interest in joining