Ewan Henderson
I mapped the global rum landscape. Now we build the partnership platform to connect it.
About Ewan
For over a decade, I worked inside the global spirits industry, leading market outreach, research and brand activations across 40 international markets. That work sparked a simple question: what if we mapped the entire rum landscape?
My team and I built a digital map covering 1,600+ brands and 1,760+ venues across 110 countries. That research exposed a major problem: 80% of independent brands and venues are locked out of the partnership economy because traditional activations are slow, manual, and priced for corporate giants.
Today, we use our data foundation to fix the industry's biggest bottleneck: compliance. We built a compliance engine that removes friction and unlocks new revenue across drinks brands, venues, and sports destinations.
Origin Story
Delivering the Vision
When I built The Rum Geography, the market was broken. Most platforms were online bottle shops or hard-to-navigate blogs, both commoditizing rum and keeping small craft distilleries or emerging brands invisible behind big-budget corporate brands.
We set out to level the playing field. We built a data-driven system to map the entire ecosystem, giving independent brands the same visibility as global giants. This gave a voice to hundreds of artisanal distillers from across the world.
Then came the seismic shift in digital search. AI overviews and zero-click search engine updates began hiding distillery destinations and craft producers from travellers and consumers. We anticipated this shift and built an evergreen, living database, one that constantly updates so brands stay visible regardless of search engine turbulence. Because we built the digital foundations in 2023, it helps every brand get seen today. They now don't get the data source for traffic because Google changed that, but we still drive traffic to rum brand sites.
That project proved a massive thesis: data transparency builds trust, and trust drives foot traffic. Building that foundation was the essential first step. Now, we take the natural next step: applying that same intelligence to unlock the B2B partnership economy, but starting with the guest, not the brand.
