Fresno State alumnus makes millions

By Chhun Sun
The Collegian

It all started with root beer.

This was not just any root beer, but Bulldog Root Beer, which is made with molasses, honey and cane sugar. And once it was mixed together, it was so delicious with its old-fashioned thick and creamy taste that it created a following so enormous it prompted national recognition.

The root beer became so popular that Orca Beverage, a Washington-based company, recently picked up the product to have it distributed and sold all over the states, including retailers such as Costco and Save Mart.

And who’s the person behind this success?

Garrett Jones, a 23-year-old Fresno State graduate who’s now the sales and marketing director of the campus winery.

Today, he’s a model for students looking to succeed in the field of entrepreneurship, someone who turned root beer into a product so big that people from overseas pay more for the shipment than the actual drink.

“The root beer gave me that,” he says of his success.

And he’s not the one who created the recipe. Instead, he’s the person who started marketing the product in 2001, when Fig Garden’s Bulldog Brewery Co. wanted to make its drink visible to people outside of the restaurant.

Jones, at the time, was an ambitious 19-year-old mass communication and journalism major who did some previous work for the campus entrepreneurship program. And with that in mind, he was called for the job.

Within a year, the root beer’s popularity soared.

It earned the No. 1 slot in the famous Anthony’s Root Beer Barrel Web site. It earned five out of five stars at www.bevnet.com, one of many root beer lovers’ Web sites.

It was the kind of ammunition he needed.

“Walking in and saying your root beer scored 9 out of 10 points at a particular Web site is something special when you’re trying to make a sale,” Jones said.

The success of the root beer was only a start. He learned the little things about the marketing business, the stuff he says really matters, like property share and the importance of having a product people can use. Now he manages about 18 products, with most of them being sold by major retailers.

But he says he’s still learning, even though he’s now dealing with revenues about five times more than he did with the Bulldog Root Beer.

“The knowledge I have now is only a dip in the bucket,” he says. At the same time, he gives his time to students at the entrepreneurship-mentoring program.

“There’s not a unique skill or ability he has over anybody else except for his passion and desire to succeed and his willingness to do what it takes,” says Tim Stearns, a professor who oversees the entrepreneurship program.

Stearns remembers when Jones approached him after a lecture in 2000 at the Smittcamp Alumni house.
“He came to me, looking for work,” Stearns says. “Usually, when you give a student something to do, he tries it and three days later, he quits. But Garrett didn’t do that. His character is something you couldn’t find, so when you find it you cultivate.”

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