Podcast: Leslie Serrero of Casa Komos Brands Group talks about luxury spirits marketing

By

Emma RUFFENACH

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
May 23, 2023

High-end spirits are the luxury industry’s new Eldorado. The latest guest in the LuxurynsightXFashionNetwork podcast series is Leslie Serrero, international managing director of Casa Komos Brands Group. She talks about her career with Godfrey Deeny, global editor-in-chief of FashionNetwork.com, dwelling in particular on the luxury tequila and ready-to-drink canned cocktails segments.

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Serrero, a graduate of Paris Dauphine University and the Harvard Business School, has worked at General Electric and Boston Consulting Group, and later went on to oversee the marketing and retail strategy first at Lacoste then at Christian Dior Couture, in the seven years between 2012 and 2019.

In September 2019, she joined Fendi as managing director for France and Monaco, and in October 2022 she took charge of international expansion at Casa Komos Brands Group, founded in 2019 by Richard Betts, a former master sommelier, and Joe Marchese. The group’s brand portfolio includes luxury tequila brand Komos and the Superbird line of tequila-based ready-to-drink canned cocktails.

Pin-point design mirroring specific lifestyle

“When you buy a luxury product, you buy a beautiful product,” said Serrero. “[With Komos], we have a product with a beautiful packaging, very modern, mixing Mexican and European heritage. We tell a story, we sell an environment, a lifestyle, so that when people drink Komos they feel they belong to a specific community,” she added.

Komos bottles symbolise a well-defined lifestyle. They are precious, sophisticated containers handcrafted in four colours, navy blue, sky blue, ivory and pink, each for a different version of 40º tequila matured in French oak casks.

Komos is the group’s flagship brand, and is distributed in elite bars and restaurants and high-end food and drink retailers.

“We operate in a fast-growing industry, and tequila is one of the fastest-growing spirits in the world,” said Serrero. “North America currently accounts for 88% of the global tequila market, and my goal is to reach a sophisticated European clientèle with our unique, very high-end positioning,” she added. 

The market's rapid growth is due also to the fact that various celebrities who are also tequila aficionados have entered the fray. Among those who have started producing this agave-base liquor are actor Dwayne Johnson, also known as The Rock, who founded the Teremana brand in 2020, and George Clooney, who sold his brand Casamigos to Diageo in 2017.