I Thought I Might Shatter. I Didn't.

Welcome to The Edit - where the real story lives.

Sooooo, I had what felt like a fleeting idea in 2019 - step into the beverage space. Wine. Beer. Champagne, like an extension - to IYLIA (the fashion) brand I was already building. A completely new industry. The only problem? I knew absolutely nothing about it.

Within about weeks, I was in Europe on business. And then the world turned on its head.

A global pandemic. Borders closed. Industries halted. And the field I had devoted my career to - fashion and luxury - simply ceased to exist overnight. People were understandably paralyzed, I was too. But I also saw something in it. When the whole world was forced to stop and reset, the playing field levels in a way it almost never does. So I stepped out in faith and got started.

What I discovered was that because international travel had stopped, the facilities here in Europe - the wineries, the production houses - had time and attention they’d never had before. They were open to conversations that, under normal circumstances, would never have happened. I rolled up my sleeves and took full advantage of that.

What I did bring into this industry - even without the technical knowledge - was a lifetime of reference points that most people simply don’t have.

My mother is from the Caribbean. My father is African-American, from a particular era that shaped a very specific kind of standard and sensibility. Between the two of them, and everything that came after, I grew up with a deeply colorful sense of the world - culture, flavor, quality, experience.

And then came fashion. A career that took me everywhere. I’ve circled the globe many times over. And with that came the extraordinary privilege of experiencing some of the finest cuisine, the most exceptional products, and the kind of sensory education that you simply cannot replicate any other way.

So when the idea of stepping into the beverage space arrived, I already knew exactly what I wanted to create, I instinctively knew what I was building. The flavor profile, the quality standard, the feeling of it. I had all of that mapped in my mind before I ever set foot in a facility. Not from industry knowledge - from a life fully lived.

That’s where IYLIA began. Long before the paperwork, the suppliers, the shipping containers and the customs agents. It began with a very clear sense of what excellence tastes like.

And then there was the production reality itself. My background is in footwear and accessory production - fashion and luxury at scale. I understood large operations. But even that didn’t fully prepare me for what beverage production actually looks like on the ground. The facilities here are enormous - often five times the physical size of anything I’d worked with in fashion. Many have evolved into cooperatives, multiple families and companies joining forces under one roof into vast, multi-operational facilities. Getting anything made isn’t just a conversation with one person. It’s coordinating bottling, caps, corks, labels, logistics - every single component of the process, across an organization that moves entirely on its own schedule.

Working in Europe and Asia in production taught me that things do not turn on a dime. Significant planning and patience are not optional - they're the cost of entry. And sometimes, despite everything, something simply won't get done. It depends - and that's just what it is. As a New Yorker, as an American woman entering this world - integrating into that environment, earning respect, learning the culture of both the industry and the country itself, and getting things moving - that is its own skill set entirely. One I didn't arrive with and had to develop in real time. Earned the hard way.

From the very beginning, the product where I saw the greatest opportunity was non-alcoholic.

In early 2020, I was at some kind of market in a very small Spanish village and I spotted a couple of non-alcoholic bottles on the shelf. I picked them up, tried them - and they were terrible. Genuinely unpleasant. It was like comparing carob to chocolate…… There was no pleasurable experience in consumption - in any sense of the word. The aftertaste was awful.

And yet - I understood the possibility immediately.

I started thinking about what I would want if I were going to create a non-alcoholic beverage. It needed extraordinary flavor, dimension, it needed to be clean. Spain is the epicenter of ecologically produced culture - the raw ingredients, the minimal use of pesticides and chemicals, the philosophy - it was all already here. I knew there was an enormous amount of room to do this better. And I started on that immediately.

The problem was that in 2020, 2021, even into 2023, most facilities simply didn't understand it. The response was genuine bewilderment - why would anyone remove the alcohol? It was a concept that didn't compute in the traditional European production mindset at the time.

So I kept building the alcoholic range while continuing to search - facility after facility - for partners who would take the non-alcoholic vision seriously. Four facilities later, I found the right one.

In that time, the world caught up, and the non-alcoholic category exploded globally. And IYLIA was already in motion.

Six years. A pandemic. A war. Failed attempts with suppliers and facilities. Products reformulated. Strategies rebuilt. Timelines that stretched far beyond what I planned. Moments where I genuinely wasn’t sure we’d make it through. More times than I even care to mention where I was completely unclear on how I was going to close a loop. Creating strategy after strategy - until what I wanted was accomplished. Working with many countries simultaneously - different countries, different states, different laws, different distributors, different licenses, mountains of paperwork. Add to that: suppliers, wineries, attorneys, international tax attorneys, ambassadors, customs agents, and the particular complexity of Brexit (UK vs. EU) and moving product across international borders with all the regulations that come with it... and more taxes. With no direct investors, no corporate entities backing me, and delay after delay after delay - and more delays.

This has been, without question, the single biggest project of my life. And these six years have felt like thirty years. These years are, without question, the equivalent of a double Master’s in business and international commerce.

There is so much more I want to share, far too vast for a single article. Some of what I will share with you in in-depth future articles is this - when I finally completed the IYLIA Premium Non-Alcoholic Collection, it was a matter of getting it across the ocean. What should have taken three weeks took more than eleven. And not for any good reason - I was working with a freight forwarder who was simply reckless. I had attorneys engaged on both sides of the ocean trying to sort it out. Only then did it dawn on me that I needed attorneys in Europe as well. After everything that had gone into building that product, my heart was in my throat for eleven weeks. It was awful, I thought I might shatter.

But it arrived. And by the end of 2024, it was on Amazon - and it sold through immediately. Completely. We couldn’t keep up with demand, I was scrambling.

I have always seen IYLIA as an international brand. That was never a question in my mind. And last year I started putting that into reality in a serious, granular way.

In future articles, I am also going to share how, in my spirit, I knew the UAE was where the brand needed to show up next. Several attempts to make that happen didn't work out. But I can look back on every one of those closed doors with genuine gratitude now - because war started, but just a couple of days before it broke out, I had the opportunity to attend the Gulfood show. Gulfood is the largest food and beverage show in the world, held in Dubai. It's so massive that it extends to two separate venues. I attended with a friend who was presenting there. No appointments. No salesperson. Just showing up.

I wasn’t even showing the brand in the beverages section - which, at the time, could have felt like a disadvantage. But that’s something I keep learning, especially now as I look back over these six years: the things that seem like they could work against you most often turn out to be the setup for something incredible.

I walked out of that show with real momentum and something equally valuable - direct, unfiltered feedback from buyers and attendees from around the world. What set IYLIA apart, they said, was immediate: zero percent alcohol, which the majority of non-alcoholic products on the market actually are not. And beyond that - it tastes extraordinary. It is pure sparkling wine - dealcoholised, and branded with the kind of care and intention that the category has been desperately missing.

What I heard over and over was that the non-alcoholic market is flooded with products that disappoint. Tasteless. Poor quality. No real identity. What they said about IYLIA, consistently, was the opposite. Exceptional quality. Elegant. The packaging was gorgeous. The price point was perfect. It confirmed everything I had believed about what this brand needed to be - and what the market was genuinely hungry for. I was on cloud nine..... And then, just a couple of days after an incredible show, a war broke out which has since completely arrested the region. But what came out of that was a clean pivot into something much more - all of which I will share with you.

I would love to build something here with IYLIA By The Glass - a space I'm calling The Edit - in order to share the business backstory in pieces. Not only everything we're doing at IYLIA, but the experience of building a company while living and working in another country. What it's like to live in Spain. The gastronomical experiences, the cultural ones, the bridging of worlds, the challenges of being a businesswoman navigating all of it. That's what this is. I pray it's of value to you. I pray it's entertaining. I pray it's insightful. I never want to write anything preachy or polished beyond recognition. I want it to be as completely honest as possible - as if we were just having a conversation.

But before I close, I have to say this - because it may be the most important thing in this entire article.

I am a woman of faith, and I would not have been able to do any of this without the consistent love and support of my family - my father, my mother, my sister — who kept my feet on the ground, kept me focused on the goal, kept my mind clear, and kept faith at the centre of everything. That is not a small thing. That is everything.

I know how much work went into this. The dedication, the focus, the drive, the gritting of teeth, the strategy, the relentless putting of one trembling foot in front of the other. I step back and look at it now - I am gobsmacked, grateful beyond grateful. My heart genuinely sings.

Every single thing that looked like a miss turned out to be a redirection toward something better than what I originally imagined.

IYLIA is live. In the UK, the US, and the EU. And I keep having to remind myself that this actually happened.

Grateful doesn’t even cover it. 🤍

Layla-Joy Williams