Artisanal Brands, Inc., a N.Y.-based marketer and distributor of specialty, artisanal and farmstead cheese products, plans to relocate into new cheese aging and production facilities next spring as part of its 10th anniversary.

In addition, Artisanal Brands is raising $8 million in new working capital through a direct sale of shares. The company offered these shares to its database of 90,000 customers and new customers in the "spirit of crowd funding," but through an effective registration statement. In April 2012, Artisanal Brands filed a registration statement to sell up to 16 million shares of its common stock that became effective in mid-June.

"Even with the demands of our tradeshow season and the slower summer months, we made progress with our Artisanal Owner's Club,” says Daniel Dowe, president and CEO. “This weekend, our largest shareholder bought $200,000 of shares through the Owner's Club to help us begin our relocation plans. This is a good step toward our ability to reach our first goal of $1 million raised, which will enable the company to finance larger inventories to help us reach our profitability goals and to expand our line of American artisan cheeses from six regions of the U.S., the largest offering available online. Members of the Artisanal Owner's Club will receive our quarterly newsletters and access to specialty cheeses not available in retail markets, as well as Artisanal-branded merchandise to demonstrate our appreciation of their support of our business. This new level of loyal and close customer relationships was exactly what we sought with the Owner's Club. Our recent blog posting, http://blog.artisanalcheese.com/owners-club/673, explains the benefits of the Artisanal Owner's Club. Our next milestone is the $4,000,000 mark, which when reached, will enable us to further improve our inventory management goals and start paying off loans from shareholders that supported us during the development phase of our new proprietary retail merchandising system called the Artisanal CheeseClock."