WTRMLN WTR Announces Sale to Caribé Juice

WTRMLN WTR, a brand of cold pressed watermelon juice blends that had attracted celebrity investors including Beyoncé Knowles Carter and Kevin Durant, has been acquired by Caribé Juice, the company announced today. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Launched in 2013, the Denver, Colo.-based company markets its core line in a variety of flavors in both 12 oz. and 1 L PET bottles that are sold in retailers such as Whole Foods, Target and CVS. In 2019, the brand launched a sports drink line called WTRMLN SportWTR. Along with Carter, Durant, Tony Robbins and other investors from the world of sports and entertainment, WTRMLN WTR stakeholders include CAVU Venture Partners and Strand Equity Partners

WTRMLN WTR co-founder and creative director Jody Levy praised the support of an “amazing network” of co-packing partners that helped build the brand over the last seven years, while noting that the cumulative costs of securing manufacturing and distribution for WTRMLN WTR created pressure in other areas of the business.

“We spent a lot of time, resources, energy and money making our operations more efficient over the past years as we’ve scaled, and oftentimes marketing is what gets left out when you start leaning into operations,” she said.

In Caribé, WTRMLN WTR found a company with the manufacturing muscle and expertise in place that will allow for greater attention on brand building and driving awareness. The Sterling, Virginia-based company raised $2 million from investors in 2017 to construct a high-pressure processing (HPP) equipped production and co-packing facility in the Dominican Republic, a key piece of its strategy to create a branded portfolio of affordable cold-pressed juices in 12 oz. bottles made from fruits and vegetables popular in the Caribbean. However, building the factory forced Caribé to shift its attention away from brand building, said founder Luis Solis, but in acquiring WTRMLN WTR, it now has an established brand with strong retail relationships upon which it can build.

“We are accelerating what we have wanted to do for years, and we have the supply chain in place to support that,” he said. “From the WTRMLN WTR end, we are getting all this distribution and relationships that we were trying to build (previously). We are leveraging the sales and marketing team from WTRMLN WTR and the structure they’ve built and combining it with our strong operational structure, not only with the factory in the Dominican Republic but also our network of farmers and our employees.”

Though she will no longer be involved in day-to-day operations, Levy emphasized that she remains “totally committed” to WTRMLN WTR’s success. The company’s existing sales and marketing team will be integrated into operations under its new parent company, while Levy herself will remain involved in an advisory role.

“We decided to put our brand in their hands because they are a vertically integrated business that is totally committed to the same mission that we are, which is to support farmers and communities and to lead with love and create fairly priced clean products,” she said.

Sales of WTRMLN WTR were down 32.9% year-over-year to around $7.1 million, according to data from Chicago-based market research firm IRI.

Post-WTRMLN WTR, Levy will shift her focus towards several new health and wellness business ventures as founder and CEO, including LabElymental, makers of an eight-day cleanse kit based around full fat animal milk and proprietary supplements, and NeuroPraxis, a series of app-based modules designed to support wellbeing by shifting brain neuroplasticity. The third venture, MycoMeFree, a supplement protocol for individuals suffering from topic mold exposure, is still in the works.

“I think the companies that are inspiring people to be healthy and educating people on how to take care of themselves have an opportunity to do more than they ever have before,” she said.