Organic flavored sparkling water brand Nixie has introduced a new Strawberry Hibiscus flavor this week to “perfectly encapsulate those last two weeks in July,” said Nixie Sparkling Water Founder and CEO Nicole Bernard Dawes.
Who are Nixie?
Nixie Sparkling Water launched with seven SKUs right before the pandemic hit last year. Dawes said her goal is to position Nixie as an “upgraded sparkling water” brand that doesn’t tell consumers what to do, but draws them in with taste and, in turn, encourages them to incorporate more sustainable and organic products into their day-to-day lives.
“Although our mission is focused on sustainability and organic, we don’t feel like you get the consumer there without the taste component,” said Dawes. “The most important thing you can do is create great tasting products that people fall in love with, then they feel good about purchasing them because of all the attributes backing them up.”
Nixie has earned shelf space at over 7,500 retailers nationwide and according to Dawes, the brand has already surpassed its eighth year forecasted sales goal with no sign of things slowing down. Dawes said a new flavor had been in the works since the brand’s debut, but explained they took their time expanding the initial line to avoid overwhelming retailers with another product while the pandemic was still at its height.
What’s new?
The first expansion to Nixie’s current lineup is its Strawberry Hibiscus flavor. Dawes said she hoped to include a strawberry flavor at the brand’s initial launch, but couldn’t find quite the right pairing for the fruit. After testing over 100 versions of the new SKU, she believes the flavors in Strawberry Hibiscus complement one another perfectly.
“There was nothing that hit me the way the hibiscus did,” she said. “Strawberry can be a very candy flavor and can easily take on that artificial, fake taste. When you bring in the hibiscus, it allows for the strawberry to taste more authentic. It’s like the tartness of the hibiscus complements the strawberry in a way that you taste them both more authentically.”
Dawes has worked in food and beverage for over two decades, launching products such as the Reduced Fat variety of Cape Cod Chips and creating brands such as Late July snacks; however, she feels this is the product she has been working her entire career towards creating. Strawberry Hibiscus is rolled out in 700 retailers nationwide on July 31st, marking the last day of that “sweet spot of summer” Nixie is trying to encapsulate.
What’s the goal?
For Dawes, creating a great tasting product is the first step to creating change in the industry. Once the brand wins over the consumer, support for their mission and the product comes naturally while also putting pressure on other competitors in the category to keep up. Nixie’s goal is to influence the food and beverage industry to embrace sustainable and organic products by enabling consumers make better choices – whether that be reducing their sugar intake, supporting organic and Non-GMO products, or pushing back against single use plastic.
“Not only is it better for the overall consuming public, but it’s better for the category,” explained Dawes. “We are bringing a commitment to not only the things that are important right now, but also to creating a sustainable future for food and beverage. We are committed to using sustainable non-GMO ingredients, filtered water and we test for PFAS. We will never use single-use plastic bottles and we use BPA-free can liners.”
In addition to its sustainability goals, Nixie Sparkling Water wants to help mainstream healthy beverages and contains no sugar and no calories. According to Dawes, the “wellness shopper” will be the future of the industry over the next decade and she believes every brand should help pave the way for this transition.
“If you can create products that people crave and enjoy they start to convert their diet over to more of those types of products,” said Dawes. “Then next thing you know they aren’t consuming products with artificial sweeteners in them and they are feeling good about it because they don’t feel like they are making a sacrifice.”
Dawes continued to explain that her personal mission with sustainable, organic products began long before Nixie was founded. She saw the impact best-selling products had on a category first hand with Late July’s Jalepeño Lime chips. The more people bought them she said, the more shelf space they earned and from there, competitors started purchasing organic ingredients. This is the type of chain reaction Dawes wants to set off across the beverage industry, starting with eliminating single-use plastic bottles in the beverage set.
“My overall mission is to make sustainable, organic products taste and sell better than conventional,” stated Dawes. “If you do that, you are changing the grocery store fundamentally. You are never going to change anything in a profound way if the product isn’t a best seller. That’s never going to affect the change I want to see. The way to really create change is to create best-selling products.”