Looking to take the company to the next stage in its mission to help the environment through sustainable packaging, bottled water maker Pathwater has rebranded as PATH, a move that comes as the company completes a celebrity-backed funding round and rapidly scales its retail footprint.
According to PATH co-founders Ali Orabi and Shadi Bakour, the company dropped “water” from its corporate name to reflect a broader focus on environmentally friendly innovations outside of beverage. The company’s core line of purified waters in reusable aluminum bottles will remain labeled as “Pathwater” as it branches into new product types outside of packaged beverages focused around water and sustainability including technology plays set to be announced in the near future.
“The whole point of PATH is that we want to become more of a brand that has an end-to-end solution, and not just a bottled water,” Orabi said. “Yes, we are a bottled water brand currently, but we want to become more of the Apple of the industry. You don’t say Apple iPhones or Apple Mac, it’s just Apple.”
Founded in 2015, PATH has focused on disrupting the bottled water space with an anti-PET message, encouraging consumers to refill its bottles in an effort to save the environment. Last year, the company expanded beyond its single SKU still bottled water with new sparkling and alkaline varieties. Most recently, it has introduced accessories for its bottles, including nylon sleeves and swing caps, sold on its website.
Over the past year, PATH has brought in a number of celebrity and athlete backers in recent months through a bridge funding round, including comedian Kevin Hart (whose beverage interests also include C4, Ellis Island Tea and previously Liquid I.V.), Ryan Seacrest, professional gamer Ninja, actor Sterling K. Brown, singer Becky G, NFL stars Mohamed Sanu and Frank Gore, MLB first baseman Luke Voit and journalist Adam Housley. The sum of the bridge round was undisclosed.
According to Bakour, the celebrity backers will be highly involved in promoting the brand through social media as well as television and other media appearances. The company is also introducing collaborative bottles for many of its partners, including Ninja and Seacrest.
The new backers join a roster of previous celebrity investors in the company, which include NFL tight end Vernon Davis, reality TV chef Guy Fieri, basketball player Festus Ezeli and actress Tamera Mowry. The company previously closed a Series A funding round and Bakour said the company is working towards finalizing a Series B round in the near future.
“Most importantly, is that people like Kevin Hart realized that they want to join a movement that is actually making a difference,” Orabi said. “It’s not just about new packaging and with all of our investors, they’ve joined, basically, a movement. They believe in what we do and what we’ve accomplished and what we have to offer to the world.”
The new investment comes as PATH scales its flagship water business nationwide, expanding its retail footprint to over 20,000 doors, up from 3,000 stores at the beginning of 2020. Among the chains the brand has added are convenience and gas retailers including Speedway, Tops, QuikTrip, Circle K, Chevron and AMPM, as well as Jacksons Food Stores, natural grocer Wegmans, and Rite Aid. The brand will roll out its Still and Alkaline SKUs into Sprouts and CVS stores in Q2. Citing internal data from IRI, the company said it was the fastest growing brand in the convenience channel in 2020 for brands with dollar sales over $1 million.
According to Orabi, PATH has also turned to co-branding as a major revenue driver, creating custom bottles for corporate customers including NBC’s The Tonight Show, Lockheed Martin, State Farm Insurance, Four Seasons hotels, the Grand Wailea Maui resort in Hawaii, Orangetheory Fitness, RE/DONE, 1 Hotels, Empire, Bun Mee and Napa Farms Market. Many of these partners, including Orangetheory and 1 Hotels, have banned single use plastic, Orabi noted.
The focus on co-branding opportunities follows a period of upheaval for PATH’s on premise and travel channel sales amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Orabi said. Prior to March 2020, one of the brand’s largest buyers was the San Francisco International Airport and the company also had a heavy presence in food service.
“San Francisco alone was doing about 9,000 bottles per day,” Orabi said. “So going from that to zero, we have to expand our core brands footprint immediately, so we just added more gas to the fire when it came to co-brands.”
To support the growth in retail and co-branding, PATH has built out its sales team with beverage industry veterans from Nestlé, Icelandic Glacial, The Coca-Cola Company and Red Bull, Bakour noted.
“We’re very aggressive with our strategy; it’s a speed-to-market game,” Bakour said. “That’s why we’ve gotten the best partners across the table — stakeholders, advisors from across industries, not necessarily just food and beverage –because the nature of our product is so fundamental.”