If you are like many Americans, chances are you spent a good amount of the past 12 months at home watching something on one of the ever-growing streaming entertainment options available from providers like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. For kid’s beverage maker Good2Grow, all those views are now paying off.
Since launching in 2001, the Atlanta-based company has made licensing partnerships a cornerstone of its growth strategy: each of its four product lines — Fruit & Veggie Blends, 100% Juice, 75% Less Sugar and Fortified Waters — feature collectable bottle tops featuring characters from Disney, Marvel, Universal, Hasbro and a host of other high-visibility entertainment properties including Lucasfilm (Star Wars), Nickelodeon, Warner Bros., MGA, WWE, Mattel and Sega, collectively representing characters ranging from Mickey Mouse and Iron Man to the velociraptor from Jurassic Park.
Those licenses are the “engine” that has fueled the company’s growth thus far, according to Edzra Gibson, VP of marketing at good2grow. But as the pandemic has shifted entertainment out of movie theaters and theme parks and into people’s living rooms, Gibson said the company has seen at-home activities — from streaming services to toys — provide a boost in interest and sales for its related licensed properties.
“What streaming has done is it has made a lot of properties that maybe didn’t get the same level of media investment, but now that families are at home, they’ve been watching and consuming more content,” he said. “I think we are a direct beneficiary of that.”
The breadth of good2grow’s licensed partners has given the company some balance during a year of upheaval. While the closure of cinemas has forced brands like Marvel and Disney to pivot to streaming-focused business models, another one of good2grow’s partners, toy maker Mattel, saw sales for Barbie climb 87% to over $276 million worldwide, resulting in a material increase in sales for the beverage products featuring the character. The brand saw similar spikes in sales for its Trolls (Universal) and Scooby Doo (Warner Bros.) licenses after Trolls World Tour and Scoob! were released on-demand last summer. The aforementioned content engine, Gibson noted, feeds itself.
By leading with its licensed characters, the barrier for entry to other beverage categories becomes less intimidating. Case-in-point: good2grow introduced a two-SKU line of flavored organic dairy milk available in single-serve 8 oz. bottles in Chocolate and Strawberry. Adding milk alongside juice and water gives the brand a presence in all three of the top kids beverage categories — as well as its first product to be sold cold — but also provides further confirmation of the company’s overall business model.
“It makes sense for us to go into milk, but it will also demonstrate that we can disrupt this category as well, and that this particular model can extend to other categories,” said Gibson.
Within its existing categories, good2grow has continued to set a healthy pace: according to sales data from IRI, dollar sales in MULO plus c-stores were up double-digits for good2grow across categories including bottled fruit drinks (+10.3% to $42 million), apple juice (+11%), fruit juice blends (12%) and infused waters (+13.9%).