As we come to the close of what has been a tumultuous year, I want to take stock of some of the issues that have dominated the news recently. The events of the past few weeks in my home city of New York are staggering and overwhelming. The efforts to recover and rebuild have been exemplary. It’s a stark contrast to an issue that has dominated our beverage universe – the controversy surrounding an unjust wrongful death lawsuit filed against Monster Energy.
The PepsiCo shuffle continues. After revealing a multi-million dollar marketing partnership with Beyonce and recent plans to “drinkify” snacks, the carbonated soft drink giant announced that it has added another sweetener to Diet Pepsi, according to the Associated Press.
A Chicago-area business has filed a class action lawsuit against Nestlé Waters North America Inc. (NWNA) claiming that five-gallon jugs of its Ice Mountain Water brand are falsely advertised as containing spring water when in actuality the water comes from a municipal source.
Much like the bevy of other sports/hydration drinks on the market, enterade is marketed as a dietary supplement for "hydration during stressful exercise and endurance sports." However, unlike competing brands, enterade contains a bare bones formulation of water, natural flavor, and sodium bicarbonate that makes the product rather unpleasant to consume.
As an investment banker with Silverwood Partners working in the healthy/active living consumer packaged goods (CPG) space, I’ve often said that the joke about investors is true – they enter the room walking backwards with their eye on the exit. Perhaps entrepreneurs and founders should, as well. Unless you are building a company to comfortably live off of cash flows, you will need to sell your company at some time.
Start with some capital, any capital at all, and so long as your brand has growth potential, you could be the next Starbucks or Rockstar. This message was repeated on the second day of BevNET Live Winter 12 in Santa Monica, CA, as representatives from big-time brands shared their paths from humble beginnings to current prestige before a bevy of note-taking startups.
An new online petition is calling for PepsiCo to stop formulating its Gatorade line of sports drinks with brominated vegetable oil, an ingredient tied to flame retardant chemicals, according to The New York Times.
Tibi Tonic is a new hangover recovery supplement aimed at reaching consumers within the nightclub circuit. The brand, which took part in New Beverage Showdown 4 at BevNET Live Winter 12, has done well to differentiate itself from competing recovery drinks with its sophisticated packaging, but we can’t help but feel as though its branding would be better applied to some other form of functional beverage.
As those of you who’ve learned to skip right over them will know, I often start my columns with an amusing or revealing anecdote, or even sometimes a mordant joke. You won’t get that this month, because that certainly isn’t appropriate when the topic of the column is the killer in our midst: Energy drinks.
BevNET’s Supplier and Services Guide is an annual resource to the 1,000+ beverage companies that turn to BevNET each year to identify and source vendors. The guide will be included in the Jan-Feb issue of BevNET Magazine, which is sent to 19,000 subscribers, and available online to BevNET’s 100,000+ monthly viewers.
For those of you who dream nightly about this kind of thing – and yes, the BevNET crew is part of that group, don’t you doubt it – we recently got some spectacular news. Symphony IRI Group, the company that provides our awesome brand sales data, has updated its information to include Wal-Mart.
In a bid to reassure shareholders and investors about safety of its products as well as the current and future growth potential of its flagship energy drink, Monster Beverage Corp. issued a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that included a 61 slide presentation that began with the statement, “Monster Energy Products Are Safe.”
With knowledge of some legal terminology and a well-prepared plan, your brand can avoid a suffocating contract and keep investors interested. At least, that’s what a group of lawyers told BevNET Live attendees during a breakout session in which they covered everything from trademark law to buyout terms.
Startups and growing brands heard it repeatedly—investors with full pockets are waiting for your next marketable innovation. This was a steady mantra at BevNET Live in Santa Monica on Dec. 3 and 4, a conference that gathered representatives of the beverage industry from across the world to engage in panels, presentations, expositions and a sampling bar.
