Innocent Drinks: Don’t be Afraid to Start Small | Hacker News Reader

Innocent Drinks: Don’t be Afraid to Start Small

warstory.co

41 pointsvincentchan25 comments

It's a nice story, but "Do you think we should make a smoothie company?" seems like the wrong question to ask and one that's likely to get a self affirming response. So more likely the benefit was psychological for the founders to justify to themselves that they should take the risk of starting up.

I mean, I'm sure I could make smoothies or bake cookies that people would think were awesome. Just use good ingredients and follow the recipe , that part isn't hard. OTOH knowing whether there is an oversupply of smoothies in the market already and knowing how to sell them in large enough quantities, manage production etc is another question entirely.

But then again they would have never been able to remove the risk of doing it no matter what they asked, so it's probably understandable they chose to ask for a psychological tap on the back.

Overpriced processed juice. Only reason this company is still alive is because it's owned by the Coca-Cola company.

Try to do the same and watch your company go bankrupt within 2 months.

They launched in 1999 and sold the first stake to Coca-Cola in 2009. They somehow managed to scrape by for 120 months with no Coca-Cola ownership. Start-ups can't have an exit after 10 years?

The soft drink market is tough, you are fighting against two huge incumbents with a lot of power and money. Being purchased be one of them after you achieve a certain level of (local) success is one of the few options for a successful exit.

I've worked with a small soda company that folded after a dozen years. The incumbents did everything from buy their space out from their retailers to scoring a monopoly with towns for public areas and schools.

Selling low-margin (often with seasonal swings) products that have to be kept cool, with a limited shelf-life, and overcoming the retail and distribution hurdles is an achievement.

I'm sure it's a tough and dirty business to be in - but the GP is still completely wrong when they suggest that Innocent somehow benefits unfairly from being part of Coca-Cola when, in fact, they weren't for the first ten years of their life.

I don't think that's really fair.

They knew the advertising business, identified a target demographic and created a product with an image that appealed to them.

I remember back in 2003, they where visiting most universities which where campus kind, with a van decked out in astroturf. The obvious hypocrisy of their brand and message were plane staring you in the face. Take an old in-efficent desiel van, deck it in plastic stuff which looks like grass and you've a product.

It was almost emotive, and whilst it didn't appeal to me, they obviously really understood their target.

As such to dismiss it as overpriced juice, is akin to Balmer dismissing the iPhone as overpriced.

I loved the start up feel of the company and the fact they had a sense or humour. They also listened to customers, once when I had a minor complaint about one of their drinks they brought in an entire tray of smoothies for the people in my office. Way cool.

It is a shame however that they also took the startup route of selling out to Coca Cola, and from then on in my opinion their product has gone downhill in quality and the new drinks they do are just crap bottled under the Innocent brand.

Either the "ethical" marketing was always just that, or Coca Cola offered them one of those old-school Microsoft "take the offer, or we use our distribution network to crush you" style deals.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi don't have great track records launching home-grown premium smoothie/juice offerings. Many of the premium brands they run - Naked, Odwalla, etc - came via acquisitions.

Given that Coke started with a ~15% stake in Innnocent before building it up to 90% I think it's rather more likely they simply rolled up with a huge barrow of money. It's hard to maintain your 'ethical' stance when somebody is trying to give you millions of dollars (see also, Ben & Jerry's).