First Drop Brand Resuscitation Fever

Resurrection Fever is Spreading the fi rst founders to try to incubate within a larger beverage company under a hybrid strategic/investor strategy when For many founders, the sale of their brand to a larger company Coke’s nascent VEB group picked up a chunk of Bossa Nova is the endpoint to the journey. Sure, there are consulting for about $13 million. But the Acai brand struggled to fi nd its arrangements and slow fades, but it’s rare for an entrepreneur feet in the Coke system (sound familiar?) and was quickly sold to fi nd a permanent home within the world of the CPG to Sunny D. giants. Sadly, it’s also becoming a rare thing for many of the Now that Johnson has Bossa Nova back, re-launching it as entrepreneurial beverage brands that are sold to strategics to a line of botanic sparklers, he’s working with Neil Kimberley, make a long, successful run as well, and with the movement a strategy savant who is fresh off a run in which he helped at many companies turning toward simplicity and core engineer the growth of Essentia Water. The kismet there, of strength, there have been an inordinate number of established course, is that Kimberley himself was part of the best known entrepreneurial brands available for those founders and brand resuscitation in recent memory, that of Snapple. In executives who might be interested in a buyback deal. the 1990s, the brand went on a roller coaster ride, selling to

That raises the question: Is it actually possible to engineer Quaker Oats for $1.7 billion, then getting fi re-sold to investor a successful brand resurrection? We’re about to see, as the Triarc for $300 million in 1997, and then, with Jack Belsito and lineup of founders who have either bought back their brands investor Nelson Peltz at the helm, being re-sold to Cadbury after selling them to a larger company – or, in the case of Seth Schweppes in 2000 for another $1.4 billion. Goldman and the tea business, set themselves up for an encore Compared to the scale of these recent buybacks, Snapple had with a near-indistinguishable product – is growing. a lot more recognition and infrastructure, of course. Among

It started with Jeff Dunn raising a massive fund and making this crop, Honest carried the most weight in the culture, one of its fi rst purchases the reclamation of Bolthouse Farms, after he’d watched acquirer Campbell’s - whom he’d sold the brand to in 2012 - sour on the business. Dunn also recently purchased Evolution Fresh, a juice brand that was once the upscale Neiman Marcus to Bolthouse’s Macy’s, and as our channel check shows, has identifi ed the room in the juice space to get Bolthouse back on the move. while Bolthouse turned itself into a big player in the pre-HPP premium juice rush of the late 2000s. But thanks to the internet and social media movements, we’re also living in a time when niche plays don’t quietly go away – both Surge and Crystal Pepsi have been brought back over time as special items; a VC fund bought the rights to Slice; can TaB be far behind?

Another guy hoping for a second squeeze of the orange is It’s easy to understand the motivations of the founders when Matt McLean — everybody’s favorite Uncle Matt — who is a they go back in for their brands. Goldman, for one, was clearly couple of years into trying to reinvigorate his own, eponymous disappointed that the broad community of stakeholders in the juice brand. There’s certainly something to having control Honest community was being effectively cut out of the business over the brand that’s got your name on it, and McLean was by Coke’s discontinuation of the tea brand. With Just Ice Tea he’s able to get to his company right before the window closed on hoping to reactivate that network. For others, though, maybe it’s the Dean Foods bankruptcy in 2020. McLean has changed the opportunity to do it again, to do it right, to fi nish the job, only the business’ sourcing a bit as a result of agricultural and this time with the benefi t of the right kind of experience, or better pandemic-related factors, and the brand has also found timing, or more startup cash, and the hope it might alleviate the traction, albeit in a smaller arena. emptiness that comes at the end of any long campaign.

What is it about founders who can’t stay away, though? Seth The business case seems to be that these brands have either Goldman reinserted himself into the fray over the summer, name recognition, solid brand fundamentals, or a cause that effectively moving into the philosophical condominium shouldn’t be abandoned. If they worked once, they should be abandoned by Coke after the soda giant discontinued his fi rst able to work again, better and faster. big brand, Honest Tea, by launching Just Ice Tea as part of his That’s not unique to beverages, either. Look at Jonathan current venture, Eat the Change. The free publicity that has Sebastiani buying back Krave Jerky from Hershey, or even the accompanied the launch has given Just Ice Tea quite a bit of founder of fi tness brand TRX, Randy Hetrick, coming in to momentum as Goldman hacks together old friends, investors, buy the company out of bankruptcy. Certainly KIND founder employees and suppliers into a brand network. Daniel Lubetzky made a similar bet when he bought control

While Goldman couldn’t buy Honest back from Coke, of his company back from investor VMG. John Bello always the soda giant did allow the rusted-out bodies of a couple wanted another shot with SoBE, to the point where he tried to of other brands it purchased to go back to their founders for turn Adina into SoBE 2.0. There’s something about your fi rst new engines. The most prominent one, Zico, was bought by love, I guess, like a novelist bringing a favorite character back founder Mark Rampolla in early 2021. (Rampolla has actually for another go. become something of a collector of these kinds of brands, There’s always another run, these founders believe, and for picking up Chameleon Cold-Brew from Nestlé USA earlier an increasing number, the reins are back in their hands. The this summer as well.) big companies left their brands for dead – but there might be

Bossa Nova is another long-buried brand that’s fi nally made some life there yet. You just hope it’s a resurrection that comes its way home to its creator. Founder Alton Johnson was one of closer to Snapple, and not Frankenstein.