Innocent Drink

Innocent drinks

Founders – Reed Jon Wright and Adam Balon

London based company – selling smoothies and juices

Expand overseas or expand product range or both? – to continue the growth

• or other options – being acquired by other beverage companies or harvest some of the values they have created since they have strong cash flow

smoothie market

divided into two segments : premium (no water or added sugar/ higher price)  and standard ( with water and added sugar with similar price with normal juice)

sold through 3 channels – grocery stores/ café and sandwich shops/ impulse retail

competition

market share figures

• innocent – 30% (innocents competitive advantage was that they had higher quality products and customer perception of a hipper brand )
• PJ smoothies – 25% (only premium smoothie player in the market before innocent came in)
• Store own-brands – 25%
• All others -20%

Juice buying patterns across different countries – surprisingly idiosyncratic

Market size – growing rapidly since 2004(1.3 billion → growing 30-40% annually for the 3 year period from 2002 to 2004)

Internal debate within innocent about the “Ceiling” of the UK smoothie market – change from juice to smoothie → not affordable to all families …

Early development and decision at innocent

• conducting a pilot test – set up smoothie booth at the jazz on the green festival – yes no bins “should we quit our day jobs and start a smoothie company?
• Pricing the smoothie – differentiator – freshness and quality (biggest competition was PJ) – 2.00 was the highest they can go – matching PJ price – but now need to decide on the volume – 250ml
• Finding manufacturer – made good relations with a small supplier in the rural area who was willing to take the risk
• Rising investment capital – first – organically?. Bank loan – too little asset/ too risky for banks.  Venture capital firms! – but no investor was interested. → finally angel investor – Pinto

The labels that Germain created became a institutionalized part of the company’s marketing plan

Traditional marketing (eg:bus and subway advertisements) versue guerrilla marketing

• challenge for non traditional marketing approach – difficult to track

growth options