case study
Add to water
Future-proofing the portfolio of Ottakringer Getränke AG and revolutionizing the beverage market by building a successful new venture outside of their core business.
case study
Add to water
Future-proofing the portfolio of Ottakringer Getränke AG and revolutionizing the beverage market by building a successful new venture outside of their core business.
From idea to company in 9 months
Service
Venture Building
Client
Ottakringer Getränke AG
Industry
Food and beverage
Year
2022
Impressions
4,5M+
Website Visits
84K+
Orders with a minimum budget
1500+
Investment received
500K
„In TheVentury we found the perfect co-founder. They know what they’re doing, they ask the right questions and created the ideal team for our shared venture!“
Martin Eicher
Leitung Marketing & Innovation | Ottakringer
Venture Partner ADD TO WATER
About
ADD TO WATER
With ADD TO WATER, we combine two worlds to achieve one common goal: innovation for the beverage market. How can we make drinking water more enjoyable? How can we help people drink more water?
The answer: Individual flavour combinations for greater variety when drinking water. Together with Ottakringer, we are developing ADD TO WATER to revolutionise water consumption with fruity, natural aromas.
The mission: Drink with Joy!
THE CHALLENGE
Big companies must innovate outside their core business to stay relevant for decades. This is something that Ottakringer Getränke AG realized and actively tackled. Continuously observing the dynamics within their and adjacent industries, they identified that water, and more specifically sugar-free water additives, are a market that will gain more and more relevance in the future.
The concept of natural water flavours was born, and with this, the business case behind it needed to be validated, and a venture needed to be developed in case of positive signs. Here is where Ottakringer Getränke AG realized they lack the internal resources and parts of the required capabilities.
OUR APPROACH
We formed a team comprised of experienced serial entrepreneurs and combined those assets with the means of strategic investors. TheVentury brought founding experience, e-commerce & performance marketing know-how, and expertise in validating products and markets. Meanwhile, Ottakringer Getränke AG contributed their vast knowledge of the market, supply chain, and product development process and the necessary funds to give the team the runway they needed.
This collaborative effort and the unfair advantage that came with it allowed the team to launch a very new kind of product into a competitive market. From the idea to the company’s founding, merely 9 months passed. By sharing the risk, we also committed to founding a joint venture in case of success.
March
The first flavour prototypes were developed, and eventually, after tasting & testing, the production of ADD TO WATER started.
April
April marked the kick-off of our endeavour, and with this, the first experiments about the right target group and the value proposition began.
May
It was all about setting up the webshop and the supply chain needed to start operations in Austria and Germany.
Beginning of June
We ran a pre-order sale to generate customers and create a buzz in the build-up to the big product launch.
June 15th
We successfully launched the webshop and started selling ADD TO WATER. Thanks to the press coverage, we quickly gained traction in Austria and watched our sales numbers increase. But some problems always needed solving, like, for example, broken package deliveries or inevitable webshop hiccups.
July & August
The following two months were about two things: Getting more, real-life feedback and resolving issues in the process. We did everything - from interview calls with clients and optimizing the customer experience for our webshop to fixing the issue of broken package deliveries.
September
We pitched our progress in front of the steering board. By presenting our results and all the hypotheses we could validate (or not), we earned their trust and the follow-up funding of 500K, securing further runway. We were ready to build upon these findings and the funding to set everything up for our scaling phase.
January
ADD TO WATER GmbH was founded, and operations were handed over to the first employees, starting with the new CEO.
THE OUTCOME
In just 9 months, ADD TO WATER went from an idea to a company. Through real-life feedback, experiments and fixing the issues that arose, the team validated all critical hypotheses and achieved important learnings about the product, market, and users.
More importantly, we managed to build a company, creating not only a place to work for more than 3 people, and hopefully more in the future, but managed to help future-proof the portfolio of Ottakringer Getränke AG.
500K
investment received
1500+
orders with a minimum budget
4,5m
impressions
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Venture Building Lead
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