Waiakea: Our online business is on fire!
While scale is important, you don’t have to be the size of Nestlé (Pure Life), PepsiCo (Aquafina) or Coca-Cola (Dasani) to succeed in the bottled water business, insists LA-based Ryan Emmons.
He first launched Waiākea - bottled water from the Kea’au aquifer at the base of the Mauna Loa volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island - in 2012 and now sells it in several thousand stores including Whole Foods, Wawa, Haggen, Meijer, and Farm Fresh, in 30+ states.
He has also struck deals with leading distributors including McClane, Sysco, JFC International, and Performance Food Group.
However, the big growth opportunity right now is B2C (direct-to-consumer) e-commerce, says Emmons, which turned in another year of triple-digit growth in 2015 and has also secured a new injection of capital to grow the business in 2016.
Hear more from Emmons in the 'Entrepreneurs to Watch' panel at FoodNavigator-USA's LIVE online Beverage Innovation Summit on February 18. Register HERE for free.
