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How is a company that sells canned water worth $1.4B?
- bedhead 3y agoBecause people pay money for it?
- lebean 3y agoBingo! This, and people will probably pay money for it in the future. A killer combo that makes something worth money!
- anigbrowl 3y agoObviously, but why? What makes a brand so valuable, when not anchored to any sort of unique product?
- aiauthoritydev2 3y agoPeople paying money itself is an evidence of "unique product". You think you can make money by selling canned water ?
- steveklabnik 3y agoHere's the reason: people who drink have weird feelings about being around non-drinkers. I've been on both sides of this: I have a straightedge tattoo. I didn't start drinking till my late 20s, post college. I now drink... probably a bit too much at times, if I'm honest. Back when I didn't drink, I had zero problems with other people drinking. I'd go to the bar with people, no problem. Just a personal choice. But drinking is a social activity. It's got a lot of vibes, not a lot of rigidity. And some drinkers, when out drinking, find that someone who isn't drinking can ruin the vibe. I found that a lot of people who I was okay hanging out with while they were drinking, weren't as okay as having me hanging out while they were drinking. Enter Liquid Death. Now others feel like you're fitting in. Seems like you're having a tall boy just like everyone else. Furthermore, since this is now A Thing, if you want to go out, but don't want to drink, it's nice to know that it's gonna be accessible. I was out a few weekends ago, one of the trio was done drinking, but the other two of us weren't. It was nice to be able to buy them a "drink" too, they could get started on re-hydrating immediately. I bought a Liquid Death over this past weekend, when I was out a bit early, didn't feel like having a drink, but did want to support the event I was at buy buying a drink. Yes, it's "irrational." It's really about human interaction. Which has its own logic.
- anigbrowl 3y agoThis is great reply, I learned a lot from it.
- steveklabnik 3y agoThanks. Hard earned knowledge, haha.
- hermitcrab 3y agoBecause we are all basically apes in clothing and obsessed by status. If you can convince someone that something will make them cool/desirable/higher status, they will buy it, regardless of what it is. Even a $2 can of water. Why do you think people spend fortunes on Lamborghinis, that are objectively shit cars for anything other than showing off? Or Rolexes, which don't even keep time very well?
- paulpauper 3y agoWhen why not just make a copycat brand. I thing the success of this brand is just survivorship bias. There is nothing special about it but the branding.
- hermitcrab 3y agoIt's hard enough to sell people stuff they do need. Selling them stuff they don't need requires a lot of money and dark skills.
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agohttps://archive.is/ef7nb https://archive.is/ef7nb
- tempsy 3y agoYou can ask the same about Celsius the zero sugar energy drink maker which is worth $20 billion apparently
- reducesuffering 3y agoCelsius makes sense as they have good flavors, include ECGC, B vitamins, caffeine, and are cheaper than other big energy drinks, even $1/ea if you buy bulk.
- kube-system 3y agoBecause water is the most important substance to support human life and people value the convenience of having it available in a manner that they prefer.
- ramon156 3y agolaugh track
- hermitcrab 3y ago>water is the most important substance to support human life I'd say that was air.
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agoI don't mind bottled water, I drink a lot of it in fact, but I do find two things interesting here. #1 is how companies are creating "artificial" value of their products, purely through marketing #2 is companies who seem to exist purely as this marketing and sales apparatus.
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agoBecause you're not paying for a company that cans water, you're paying for a company that has built an effective marketing apparatus which entices people to pay a premium for their canned water. I know nothing about this companies operations (I only heard about them a few weeks ago) but I would wager money that they entirely outsource their production and distribution operations and what they consider their "secret sauce" or the actual thing which is actually valuable to future growth of the company is entirely their marketing and sales operation. This is not (entirely) to be diminutive of what they are doing. Convincing people to spend $2/can for filtered tap water is impressive.
- Solvency 3y agoYou just described every single beverage company in the world. Monster. Coke. Redbull got into F1 for marketing. The list goes on and on. Liquid Death is literally paying for these hype op-ed pieces on top of their novelty marketing just to further convince people and create a self perpetuating feedback loop. Just like every other canned beverage company before them, and every other to come. No one has a secret sauce. It's marketing 24/7.
- BrianGragg 3y agoSlight difference in the companies listed all contain addictive substances and the other just contain water.
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agoCoke and Monster manufacture their own beverages. So does Redbull (kind of).
- aiauthoritydev2 3y agoI bought it only once. In fact the label made me think that it was carbonated water for some reason. I bought it and drank it and realized I was scammed. Since then I judge people who buy this crap.
- 3y ago
- Solvency 3y ago"Valuation" is the same reason Tesla is "worth" an absurd amount of money well beyond its means. It's all bullshit. No one is buying this crap. Just because you see it on shelves and in chain stores doesn't mean anything. I have friends at Walmart. Pavilions. Albertsons. And Wawa (NJ). It's a novelty beverage like any other and any speculative valuation about it is just meme financebro shenanigans.
- skyyler 3y agoAre your friends "at Walmart. Pavilions. Albertsons. And Wawa" cashiers or something? If they had access to sales data they'd know this stuff is flying off the shelves in a confusing way. It's just edgy marketing fizzy water. But it's extremely popular with early 20s dudes right now.
- BrianGragg 3y agoI don't see stores continuing to stock items that don't sell long term and this product has been around long enough for the stores to realize this and stop stocking a non selling product. So in saying that I have to disagree with your observation.
- hermitcrab 3y agoSupermarkets are data driven and ruthless. I don't see them putting anything on their valuable shelf space for more than a few weeks if it doesn't sell.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- keybored 3y agoA^w I buy a fair amount of carbonated bottled water. Like coffee and beer: something I would have hated as a child.
- williamcotton 3y agoMy kids have always loved seltzer!
- ryanwhitney 3y agoI hated this brand when I first saw it. The epitome of marketing bullshit: make water look edgy/cool/etc. But overall, the fact that it comes in aluminum cans does seem like a good thing in comparison to bottle water. No idea what the environmental (weight?) tradeoffs are compared to shipping plastic bottles though.
- hnhg 3y agoThe inner lining of aluminum cans is usually plastic, I believe.
- steveklabnik 3y agoIn this case, Liquid Death makes it a point to have zero plastic: https://liquiddeath.com/pages/death-to-plastic https://liquiddeath.com/pages/death-to-plastic
- infecto 3y agoI did not see anywhere that the cans do not have a plastic liner...unless I skipped it in the video.
- steveklabnik 3y agoI will admit that I haven't specifically checked on the exact composition of their packaging, but "fuck plastic, we're all aluminum" is a marketing message I have heard from them many times. It's possible that they're making that up, but I would assume they'd get in trouble for lying so blatantly. Maybe that's naive of me. I don't buy it for environmental reasons, so I've just taken them at their word.
- fragmede 3y agoThat page doesn’t actually claim they don’t use plastic in their cans though, just that plastic is bad.
- 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- porkbeer 3y agoI personally like that they list their ingredients instead of shady hand waving like most flavored waters seem to. No, i will not accept zero calorie 'essence' as a real thing (likely unregulated sugar alch) and nor should you.
- xnx 3y agoI like the 16 oz cans and their labels are cool, but nothing nails the combination of flavor and calories like Spindrift. Unfortunately, I've never seen Spindrift tallboys at retail.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoThat’s my go to as well. It doesn’t have the gross artificial flavor of 0 cal seltzer waters because it’s real fruit but in small amounts
- xnx 3y agoMy only disappointment is I don't know of any generic/store-brand clones of Spindrift. Plenty of zero-calories seltzer clones, but none that use a little bit of real fruit juice.
- themark 3y agoBecause when you are at a rock concert and you want something light to drink, it is cooler to ask the bar tender for Liquid Death rather than a Perrier.
- hermitcrab 3y ago"because the brand is what’s important; the brand is all there is" With enough marketing and a bit of luck, you can sell anything. Even something as unneccessary[1] as a canned water. Welcome to late stage capitalism. It's worth learning a bit about marketing to recognize how marketing pushes our buttons. It won't make you immune, to does help you to understand when you are being manipulated. This book is a good start: "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini [1]For most people reading this.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoI had a realization a while back: nobody sells products anymore. Even the products are part of a marketing campaign. Think of this. Burger Joint comes out with a new burger. They advertise it endlessly, you go to the joint and buy one and give them your money. Would they take your money without giving you anything at all if they could? Of course they would, but that doesn't work. They have to give you something. The "product" is nothing more than the last mile of a marketing campaign. They don't care about the product, only the revenue. Almost no product is created today that is designed solely to meet an existing market need, they're all crafted as part of a holistic marketing campaign. The product doesn't matter, only that you give them money. People naive enough to not know this and start with creating value are probably laughed at inside marketing and MBA circles worldwide.
- hermitcrab 3y agoYes. Watch a modern car ad. The car hardly features. No mention of miles per gallon, boot/trunk space or warranties. It's all beautiful people doing beautiful things in beautiful surroundings. "Buy this car and you will become one of them" is piped straight into your lizard brain.
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- onel 3y agoTrue. But that's why good marketing had never been about the product. It has always been about how it makes you feel. You take a grouo of unhappy people and you can sell a lot of things to them if you phrase it right. You made me curious about that book
- AniseAbyss 3y ago[dead]
- neilv 3y agoWhen I saw Liquid Death on the shelves of WFM, I thought maybe it was targeted at health-nuts and non-alcohol-drinkers wanting something to drink in social situations when people were drinking beer, without "just water, thanks". With what people are conditioned to pay for drinks at bars and restaurants, paying for water substitute is easier. (Not everyone wants to burp club soda.) As for bottled water in general, I never would've considered it until a few years ago, since city tap water used to always be fine for me... but personally I'm now drinking and cooking with bottled water exclusively, after repeated pipe incidents in my old apartment building made my usual Pur tap filters inadequate. Also, based on how quickly stock of 2.5gals of Poland Spring and other brands seem to move from local store shelves, in neighborhoods of student doctors and scientists living in dodgy old buildings... I suspect I'm not the only one who decided that plastic byproducts (and the occasional injury from shuffling around 2.5gals) seemed safer than drinking out of some of these old building pipes. (Also, there's conditions like Detroit's tragic lead problem. Even the local water authority for my HCOLA recently had a problem with PFAS.)
- kshacker 3y ago> I suspect I'm not the only one who decided that plastic byproducts (and the occasional injury from shuffling around 2.5gals) seemed safer than drinking out of some of these old building pipes. We decided on an RO (Reverse Osmosis) system along with a filteration system. Based on what we spend annually maintaining the system, sometimes I wonder if we would not be better off just going bottled water (bulk, from Costco) with less of an overhead, and it is a close call ... although I do not know what it will cost to buy water in bulk, and I guess I still may need a filteration system for bathing.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y agoI know people are making fun of this brand because most engineers think they are above marketing and people should only buy the constituent product. What liquid death has done is to provide water in an environment where everyone else is drinking a hard drink. Also the can and branding makes you feel you are having more than water. It is a market need and it is being filled by this company. That is why the founder will make more money than many FAANG engineers will make in their lifetime combined.
- steveklabnik 3y agoYes, threads like these really remind you of the bias HN has. There's tons of great businesses that engineers will dismiss completely. Oh well!
- hn_user82179 3y agoI was recently at a party where a subset of us weren't interested in drinking (all of us were watching calories, so like mocktails/juices weren't a great option). It was a bar where everything was sold by the can (no mixed drinks). We all separately ordered and to my surprise we all ordered Liquid Death in spite of other seltzer waters, such as La Croix, being available. Whatever marketing they're doing is working. Sometimes it feels like not drinking is a "statement" so it's nice having a lowkey non-alcoholic option.
- ncrmro 3y agoThe severed lime is sweetened with agave and has a bit more sugar that regular flavored sparkling water which makes them a nice way to get a small amount of sugar.
- throw0101b 3y agoIf you think that's weird (2019): > Moses Lam and Troy Paquette are capturing, compressing and commercializing something most Canadians take for granted — fresh air. > The pair of Alberta entrepreneurs made headlines back in 2015, largely as a curiosity. Their company, Vitality Air, was reminiscent of the fictional cans of "Perri Air" from the movie Spaceballs. * https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-vitality-air-sales-update-bottled-air-1.5073762 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-vitality-air-...