#81 with Mike Cessario - The Genius Way Liquid Death Sells Canned Water

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Uh what's up, Sam, and we have a guest, uh Mike Cesario. Welcome, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, guys. We'll have this hour to be A little bit of an e uh an escape.

We talked about everything going on last podcast, I think Let's tr we'll try to make this like just a at least a forty five minute, fifty minute escape for people and we can kinda talk about Some interesting stuff. Exactly. It it does kinda feel silly to be like, Oh, here's some business ideas when like, you know, the whole world is is really, you know, uh in a tilt, whether it's through coronavirus or the different protests that are going on.

But uh like you said, I think You know, for me, I'm like glued to Twitter and the news and all this stuff all day. Then you know, by seven, eight pm, I just need a break. I go walk my dog. And I go listen to some mindless stuff about sports or whatever else, just to you know, just to calm my mind. And so hopefully We could be that for some people where uh a bit of a diversion or a bit of an escape from the heaviness that's going on. So

Uh yeah, Mike, I'm glad you're here. We you have a product that we've talked about on the podcast before. Uh, which is liquid death. So okay, if somebody doesn't know what liquid death is, give them the what is liquid death, and then we're gonna talk about how you started that and then we're gonna brainstorm some Cool ideas and spaces around around what you do. Sure. So I mean I guess

at the heart of what liquid death really is, we're really just Completely trying to change the way Healthy food and beverages are marketed. Um At the end of the day

Most of the most hilarious memorable ad campaigns that you ask most people about of the last 10 years, they'll tell you. Budlight. Doseckis, Snickers. Doritos, Skittles, like all junk food and alcohol. That's the funniest, most memorable

kind of youth culture owning and energy drinks like Red Bull. That's like the most y And old spice. Let's not leave Old Spice out. But yeah, it's like all the it's all junk food and alcohol that does all the funniest, coolest youth culture marketing. Whereas healthy food is traditionally marketed to like mom and it's quiet and it's responsible, or it's like look better, where you know, show your you know, fitness models, you know, drinking bottles of water, like It's a very different

They don't use fun. to market. Whereas Right. Unhealthy beverages, stuff like that. Like they want to own fun. So we're basically doing that with water. So we wanna be able to take the healthiest thing you can drink.

um that most people don't drink enough of. Um brand it and build a uh you know a cool thing around it where it's something that You feel totally comfortable drinking a liquid death in a bar or at a house party.

Or at a music festival or at work or in the gym. And just making it more fun to walk around and have a water. You definitely made headlines when you raised all that money'cause everyone was like This is such a silly idea and they raise all this money. I didn't I I I agree that it's a silly fun name. I don't agree that it's a stupid

reason I mean it was it's it seems like an awesome company and totally worthy of Going big. Um But so it kinda worked, right? Like you you definitely uh You definitely ruffled some feathers and I think that's good. No, yeah, I think

Yeah. I always bring up You know I one of the Yeah, I I listened to the The Reed Hoffman podcast a lot, the

Um Masters of Scale. Masters of scale, yeah. And it's like I love that he always pushes. He's like Truly innovative ideas are almost comical at first. Because if it seems like it makes a lot of sense right now, it probably means there's four other companies that have been working on it for five years already. It's like the things that are truly

unique and innovative, like almost don't make any sense at first or seem laughable. I think like That's kinda the case of liquid death, I think. It's like we're really trying to disrupt a category in a way that's Not just disruption for the sake of disruption, you know, I think it's like

We strongly believe that And I don't think it's something hard to understand. in a w a in a category where almost all the products themselves are perceived as the same. You know People aren't a p assuming I only drink Fiji because it's got point seven five more electrolytes than smart water, which has point five and the pH is seven point seven, it says seven point no.

It's like Most people assume water is the same. It's more of a brand play. And we believe If we can make you laugh. We have a way better chance at you giving us your dollar sixty nine.

than the the faceless brand next to us who's trying to shout at you Electrolytes, a lot you know, they're like Guys, this all seems like snake oil to me, like I feel like there's real human beings behind liquid death that I'd want to have a beer with. So I'd rather give you my my dollar sixty nine than the guy next to it. Right. And let's talk a little bit about the form factor. So is it a it's a tall can is what I've seen. Are there other form factors or no? No, it's just a tall can. Which is cool. Uh the branding of it is sort of like, you know, almost like heavy metal or how do you describe it? Yeah, I mean Yeah, I think at the end of the day you would you would say we're like uh

alternative punk metal inspired uh design and and vibe. The way I like to think about our brand is like we're a professional wrestler. Like It's all theater and fun and no one thinks it's trying to be real. Like no one thinks the Undertaker is really an evil guy from the dead who likes metal. No, it's a character and it's fun to like

have a character. Yeah. And that's kind of w that's how we think about it. Like We're just playing this fun character. It's fun to choose to believe. Yeah. th that this is what it is and and not take it too seriously. And you were right, like, you know, if you're at a bar Or a music festival and you choose water.

You feel like you're choosing you're opting out of the fun. And in fact they'll they'll sort of uh you know Small plastic rinky dink cup w with a with a baby straw uh right if you versus if you ordered a you know an alcoholic drink or something else. That that's actually a good point. I mean I don't drink and I still go to bars and I always felt like a I used to order sprites with lime in it because I was like uh I don't want to make people I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable.

What so I'll just I'll even though I don't like to drink soda, like I'll drink it anyway. And I don't wanna have no duels because I'm like oh then everyone's just gonna like It's just gonna come up. And so it's a it is a great alternative to that. And and so Mike, I'm curious, where does this idea come from?

So I think This was really just like a culmination of all my passions and experience sort of like converged into one. You know, it's like I grew up In high school playing in punk rock and metal bands and skateboarding.

And you know, I would do all the show flyers and album art and stuff for our bands. Which kinda got like the entrepreneurial probably side of things'cause like, you know, we're booking shows and we're selling merch and like we're pressing records and doing all that kind of stuff. Then I got into a career of like

graphic design, which led into advertising. So then I was like an advertising creative director for a long time and I worked on big brands like Nestle and um Toyota and Volkswagen and Naked Juice and all this kind of stuff. So I I think I got a good sense of Where I think big companies screw up, I guess, like where I think they're short sighted.

Like I can't tell you how many boardrooms I've been in where I'm trying to convince people that Social media isn't some like niche little thing you add on to your business. Like it is the internet now. When you say I'm going on the internet. Nine times out of ten, you're going on social media.

I think a lot of brands are just way behind the ball to understand what it really takes to be successful in the social environment. Like Your little social posts aren't just competing against other beverages.

You're competing against influencers who are uncensored and can do crazy off the wall stuff. You're competing against movie trailers. You're competing against everything awesome on the internet when you're scrolling through your feed. That's what your marketing is competing against.

So when you really think about it that way. Do you really think your little ad that seems like a typical beverage thing is gonna actually stand out in someone's quick scrolling feed amongst all this other amazing stuff. Probably not. So I think the bar for what stuff needs to be is way higher.

And I think that's what I've built liquid death around. Like We think about marketing like entertainment. I don't ever want to put something in your feed that feels like marketing. I wanted to feel like actual entertainment that made you laugh.

Or it was the funniest thing that you maybe saw that morning. that you want to share with your friends or whatever. That like We're never just sticking marketing in your face, like it's always gonna entertain you. Or it's gonna do something of value that it gives you.

I'm looking at their Facebook ads right now. And uh what you're saying is true. So here's the two ads I see. I wish I could show this through a podcast. I'm gonna show this to your ears, but There's a giant can of liquid death in front of a mountain and it says, This is dumb, don't buy this. And then there's another one that's like Uh

I don't even know what you would call this. It's like a It's like the mountain from Game of Thrones, but instead of his head is a can of liquid death erupting from his head muscular body, and he's standing in a g grocery store aisle holding an axe. And it just says liquid death is available nationwide in all foods. Is there anything you can give me that shows or the listeners how big this business is, like what what what size you guys are? Yeah. Why should we why should we care about what you say? Is this working or not?

Yeah, I mean I can't get into like specific kind of sales numbers, but Since we launched National and Whole Foods. Basically we launched the day the pandemic started. So we went we went into Whole Foods. Um March fifteenth.

Um Basically even Even though we've been in a pandemic where they've had like eighty percent decreased store traffic and Everything else going on. We've had insane growth in Whole Foods and we're now the fastest growing water brand in Whole Foods right now. And and you've raised like

How much money to make this so far? Mine, ten million. Uh grand total since the very beginning of everything, I think we we've raised around uh twelve total right now. So Great. Okay, so we we kinda have an idea a little bit about sizing. W when you look at when you were looking at

this business and what and what to start w was that your perspective which is What is something that I mean, I it sounds like you're into health and and that type of stuff. What is something that is like good for you but has shit marketing and how can I build a business around that? Was that your perspective? H In a nutshell, I think it really came from You know, when I grew up playing in punk bands and and and metal bands and stuff like that

I was still and a lot of my friends in that world were very much into health. Like I was a vegetarian at age sixteen. A lot of my friends in that scene were More of my friends were even vegan. A lot of them like, you know, didn't drink alcohol. Um, I I do, and I I don't I think that's one thing that we've been like misbranded is like liquid death, it's water for the straight edge crowd. That is not what we're trying to do. I think

It's something that's been adopted by them for you know, the reasons of yeah, it is more fun to walk around in a bar if you don't want to drink. than something like this. But I think Yeah. Another thing that the health food industry does and I don't think

We want to do it. is we don't want to be preachy to people. We don't want to say, you should be doing this and you shouldn't be drinking this and you shouldn't be doing that. Like we're like Hey. You wanna go rip some shots at a bar, fine, but maybe take a break and have a water for an hour.

You know. Or like Hey, you want to uh smoke weed or whatever, it's like great. Like Maybe hydrate while you're doing it.

You know. Even if like, hey, you want to go buy a monster energy drink or whatever. Great, maybe buy a water too, and have a water after you just pound a bunch of sugar and caffeine. Right. That's the good news. Anybody who does any lifestyle also drinks water. And so you you pa you can pair to any lifestyle that you want. It sounds like you guys are trying to do that. Let me ask you, like you've said some kind of abstract ways like

You know, we felt this was missing blah blah blah. But I want you to like rewind and make it real so like Take us back to the moment you have the idea. What's going on, where are you? Where does the idea come from? Who are you talking to? And then like How did it turn into something?

Sure. So As as you know, in the world of of rock and roll, punk metal, whatever The only brands that have invested in trying to own that culture have been energy drink. Primarily monster.

So Monster was sponsoring the van's warp tour with all the punk bands. They sponsor all these different metal bands. Like You don't see that with many other beverage brands doing that. And that's been going on since You know, I graduated high school in two thousand. So that's when I think you're really starting to see that swell up.

And a lot of my friends were in bands. We were at uh the band's warp tour that was sponsored by Monster back in I think it was like around Two thousand Seven, somewhere around there. I was in Denver working for an agency there. went and hung out at the warp tour with my friends, you know, they took me backstage.

We're hanging out with like all the vans, you know, the band's tour buses. And I saw that they had like huge stacks of monster. That these guys are all drinking. And I was like

How are you guys pounding energy drinks right now, like in the hot sun? Like it's like ninety-eight degrees. And they're like, No, dude, it's water. And it was like Monster gives all the bands They look like monster cans, but at the bottom it says tour water.

Because they know that none of these bands are gonna drink this stuff. In the sun. So bands on stage are pounding what look like energy drinks to all these kids. But it's really just water. And I remember thinking like

That's so fucked up. Like You know, like you know, and I think that was the moment where I Where it kind of started me down the path of Um

Like Why is it? stuff like water like marketed in a cool way like this. And it was like when you actually had a freezing cold can. Of water. Uh

It's just more refreshing to you psychologically. There's actually a uh Popular science, I think it was. They they did this study Where they showed that temperature was the number one

quencher of thirst. Neurologically. Which is why like If you're really thirsty and you suck on an ice cube, it actually kind of quenches your thirst a little bit, even though no water is actually absorbing into your body, really. So I think there was just like

That was sort of the aha moment for me where I started thinking about Why isn't it healthier things'cause none of us None of my friends hanging out wanted to actually drink energy drinks. Like we just want to drink water. Um

Or beer. You know. All right. But it's like of course you're a ban, you gotta make money, you're touring, so of course you gotta take the checks from these companies and And you know, they they They play ball to a certain extent, but that's where I think the idea really started.

And um What other verticals did you explore? Um That you think would also work for this.

Did you explore any other products that you think like this definitely There's definitely opportunity here if you do what we're doing, but in this This thing or that thing. So it's funny what I so that so that warp tour thing happened in yeah, like around two thousand seven, two thousand eight, where I started thinking about that. But then it was a cup like maybe

Two years later I was living in San Francisco and I actually developed a Spirits brand. On my own. Called Western Grace. Um, and it was basically brandy.

So it was like hey, how do we make brandy cool? Because I had brandy It was really good and I'm like, Why don't people drink more of this? It's just like whiskey without the burn. But every brandy bottle literally in the in the liquor store had dust on it. It was like

What your grandfather drank. Or some trying to be replica of French luxury with cursive golden text on the bottle. But it was more similar pro taste profile wise to a whiskey, which was the biggest, fastest growing spirit. So I had this idea to create A Brandy

that felt more like a whiskey and felt cool. And Sure enough, like I found a brandy distillery in Northern California. Who were like, Oh my God, we've been waiting. For someone to try to make brandy like mass and cool.

For like twenty years. So they were like, Hey, we'll make the brandy for you. Then I went and found some spirit industry folks who helped create Hendrix Gin. And Sailor Jerry Rum. to kind of come on board. They thought it was really interesting and then

All of a sudden we have a brandy company and I move back to my hometown of Philadelphia where my partners were. And we basically like I was only a couple years out of ad school. No entrepreneurial experience, no liquor industry industry experience. And We started building this brandy company and um

It's still around today. They're in probably eighty bars in LA. They're all over Austin. They're in Nashville. They're in Florida. But I left the brand a little bit early on because I just Me and Ark the uh the spirits folks we brought in.

Kind of like didn't see eye to eye on a couple of things from a marketing level. So I said, Hey, you guys keep growing it from here. I'm gonna kinda go do my own thing and you know, I'll I'll keep my little chunk of best in equity and best of luck to you guys, like no hard feelings.

I'm sure you'll do great with it. And then um went to work for an agency in Tennessee that a uh a friend of mine started. Called Humana. Where I started doing a bunch of Well, w human I

And I we did a bunch of funny work for the organic world. We did this uh campaign called Save the Bros. For uh organic valley. So it was like the first organic protein shake. And we did this funny viral video that just went

Bananas. And it was like the first time that like humor had really been done like in the world of organic. And that was like The reinforcement of

The warp tour thing where it's like Right, like why aren't more health brands like playing with the kind of humor and irreverent internet stuff. that these other, you know. unhealthy things you're doing. And then

That's really where I started building the nuts and bolts of liquid deck and figuring out the production and coming up with the branding, and then it was I think maybe two years after that was when we officially kinda launched it. That's that's pretty cool.

Do you think that there's still opportunity for that? I mean,'cause when you go to seven eleven, I'm in I live in San Francisco, I'm in Austin right now there's seven eleven's everywhere. Is And it's only muscle milk. That's the only uh protein based Drink.

Uh and that is similar to your analogy of like an that's like an Evian or a Fiji or something like a mass brand. Well I I think If I'm if I'm not wrong, I think it'd be more like taking cottage cheese and making cottage cheese fun than it is muscle milk or the kind of protein shakes, which are already kind of like trying to mass market.

And and get in with a sort of Different lifestyles. Uh whereas you know, some random product category where it is only trying to play it safe, non internet based marketing, those are the ones that you're talking about, right, Mike, where

you you think those have the sort of a larger delta between what's out there and what could be out there. Yeah, it's tricky and I think that's where it's a um So Protein shakes. If you think about who the protein shape consumer is.

Probably predominantly male. Like dudes trying, you know, bulking up a lot of the time, you know, at least in that world. And that's why Organic Valley. When they came to the agency They knew that like All the ads they've been running,'cause most of Organic Valley's products are

milk and cheese and stuff that they sell at Whole Foods. All their commercials are like Picturesque sunsets over family farms and Our family farmers, they just care more than anyone. But they knew that when they launched an organic protein shake, it's a very different customer. than the mom who's shopping at Whole Foods for their other products.

So they wanted us to come in and say, Hey We know that It's like a muscle dude that we're selling this to. Who's typically not An organic, you know.

The big time organic shopper. Maybe they are buying the tubs of Um you know, protein powder at G and C. Or they're buying you know muscle milk. So they're like

We still want to appeal to that audience with this very you know A protein shake that's made by family farmers. So we did this whole funny video that's like You know. If bros like look all the chemical crazy shit that's in protein shakes

If bros keep drinking them They might not last much longer and they'll go extinct and like who's gonna bring the beer pong table when they're gone? And like you know. Like this whole idea of like

Save a bro, get them on an organic protein shake. That was sort of like the funny idea that we had that went really, really well. Um And it's because the product, even though it was healthy.

І стіль а ликвід. That wants to be drunk. by a consumer who identifies with the marketing. It's like

If you just try to say, All right. We're gonna make An oat milk brand that feels You know. Badass and rock and roll.

The oat milk customer probably isn't guys who ride Harley Davisons. Like they're not drinking oat milk. But you're trying to market to them. So it's like that's probably not gonna work as well. Because you've got way more marketing education to do to try to convert new customers into something that they've never drank before. Water is different for us because everybody drinks water.

We don't have to explain. How to drink water. How to use it. Like everybody drinks water from Harley dudes to metal dudes to yoga moms to everybody. And now it's just about

Come on. From a demographic or psychographic standpoint. Who just thinks this is a cool thing to be a part of their day with? You're not trying to convince them why they should drink water. Gotcha. And so

You also went through science or how how did science get involved?'Cause this uh when I first heard about this, I was like, Oh, this is coming out of science labs. Is that Did you bring the idea to them? Did you meet them and then incubate the idea? How did that happen? And and for for people who don't know what we're talking about, science is like this weird quasi venture capital firm, but also like a weird incubator. Uh they launch Dollar Shave Club and a variety of things or Maybe they helped launch, I don't know what the cor correct verbiage is, but they're definitely this weird combo of like Company builder and investor.

Based out of LA. Yep. Yeah, so We launched liquid death. in a bit of a backwards way than most I think beverage brands launch.

Which was We launched A year before we met science. We launched liquid death on social media before we ever had product. Because we knew that

With such a crazy idea like liquid death. There's nobody who's writing me a check for the idea of liquid death. They're like, You're this is stupid. You're crazy. Like who would ever buy this? It's a negative name. It says death. Retailers will never carry it. Yada, yada, yada. Um so I knew that I had to prove it out as a concept on social first. before I could actually make people feel like I'm de risking This thing a bit.

to actually raise. So We designed the can to look like a three D Realistic can. We shot a fifteen hundred dollar video.

And then We just put it on Facebook. No Twitter, no Instagram, just Facebook. We put maybe um I don't know, three grand in paid media behind the video.

And then cut to three months later. We have more Facebook followers than Aquafina. The video has three million views. We've got a range of DMs from Hi, I

and a seven eleven franchisee in the Midwest, how do I get this in my stores? Or Hi, I'm the biggest non out beverage distributor in New York City called Big Geiser. How how do we talk to a sales representative to distribute this?

And we didn't even have product yet. Or no idea of how we were even gonna really make it. So then I use all that social traction and distribut and retailer interest. To then start raising a small friends and family around so we can actually produce physical product because with cans. The minimums are really, really high.

like quarter million cans is the lowest you can actually produce. with a can manufacturer. So it's a little bit capital intensive just to even. Start playing the game. How much is a quarter million how how much a quarter of a million a product, what would that cost I mean, if you're just starting, what would that cost? Um I mean it all depends what you're feeling in there.

But I mean I mean yeah, I mean you're you You're talking Hundred and fifty, two hundred, two hundred and fifty grand just to like kinda get started, probably. You know, doing cans.

So yeah, w once we Once we then kind of raise a little bit, we started producing cans. Uh we we bottle or well I should say we can And source our water in Austria. In the Alps. And

Let me let me ask you. What what does that mean when whenever people are like, Oh, this is you know, spring water from this mountain, it's like You know, my head is always like this is BS. What does this mean? Does that mat like A, is this true? B does that matter? Um so like Why do you go get your water from Austria in the Alps? Like

What is that is that is that branding? Is that like Is there something about water that I don't know? Like why do you have to go there to get your water? Let's be totally honest. Water for the most point Part. I should say, for most people is water.

Like if you had people try to even even water snob. If you had them blind case test. Fiji versus Evian versus whatever, can they really tell the difference? Probably not, right? I've done this test many times as an Evian drinker. Evian versus so Evian and Fiji are taste similar to me. Evian versus Crystal Geisler.

Like it tastes Different. Yeah. I've bet money and I've got it right before. That's interesting.

But yeah, I think The things that make water Um that affect the taste of of water. Or

the natural minerals and how much of them there are in the water. And the pH of the water. Is it more acidic? Is it more basic? And what those minerals are affect How acidic.

Or how basic it is. So when you For us. Our water comes from the Alps.

And it literally goes right from the mountain into the camp. Obviously it goes through filters and things that filter out debris and all that. And then we put it through like a pasturization process that makes sure everything, you know. It's all clean and good to go. But

Everything in that water Is That's the natural mineral profile of the water that has been built up over probably hundreds of years in the mountain. And it's like, you know. Naturally alkaline at seven point eight or seven point nine pH. It's got a nice mineral level.

Nice mouth feel when you're drinking it because of the level of minerals. So that comes right off that way. It's all everything's natural about it. Almost Every major water brand in the US Um

Whether that's smart water. Assentia, Aquafida, Dasani. Um Most of those brands they're using municipal tap water from the factory.

But then they reverse osmosis, which strips everything out of the water, all the natural minerals. All the bad stuff. Everything. So it's literally just like Empty water. Then They have to add in minerals back in.

to kind of make it taste good. So they'll add in the natural things that occur in water, but just kind of artificially with just Doing it at the factory. has a decent pH and a decent mineral profile that tastes good.

So Those are kind of the two options. When you say something is spring water, It's very strict from the FDA of what that has to be. Like To call it spring water?

You cannot alter the original mineral pro profile of the water. So even if you take it off the mountain. If you put it through reverse osmosis. and it strips out the natural minerals and you add them back in, you can't call it spring water anymore because you've altered the original thing. Everything we have in our water is natural. That's how it comes off the mountain.

It's kind of its own perfect thing. We don't have to go through the whole process of like using municipal tap water from the factory, stripping everything out, adding stuff in and kind of like Creating a water.

Yeah, that's that that's like the big difference. Okay. And you know, I've never actually had liquid death. Um Is it's flat water though, right? It's not sparkling and it's not flavored. We have a sparkling version, but so we have a still and a sparkling. Yeah.

And um and so you Uh sorry, just to sort of finish it. So you you you did the social media to prove, hey, we can build a fun brand that people resonate with. Then you figure it out, okay, to produce the minimum run, I'm I'm gonna need a couple hundred grand. to get this thing off the ground. And you raise kind of the fen friends and family round.

Uh, that was from science or afterwards science came about and they wrote a bigger check. We raised the friends and family round just to basically cover like a super limited r you know, the smallest run of product we could do. And then once I finally had a physical can of liquid death for the first time. Which was probably around October of twenty eighteen.

We had a A guy that we knew who knew someone at science who said, Hey, you guys should really talk to science, like they'd probably be all over this. So we went and met with science and brought them a physical can. And once someone could really hold it. And it wasn't just like us showing

Digital images from social. It made it way different. It just like They understood the magic of it and how cool this would be walking around with this or How you know how into this people would be.

So then we that's when we kind of decided to do a deal with science and Over the next two months after that, they helped us gear up our D to C launch where we launched online in January of last year. And do you think this will be mostly D to C? You think this will be retail? Wh how do you think about that? Obviously you're doing both. Where do you think is the kind of bulk of the business gonna come from? Um

I think we've always known it was gonna be retail from the beginning. We just didn't know how soon do you start really pushing into retail. Water something that You don't want to just order on the internet. Like you wanna be able to buy water when you're thirsty somewhere.

So It's just naturally a retail play versus like, you know something like maybe like a soilant that's like a meal replacement thing, you could order those to your front door. Because it's not like you're just randomly deciding to go get one of those. But now they're pushing into retail as well, but

w what's your pitch on how big this gets? And the way I like these pitches is kind of like Bottoms up. So it's like, you know, rather than saying, you know, well, vitamin water sold for this much, so maybe we can get that much or more, cause blah, blah, blah. But like bottoms up being like, you know. Um, there's this many grocery stores. I don't know if you think that way, but like do you do you have that sort of analysis of like I think this gets this big Because I can say that there's this many venues or this many grocery stores or this much D to C demand on this. So I think we can, you know, when we grow up, we can become this big. Do you think that way? Or or how do you approach that?

Yeah, I think it's a c a combination of things. I mean, one, you can obviously start at what is the size of the bottled water market. Which In twenty nineteen, the bottled water market in the US alone was twenty billion dollars. Wow. Uh still water made up

A little under fifteen billion of that twenty. And sparkling is about three and a half billion of that twenty. So it's a massive market. Uh in seven. What's the rest? Flavored? Uh like private label.

Um Okay. Yeah, and and flavored. Um stuff in there. Gotcha. Um The biggest

retail uh In terms of doors. uh channel is convenience stores. There's like over a hundred and fifty thousand convenience stores. And then I think there's maybe

thirty thousand grocery stores or something like that. And then the b well, the biggest channel is restaurants and on premise. Like restaurants and bars, there's about a million in the US. So you can start looking at Yeah.

velocities of what certain water brands do in convenience stores we can look at some of our velocities that we're seeing and what they can grow to. And yeah, you can really start to like forecast out how big this gets. But it's like well performing water brands just in seven eleven Can be doing.

fifty million in sales just in seven eleven in scan sales. For like you know. you know, a g a a decent water brand. And that's just seven eleven. Who are the top three?

The top water brands uh in terms of s scale. are as you could probably imagine like Aquafina and Dasani. They're both over a billion dollars uh a year. And it's own th those are owned by pet uh Nestle and uh Or who are those owned by?

Aquina's Pepsi, Dasani is Coke. Okay. Wow. Okay. That's And then Nestle's the other big one. Nestle has a couple of brands like Nestle Pure Life and Kind of the more budget. Um uh value water. And yeah, they're another they're over a billion as well.

Who owns uh how who owns and how much so Fiji's own by wonderful brands. They're down near you in LA, right? Or I don't know if you're in LA, but in LA Yeah. How much how how much revenue do you think Fiji and Evian does? I think uh Fiji's a privately owned company. Is Evian public? I don't know. Um, I don't know the exact numbers. I've I I've seen a couple of things, so I can't really comment if they're

If they're accurate or not, but I assume that Fiji, Evian, they're probably somewhere around like Five hundred million a year, something like that, I would guess. What would the margin on that be? So

Um Is it as big as I would think? Um, it's not as big as you think, really, because the retailers They want the most margin on bottled water.

Like The the they want to mark out bottled water higher than almost any other beverage that they have in the store. So the retailer wants a lot of margin. Then you've got distributors that need their margin.

So it's like you really get down, it's not like bottled water is some like insane margin. for suppliers than other products. Yeah. Like energy drinks probably getting more margin than than water is, to be honest. Which I I think the conception is

Dude, they're just bottling water. That's like you know, you're like selling air. Uh but but in reality the margin is probably I I would guess. So but You know, sub thirty percent, not above thirty percent is kinda my my my guess. Yeah, I think most in in most beverage They say like

you know, a target like really solid margin for beverage would be like forty percent. That's like Fifty is like you're killing it. And then it's like I think you get down like to thirty is probably like on the low end of what you want. But yeah. So when I I I used to own a chain of hot dog stands in Nashville and when it was r it was called Southern Sam, Wieners as big as a baby's arm. And

And I would Crush it. Uh in the daytime bottled water would cost two or three dollars.

And at nighttime when everyone's drunk, you definitely add a little bit more to it. I think at from restaurant depot I think a bottle water was fourteen cents. Or like Yeah, c so it was like stupid. And so I like the hot dogs would like make a little bit of money.

I would make a I you can make a thousand dollars a day off bottled water. That was where the money was at, was for the bottled water. Uh So if you if you need a sales guy, you got Sam here. Yeah, man, I was hawking water like crazy. That was where it was at. Uh Mike, we had this uh question which was if you had to make a thousand dollars tomorrow, but I stripped you of all your kind of like current income streams and your print business.

How would you go try to make a thousand bucks in a week or whatever? And uh I think Sam's was I would go to a hot place, I would buy water for fourteen cents and and go sell'em in front of a stadium or something like that. In a corner. Like at a uh at the um at the stoplight. Yeah, yeah. Because like people don't care about the water. They more so care about the convenience. Like oh fuck it, it's right here. It's I got two dollars next. And I totally overthought it and I was like, Well, I guess I would create this online store and I was like, No, it's like too s too slow, too complicated. I would go sell water. I would be like a vendor at a uh like a concert series, like the summer s concert series that Cities has. I I swear to God I would make a thousand dollars a day in bottled water sales. You just you know, that's not every day, but You crush it uh at those concerts to sell'em bottled water.

Uh yeah. That that was where I where I would make a killing. What other opportunities have you seen um that if you weren't starting this business you would uh be very interested in? I mean I guess Obviously like you're always looking for

White space. Right. I think Where I was really inspired most by my point of view on business and branding. is from Virgin.

Like Richard Branson. What you know, early in my advertising career when I worked in San Francisco. The main account that I worked on was Virgin America, the airline. So I got like super deep into Virgin and and I read, you know, Richard Branson books and I just would love Their model was like

We go and try to find a stale category. And we make the one really cool fun brand within that category where it almost changes the category, where the rest of the category almost has to start adapting. Like Airlines. Like

Nobody was excited to get on an airplane. We eat airplane food. Or anything, and then they were the first ones to make planes with like neon blue lighting and like Yeah.

T Vs in every C, which now is like a common thing in every airline now. Right. Right. So it's like That really inspired my way of looking at where I would look for things that were like What is something that Like you said, like cottage cheese. Like what is something that is

Extremely boring. Or like what's a category that just nobody cares about? Where you can't think of one cool brand in. And Obviously like if it's something that seems like It could still have appeal. It's just the victim of

Poor brands. Not getting it. And you know, just not innovating or whatever it might be, and you see an opportunity, hey, this is actually could be a thing that people really would love, but it's just been stuck in this like

Dull drums of branding for so long and it needs something. Because at the end of the day with Especially with packaged goods like Branding is so much more important than most suppliers. or or companies think. You know?

Because Most companies are started by business people. In in the most part. It's like Someone with an MBA, someone who understands the nuts and bolts of building a business. It's rare that businesses are started by creative people, like artists. And people that are

You know. graphic designers and stuff like Yeah. It's two different things. And usually what happens is The business folks think really rationally like

Okay, my product contains this. So the name of the product should be about that. And I should List all the rational reasons why someone should buy her. Yeah, right. It's like Yeah. That gets them a certain part of the way.

But then they end up hiring a creative agency to get all these creative thinkers in to build a story around this boring thing to make people actually care about. So what I think's interesting is when you have creative people at the very beginning of the process where it's like Just considering what the company should be. What the name should be.

What the product should even look like. Will someone even care about whatever it is you're selling? Because I think the creative people do have a good sense Oh. Culturally what's going on.

What's cool? What do people care about? What's the climate? Business people. Not so much. I feel like they're more in like the the the nuts and bolts and weeds of like numbers and manufacturing, which is hugely important.

Which is why there's so many brands that Never get the creative side. But still they just become these logistical Swiss army knives that still get acquired. Right. But it's like just imagine if they had great creative too. You might be a two billion dollar brand.

You know, um I'm I I Speaking of water. I'm good friends with this guy, Scott Harrison from Charity Water. Have you ever met Scott? Yeah, I I've never met him. I heard the br heard of the brand. And so so you've heard of the brand because um

I think they've done a phenomenal job with the brand. And so this is just a like we were thinking when we're just brainstorming, oh what's another category in a grocery store that you could do this with, which is definitely a totally legit brainstorm we can do. But this is a a very different analogy, but I think he did the same thing. So Scott was a party promoter, like you came from a punk rock background, then ads And then you went into this CPG space, which is not the maybe the most conventional path.

He's a you know, party promoter, club promoter in New York for ten years. uh you know, convincing dudes to buy, you know, three thousand bottle three thousand dollar bottles of great goose that they know, you know, you can go buy for fift fifty dollars across the street. um to get table service, right? And so then he goes and he he, you know, sort of has a come to Jesus moment. Goes to Africa.

decides I'm gonna dedicate the next year of my life to philanthropy and giving back. And um But he's all he knows is how to promote parties. How all he knows is cool. And so he reinvented charity as a cool brand. And he has this quote he does when he like tells his story, which is Um it's a quote from someone talking about philanthropy and they say

Man, imagine if we could sell charity with one tenth Of the finesse. That uh brands sell toothpaste. Like imagine if we had one tenth of their marketing power that they do they use on toothpaste. Imagine how much good we could do in the world. And so that's basically what he did, where he was like all right, I'm gonna make a brand

that actually stands for s the for these three things. And I'm gonna have awesome design because every charity website sucks. And you know, it looks like they hired their eighth grade cousin to like build it for them. And I'm gonna do these with influencers, I'm gonna do these m print campaigns, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, he's now been raising, you know

over a hundred fifty million dollars for the cause is one of the fastest growing and best charities out there because he did what you did, which is He applied cool to a category that was totally uncool. Uh before. Yeah, no, totally. And I think

There's so many different places where you can think about You know, I I think cool is a weird word because it's like It can be taken so many ways. I think it's like it's less about cool, but it's like How do you make it interesting?

Or how do you make it like desirable. Like I have to have this. Okay. You know. That's intriguing to me.

I mean Are were there things that you've explored or you're like You know Uh this actually is one of those categories. I I'm busy now, but that would be Interesting for someone to change that category.

I think We're even thinking about that with liquid death too. Like I think liquid death You know, is so much bigger than just a water company. Like At the end of the day, like I think we think about ourselves as like a pop culture factory.

Like we just made We released a liquid death vinyl record recently. I don't know if you guys saw that. But it was like In Less than two weeks, we sold seven hundred vinyl records.

Which is like more than most metal bands actually sell when they release a record on a major metal label. And it was like This funny idea where we took social media hate comments and made them the lyrics to this metal album. Um

It's like wow, a water company now just became A record label for a minute. And it's like I think about all these other places where there could be innovation that tie to our general mission of like Hell.

But like Do we like what if liquid death creates like A chain of Heavy metal yoga studios. You know, where it's like

People who want to do yoga but they don't want to listen to Yani. When they're doing it. Like Is there some room for like some kind of cool like how do you Make it a totally new kind of like fitness experience. You could do like tough guy multivitamins if you needed to, right? You could take a a healthy product multivitamins and be like, Okay, cool, instead of interesting actually rainbows and care bears, like maybe we could just make this form factor a little different, brand a little different, right? To to speak to a different audience who's

So you you guys have raised, let's say ten I forget the number, ten or twelve million dollars. You're not Huge, yeah, you're definitely still getting going. How do you decide so like At my company we have a brand that people know and people just

If we make stuff people will buy it, but I in my head I'm always like, I don't wanna make other stuff. Let's just like focus on what we're doing and kick ass at that and then maybe eventually Expand. Whereas you've done these little experiments like the vinyl record and maybe you're also trying to uh maybe you weren't joking with your heavy metal yoga thing. In my head I'm like

No no no fuck that focus. What a do you have like a like Logistically, how do you decide where to throw budget at and throw money at in order to So let me ask you this. So this this is what I mean. All these other products that we could potentially make that actually sell.

Or actually succeed. They double as marketing for the water. You know, it's like Yeah, it's just marketing that's profitable. It's profitable, exactly. It's like we made a vinyl record. I can't tell you how many eyeballs that got liquid death on from people reposting the album, sharing the album. Talking about it. Um

That album for us to execute, including printing the vinyl. Cost us twelve thousand dollars. And we've already made all of our money back and more. And We hired a guy that we knew that was a friend of a friend who's an incredible metal musician who wrote the whole album. His name's Gus Rios.

He wrote and recorded the whole album. His buddy mixed the whole album and his buddy mixed stuff for Justin Bieber and all these other guys. So we got the whole album recorded. We made a commercial for it using only stock footage.

So we spent maybe two grand on stock footage and my wife edited the video. So it was like. You know That's all that's all we launched with. It was a a little launch video made with stock footage and

We pressed records and sold the records in our merch store. Um And it's like All that stuff adds together. That's why it's like What would it cost to

to start let's call it a chain of Five. L small heavy metal yoga studios in LA. Like Small little studios, not a lot going on. You find some, you know, some instructors, like maybe you could actually build that out for

Call it. Five hundred grand. Let's just say like you can make you could build a five chain yoga studio Heavy metal yogos to get chained. For five hundred grand.

What does five hundred grand buy you if you try to run one TV spot during the fucking Oscars? Like Maybe you get a thirty second spot. And what's gonna see more lift? and brand evangelism for your brand. Running one five hundred thousand dollar commercial

During the Oscars. Or building a chain of five heavy metal yoga studios in LA that gets talked about. By every publication. Heavy metal yoga studio launches in LA. People actually go to it. Everyone who goes takes photos and shares and talks about it's like That's a way smarter way to spend your money and you might actually make some of it back if it's a good enough business model. Right, you know.

This is like uh Elon selling flamethrowers. Right. Uh, you know he he he is the, you know, sort of Iron Man trying to be a badass rockets and you know, drilling into underground and electric sports cars. So he comes out with a flamethrower for seven hundred dollars, I think it was. And he sold I don't I don't I think he sold like millions of dollars worth of the shit ton of the flamethrower. I think it was ten million. And the whole thing is basically just being like, you know, feeding the evangelism, like you said, of the cult of Elon.

of yeah, life should be a little more badass. We need a little more fire, a little more speed, and a little more like, you know uh rocketry to to in our in our lives. And so it it fits the brand. Yeah, and it's like it you know. When when you curate your own new experiences or whatever for the brand, you can also control what goes on there. So at all these yoga studios, it's gonna be coolers of liquid death is the water there. Right.

You know, it's like Yeah, it's it all kind of can work together. Th my my takeaway from this whole podcast is I'm gonna do I'm gonna do a handful of I I'm not gonna launch a yoga studio, but a twelve thousand dollar Vinyl release or something like

Of that scale is super interesting. I need to do more of that. Do you have one person uh on your in your t on your team who like does these odd things or is this just like uh A pro like a project that you uh lead and coordinate. So we work with You know, we do have like

Uh creative agencies that we work with, like most of which are run by my friends who I I knew from the industry. They've got small little startups. And what's nice about liquid death is because We want to do such cool Different things.

People are willing to kind of work At a nice homey rate because like they want that thing up for their real. Yeah. We're not just asking them to make some board. And you're crazy enough to be will you're open enough to like try to go to Nestle and say, Hey, look at this amazing thing we did with liquid death and they want the Nestle check, not the liquid death check, right. But they need you to get the Nestle check. Well they're doing the same thing that you're they're doing they're doing the same thing what you're doing with the vinyl. They're like uh maybe pay for itself, but it's also marketing. Right. Right, exactly.

So yeah, I mean we uh we we get a lot of um you know, smart creative people that are throwing ideas into the mix, but You know, at the end of the day, like, you know. I'm a very creative focus CEO. I think we've built like a nice team. around us that like

is really smart with operations and supply chain and that kind of stuff. It's not so much my strong suit. And I can, you know, focus more on the brand and creative side, which Yeah, liquid death it's It's really a brand plan. You know, like and that it's so important and I think

Building out all these fun things we're talking about of like how do you build this brand that has such an evangelist audience to it. And but continues to grow. Like that's that's really the focus. I'm also creative, but I definitely am like fiscally s conservative and I'm like, No, no, no, we've got to focus it the focus on the cash cow.

But I'm like You're right. This dumb shit that seems dumb. But it's awesome. You can do that for way cheaper than you think. Yeah, I guess it's just like always think like

One of my old bosses I I used to work I was a Crave director at Vayner Media. So Gary Vaynerchuk was like my my boss, essentially. Yeah, I learned a lot from him in terms of like Marketing is really just about day trading attention. Like It's marketing's all about attention.

And attention has different cost to it and different price to it depending where you go. The price for a billboard You're paying so much per eyeball that sees it. It's like Yes, it could be effective, but you're overpaying for it versus

create a yoga studio In LA. you might generate even more eyeballs and attention at a way, way lower spend. So I think it's just always thinking about Who

How do I get attention for my brand? And what are all the different possible ways that you can get attention and what's like the most cost efficient ways to get that attention? And I have to ask, was it awesome or not awesome working for him? Is is the guy the real deal or what? I love Gary. I think he's like

an incredible human being. Like you know, I've worked for a lot of corporate Folks and I think there's There's a lot of egos, there's people who don't care, and I think Gary like truly cares. Like even if you're gonna tell him you're You're quitting, like he's gonna be like, Oh, awesome. Like, do you need any help finding your next thing? You know, like he's just like He cares. And I think that's what he's built his whole

company on is like You can build a massive company with like a compassionate point of view on your people and not just being some like tyrant Okay. Yeah. Anything about Gary'cause he's a very public presence, right? He's personally out there a lot.

Um and you know, anytime you personally put yourself out there p putting a part of you out there, not the whole thing. Is there anything that either People don't really know about him, or is a misconception that you've seen about him, is there anything like that? I would say that like Talking with him normally one to one. is obviously the volume isn't as loud as it is when he's on camera.

You know,'cause at the end of the day, like He's an entertainer. To a degree, right? Yeah. Now he's an educational business. Entertainer.

But he's entertaining to watch, like the way he talks, like How his passion is, like how he's smart. Like there's plenty of business people who say smart things. But not Maybe as many that are like is entertaining. Yeah, animated on camera. So it's like in a way he's kind of playing

You know, all bit of his character. But it's like off camera like He's way more mellow, I would say. I was on I was I was on his podcast and he was

Very nice. That's awesome. All right. Well Mike, we'll we'll wrap it up. Uh where should people follow you, find you if if they want to hear more thoughts or liquid death, you know, give people shout out where where people can get more of what they got today. Yeah, I mean most Everything happening with Liquid Death um is on Instagram. So follow us. It's at Liquid Death. On Instagram.

Um you know, at Liquid Death on Twitter. And um LiquidDeath dot com is our site. And uh

Yeah, that that's That's it. This is awesome. I'm looking at it right now. Thanks for taking the time, man. This is badass. Yeah, I I got a bunch of ideas. In fact, sorry if my typing is g is uh something you can hear on the podcast because while he was typing while he was talking, I was like I need to write this down. I had three ideas while you're talking. Not exactly what you said, but you inspired something while you were talking.

I was like, I gotta write this down'cause we're gonna do this, and if we don't do this, like I'm gonna regret it. So uh apologies if everyone here is typing in the background. Yeah, I'm uh I do the same thing. I'm like looking up everything you're saying. That's a that's a sign of a good podcast, though. And it's all about speed. Like that's the one thing I always push. It's like the idea shelf life these days is very short. Like if You have a cool idea right now. If you don't make it tomorrow, someone else is probably making it in two weeks. You know, it's like that's just the reality. Right on. Cool. All right, Mike, thank thank you so much for coming on.

All right, thanks guys. Take care. Mike. Thank you.

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