Word: arizona
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...Pepsi and Unilever) and Nestea (a Coke-Nestlé partnership) as "garbage." His advice to Coke: "Fire those people [the marketing executives]. Put them on a truck, and run them south. They're out there covering their asses." Vultaggio gloats about the fate of Snapple, once a proud independent like Arizona, that was swallowed and spit out by Quaker Oats and is now part of Cadbury-Schweppes. To its owners, he says, Snapple is "not even worth talking about." The soft-drink superpowers feel similarly about him. They refused to bash back...
Vultaggio is the blue-collar anti-CEO, a former truck driver and Brooklyn beer distributor who, with innovative packaging and consumer-friendly pricing, has built Arizona into the fastest-growing major bottled-tea brand in the country. And he has done it on his own terms, dismissing the conventional wisdom about management (chairmen schmooze; they don't reorganize warehouses in the middle of the night), finances (entrepreneurs sell out or go public as soon as they can) and marketing (consumer companies spend at least a few bucks on advertising to consumers) along the way. "Don came up from the bottom...
Vultaggio does have reason to brag: his brand dominated 2005, a year in which Coke and Pepsi fizzled. "Arizona went nuts," says Jeffrey Klineman, editor of Beverage Spectrum magazine, a trade publication. According to Beverage Digest, Arizona topped the retail iced-tea market in 2005, taking a 32.3% market share in supermarkets, convenience stores and drugstores and picking up more business than any other brand. Arizona's annual sales in major retail-distribution channels topped $417 million, according to Information Resources. The company says its total sales, including Wal-Mart and all the hundreds of tiny corner bodegas that sell...
...Arizona is one of the players that has turned the entire soft-drink industry on its head. Teas, sports drinks, bottled water and energy drinks, once considered niche players, are driving the market, while the once invincible colas have lost their crown. "Carbonated beverages are in serious trouble," says Tom Pirko, president of BevMark, an industry consulting firm. Shipments of soda slipped 0.7% in 2005, says Beverage Digest--the first annual decline in 20 years. Coca-Cola's flagship, Coke Classic, was down 2%; Pepsi-Cola fell 3.2%. And soda is absorbing some of the blame for America's obesity...
...Arizona has grown through a careful combination of solid value pricing, attractive packaging and a steady stream of new products. Such new health-conscious items as Diet Decaffeinated Green Tea have thus far not cannibalized sales of its reliable iced-tea flavors. Almost all the drinks come in oversize 24-oz. cans, with the 99˘ price painted on the front to prevent retail markups, and each flavor gets a distinct look. "Arizona's marketing has been in eye-catching, aesthetically pleasing packaging," says Gary Hemphill, managing director of Beverage Marketing Corp., a research and consulting firm. "To win that shelf...