The Ledger
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Kirban: Vita Coco sabotaged Zico by buying and trashing products
“A lot of that, you know, I mean, literally, like, buying their product out of stores, putting it in trash cans, taking their point of sale material down, hiding it in back rooms, stupid stuff.”
Kirban: Zico parked a sampling truck outside Vita Coco's office
“They would literally, just to piss us off, they would set up their sampling truck outside of our office every other day and sample people. So everybody around our office would be walking around with Zico.”
Kirban: Zico switched to concentrate after Coca-Cola invested
“As soon as Coke invested in that business,
They moved to a concentrate model. So they were no longer a hundred percent pure premium coconut water, not from concentrate.”
Kirban: Vita Coco partnered with ex-employees of Zico's distributor
“The beauty about them is they were a bunch of guys that had left the distributor where Zico was sold. So not only were they a much smaller distributor, but they also had it out for that distributor and for Zico.”
Vita Coco spent $4M defending its 'Born in Brazil' tagline and won
“And we literally spent four million dollars on legal fees to fight it, and we won.”
Kirban: Celebrity equity investors promote brands more effectively than paid endorsers
“So now we're not paying somebody to endorse our brand. They've, in theory, paid us, right? They've invested. Now they have ownership. And they're now more motivated than if they were getting paid, you know, a couple hundred grand or whatever it is to go do som…”
Kirban: Vita Coco was positioned from day one as a Gatorade competitor
“No, right off the bat, we saw it as a competitor to Gatorade. Because that's how it was drank in Brazil, and that's how it's drank across the tropical world.”
Kirban: Consumer brands fail when awareness and retail distribution desynchronize
“I think a lot of brands struggle because they get one or the other way before the other, right? So You, maybe you start to get awareness, but you just can't build distribution because you don't have the distribution footprint and power to be able to do it, or …”
Madonna and a celebrity cohort funded an entire Vita Coco investment round
“And he started making some phone calls and he, you know, called Timmy Moore and he called Matthew McConaughey, called Anthony Kiedis, a bunch of People and, you know, said, I'll take, we'll take, we'll, me and my friends, we'll take the whole round. Madonna to…”
Suplicy: Coconut water and açaí succeeded by premiumizing Brazilian commodity foods
“After seeing coconut water and acai become very popular, what I noticed is they were Brazilian commodities. Then now we're sold as premium products because like you mentioned it in Brazil, if I went to a run at the park, I went to the beach, there was a old VW…”
Kirban: Vita Coco signed first distributor before having a physical sample
“Yeah, it hadn't arrived. I didn't even have a sample.”
Kirban: Diaspora communities drove Vita Coco's early retail adoption
“I had this instant Consumer in people from the Caribbean, people from Southeast Asia, people from Latin America, and, you know, in some cases, they would taste it, and they would buy a case.”
Kirban: Vita Coco made 'never from concentrate' its key differentiator
“So we quickly changed our packaging and put in huge letters across the front, never from concentrate. And that became our big selling difference.”
Vita Coco spent entire $75K initial capital on its first production run
“So I think we had in the bank, 70, 75,000 dollars in the bank. And we spent pretty much all of it on the first production. So it was two containers of product, if I'm not mistaken.”
Kirban: Red Bull China bought 25% of Vita Coco and took over distribution
“Yeah, it's actually Red Bull China, so they're the owner of the Red Bull brand in China, so they have a huge beverage company in China. They were looking to diversify, bought 25% of the business, and Became our distributor in China.”
First Bahamian distributor sales covered majority of Vita Coco's initial production costs
“I believe they sold just over half of the product we sent. And then together we paid to destroy the rest of it because it was at some point going bad. And he paid me for the product that he sold, which was enough to cover the majority of our costs for the init…”
Vita Coco had under $1M in sales during 2007 equity fundraise
“Well, we were doing less than a million dollars in sales so we were not a big company, and so,
When you think about it, it's actually a decent valuation on the business at that point.”
Vita Coco and Zico founders later became close friends and co-investors
“He's amazing. We've become friends ever since. We invested in a couple businesses together. We're good friends now.”