One of North America’s most iconic lifestyles is returning to stores near you.
For decades, Clearly Canadian defined what a premium North American beverage brand could and should be. Today, with sparkling water sales exploding in the United States, the time could not be better for North America’s own authentic sparkling water brand to make its return.
Over fifteen thousand (15,000) die-hard Clearly Canadian fans have joined together to show their early stage support for Clearly Canadian with an online crowdfunding campaign that netted $750,000 dollars and more than 25,000 cases pre-sold.
Read on to learn more about Clearly Canadian and where we are going from here!
The Huffington Post put it best:
Americans, in what is a clear secular shift, are abandoning traditional colas and sodas in droves, and looking for crisp, refreshing, healthy alternatives. And what are they finding—and buying: sparkling water in many different formats and styles.
Sparkling water, in particular, is the only segment within the U.S. carbonated beverage market that is seeing explosive year-on-year growth.
This has helped brands such as Sparkling ICE (which began as a Clearly Canadian copycat), San Pellegrino and LaCroix all explode in the space of just a few years.
And here’s the thing —
With sparkling water sales continuing to soar, the timing could not be better for Clearly Canadian to return. Clearly Canadian’s customers and the beverage industry itself coud not agree more.
When Robert Khan & John Behling (two American boostrappers) took the reigns of Clearly Canadian, they knew that customer support and industry fondness for Clearly Canadian was huge, and the goal of turning Clearly Canadian around would not happen in a single day.
But even they were surprised by how vocal Clearly Canadian’s rampant and many millions of fans have clamored for the brand to return to retail shelves.
Over 15,000 dedicated Clearly Canadian fans have joined the movement and put their money where their mouth is to let retailers and distributors know that Clearly Canadian needs to return to shelves nationally.
25,000 cases sold without a drop of marketing or real distribution put in: it’s not every day that a beverage brand can boast that kind of customer loyalty and support.
Interested in learning more about Clearly Canadian’s turnaround? Check out our feature on Grub Street for the full story!
Clearly Canadian isn’t flying solo on our return to national store shelves: we have one of the food and beverage industry’s most respected brokers in our corner.
ACOSTA is the “Goldman Sachs” of U.S. food brokers. Their core group represents nothing but the best-known, most established brands.
By partnering with ACOSTA, we’re able to take Clearly Canadian directly to the national retailers that are already clamoring for our return — unlike most emerging brands that stall for years with no choice but to fall back on traditional and very expensive DSD methods.
Clearly Canadian is the only second established brand to receive this type of national turnaround opportunity from ACOSTA — the first being Hostess/Twinkies, after they faced near extinction in 2013.
ACOSTA’s involvement with Clearly Canadian is a powerful vote of confidence in the Clearly Canadian brand, and serves to underscore just how overwhelming the groundswell of support for Clearly Canadian has been.
Here’s what just a few of our current investors have to say about Clearly Canadian:
You can’t argue with numbers like these: customers want Clearly Canadian, and they’re breaking out the checkbooks to make it happen.
Retailers across North America are lining up to stock Clearly Canadian on their shelves and we have three co-packers ramping up to supply national demand, with British Colombia slated to go live in Q4 2015.
Clearly Canadian is proud to have been endorsed during its pre-sales campaign by YouTube super-duo Rhett & Link, whose YouTube channels have a combined subscriber base of over 13 million people with over 2 billion total views.
With a global trademark portfolio spanning over 30 nations and the licensing and development of new emerging food technologies under way, there’s a long-road ahead and much more to come from Clearly Canadian.
Want to be a part of Clearly Canadian’s revival? Request access to the Business Plan tab of this profile, and let’s talk!
Clearly Canadian is helmed by a team of Gen-X Canadians and Americans who simply could not believe that Clearly Canadian was on the verge of extinction. And in classic entrepreneur fashion, rather than just shake their heads about it — they decided to do something about it.
Robert Khan is a serial entrepreneur who looked at the Clearly Canadian brand and his own youthful expriece with it and saw existing culture and community equating to intrinsic unlocked value and long-term opportunity. An iconic brand already beloved by millions, perfectly aligned with the most massive trend to emerge in the beverage industry over the past decade? Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
As former CFO of PROVIGO, Gerry Lecours oversaw financials for a grocery chain numbering 300 stores — experience that makes him the ideal candidate to guide the financial future of Clearly Canadian.
Bernard is a highly disciplined marketing and branding professional. Bernard comes to Clearly Canadian with extensive prior experience in a variety of roles including Art Direction, Creative Direction, Branding and Marketing. His prior clients have included Absolut Vodka, Intrawest, Bosch Power Tools and many others.
EVP of Marketing at House of Blues, former Director of Marketing at Coca-Cola and Red Bull — John Behling’s resume as a beverage industry marketing expert speaks for itself, and now he’s bringing all of that experience to the table as Chief Marketing Officer for Clearly Canadian.