Collabs, influencers, and memes… this is the story of Poppi’s 250% ecom sales growth and $100M playbook.
Originally founded in 2018 by Allison and Stephen Ellsworth in their Austin, Texas kitchen, the product was a prebiotic soda that Allison made to aid her own health problems.
They named the brand Mother Beverage, and the couple began selling the soda at local markets where it began to gain notoriety. Lots of it.
Within a few weeks, a buyer from Whole Foods approached the couple at the farmer’s market looking to buy the product in bulk, to stock on the shelves at the original Whole Foods in downtown Austin.
This was a HUGE opportunity, as you know.
Allison and Stephen immediately quit their jobs, opened up a production facility, and put their entire life savings into scaling the production of Mother Beverage.
The product made it onto shelves within Whole Foods and as if the story couldn’t get any more perfect, the couple made it onto Shark Tank where they pitched the Sharks for investment (and ended up earning a $400k investment from Rohan Oza).
This initial investment spurred Allison and Stephen to rebrand Mother Beverage into poppi at the start of 2020. I for 1 learned about the original brand name this week. I missed the entire Mother Beverage era. Did you?
Since then, Poppi has been on a CRAZY trajectory, knocking on the doors of the largest legacy soda brands in the world, and building an enviable cult following.
Within 4 years Poppi has eclipsed $100M in annual revenue, built a social following of 1M+, and increased ecom sales by 250% in 2023. But how???
They’re running a can’t-lose combination of brand collabs to authority hack, influencer partnerships, and memes to flex the cultural relevance that their competitors lack. They’re smaller than Coke, they’re smaller than Pepsi, so you’d think they’d be at a disadvantage, right?
WRONG. Poppi is using legacy brand’s size against them.
Let me show you.
4 months ago Poppi did a collab with PopUp Bagels to get their drinks inside every PopUp Bagels location. PopUp Bagels = a trendy bagel brand that is known for its limited edition pieces (denim, trucker hats, Butterfinger limited-edition schmear).
Poppi is moving at the speed of culture, and meanwhile their competitors are spending 6 months to get approval on a single, brand-safe campaign.
3 months ago Poppi did a collab with this local Mexican restaurant you may or may not have heard of, called Chipotle. 😉 The partnership, which was announced THROUGH A MEME (legacy brands would neverrrr), highlighted that Poppi will now be available in all Chipotle’s nationwide.
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And, these brand collabs also double as new distribution channels for their product. Poppi has made this a habit since 2020.
But, their true competitive advantage lies in their cultural relevance. They’re becoming the it-brand because they’re getting their product into the hands of the it-crowd.
Adam Levine, Post Malone, Alix Earle, 50 Cent, Kim Kardashian, these are the influencer partnerships that they’ve run just in the last 5 MONTHS ALONE.
Rich of them.
What 10x’s this impact though is Poppi’s people-facing brand.
Allison and Stephen (the founders) are featured in a TON of content. They’re “building in public” as DTC twitter calls it.
(Allison with 50 Cent below LOL.)
Whether it’s selfie videos with Post Malone or TikTok dances with the entire Poppi team, Allison has become an influencer in her own right (similar to Jake Karls with Mid-day Squares) simply by showing the human side to the brand.
In one of her first ever posts on TikTok, she made this video, it struck a chord with her audience, and Poppi did $100k on Amazon that night.
Founder content crushes. People want to buy from people.
When consumers are on Amazon ready to add to cart and they’re deciding between La Croix or Poppi, it’s the affinity Allison has built with the Poppi community that will get consumers to add to cart over the competitors.
There is no brand I would point to quicker than Poppi if someone asked me who they should take notes on for their GTM in 2024. And, we didn’t even get to talk about their ad campaigns or landing pages today, looks like I’ll have to save that for another Go-to-Millions mwahaha.
