As most entrepreneurs will know, dreams are one thing, but making them a reality takes a huge amount of dedication. Over the last few years, the PURA Beverages team has tackled the local market with determination, and it has paid off.

This once small start-up had grown from just an idea to a well-loved product, available in retailers around the country. Now, this tenacious brand is ready to take things to the next level and give the US market its best shot.

PURA Beverages founder and CEO, Greig Jansen, shares his learnings from his experience at the Summer Fancy Foods in New York and the Kehe Holiday Show in Chicago, giving local businesses his insight into how to take a home-grown brand international.

1. Lay the groundwork
Visiting these trade shows gave PURA Beverages direct access to all the major retailers that they had been trying relentlessly to engage with over the last two years. Not being able to travel had made it borderline impossible to make headway on this front. Although the team had attended shows in 2019, they were now geared this year up to succeed in an exciting new market.

“We did our homework, and we now have an entity, a back office, and a stock warehouse, all based on the ground in the USA. It meant we were now ready to meet the right people to get our product into the hands of consumers, but more importantly, be able to follow through afterward,” explains Jansen. “You need to be sure that you want to be in a new market, you cannot just dip your toes in the water, you need to be willing to make commitments.”

2. Nothing beats face-to-face contact
Big retailers, including the likes of Walmart, Target, Whole Foods, HEB, Aldis, Giant, Costco, Albertsons, and many others, visited the PURA stand and showed interest in the products, hugely flattering, and humbling for a once small South African brand.

“These face-to-face meetings resulted in some big changes for PURA. We confirmed that PURA Kids, will be going into Target in Quarter 1 of 2023, with PURA Soda in consideration for the October reset. We are now in the process of working through the listing requirements with multiple additional retailers who have expressed interest in listing our products, including Walmart,” says Jansen.

At the Kehe show in Chicago, PURA got around $1 million in initial orders and is in the process of following up to convert other opportunities into sales.

“There simply is no substitute for being able to share our brand, our passion, and how our products deliver in person. That being said, once you have got into retailers this is when the real work starts,” Jansen continued.

Courtesy of Ventureburn – read full article here.