Harvard Business School 9-898-171 Rev. December 11, 2000 Nantucket Nectars Well, we knew we were in an interesting position. We had five companies express interest in acquiring a portion of the company. Sometimes you have to laugh about how things occur. Tropicana (Seagram) and Ocean Spray became interested in us after reading an article in Brandweek magazine that erroneously reported that Triarc was in negotiations to buy us. (See Exhibit 1 for a copy of this article.) At the time, we hadn’t even met with Triarc, although we knew their senior people from industry conferences. We have no idea how this rumor began. Within weeks Triarc and Pepsi contacted us. We told no one about these on-going negotiations and held all the meetings away from our offices so that no Nectars employee would become concerned. It was quite a frenetic time. The most memorable day was just a few days ago actually. Firsty and I were in an extended meeting with Ocean Spray, making us late for our second round meeting with Pepsi. Ultimately, Tom and I split up: Firsty stayed with Ocean Spray and I met with Pepsi. Ocean Spray never knew about the Pepsi meeting. Tom and I have learned under fire throughout our Nectars experience, but this experience was a new one for us. —Tom Scott, co-founder of Nantucket Nectars Research Associate Jon M. Biotti prepared this case under the supervision of Professors Joseph B. Lassiter III and William A. Sahlman as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School. 1 898-171 Nantucket Nectars It was certainly exciting to have some companies interested in acquiring Nantucket Nectars. But, should the founders sell at this time? They had originally planned to take the company public. The company was doing great, better than they had ever imagined. See Exhibit 2 for historical financials and Exhibit 3 for recent valuations of initial public offerings. But, many people, particularly company founders who were running their newly public companies, were telling them that going public wasn’t a completely positive experience. They wondered whether the company was even ready to go public. Regardless of their decision about going public, should they continue negotiating with potential buyers to find out the market value of their company? Ultimately, they needed to decide whether to sell the company or begin the initial public offering process. Of course, operating Nantucket Nectars as a stand alone company was always an option. Background Tom Scott and Tom First met while students at Brown University. (See Exhibit 4 for their résumés.) During their summers, the two created Allserve, a floating convenience store serving boats in the Nantucket Harbor. The founders decided to return to Nantucket after graduation to continue this service business. At the time, they sold ice, beer, soda, cigarettes and newspapers and performed services such as pumping waste and delivering groceries and laundry for boats in the Harbor. The founders did not even sell juice at that time. As First recalled, “we started what was basically a floating 7-Eleven.”1 During the winter of 1990, First recreated a peach fruit juice drink that he had discovered during a trip to Spain. The drink inspired the two founders to start a side-business of making fresh juices. In the spring of 1990, the founders decided to hand bottle their new creation and sell them off their Allserve boat. “We started by making it in blenders and selling it in cups off the boat. But we also put it in milk cartons and wine bottles—there was a wine guy on the island—basically anything that we could find. 2” Everyone loved the product, prompting the founders to open the Allserve General Store on Nantucket’s Straight Wharf. Soon thereafter, other Nantucket stores started carrying the product. In its first year, Nantucket Allserve sold 8,000 cases of its renamed juice, Nantucket Nectars, and 20,000 the following year. Financing In the first two years, the two founders invested their collective life savings, about $17,000, in the company to contract an outside bottler and finance inventory. For the next two years, Nantucket Nectars operated in an undercapitalized state on a small bank loan. Tom Scott recalled the situation: We were scraping along. Everything was going back into the company. By early 1993, our few employees hadn’t been paid in a year, never mind that Tom and I hadn’t paid ourselves in three and a half years. But we worked all sorts of odd jobs on the side, especially during the winter. It was especially tough because we could see the juice really taking off. Ultimately, the two founders and Ned Desmond, who would later become the Regional Director of Sales and Marketing, persuaded Mike Egan to invest $600,000 in Nantucket Nectars in exchange for 50% of the company. The founders originally met Mike Egan while serving his boat in Nantucket Harbor during the early days of Allserve. Mike Egan was the founder and former CEO of Alamo Car Rentals and still maintained 93% of that company’s stock. While the founders were 1 Beverage Aisle, February 1996. 2 Beverage Aisle, February 1996. 2 Nantucket Nectars 898-171 concerned about ceding a controlling share to an outsider, they needed the money and had no other options. Egan performed the function of trusted advisor while not meddling in the day-to-day operations of the business. As Egan explained, “I really made the investment because it makes me wake up in the morning and feel like I’m twenty-five again, trying to grow another company.” The founders used the capital to improve distribution and increase inventory. First, they secured better, independent bottlers. Given their lack of credit history and Snapple’s fantastic growth, which utilized the majority of good bottler capacity, Nantucket Nectars previously had difficulty finding quality bottlers at an affordable price. Secondly, they built their own distribution arm with the equity capital. The founders needed to decide how to distribute their beverages in the early days, deciding between three options: · implement a large advertising campaign to build brand awareness while moving their product through an independent distributor channel which would carry multiple brands at the same time; · contact retailers directly to create trade promotions; or, · distribute the product yourself. Given that Nantucket Nectars could not afford the first two strategies, the founders created a unique private distribution strategy where they themselves sold, delivered, and stocked the product. Ned Desmond explained: We were doing it all. We leased some warehouse space, bought an old van, and went up and down the street selling Nantucket Nectars and our passion to make the brand succeed. The retailers immediately loved our story and enjoyed seeing us stock the shelves ourselves. Becoming our own distributor allowed us to control the positioning of the product. We often rearranged the shelves to ensure that Nantucket Nectars was better positioned than Snapple. In order to speed up their growth, the founders obtained the exclusive rights to distribute Arizona Iced Tea in Massachusetts. Boston was one of the top 5 New Age beverage markets in the United States and Arizona Ice Tea needed a strong Boston position in its own race with Snapple. While hoping to harness the "on-the-street, upstart energy" of the Nantucket Nectars team, Arizona Iced Tea was more than prepared to cancel the contract if Nantucket Nectars did not perform. The founders wanted to piggyback off the strong brand and higher volumes of Arizona Iced Tea to build their own distribution arm and to get more outlets for their own products in the market. Within three months the distribution division grew from seven to one hundred employees and from 2,000 to 30,000 cases sold per month. At the same time, the founders repackaged and reformulated their own product while convincing small stores to carry Nantucket Nectars along side the red-hot Arizona Iced Tea. By the end of 1994, revenues surpassed $8 million. Marketing and the Creation of a Brand Most New Age3 beverage companies must have clear differentiation because under- capitalization did not allow traditional, expensive advertising strategies and slotting charges for garnering shelf space. Nantucket Nectars relied on creative packaging, rapid and original product introductions, word-of-mouth and a memorable story line. Achieving this combination of low-priced but effective marketing was extremely difficult. Knowing this difficulty, the founders decided to focus on a simple vision without the help of any outside agencies: create a high quality product and 3 Term given to trendy, more healthy beverages such as ready-to-drink teas, sports drinks and juices. 3 898-171 Nantucket Nectars sell a persona. The result was the creation of a unique brand personality based on the start of the company on Nantucket. In the early days, Nantucket Nectars focused on creative but mundane ways of creating name recognition at a minimal cost. The company set up samplings, giveaways, sponsorship for road races and summer sports leagues which usually required only donation of product. In addition, the company set up publicity stunts including salespeople dressed up as fruits.