Key facts:
- Liquid Death, the famous water-in-a-can startup, just raised an additional $34M (after $9M earlier this year)
- Pernod Ricard’s venture arm (Convivialité ventures) is part of the round
- Started as a joke and rebranded as a somewhat innovative packaging, the company sells Austrian Alps water in cans made of at least 70% aluminum.
Why it matters – DigitalFoodLab’s opinion:
We already talked about Liquid Death in March as a good example of an interesting and funny marketing example. The startup seems to follow all the rules of the “new DNVB (Digital Native Vertical Brand) playbook”:
- strong e-commerce presence
- well-designed communication
- strong community (notably based on heavy metal fans)
- growing retail presence to broaden its customer base and repeat
However, we can say that we are more than skeptics about this round. The amount of money raised seems a bit extreme for a young venture selling a staple with a premium ($16 for 12 cans of… water, which is twice the cost of Evian, similarly Alps water). Furthermore, while death-to-plastic marketing is well-thought in our days of growing climate change awareness, importing water from the Alps to the US and using aluminum cans is a bit odd.
