Launching in the coming days online, FNSH marks the first beverage project for Williams, who comes to the CPG industry after decades in real estate and leading venture capital firms. While new to the space, Williams said beverage has long been a passion; he had wanted to create a drink brand in some form for “at least 10 or 15 years” but had been “waiting for the right time,” which finally came around a year ago as he looked into the bottled water segment and felt there was a lack of brands with a strong message tailored to the “every man and every woman.”

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NielsenIQ estimates the bottled water market is worth around $19.3 billion and up 2.6% in U.S. retail dollar sales for the 52-weeks ending April 6. Regardless of the category’s size, Williams said he feels there is still plenty of opportunity “to bring something new to the water category” that can be marketed to the everyday consumer with an aspirational message that doesn’t feel focused on top athletes or celebrity influencers but instead can inspire “everyday” people in their workouts or daily lives.

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“Most of us aren’t hanging out with professional athletes at the top end of the spectrum, but there are millions and millions of people on a day-to-day basis trying to figure out how to achieve some sort of balance in their lives,” he said. “We want to build a community of those kinds of folks that want to share their stories with us. We want to celebrate their milestones and achievements.”

 

Messaging for FNSH will focus heavily on hydration, which Williams suggested is still overlooked by many consumers as a “critical component of health and wellness.” Williams isn’t alone in feeling like the water category isn’t doing enough to speak to everyday consumers. Earlier this year PepsiCo launched electrolyte-infused Gatorade Water. Gatorade chief brand officer Anuj Bhasin told AdAge in February that the company believes that there’s a large group of “everyday athlete” consumers who “don’t feel like someone has created a water for them.” Last month, the company told BevNET that it believes the white space is as large as “tens of m illions of consumers” who are “not reaching for enhanced water at the store shelf.”

 

Williams isn’t sweating the potential competition, though. Creating a product that directly competes with some of the largest beverage companies in the world could help better differentiate FNSH, as opposed to seeking to compete with a sea of independent brands in small categories, he argued.

 

“It sounds crazy to attack the mainstream, the largest category of water and electrolyte drinks, which we know all the big companies are involved with,” he said. “But I kind of feel that, even though it might not be intuitive, it might be the best place for us to be. I think there is room for brands like us in that big sea of big companies.”

 

Williams is bootstrapping FNSH, operating with a small team, and is preparing to launch online sales this month through Amazon. While he’s open to bringing on investment in the future, the goal is to establish FNSH in the market and begin scaling the brand before seeking outside financial partners.

 

FNSH is also working with food and beverage sales and marketing firm Cascadia Managing Brands, which Williams said is helping the company to craft its distribution strategy and a game plan for how to “methodically scale the brand.”

 

While there’s no definitive plan for FNSH’s retail roll out yet, Williams said he will likely look to launch the brand in the conventional channel sometime in the near future, but that could be months or more away as he looks to focus on driving Amazon sales and establishing the brand online first. However, he’s already thinking ahead to line extensions, with plans to add flavored enhanced waters to FNSH’s portfolio later this year. “I think that the world could use a little bit more authenticity,” he said. “We might just be a beverage brand, but we think we can mean more than that."

 

Read the official article on BevNet.com