I got nudie today!

Have your brought a drink from your local Milk Bar, Service Station of Lunch Shop lately? It's a bit like trying to buy a toothbrush! The fridge is packed with a plethora of tempting beverages; from juices to flavoured milk, energy drinks to "performance waters". So if you are going to have a product in this over-crowded "fast moving consumer goods" segment, you'd better be different.

Nudie Juice is different.

I had heard of Nudie Juice before, only because their factory had burnt down! But I had my first Nudie Juice today, something called “strawberry, banana and more” in a bottle marked “Limited Edition Fire Fighter Nudie”.

It got my attention enough for me to take a closer look at the bottle (usually I am too scared to read through the ingredients and other product information on the sides of such products), which explained the reason for the limited edition:

"On Thursday May 27 2004, nudie headquarters burnt down. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of brave fire fighters, no one was hurt. But we lost all our squeezing machines and lost of good fruit. Which meant we couldn’t make any nudies for a while. But it takes more than a fire to keep nudies down. And this “limited edition fire fighter nudie” is proof.

We were going to call it the “limited edition phoenix nudie.” (The phoenix is a mythical bird that rose from the ashes of some big fire.) But if it wasn’t for the firefighters, the nudie fire could have been much worse. So for all you fire fighters, this nudie’s made for you”

Cool huh! Find me another bottle in the 7-11 fridge that is as entertaining.

In 18 months, this cheeky little juice company has,with little or no advertising, generated sales in excess of $12 million.

So what is the secret? Owner Tim Pethic puts it down to a "distinctly different" product and a marketing technique based on "customer dialogue rather than monologue":

"I wanted a dialogue with our customers; that's why we use the website and I answer 40 emails a day personally," he said.

"It has worked; our customers have become salespeople simply by asking shopkeepers to stock our juices.

"It is an amazingly powerful tool and the response has been overwhelming."

The only potential downside in this story? This innovative Australian small business little has recently merged with the Pulp group of juice chains - 20 per cent owned by Richard Branson and 80 per cent by the public company Signature Brands.

Hopefully they keep the "it" that they have at the moment!

Oh, and the juice tastes really good too!

Comments

[Sam]

Of the 40 emails that Nudie got per day, over half of them are from under 15s. Tim told me.

[Tony]

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