00:00Nous n'avons pas à personne comme compétitif.
00:02Nous étions en hype, puis nous étions viraux.
00:04Maintenant nous sommes dans le habit de construire.
00:06C'est pour l'innovation.
00:13Bienvenue à The Big Question,
00:16le sérieux de l'Euronews où nous parlons des plus grands noms dans le business.
00:20Et aujourd'hui, c'est pas différent.
00:22Je suis présente de Cristina Kent, qui est le CEO d'AirUp.
00:26Cristina, merci beaucoup pour nous.
00:28Merci beaucoup pour m'avoir eu.
00:30Je suis très heureux d'être ici aujourd'hui avec vous.
00:32Alors, l'AirUp produit des water bottles,
00:34que vous avez sent à créer,
00:37essentiellement, la perception de flavour,
00:39par mettre les interchangibles pods dans le top de la bottle.
00:43Et ce produit, Cristina, went viral,
00:46je l'ai vu qu'il y a eu.
00:47Il y a des millions de views sur TikTok,
00:50qui est incroyable.
00:52Donc, pouvez-vous nous dire,
00:54ce qui a fait l'explosion ?
00:55Je pense qu'il y a trois pas pour virilité,
00:59pour aller dans une zone positive.
01:01Quand vous regardez un problème de société,
01:03comme, par exemple, la hydratation,
01:05le fait que nous devons prendre plus de l'eau,
01:07il devient un topic que les gens veulent parler.
01:09Donc, il y a une bonne base pour virilité.
01:12Au début, il y a eu un hype.
01:14Et, bien sûr, ça surprisee tout le monde,
01:15parce que ce produit est un produit qui vient de leurs fondateurs,
01:19qui étaient ennuyent l'enginers.
01:21Et scente, c'est-à-dire que vient de la neurosciences,
01:24vient de une vraie innovation.
01:26C'est-à-dire que nous pouvons servir la pêche de l'eau
01:28d'un effet qui n'a pas de gorge, n'est pas d'artificier.
01:32C'est-à-dire que c'est la scente.
01:34Vous pouvez le percevoir la pêche,
01:35même si vous êtes en train de l'eau purée.
01:38C'est-à-dire que c'est le magique du système.
01:39So the sum of good insight, a good product and a good conversation, that makes it viral.
01:46And now the part that we are building in is the habit.
01:55And the company launched in Germany in 2019.
01:59And I read that within the first six weeks, it sold 80,000 units of the water bottles.
02:06Now, take me back to the beginning and where the whole idea came from.
02:12It has a beautiful story.
02:14There were a bunch of founders.
02:15We have five founders.
02:16And everything started in a university lab.
02:20It was an end-of-year project.
02:22And the project was based on neuroscience.
02:25They were looking at how 80% of taste comes retro-nation.
02:30They thought about different applications.
02:31And they came up with the idea of water.
02:34So when they presented the project, very soon they were able to get back in and to build up a
02:40company.
02:41So the story is incredibly founder-led.
02:43And what is very nice is that that was created, as you're saying, about six years ago.
02:48But the founders are still in the company.
02:51This is one of the reasons why I was attracted to the company.
02:54When I met the founders and I saw their authenticity and the authenticity of the product and the innovation,
03:01it felt like a very wholesome place to be.
03:03And working with them is super fun.
03:06The bottles, of course, they get people through the door.
03:08But the pods are what bring them back, essentially.
03:11Because you need the pods, the interchangeable pods, to put at the top of the water bottle to smell the
03:15flavour for the water.
03:17So is the real AirUp business the bottle?
03:19Or would you say it's the recurring revenue pod business?
03:23I think it's both.
03:24And when you look at the part of the journey we're at, the bottle, of course, opens the conversation.
03:29And then what we have done is that the pods now are available in many places.
03:34Now we have 15,000 points of sale.
03:37We actually opened up a lot of the retail distribution to make sure that there was no friction in terms
03:43of when you wanted to change the pod, that there was availability.
03:46It's a little bit like when you think about a gym, we all know that being healthy is going to
03:51a gym.
03:52But if you have to take a bus and you have to walk a kilometer to get to your gym,
03:57you won't make it.
03:58And seemingly when you get to the gym, it has to be a nice experience.
04:01So we know that the repeat comes from both the nice experience of the bottle and also the accessibility of
04:07the pods.
04:08And do you know what percentage of customers come back and buy the pods?
04:12The business has sold now 50 million bottles and we are above 200 million pods.
04:16So it is working.
04:18And what we can see is that people who really stick to the franchise, through clinical studies, we see that
04:24they drink more water.
04:25So the product is proving itself.
04:27And now, as I was saying before, we were on the hype, then we were viral.
04:32Now we are in the habit building.
04:34The habit building is a little bit slower in the sense that we need to get people adopting the system
04:40day after day for the hydration promise to be true.
04:43You need to continue coming back, coming back.
04:45And that is the part that we are vested now on really creating habits.
04:48And Christina, when it comes to competition, your biggest competitor, it isn't necessarily Coca-Cola, for example.
04:54It's the glass of tap water that costs nothing.
04:56So what's your answer to that?
04:58I think we have our own lane.
04:59We have created a new category.
05:01We don't see anyone as competitors.
05:04And not because we are arrogant or anything like that.
05:07It's just basically we created something new, which is the ability to give you a system that makes you enjoy
05:12water.
05:13We exist to help humans drink more water.
05:16And we do it in a way that there's no sugars, no artificials, just pure water with a hint of
05:21flavor.
05:22And that gives you the enjoyment.
05:23And Christina, AirUp was founded, as we talked about, and is still headquartered in Munich.
05:29You've also expanded into the U.S.
05:31But what's fundamentally different, would you say, in trying to grow AirUp on the continent, here in Europe, versus the
05:38U.S.?
05:39We actually have gone into the U.S. in two different ways.
05:43We went the blockbuster way, which is you get in, you go everywhere, you try to do nationwide distribution.
05:49The reality is that there's not one U.S., there are many U.S.s., and U.S. is a
05:54very vast territory.
05:56And also lately, it's been harder with the tariffs and everything.
06:00So what we've done is change our approach.
06:03And instead of going all in, we are now launching in Boston.
06:08We're going to win in a smaller footprint, create a prosumers, and then expand from that.
06:13It is very different to launch in the U.S. than to launch in France, for example.
06:18You're a CEO that's worked with lots of major brands, Christina.
06:22Has, in those internal conversations that you have with other CEOs, has the tariffs really taken you all by surprise?
06:29And every day, is it sort of, okay, what's happening today?
06:33Is it difficult to strategize with the business?
06:35Yeah, of course it is.
06:37It has brought many business into a very difficult place of planning.
06:41Not only because of the sheer tariffs, also because of the changes within the tariffs.
06:45The promises of returning the money, then the different change of tariffs setting.
06:50And as you know, you couldn't bank on anything.
06:52Like one day was one thing for one country, the other day was another thing for another country.
06:56So I think it's been for CEOs who are manufacturing in Europe, and they want to sell in the U
07:02.S.
07:03It's been an interesting time.
07:05Yeah, and what's next for AirUp?
07:07What can we look forward to next?
07:10Next for AirUp is we are launching a new product.
07:12We are very actively seek for feedback, and we are always seeing ongoing improvements on the product.
07:18The product we are launching now has a few capabilities that have been massively improved.
07:23Now we can put sparkling water, which is, if you know, like in some countries like Germany, unless you can
07:29put sparkling water, the habit of the still water is not there.
07:33So for us to be able to have sparkling water was very important, and this is our next big thing.
07:39Well, Christina, best of luck with the launch of the new product.
07:42It's been really fascinating to talk to you.
07:45So thank you very much for sharing your insights, and thank you for joining us on The Big Question.
07:49Thank you.
07:50Thank you.
07:53Thank you.
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