Xigaware

Someone has well said that the two most important rules of business are: 1) Stay in business; and, 2) Don’t forget rule number one. You cannot serve your clients if your business fails. We can learn lessons about staying in business from those who have already done so.

SodaStream was introduced in 1903. Invented by Giles Gilby, it was a carbonation system which made standard water into fizzy water, and was originally sold to the upper classes. Different flavours were introduced in the 1920s. Sarsaparilla and cherry ciderette were two of these. In the 1970s and 80s it enjoyed vast success, becoming a big hit in countries such as Australia, the UK, and Germany.

The company underwent numerous changes in ownership, at one stage even being part of the Cadbury Schweppes empire. 1998 was the year SodaStream changed hands for the final time when purchased by Soda Club, which at that time was Israel’s biggest supplier of SodaStream. After Soda Club’s unsuccessful bid to rename the brand Soda-Club, the brand remained SodaStream.

More recently Soda Club sought to renew the SodaStream brand. SodaStream was relaunched along with a new machine and many more new flavours, concentrating on being a healthy alternative to fizzy, sugar-rich drinks such as Coca Cola and Pepsi, and focused on health and diet issues so prevalent in this day and age.

The SodaStream product is fundamentally a home carbonation kit; it allows you to change water into sparkling water, as well as allowing you to add low-calorie flavours such as cola and orange. A large assortment of calorie-free flavours to flavour sparkling water to great taste is sold at allfreightfree.com.

The SodaStream machine works this way: it forces co2 into a bottle suitable for pressurising and which is filled with water. The co2 turns the water into sparkling water. This process (dissolving co2) is what we call carbonation. The carbonated water can then be drunk on its own as sparkling water, or mixed with flavours to create tasty, healthy treats. Once the co2 canisters have been used up they can be sent back to Soda-Club who recycle the canisters by refilling them with co2 then sending them back out.

As far as the actual health and diet benefits gained from drinking SodaStream, it is claimed that all their flavours are completely sugar-free and contain a maximum of 2 calories per 100ml; this is, assuredly, good news for any parent concerned about a child’s diet.

The SodaStream machine adds only co2 to the water, meaning it does not have the added sugar that some bottled sparkling water contains, so there is fundamentally no difference between it and normal water.

SodaStream have made much of their environmental and health credentials, going so far as to say that every single litre bottle of SodaStream made saves three aluminum cans. The result? in just a 3 year span, a family of four could slash their soft-drink-related packaging usage by over 90%. This is a significant claim, one that in this environmentally conscious age will stand them in good stead. It is clear that Sodastream has developed into a viable alternative to the big players in the soft drink world.

Each and every year thousands of new businesses are born, and thousands of others are buried. By studying a business like SodaStream we can identify qualities and strategies that might help our own businesses survive.

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