Snapple

Arnie Greenberg, Leonard Marsh and Hyman Golden had been friends since high school. In 1972, they went into business selling all-natural apple juice to health food stores in Greenwich Village under the brand name Snapple. By the late 1980s, their brand had achieved near-cult status on both coasts of the United States, with its iced teas particularly in demand. It had taken 15 years, they said, tobecome an overnight success.
In 1994 Quaker bought Snapple for $1.7 billion. The vision had been to combine Snapple with Gatorade, an earlier and very successful acquisition, to form a powerful beverage business unit.
Snapple, however, did not thrive: sales fell in each of the next four years, and in 1997 Quaker despaired and sold the brand to Triarc Beverages for $300 million. In thefallout that followed, both Quaker’s chairman of sixteen years and its president resigned.
Mike Weinstein, CEO of Triarc Beverage Group, reflected on the acquisition. “At $300 million, Snapple is not a steal by any means. It’s in decline, and when that happens to a brand it’s seldom that it comes back. We’re in a fashion business here, and when your imagery isn’t fashionable often that’sthe end. But we’ve talked to a lot of consumers and we did a lot of qualitative research, and we’ve decided that in this case the brand still has inherent strength. People feel good about it. It will respond to the right marketing stuff.”
Professor John Deighton prepared this case as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or
ineffective handling of anadministrative situation.

1972–1986: The Origins of the Brand

Arnie Greenberg’s family ran a sardine and pickle store in Ridgewood in Queens, NY. His friends Leonard Marsh and Hyman Golden helped him in the store, and in turn he helped them to manage their window-washing business. In the climate of the 1960s, Arnie encouraged the family to stock health foods. The three saw the popularity ofnatural no-preservative fruit juices in the store, and teamed up with a California-based juice company to manufacture and distribute a bottled apple drink. Eventually they broke away from the Californian partner and founded their own company, Unadulterated Food Products, and the Snapple brand. “100% Natural” became Snapple’s mantra.

The business grew slowly using internally generatedfunds. It outsourced production and product development, and built a network of distributors across New York City. Where possible, it sought individual distributors working for their own account, and found as a result that the business needed to broaden the product line to keep distributors occupied. It added carbonated drinks, fruit flavored iced teas, diet juices, seltzers, an isotonic sportsdrink and even a Vitamin Supreme. Some succeeded and many failed, but premium pricing on the successful products covered losses on the failures. Revenues and profits grew with expansion of distribution into New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
In 1984 annual turnover was $4 million and it doubled by 1986 to $8 million.
In response to pleas from Snapple’s distributors, the founders commissionedadvertising. Jonathan Bond and Richard Kirshenbaum, who managed the Snapple account later, described this
early advertising as follows:
When tennis star Ivan Lendl was featured in several ads, the idea didn’t quite come off. (He) kept mispronouncing the name as “Shnapple.” Luckily the ads were so bad that they didn’t do the brand any harm. Had those schlocky ads been just a little better,they actually would have been worse for Snapple. The ineptness of the ads actually came off as charming, just like the cluttered packaging.

Snapple was just one of many small beverage brands aspiring to appeal to young, health-conscious urban professionals in the 1980s. Napa Naturals, Natural Quencher, SoHo, After the Fall,
Ginseng Rush, Elliot’s Amazing, Old Tyme Soft Drink, Manly...