Latest news with #Cirkul
CNBC
4 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
34-year-old CEO shares his No. 1 piece of advice for entrepreneurs—it helped him build a $1 billion company
Starting a company straight out of college, with no prior business experience, isn't always easy. To support himself and his flavored-water business Cirkul, Garrett Waggoner played professional football in Canada and worked as a car valet in the offseason, he says. His co-founder Andy Gay worked in the women's shoe section of a department store, Waggoner adds. Together, they sought advice from anyone and everyone. Today, Waggoner's top tip for young entrepreneurs has a hint of irony to it: Don't listen to everything you're told, the 34-year-old CEO says. "Every time you get advice from somebody who has grown a business, make sure that you're interpreting it through your own lens," says Waggoner. "What worked for [them] might not work for a different type of business." Waggoner and Gay launched their Tampa, Florida-based business in 2015, got their products — reusable water bottles with built-in disposable flavor cartridges — onto retail shelves in 2018, and obtained a $1 billion pre-money valuation during a $70 million fundraising round in 2022. Some of the advice they received in Cirkul's early years worked, Waggoner says: focusing on solving a real problem rather than trying to build a cool product and "obsessing" over customer experience. Before the pair landed on the Cirkul bottle's current design, they found themselves lost in imagining all of the cool things a new product could do, says Waggoner. Refocusing on solving a problem "made us ground everything we did in the customer's actual need, which is gold," he says. Other pieces of advice were less effective, he says, or simply weren't applicable to the type of business Waggoner and Gay wanted to run. They tried outsourcing their manufacturing, for example — a common practice for consumer product companies — but struggled to find a factory that would work with Cirkul to produce a novel product. "Most folks in the beverage space do cans and bottles, so when approached with something unique, they all declined to lean in," Waggoner says. "We, by necessity, were required to manufacture the product ourselves." Manufacturing their own product required a "tremendous amount of successes, failures and ultimately, learning," he adds. Cirkul's manufacturing currently takes place in warehouses in Tampa and Salt Lake City. Other entrepreneurs agree: You need to figure out when to listen to someone's advice, and when to break from conventional wisdom and trust your gut. "When you're just getting started in a small business, it's easy to drown an opportunity if you let yourself get pulled by different ideas," billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban told CNBC Make It in March. Successful business owners take other people's feedback seriously while filtering out bad or irrelevant advice, Cuban added. Kopi Kenangan co-founder and CEO Edward Tirtanata offers similar advice: Don't ever sacrifice what makes your business unique. His Indonesia-based coffee chain, which brought in more than $100 million in sales in 2023, broke into the already-saturated coffee market by creating customized menus for different countries and tailoring items to local tastes and price points, Tirtanata said in May 2024. The strategy ran counter to the conventional wisdom of using a standardized global menu, which many other chains do, he noted. "The next Starbucks is not going to look like a Starbucks, the next McDonald's is not going to look like a McDonald's. The next Google is not going to look like a Google – you need to be radically different in order for you to compete against the incumbent," said Tirtanata.
Business Insider
28-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
This beverage brand CEO says making his products in the US has been essential to his success
One really important — and often overlooked — thing about coming up with a new product idea is finding a way to make it. That's what Cirkul co-founders Garrett Waggoner and Andy Gay discovered when they came up with a concept for a water-enhancing flavor cartridge system back in 2015. "The Cirkul cartridge was such a novel form factor, and no one had ever done anything like it before," Waggoner told Business Insider. Making the product overseas wasn't even an option, since there weren't any contract manufacturers who could do the job. "We just had to start doing it ourselves," he said. Waggoner and Gay had "no formal background in manufacturing or operations, but back in 2018 we leased a little warehouse and started filling cartridges by hand at night." Bit by bit, the Tampa-based brand gained a following on social media, linked up with Walmart, announced a $1 billon valuation in 2022, and Waggoner said the company now has a million square feet of production space divided between Florida and Utah. Waggoner said making his products in America paired well with the company's original direct-to-consumer model, which allowed the team to quickly turn customer feedback into useful changes, rather than having to wait for a ship to cross the Pacific Ocean. "In the early days, if you dropped the bottle from, say, hip height, the cartridge would kind of break apart," he said. "So very quickly, our engineering team identified manufacturing tolerance adjustments that strengthened that connection." That rapid feedback loop was "vital to helping the product grow up to where it is today," he said. An expanding menu of flavors is still driven by customer feedback, with cartridges mixed and made in the US. In addition to the cartridges, Cirkul also sells a selection of plastic bottles (which the company makes here), and a newer line of Stanley-style stainless steel tumblers (which are currently imported, though Waggoner said he's exploring ways to bring that production on-shore). Although the decision to make his products primarily in the US was at first more about necessity than principle, Waggoner said he hasn't really seen outsourcing or off-shoring as attractive options. "We've been growing so quickly that, to be honest, it's just never been a consideration, because we've been building our operations out continuously," he said. "Frankly, the team takes a lot of pride in it, and it's a lot of fun to see the team deliver something that is novel."
USA Today
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
'Friday Night Lights' creator directs Cirkul's debut Super Bowl commercial
'Friday Night Lights' creator directs Cirkul's debut Super Bowl commercial Show Caption Hide Caption Matthew McConaughey talks tuna salad and Uber Eats Super Bowl campaign Matthew McConaughey chats exclusively on set with USA TODAY's Ralphie Aversa about his new Uber Eats Super Bowl ad and infamous tuna salad recipe. UBER EATS It started out as a locker-room spitballing session, a couple of Ivy League football players trying to solve for hydration. Sunday, more than a decade and many late nights and early mornings later, Garrett Waggoner and Andy Gay's brainchild will be unveiled on the biggest commercial gridiron of them all. The co-founders of Cirkul will enjoy a significant full circle moment, when a 30-second spot for their flavored water will air during the Super Bowl. It's a big game debut rich in symbolism: Cirkul distributed its first product in 2018, just a few years after Waggoner was parking cars in between his two seasons playing football for Winnipeg of the CFL and Gay was selling shoes, both hoping to gain a foothold with investors to provide a proof of concept. By 2022, after multiple investment rounds, Cirkul exceeded a $1 billion valuation. And after the brand enjoyed a boost from TikTok virality and gained a foothold at Walmart and other massive distributors, the group felt it was time to strike on Super Sunday, symbolically completing a dizzying rise. 'Even a couple-few years ago,' says Waggoner, 'Andy and I were in the warehouse, packing boxes. 'To be on the biggest stage, yeah, it's pretty humbling.' They're scarcely going it alone. Thanks in part to Cirkul chief marketing officer Steve Battista, the group reeled in director Peter Berg, well-known cinematically but also a veteran of multiple long-form Super Bowl commercials for the NFL. And to connect with the audience, the crew brought aboard comedian and former "Pitch Perfect" star Adam DeVine, cast opposite his wife, actress Chloe Bridges, aiming to execute a vision the founders concocted over the long haul. 'A lot of early mornings, a lot of 3 a.m., 4 a.m. brainstorming sessions,' says Gay. 'We had a lot of ideas we wanted to fit in and (Battista) kept banging us on the head, saying, 'Guys, it's 30 seconds, 30 seconds.' They were in good hands. 'Poetry in motion' Berg, the creative force behind both the "Friday Night Lights" movie and celebrated TV series, cut his commercial teeth by helming a pair of two-minute Super Bowl spots for the NFL; he'll have a third featured in this year's game. Yet Cirkul – not even a decade old – presented a significant challenge that the hoary NFL didn't: Connecting a nascent product with a largely unknowing audience. 'They had all the accompanying anxiety that comes with trying to launch a new product and go all in on a Super Bowl spot,' Berg said of the Cirkul gang. 'You knew they were making a pretty large commitment and I wanted to help them take that quite seriously. 'The biggest challenge was helping them get through the pressure of the moment. It's a huge commitment financially and as far as reputation goes, you can't walk it back. You're proclaiming something is legit, on the biggest stage in the world. 'People are maybe a little tense. You can feel the pressure. That's what I like about Super Bowl spots – everybody's sitting up a little straighter and breathing a little shorter.' They were certainly all ears. Waggoner was a hard-hitting safety at Dartmouth, got a brief look in Detroit Lions camp and then played two seasons for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Gay was a reserve quarterback at Dartmouth and both, naturally, were big fans of Berg's football work on the big and small screen. They were relatively awestruck seeing his handiwork up close. 'It was our first time being on set with someone of his caliber,' says Gay. 'He'd throw out suggestions or tweaks or ideas and you'd be like, 'Oh, let's see how it goes,' and it would just be perfect, and bring the entire spot to life, and get so much more out of the limited time and scenes we have to play with in that 30-second mark.' Says Waggoner: "It was like seeing what one of the best quarterbacks of all time was like on the field. Small nuances, different tweaks, talking off-set to different talent. It was poetry in motion.' Time for a 'big bet' Berg says in working with emerging products like Cirkul, 'you have to let the brand land.' That's been a near decadelong process for a product that touts sustainability and health, along with the consumer's freedom to dial up the flavor in their water. Now, thanks in no small part to shrewd online marketing, Cirkul is in Walmart and Target, available on Amazon, credible with young consumers. Waggoner says Cirkul's aided brand awareness – or the measure of how many people can recognize a brand when prompted – is just 20%. Yet its widespread availability made now the time to strike. 'At this point in our life cycle, it makes sense to make a big bet,' he says. 'We're fully widely distributed now, in all the places where customers would think about shopping.' The group is confident in Sunday's final product, and will connect what they believe is a unique product with a similarly splashy spot. 'What we've got cooked up is something I don't think people have ever seen before,' says Waggoner. 'And we're really excited to see how America reacts.'
