HOW
WE THINK
Venturing & Emerging Brands was created with a simple but ambitious purpose: to find and develop the next generation of brands with billion-dollar potential.
OUR CAPABILITIES
There are many components needed to achieve this mission across our broad ecosystem of stakeholders, which includes retailers, bottlers, investors, consumers and communities.
Futurist — We think 5-10 years out about how the beverage world will evolve
Investor — We consider different venturing investment models for brands
Incubator — We help build and execute capabilities for smaller brands
Integrator — We help transition successful, 100%-owned brands to broader management within The Coca-Cola Company
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF EMERGING
Successfully scaling a brand comes with many challenges. In fact, less than 3% of brands grow beyond $10MM in retail value, and less than 1% grow over $100MM. VEB helps promising brands navigate the growth process and scale to win.
Each brand in our diversified portfolio of investments falls into one of four distinct development phases. While every brand is different, its journey through each phase is defined by similar needs and behaviors across disciplines like supply chain, route-to-market, and marketing.
Though we don’t believe in one magic formula, we do believe there’s an art and science to emerging. This includes varying levels of investment by phase; for instance, we usually consider an indirect minority investment in phase 1, a direct minority investment in phase 2, and a direct ownership investment in phase 3.
THE 4 PHASES OF GROWTH
It also means finding brands poised for market disruption. That’s why we look at macro trends among consumers—socio-dynamic forces like who we are, how we live, and what we value. And since most consumers can’t tell you what they’re looking for if it doesn’t exist to them yet, we also examine the micro-level entrepreneurial trends that introduce new ideas to the market.
We believe true disruption exists at this intersection of what consumers are doing and what the market is offering. A brand at this intersection is poised for disruption and can define the future beverage landscape. That makes it a strong fit for VEB—and one we look forward to helping share with the world.
As a brand matures, it eventually graduates from VEB to join one of The Coca-Cola Company’s key business units; for instance, Honest Tea graduated to the Water, Teas, and Coffee business unit and Coke from Mexico to Coca-Cola. It is our aim to continually introduce new entrants to the VEB portfolio, and advance each brand when the time is right.