With a career spanning 35 years in the bottled water business, Kim Jeffery has seen a drastic change within the beverage industry since he joined Perrier Group of America in 1978. At that time, the U.S. water category primarily consisted of 5-gallon containers and was a $250 million business, he says. Although the company’s flagship Perrier sparkling water brand was available overseas for nearly a century prior to its debut in the United States, much of the U.S. beverage industry did not believe that Americans would pay $0.79 for a bottle of water, he adds. Jeffery and his team, however, thought otherwise and set out to prove them wrong.
Shortly after Perrier’s U.S. launch, the brand became “an instant success” in the marketplace, notes Michael Bellas, chairman and chief executive officer of Beverage Marketing Corp., New York. In fact, the brand even inspired more than 40 works of art by Andy Warhol in the ‘80s, which the company is paying tribute to now via a series of limited-edition bottles.