What a trip Trip is on. The $300m valuation of the adult soft drinks brand in the latest fundraising is astonishing, and a huge testament to the fantastic job founders Olivia Ferdi and Daniel Khoury are clearly doing. As well as achieving strong growth in the UK (despite Covid) since the brand was founded in 2019, Trip has made great inroads in international markets (despite Brexit), including the US, traditionally a graveyard for many UK fmcg brands (despite Donald Trump’s tariffs).
It’s over a decade since a ‘Creative Challenge’ feature in The Grocer explored the opportunity for a functional soft drinks brand that could help consumers achieve calmness. It was a distinctly counter-cultural idea at the time as energy drink sales were soaring. And this was long before CBD, magnesium and mushrooms et al were ‘a thing’. But we correctly identified there were a lot of stressed people out there.
Trip is the perfect manifestation of that insight: brought up to date with the inclusion of those magic ingredients and delivered through a brilliant branded proposition, with slick marketing, fantastic supply chain execution and strong financial backing (it’s still loss-making) from celebs and influencers, the brand has tapped the mindfulness zeitgeist and reaped the rewards.
As well as the above mentioned obstacles, Trip has also overcome the legal quagmire in which CBD, as a so-called ‘novel food’, has been bogged down. And while it’s also found itself in hot water over health claims surrounding the Mindful Blend range of drinks it’s developed in response, the new range has proved a successful pivot for the brand, now outselling its CBD beverages globally and in the UK.
So the success of Trip should serve as inspiration to other entrepreneurs in a challenging market – with some of the winners of our New Product & Packaging Awards doubtless hoping to achieve something similar in the future. And following on from Henrietta Morrison (Lily’s Kitchen), Joanna Jensen (Childs Farm), Pippa Murray (Pip & Nut) and Amelia Christie-Miller, CEO Olivia Ferdi also demonstrates the continuing success of female fmcg entrepreneurs.
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