Waterdrop CEO Martin Murray on exporting a European beverage brand to the U.S.

Vienna-based Waterdrop, best known for its pressed tablets that make flavored water, has ambitions to become a global beverage giant.

The brand launched seven years ago in Austria and slowly expanded into other European markets like Germany and France. Now, the company has expanded in the U.S. and is working to become more of a household name. In 2021, Waterdrop said it brought in over $100 million in sales in Europe alone.

"There are very few European innovations that make it in the U.S.," said founder and CEO Martin Murray. "Typically, the innovations come from the United States." But Waterdrop is trying to buck this trend -- and on this week's Modern Retail Podcast, Murray explained how.

Waterdrop is Murray's big vision to make what he calls a "micro-drink" brand. That is, it's a beverage sans water -- meaning it has less of a carbon footprint and requires much less packaging and plastic. Murray wanted it to be cube shaped and he wanted it to be made with real plant and fruit extracts.

For months, Murray flew between Europe and Asia meeting with technicians to try and figure out how to make such a product. "Out of 20 meetings, 19 told me it's stupid and it doesn't work," he said. But while in these meetings, Murray was able to get a crash course in product manufacturing and formulation. Through this, he was able to figure out how to ask the right questions and fine-tune his pitch. He finally hit on a manufacturing partner who agreed to give him an R&D budget to try and make the product.

From there, Waterdrop was able to build a minimum viable product and bring it to market. Part of Murray's ethos has been to test and iterate. "To be honest, the prototype was really bad -- like, it didn't dissolve, it didn't taste [the right way], you couldn't open the packaging," he said. "But it was a prototype."

"We started the company, we started the product then we iterated [while it was on] the market -- got a lot of feedback and since then have been really changing based on what consumers are telling us," he said.

When it first launched, Waterdrop was predominately online. But in each country it launches in, it has been expanding more and more into retail -- both wholesale and its own stores. And while retail is becoming a much bigger part of its business, Murray isn't going to pull the plug on DTC anytime soon.

"Our e-commerce will always exist because it allows us to test products very quickly," he said.

For now, the focus is on continuing to expand as well as refining its product.

"We started [like] a semi-broken Alcatel phone," Murray said. "Now we're looking at the iPhone 5 or 6 -- we went through a progression of iterations. We know how to build the iPhone 10+, but we're on a journey of continuously making those improvements."