I lifted this from my blog on the wedrinkmorewater website and it is gives a comprehensive history, including how I came up with the idea! It has been a VERY hard struggle, especially convincing people to manufacture initial samples, even though I had cash to give them! They seemed it was not worth their while to help us at such an early stage!

Cheers JY

O2GO Innovation helps people drink healthy amounts of water every day.

Healthy people at the office and the gym refill sports water bottles from the water cooler and the tap and drink the 2 litres of water we all need everyday. Santeau saw the opportunity to add natural flavours and vitamin supplements to bottled water to help people stay healthy and hydrated throughout the day and make water more interesting, without the need to buy expensive bottled waters or enhanced water products sold at a premium.

Our new product development objectives were to offer the market a new and exciting way to enjoy more water by developing a portable sachet product packed full of vitamins and minerals when added to 500ml of water, dissolved to clear and which gave the water a refreshing tasty flavour burst. Development of O2GO has achieved this to an award winning standard (Leatherhead Foods International Award for excellence in ingredients technology).

Our business objectives were to launch the O2GO range into food service to grow the company from a standing start and by using the profits generated from this activity, enable Santeau to launch O2GO through traditional retail channels and secure the majority share of this new category with the O2GO brand.

We are in the second phase of this launch after a successful and profitable launch into the food service industry with our partners Single Source Portions Ltd.

Santeau have approached specific retailers to gain meaningful and profitable listings in the bottled water rather than the vitamin and minerals (vms) category. This has proven quite difficult as retailers have never before provided a dry product via the soft drinks/bottled waters aisle. However we have managed to change the buyers’ vision by showing them that in the retail environment, O2GO can gain back margin from missed water sales as people refill their bottled water at the water cooler and the tap.

O2GO is due to list on the 10th January with 335 Sainsburys supermarkets nationwide. The activity was prompted in 2004 after Jonathan Yates, a keen sportsman, noticed that healthy people refill water bottles on average up to 7 times before purchasing a new bottle especially if they worked in an office environment or members of a gym (source: NOP June 2004 Santeau questionnaire).

in order to find the correct formulations and strengths of flavours, Santeau commissioned research from the NOP, Mintel, Abbey Well Water, the Regional Food Group, Attention, blind taste test focus groups (video), exhibition sampling and stop and greet questionnaires across the UK.

The research backed up the initial product development requirements that the range had to have the following qualities: clear soluble in cold water immediatelyon contact, meaningful vitamin content - natural flavours, light refreshing taste, portable hydration solution.

Defined as a wellbeing category the O2GO brand helps make drinking large amounts of water easier, as one sachet dissolves in 500ml of water, is low fat, with no added sugar, and is good for you.

From this information the company formulated O2GO, a unique blend of vitamins and minerals in five refreshing and tasty flavours which adds flavour and function to bottled water.

The research and development process took 6 months from inception to completion.

Our range is constantly evolving and we now have several other brands under development to take advantage of this new market that O2GO has created such as O2GOsport+ and O2GO xtraclear.

Due to the size of the market that O2GO has created, certain segments are demanding slightly different products and as such Santeau is developing further brands for these customer demands. Current brand developments include: mee, one.8 and Isol8.

O2GO has been developed to help people drink healthy amounts of water. As we have recently reached the 1m sachet milestone this means we have helped people drink an extra 1,500,000 litres of water since launch.

The product has been launched in its first phase through food service rather than a retail environment with the help of our food service partners Single Source Ltd.

The product was specifically targeted at BC1C2 females in the office and gym environment. However we have seen uptake from a surprising cross section of the market with sales to organisations in the following areas: office catalogues (Spicers 2007 page 102), diabetics, care homes gyms, mod, airlines, hotels, sailing, schools and health food shops.

We have testimonals from individuals who say O2GO has helped them drink healthy amounts of water whilst delivering meaningful health benefits. One such example is shown below. (More available on request.)

“I’m diabetic and disabled and I suffer from night sweats and become very dehydrated by the morning so I always keep bottles of water nearby. As I’m on benefits I can’t really afford those fancy flavoured waters you can get in the shops and O2GO is a reasonable alternative and seems to have real benefits attached. I am spending one week in Jersey Zoo on the Channel Isles and I will be spending the whole week in the open photographing all the animals etc. Their concession stands sell 500ml bottles of iced tea and flavoured water at £1.50 each - I refuse to pay that much so I will be carrying a bottle of O2GO flavoured water that I can top up as I go round the zoo.” (Paul Archer from the web)

O2GO has been taste tested, market tested at the vitality show in London, with 6,000 respondents declaring that they liked the taste as well as market test sales on ebay to see if people would buy the product without initially trying it first. The following are some of the replies from our ebay sales:

- makes drinking water tasty!
- Great product to add to my hydration bladder when hiking!
- Makes bland water taste yummy!!
- Great product - ideal for cycling! Thankyou
- v refreshing taste, love it to liven up water @ work, peach mmmm. Highly recommended - the whole family loves them. Many thanks.

Ebay works on feedback so we value our ratings highly.

O2GO is innovative product that is classified as a food. One of the issues with this is that it is difficult to gain any patent rights other than trademarked brand names which we have done. There really is no reference product in the market at the moment except on the periphery of our core idea with products such as Lucozade Sport Powder and Berocca recovery tablets.

It should be noted that to launch a new consumer product that the market has had no prior education or product reference point about before is a very difficult thing to do. I can only congratulate all those at Santeau, and our partners, for their hard work and efforts in the last year to enable the O2GO launch into Sainsburys (after a two-and-a-half year development and sales cycle).

Thankyou
Jonathan