Talking Rain

Talking Rain
Industry Beverage manufacturing and bottling
Founded 1987
Headquarters Preston, Washington, United States
Key people
Kevin Klock, CEO
Products Sparkling ICE
Website SparklingICE.com

Talking Rain is a privately held beverage company based in Preston, Washington that manufactures and distributes enhanced and sparkling waters. The company was founded in 1987, but has risen to prominence recently after the emergence of its Sparkling ICE brand across the United States.

An iconic brand in the Seattle-area for more than 25 years, Talking Rain is a Washington-based beverage company situated in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. This innovative company is outselling international water brands in flavor-categories across the U.S., while beginning to find success internationally with the brand’s boldly-flavored, lightly carbonated Sparkling ICE® flavored sparkling mountain spring water.

A part of the Talking Rain® product portfolio for over 20 years, Sparkling ICE® beverages were often overlooked, until a major organizational shift in 2010. The new leadership team refocused the company’s efforts on this diamond in the rough. With Kevin Klock serving as Senior Vice President, TalkingRain started to build a strong marketing, sales and manufacturing team to focus efforts on this naturally flavored, zero-calorie carbonated beverage, which was quietly building a strong following in the Northwest since entering the marketplace. By the time Klock became President in early 2011, his strategic focus on Sparkling ICE breathed new life into the brand, growing it from $10 million to more than $350 million in retail sales in just three years.

Sparkling ICE is now one of the fastest-growing beverage brands in the United States, and aims to become a one billion dollar brand by 2018.

Products

Talking Rain produces PET bottled flavored and un-flavored spring waters for distribution throughout the United States, as well as in Mexico, Canada and Japan. The company's most prominent brand, and only brand that is distributed nationally, is Sparkling ICE, a low-calorie 100% artificially sweetened carbonated beverage made from spring water with vitamins and fruit juice added.

Sparkling ICE brand products come in 11 fruit flavors, and each flavor has a distinct and vivid color. The products are packaged in a tall, minimalist PET bottle, branded with an ice cube logo depicting each bottle's flavor. Talking Rain also produces and distributes Sparkling ICE Lemonade, an extension of the Sparkling ICE brand that is not its traditional fruit flavors. There are 6 varieties of Sparkling ICE Lemonade.

Microsoft stocks Talking Rain products, among other soft drinks, for free distribution to employees. During the development of Windows Vista, Microsoft arranged to have special Talking Rain cans printed with the Vista logo and a link to an Intranet site.[1]

According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, as of August 2008, 90% of Talking Rain's revenue comes from flavored products. The company is privately held and as such does not report exact revenue or profit figures.[2]

Awards & Recognition

In April 2012, The Sparkling ICE® brand is recognized as a “Rising Star” in the SymphonyIRI Group’s New Product Pacesetters[3] report, an industry-recognized benchmark analysis of exceptional first-year CPG sales success for newly launched products. Additional 2012 Pacesetters included Dr. Pepper Ten, Kraft MiO and Starbucks K-Cups.

October 2012: Talking Rain receives the 2012 InterBev “Best Sparkling Beverage” Award for the Sparkling ICE Coconut Pineapple flavor.[4]

December 2012: Sparkling ICE claims the BevNET Best of 2012 Award for “Best Enhanced Water”.[5]

References

  1. ↑ "I found a can of Lemon-Lime Windows Vista Pop" Reddit.com, September 1, 2015.
  2. ↑ "Puget Sound area water bottlers still growing despite eco-concerns." Puget Sound Business Journal, August 22, 2008.
  3. ↑ BeverageDaily.com. "Rising US beverage stars add excitement ‘throughout the day’: Symphony IRI". BeverageDaily.com. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
  4. ↑ "InterBev Awards 2012 finalists and winners announced". FoodBev. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
  5. ↑ "Sparkling ICE : BevNET.com Best of 2012". www.bevnet.com. Retrieved 2016-02-03.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, February 22, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.