Healinga functional hydration brand, is entering a new phase of its growth, including nearly quadrupling its retail presence from 2021, finalizing its leadership team, and completing $5.6 million in Series A funding.
It’s been a hot minute since businesskinda.com checked in with the brand — nearly three years, in fact — which has been carving out a unique niche in the $10 billion functional drink mix market that founder and CEO Lauren Picasso told businesskinda.com has been in the past 12 years” explodes”. months.
Picasso largely attributes that to consumer behavior toward more environmentally friendly products, including the ease of using powder versus ready-to-use liquids, which weigh more to ship and have more packaging.
Hydration isn’t a new concept (who can forget The Right Stuff?), but consumers seeking healthier options have in turn created a more competitive landscape in recent years.
Picasso touts Cure as the “only female-founded electrolyte brand” and sees Liquid IV as its closest competitor. acquired by Unilever in 2020. She also said that “legacy players are doing really well as many new players have entered the market in recent years”. Some of those other functional beverage startups have also been corporate backed. For example Hydrant, also in hydration, Olipop and Poppi in the soda area and The Ryl Company in tea.
Cure founder and CEO Lauren Picasso. Image Credits: Healing
To stand out more from the plethora of hydration options, Cure underwent a rebrand in 2022 to focus more on the ingredients. For example, it uses coconut water powder and pink Himalayan salt, while other drink mix companies use cane sugar, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup and synthetic and artificial ingredients, Picasso said.
“We wanted to rebrand our clean, plant-based ingredients and really communicate better,” Picasso added. “We feel we are just as effective as products like Liquid IV, but we use much better ingredients. There’s a very clear point of differentiation, and because of that, we end up attracting very different consumers than any of our competitors. Our product tends to skew women, which is pretty unique, and tends to be a very active health-conscious consumer.”
Since launching in 2019, Cure has grown an average of 230% per year in sales and will expand its retail space from 4,000 stores in 2021 to 15,000 in 2023, Picasso said.
The company’s products are already in CVS and Walgreens, but will now also be in retailers including Sprouts, Albertsons, Kroger, Stop & Shop, Wegmans and HEB. There are nine flavors in total, four of which are new: lime and orange launched in 2022 and lemonade and strawberry kiwi this year.
As Cure accelerates its retail presence, it continues to have a roughly 60% penetration in e-commerce, surpassing the previous year’s growth of 121% in the first quarter of 2023, all with just nine full-time employees, it said. Picasso. .
Having already raised $2.6 million in seed funding in 2020, Cure’s $5.6 million Series A financing, which closed in March, provides the company with $8.2 million in total venture backed capital. With the new capital, the company said, Picasso said Cure’s valuation is now more than 2x higher than the previous round.
Serie A was planned, with Picasso noting that “this will be our last round. From now on we will work on profitability, aiming to be profitable in early 2024.”
Cure’s hydration blend flavors. Image Credits: Healing
Lerer Hippeau, who led Cure’s seed round, is back to lead the new investment and has been joined by a group of new and existing investors including Valedor Partners, Simple Food Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Joyance Partners, Silas Capital and Kim Clijsters.
Cure plans to invest the new capital in accelerating retail expansion, expanding its leadership team, acquiring new customers and developing new products, including a bulk pot option requested by subscriber customers.
With regard to the leadership team, the company recently hired Laura Kendrick, who previously worked at SmartyPants, and Stacey Gillespie, former vice president of innovation at Gaia Herbs, to help scale distribution and overall revenue.
Cure has been successful with influencer marketing, gathering 700 influencers as part of its ambassador program, but Picasso enlisted Kendrick “to really help brand scale,” while Gillespie will monitor the company’s product development progress and expansion into other functional categories. to lead. for example energy and health.
“We were looking for someone to scale up all these different marketing channels and really drive the future brand strategy,” said Picasso. “Meanwhile, Stacey is an industry veteran who has brought 1,500 new products to market over the course of her career.”
To that end, Cure’s products have hit the shelves of a number of new retailers over the past four months, while also doubling its footprint in CVS. It is now working on a number of new products that will launch in the next year or so, Picasso said.
“We have a lot of plans for retail expansion, so the next two years will be about executing in those doors and coming up with a marketing playbook to be successful in stores,” she added.
Editor’s note: Cure, who disclosed a valuation of $22 million during the interview, said the current valuation is now higher but declined to comment further.
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