Blog
O2GO History
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
watercooler 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 intersting without the need to buy exspensive 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, disssolved to clear
and gave the water a refreshing tasty flavour burst. Development of O2GO has
achieved this to an award winning standard (leatherhead fodds 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 then using the profits gnerated 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 succesful 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 q1 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 questionairre)
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 & greet questionairres 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 immediately on 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 low fat & no added
sugar & good for you
from this information the company formulated O2GO, a unique blend of vitamins
and minerals in five refreshing and tatsy flavours which adds flavour and
function to bottled water.
The research and development proces 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+ & 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 & 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 speciffically targetted at BC1C2 females in the ofice and gym
environment. However we have seen uptake from a suprising cross section of the
market with sales to organisations in the following areas:
office catalogues (spicers 2007 page 102), diiabetics, care home,s gyms, mod,
airlines, hotels, sailing, schools & 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 availiable on request)
"i'm diabetic & disabled & i suffer from night sweats & become very dehydrated
by the morning so i always keep bottles of water nearby. As i'm on benefits i
cant really afford those fancy flavoured waters you can get in the shops & O2GO
is a reasonable alternative & seems to have real benefits attached. I am
spending 1 week in jersey zoo on the channel isles & i will be spending the
whole week in the open photographing all the animals etc. Their concession
stands sell 500ml bottles of iced tea & 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
6000 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 refreshin 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 refrence product in the
market at the moment except on the periphery of our core idea with products such
as.
Lucozade sport powder & 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 diffcult
thing to do and 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 half year development and sales cycle to have been so
succesful
thankyou
Jonathan



