Key Takeaways
- Challenger brands need to establish physical availability before they can afford to build mental availability at scale.
- Expansion works best when adjacent products reinforce the brand rather than stretch it into unrelated categories.
- Retailer trust can give a challenger influence well beyond its relative size, but that trust depends on responsiveness and partnership.
- Owning more of the manufacturing base can create the cost control and agility needed to support difficult growth bets.
William Lawrence has moved through marketing, international sales, category management, supply chain and national grocery roles during his time in the fast-moving consumer goods industry. At Remedy Drinks, that range of experience has coincided with the company’s development from a kombucha challenger into a broader drinks business with a growing international presence.
Remedy’s growth has not followed a simple sequence of launching products and adding markets. The business spent roughly a decade concentrating on kombucha before extending into Sodaly, a better-for-you soft drink, and it learned that distribution, consumer education, brand discipline and manufacturing control had to develop together. For William, the central challenge is to expand the business without weakening the clarity that made the brand valuable in the first place.
Build availability before trying to scale
Remedy began around 14 years ago on the kitchen bench of its founders, Emmett and Sarah, using the fermentation process that produces kombucha. The product was part of an emerging better-for-you drinks movement, but creating demand for it required the company to help consumers understand both the drink and the category. Unlike established drinks brands with large marketing budgets, Remedy had to invest in creating a market while also trying to secure distribution.
William describes the early challenge as a simultaneous need to build physical and mental availability. The company spent heavily on getting products into stores and communicating the proposition to consumers, and it later recognised that some geographic expansion, including the United States, had come too early while the foundations in its existing markets were still being built.
The sequence changed as Remedy gained stronger distribution and more consumers tried its products. Early efforts focused on working with retailers, optimising promotional plans and making sure the product could be found. With a broader presence and a growing base of trial, the company has shifted more of its investment towards mental availability, with marketing spend increasing substantially over recent years.
The experience offers a practical distinction for challenger brands. Marketing cannot compensate indefinitely for weak availability, while distribution alone does not create a durable brand. Remedy’s progress came from addressing those constraints in sequence, rather than assuming that awareness would solve a product that consumers could not easily find or that distribution would create demand by itself.
Use adjacency to widen the market without abandoning the core
Kombucha remains the centre of Remedy’s business and, according to William, the company has no intention of turning away from it. In the major Australian grocery retailers, Remedy holds about 84 per cent of the kombucha market and continues to grow, but the category remains polarising for some consumers because of both its taste and its unfamiliarity.
Sodaly gave Remedy a way to reach beyond that limitation. Soft drinks are already familiar to consumers, and the company saw an opportunity to offer a better-for-you alternative in a category with broad penetration. Sodaly could introduce people to Remedy through a more accessible taste and format, while still connecting to the broader promise associated with the brand.
The decision carried a clear risk of cannibalisation. Remedy used its access to data to assess the overlap between the two products and found that the reduction in kombucha sales associated with Sodaly was relatively low, at around 10 per cent. Kombucha continued to grow as Sodaly expanded, supporting William’s view that the newer product was bringing additional consumers into the category rather than moving existing customers between products.
The quality of the product also mattered. William attributes much of Sodaly’s momentum to its taste and distinctiveness, which encouraged consumers to share their enthusiasm quickly through word of mouth and organic posts. The company built its current brand platform around consumers describing themselves as “addicted” to the drink, turning that unsolicited language into a more deliberate marketing idea.
That combination of category familiarity and product distinctiveness has helped Sodaly grow rapidly from a small base. Yet William is careful not to present it as an overnight success: the first year was relatively average, and the product came close to being deleted or receiving less support. Its later growth followed a redesign of the trade plan, stronger promotional support and more focused marketing investment.
Retailer partnership can compensate for scale
For a challenger operating against much larger drinks companies, retailer relationships are not just a route to shelf space. William sees the major Australian retailers as having reasons to support Remedy because the brand attracts younger and premium consumers, while also generating strong value once those consumers enter the store.
Remedy operates at a higher dollar per litre than many other products, a characteristic that becomes more relevant as retail operating costs rise. The company therefore contributes to the retailer’s commercial objectives in ways that go beyond its size, giving buyers a reason to invest in the category and in the brand.
That relationship has developed alongside Remedy’s growing market leadership. When the company was a smaller challenger, innovation was often shaped by what retailers needed and what could secure a place on the shelf. William argues that a technically excellent product has limited value if it cannot be ranged, particularly in a concentrated retail market, so challengers must bring their partners along rather than work against them.
His approach is to respond positively to retailer opportunities, even when the full solution has not yet been worked out. Saying yes, exploring the idea and then determining what is feasible creates a different relationship from simply delaying a response. If the company ultimately cannot deliver, the retailer is more likely to understand because Remedy has engaged seriously with the opportunity rather than rejecting it at the outset.
As the business has become more credible, the balance has started to change. Remedy still works closely with retailers, but its stronger relationships and market position give it greater influence over the direction of the category. William describes that as a form of earned permission: the company can increasingly help shape the narrative rather than merely respond to the requirements of its channel partners.
Protect the brand while expanding the portfolio
Remedy’s expansion has included multiple flavours, international markets, adjacent drinks and other channels, but William believes the company has benefited from keeping those moves close to the original brand proposition. He cautions that challenger brands can make growth harder by stretching into too many categories too quickly, because every new product demands marketing support, retail ranging and operational attention.
At Remedy, leaders have been deliberate about defining what the brand stands for, what it delivers to consumers and where it can credibly extend. William sees brand protection as more than a communications exercise, because unclear boundaries make it harder to prioritise investment and easier to create a portfolio that is large but under-supported.
His advice is to get the core right before chasing a long list of adjacent opportunities. Small additions may satisfy a retailer’s immediate needs or create quick revenue wins, but they are only strategically useful when they return to the task of strengthening the core business rather than distracting the organisation from it.
The same discipline applies to international expansion. Around half of Remedy’s business now sits outside William’s region (and remit), with the company holding leading positions in kombucha in the United Kingdom and Canada and growing in Europe. However, the earlier experience in the United States remains a reminder that geographic opportunity does not remove the need to establish the operating and commercial foundations that make growth supportable in the home market.
Use control and culture to preserve agility
Remedy has moved through four manufacturing sites as it has grown, and William regards the company’s current Australian facility as an important source of strategic control. Manufacturing its own products requires investment and brings operational challenges, but it gives the business greater visibility over its cost base, promotional flexibility and ability to trial changes quickly.
That control was particularly valuable in developing Sodaly. Because Remedy understood its own costs and could make decisions within its manufacturing operation, it had more security to increase promotional and marketing investment when the product’s early performance was not strong enough. William believes the company would have found it harder to take that risk without the ability to manage its own production economics.
Control of the operating model does not eliminate complexity. As Remedy has become a global business, with people working across markets, more process and governance have naturally appeared. William’s concern is to keep those systems measured enough to support scale without allowing them to suppress the speed and openness that helped the company compete as a challenger.
He associates that balance closely with culture. Remedy has a relatively flat structure, an open-plan office and a practice of listening to ideas from across the business. The aim is not to remove process, but to prevent hierarchy and bureaucracy from creating barriers between ideas, decisions and action.
Data is becoming another part of that operating system. Remedy uses qualitative and quantitative research, tracks brand awareness quarterly and engages directly with consumers through its direct-to-consumer platform. Its most loyal customers are invited to comment on potential flavours and other ideas, giving the company a practical group of consumers who can contribute to the learning process rather than simply receive finished products.
William also sees an opportunity to make the company’s data more accessible internally by bringing together different sources and helping more people use them. That work is still developing, but the direction is clear: consumer feedback, retailer information and internal performance data need to circulate through the business quickly enough to improve decisions rather than remain isolated in separate functions.
Move from trade-led innovation to category leadership
In Remedy’s earlier years, innovation was often driven by retailer opportunities. The company looked for gaps on the shelf, developed products that could address them and accepted that some experiments would not work. William emphasises the importance of recognising failure quickly and being candid with retail partners rather than defending an innovation simply because the business has invested in it.
Market leadership creates a different opportunity. With stronger relationships and more confidence from retailers, Remedy can now spend more time anticipating where the category might go and proposing that direction to its partners. The company still needs retailers to support and range its products, but it has greater scope to lead the conversation.
That opportunity is visible in Sodaly’s future potential. The product remains present in only a small proportion of major-grocery customers, despite operating in a soft-drinks category with very broad penetration. William sees room to build the brand through marketing, international expansion, single-serve and on-the-go channels, while continuing to develop the existing portfolio rather than relying on an entirely new business model.
For the near term, Remedy is concentrating on expanding in the United Kingdom and Europe and investing more heavily behind Sodaly in Australia. The business has already tested out-of-home marketing around its “Addicted” platform and intends to increase that investment, while also continuing to find adjacent opportunities that fit the brand’s established strengths.
William’s experience suggests that challenger status is not a permanent identity but a discipline that must be maintained as the company becomes larger. Remedy has tried to preserve that discipline by staying close to its core, responding quickly to partners, using data to test assumptions and retaining enough control over operations to make difficult investments with confidence.
The strategic challenge is to let the business mature without allowing maturity to become an excuse for caution, complexity or distance from the consumer. Remedy’s next stage will depend on whether it can scale its brands and international footprint while preserving the clarity, trust and willingness to experiment that created its momentum in the first place.