Her Kids Were Drinking Too Much Soda, So She Created A Health Empire
Her kids were drinking too much juice. She was drinking too much soda. So Hint Founder Kara Goldin started a company from her kitchen that would grow to be a multi-million-dollar business.
Let's back up a bit and get some context. Roughly 8 of every 10 new businesses fail in their first year. And that's not counting your cousin Pat's would-be Soundcloud rap career. Kara (successfully) launched Hint Water all while taking care of three kids, oh, and unbeknownst to her, having another on the way. More on that later.
"I started Hint to get my own family healthier."
Kara wanted to wean her kids off the sugary drinks, but she knew forcing them to drink only water wasn't realistic. Particularly when she herself got bored with it. So she started slicing up fruit and adding it to large pitchers of water. No sweeteners, no preservatives — just water and fruit.
"I couldn't understand what was different about the product that I developed versus what was on the shelf. Then I started reading labels and suddenly realized how many chemicals and how much sugar were in these drinks."
From Kitchen To Whole Foods To Hospital
Kara had found a gap in the market. Now it was time to see if she could make this idea be bigger than the confines of her kitchen. She set her sites on Whole Foods, and on the day she told the Whole Foods Exec she was going to manufacture Hint and put it on the shelf, she found out she was pregnant with her 4th child. Life's funny like that.
"There I was on the verge of starting a beverage company, only to discover that I was about to have another child. I had a choice: either give up or buckle down."
She chose the latter and set an ambitious goal: Deliver the first cases of Hint to Whole Foods before delivering her son. That gave her six months to do, well, everything.
And everything is exactly what she did. The timeline for Kara's two new babies (Hint and her actual human child) continued to track. Six months later, Kara had a scheduled C section and dropped off the first cases of Hint to Whole Foods on her way to the hospital. She gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Justin, and by the time she'd left the hospital, Whole Foods had sold out of all the Hint water cases she'd delivered. Color us extremely impressed.
In the years since, HINT water has filled the shelves of Whole Foods around the country, as well as companies like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and Spotify. And yes, her family of six still loves it too.
Moral of the story: You never know where a great idea will come from. And if you're driven, committed, (and a total badass) you just may make it a reality.
Exhausted (and thirsty) just from reading all that? Hint is giving Digg readers a chance to get three cases of their best flavors delivered to your door for $30 using this special link. Now go forth, and stay hydrated.
Hint® is water—just more delicious. Made with nothing but water and natural fruit oils and essences, Hint Water and Hint Fizz have 0 sugar, 0 diet sweeteners, 0 stevia, 0 preservatives, 0 calories, and 0 GMOs.