Flowing With Purpose

As the beverage industry grapples with growing consumer demand for sustainable packaging and enhanced functionality, Flow Water has established itself as a pioneering force. Founded a decade ago by serial entrepreneur Nicholas Reichenbach, Flow has disrupted the traditional bottled water market with its iconic tetrapak cartons and commitment to sustainability. After successful ventures in mobile technology and entertainment, Reichenbach brought his innovative approach to the consumer packaged goods space, where he's now leading Flow's expansion into new sustainable packaging formats while maintaining the brand's core values. We sat down with him to discuss how innovation drives his company's evolution in an increasingly eco-conscious marketplace.

1. Tell us your name and a little bit about your role at Flow Water.

I'm Nicholas Reichenbach, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Flow. It's our 10th year anniversary. I founded the company 10 years ago, and prior to that, I was heavily into tech startups and developing mobile technology for 20 years. Even earlier, I was a concert promoter for 10 years. I've had a long history of doing startups and very innovative companies in mobile technology and entertainment, as well as now in food and beverage.

2. What does innovation mean to you?

Innovation means, broadly speaking, taking an industry or a product within an industry and moving it closer to consumer intent to purchase. There's a lot of discrepancy between what consumers actually want versus what companies are actually developing. That leaves a huge white space in innovation where people can develop new products, new services, and new companies to really meet the demand of the consumer.

3. How does your team generate new ideas?

My team closely follows our consumer. We have about 20 million customers in North America that drink Flow. We do lots of surveys and annual reports around what they're looking for in innovation. Is it in packaging? Is it in product? Is it in brand, positioning, or functionality? We do a lot of consumer insights to form our innovation pipeline based on consumer needs.

Some key consumer insights that stand out include sustainable packaging—that's one we definitely follow. Functional enhancements to products are also important; everyone's looking to get more out of what they buy and what they're consuming. And people care about the quality of the product—flavor enhancements and other improvements that enhance the overall quality.

4. Do you have any specific rituals for resetting your team to be creative?

We do a company offsite that focuses on restarting creativity and going into our mission and vision—where we started, where we want to go—looking at our core values and how they match our consumers. We build a week-long program that ultimately ends up defining what our innovation pipeline will look like for the following year.

5. How are you leveraging AI in your innovation process? Have you encountered any unexpected benefits or challenges?

We absolutely use AI. We're using it for a combination of real-time consumer insights, branding, and making advertising that's more suited toward our customers. We're also using it for core research that needs to be done regarding our consumers. AI is a perfect tool for that.

For resources, I personally use ChatGPT Pro, but we also use various graphics plugins for creative work.

6. What is the biggest challenge you face when innovating?

Often, getting the team energized around new products means breaking the status quo. To constantly have a culture of innovation is taxing to the workforce. We tend to push things through with a lot of consumer marketing to align our organization with our consumers.

7. Has there ever been an instance where another industry has influenced an innovation at Flow?

The wellness industry influences Flow significantly. Our consumer is broadly in the health, wellness, and active lifestyle space. Those industries really influence our partnerships, our innovation, and the ingredients we want to put into our products. We pay very close attention to the wellness and health industry at large, and we're really focused on those consumers as our main demographic for Flow.

8. Looking to the future, how will Flow continue to be a leader in innovation?

Following our consumers through their wellness journey is our number one priority, outside of making the world a better place with our values and sustainability at the core. I see the evolution of Flow really coming up with products and services around the core wellness and health movement that will make people's lives healthier, better both physically and mentally, as well as make the world a better place by making it more sustainable using renewable and fully recyclable materials.

We're innovating by not only putting Flow in sparkling form, but also in an aluminum bottle that's custom designed and proprietary to us. It uses 60% less aluminum than a regular can, making it the most environmentally sustainable aluminum format for beverages and water. We're innovating both in putting carbonation into our product and in the bottle itself that will allow us to move into sparkling water with organic flavors.

Recently, we also announced that we're moving into a very lightweight, beautiful glass container for an on-premise launch of Flow, both still and sparkling. Our core business has always been in Tetra Paks, with our manufacturing facility in Aurora, Ontario. We're the global leader in carton water by far, and we were the first company to put mineral water inside a Tetra Pak. The move to aluminum and glass really expands our formats in sustainability, so we're very excited about introducing not only new products but more sustainable formats in beverages and enhanced water.

These innovations will start rolling out in June, July, and August, and will be available in all our channels by fall.