Startup interview: Angelina Riccio, Co-founder, Purearth
RTIH sits down with Angelina Riccio who, together with Tenna Annette, is the founder of Purearth, a UK-based subscription service for water kefir, organic juice, cleanses and broths.
RTIH: Tell us about Purearth
AR: Purearth is a fast growing nutrition-based drinks company, with a loyal customer base, creating trends in the flourishing health and wellness market.
We started the company back in 2012, with a whole lot of organic fruit and veg from the farmers market, a home juicer, and a passion for helping others feel their best through the power of plants and nutrition.
It has always been paramount for us to create functional products - meaning every ingredient used has a place and a positive effect on your health. For us it was about creating a company with a purpose.
We have come a long way from our home business and now run a large-scale in-house operation, creating and fermenting our core range of dairy free water kefirs, innovative, tasty drinks and vegan broths.
We are surrounded and supported by a brilliant team of experts in production, PR, marketing and financials, their dedication and enthusiasm has helped grow our brand to where it is today.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?
AR: We are female founders, entrepreneurs and mothers. We have taken inspiration from our families and friends to create unique, tasty and healthy drinks that were previously unavailable in the marketplace. Our drinks are accessible for everyone and can be enjoyed and consumed regularly to promote health and vitality.
We have both always been very health conscious, so naturally, we wanted to build an ethical business, and one with a purpose. Helping people live healthier lives, most organically, has always been the very essence of everything we do.
Having extremely busy lifestyles and feeling the pressures of long working hours with little work-life balance, we knew making changes to our eating habits was a good starting point. By incorporating cold-pressed juices, water kefirs and raw fresh organic foods into our diet, we noticed a huge shift in natural energy levels, as well as better mental clarity and strength.
Having shared this with our friends and family, the word spread quickly about what we were doing, and this is when the Purearth journey began.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
AR: Since our inception, Purearth has always been at the forefront of innovation, curating cleanse programmes with cold-pressed green juices, superfood shots, nut mylks and medicinal infused Chaga teas to support immunity and gut health.
As with any brand bringing something genuinely new to the market, the industry has been incredibly receptive to the products and the business as we have scaled. Along the journey so far, the likes of Gails Bakery, Planet Organic and Wholefoods have been hugely supportive and led the way in both the listings of the drinks online and driving awareness of them with their shopper bases.
More latterly, we have seen larger scale operators including Ocado and Abel & Cole see the uniqueness and broader audience appeal of Water Kefir in particular, and as such have provided opportunities to really accelerate our sales.
Outside of our retail and wholesale partners, it has also been important for us to gain recommendation and endorsement from experts in the gut health and wider nutrition fields.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
AR: Like all startups there have been numerous challenges we have had to overcome over the last seven years. However, there are a couple which stand out more than others.
The first of these involved gaining of our first major customer in Gails Bakery back in 2016. Prior to this we were still batch producing in our home kitchen but realised that this would no longer be possible given the volume requirements.
We had to work out how to scale manufacture by a factor of six, and with limited capital it pushed us to the limit, but we found a way to make it happen and this became a significant steppingstone to where we are today.
“The search for the perfect online shopping experiences continues to be challenging. For some products it is almost impossible to replicate that in-store journey, which can create barriers to purchase. Therefore, finding ways of replacing this to meet the same end requirement for shoppers requires pushing boundaries and investing in new technology”
The second challenge remains ongoing; how do we find the right people to join us and take the brand to the next level? Recognising the need for resource is easy, it’s much harder to find people that share the same vision and have the right skill set to add value.
We have been lucky enough over the last three years to have found fantastic investors and advisors who have helped us bring the right people on board leading to the highly skilled team we have today.
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the online retail sector right now?
AR: With the spike in online shopping over the past six months and the likes of Amazon setting a high bar with the services it provides, one of the biggest challenges is the increased expectation level of customers.
As a brand we always strive to meet these expectations, but the reality is that the capacity, availability, and delivery in the market for some secondary services cannot meet the demand. As a direct to consumer operator reliant on third parties, we must compromise at times to ensure a positive end to end experience.
Secondly, ensuring consistent and engaging communications to both current and potential shoppers is one of the most time challenging aspects for any online retailer. Ladder onto this the fact that one bad review on a site like TrustPilot can destroy sales and customer trust overnight.
Finally, the search for the perfect online shopping experiences continues to be challenging. For some products it is almost impossible to replicate that in-store journey, which can create barriers to purchase. Therefore, finding ways of replacing this to meet the same end requirement for shoppers requires pushing boundaries and investing in new technology.
RTIH: What's the best question about your company or the market asked of you recently by a.) an investor and b.) a customer?
AR: We were recently asked by a customer, how will you keep to your core values whilst scaling the business?
This is a great question, and as we are presented with new opportunities, we ensure we are always listening and learning from our loyal customers, team members and board. It’s essential to have a deep understanding of our customers and what’s important to them and always go back to what’s important to us.
This means always ensuring our products and ingredients are of the highest quality and our products are healthy and functional. It helps us to continuously strive to achieve results of a high standard.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from Purearth over the next 12 months?
AR: We are known for our award winning water kefirs, and gut health is a category which we want to explore further. Working with specialists, we will look to undertake further studies to better understand the connection between live probiotics ‘kefir’ and a healthy gut to develop innovative new products.
Right now, we are working on other ways of introducing probiotics into people’s diets, providing the optimal daily intake in a convenient format. You will also see some significant changes in our website, with a new platform, enhanced customer experience and a variety of leading-edge functionality to really add value to our shoppers’ journey.
Additionally, with new wholesale and retail partners coming onboard on a weekly basis, the availability of our products across the country will increase, driving brand awareness and allowing more people to access the benefits of our drinks.
Finally, as with any fast evolving SME, funding for growth is a key part of our strategy. Our business plan for the next five years will require capital injection to achieve the ambitious targets we have set ourselves, and we will be looking at our next stage raise in the latter half of this year.
