With Crisp, Aura Bora avoids stock-outs and keeps sales sparkling

Aura Bora’s fast-moving team tracks inventory daily in Crisp to keep every warehouse in full supply, helping sales skyrocket across DTC and retail.

Earthly ingredients, otherworldly flavors

Aura Bora believes that water – and business – should be a little more flavorful. It started with husband and wife duo Paul and Maddie Voge, who at the time were both working in the tech sector. They noticed that the most frequently consumed drink in the office fridge was sparkling water, but were disappointed by the lack of imagination found in the existing offerings. Both environmentalists with a love for the outdoors, the two set out to make a sustainable sparkling brand that challenged people to “drink weird water.” Enter Aura Bora: a sparkling water made from herbs, fruits, and flowers (think cactus with rose petals, lemongrass coconut, and lavender cucumber). Even more unique, Aura Bora boasts no added sweeteners or preservatives, and donates 1% of its proceeds to environmental causes.

Aura Bora first charted its way into the retail world through the natural channel in 2020, where the brand found early adopters looking to try new, exciting flavors. They started with independent stores, then spread to regional natural chains, followed by a national launch with Sprouts this past summer. Now, their botanical blends are expanding into conventional grocers like Safeway and Albertsons. Aura Bora describes their distribution growth as “steep, but intentional,” allowing them to fully deliver on all of their retail partnerships. But there were still some inflection points in demand: when Paul and Maddie got a call from the producers of Shark Tank inviting them to pitch the following week, they hopped on a plane and ended up with an investment. And when the episode aired in 2021, they were inundated with more DTC orders in a single day than the entire history of their website.

More portals, more problems

As CEO, Paul Voge does more than pitch to the sharks: he leads product development and innovation, brand and marketing, commercialization, operations, and administration. Sound like a lot? It is, but that keeps things interesting. “Every day is a new adventure,” Paul says.

With so much going on, Aura Bora’s lean team couldn’t continue to spend time with their heads buried in vendor portals to manage their growing distributor and retailer partnerships. “I always needed a second screen to have multiple portals up at the same time,” Paul recalls. “It was ‘death by portals.’” When he saw that Crisp could help him consolidate all of that information in one place, it was an easy choice.

A plan for all seasons

With Crisp, Paul quickly had a picture of the company’s distributor business in one convenient location. As an in-demand brand, one of Aura Bora’s biggest priorities is managing inventory to keep Distribution Centers (DCs) and retailers in full supply. This is particularly important for sparkling water, which has one of the highest degrees of seasonality of all CPG products. As Paul explains, “High seasonality means we have a very dynamic inventory management challenge on our hands.” For example, Aura Bora has to ensure they aren’t overstocked with inventory that will just sit in warehouses during the cooler months. At the same time, the team has to adequately ramp up DC inventory as peak season starts to kick in, and backfill the depletions from the warehouse quickly enough. Paul knows that data is his most powerful tool here: “With Crisp, we can go from reacting to seasonality to planning into seasonality,” he explains.

To start, Aura Bora’s sales team uses Crisp to check inventory by SKU and weeks of supply daily at key warehouse locations. Then, they overlay this inventory data with other retailer data sources and category data from SPINS, giving them a full picture of where sales are growing and which DCs those key accounts pull from. For example, they might see that if an order comes in at the KeHE Chino warehouse in the next 4 weeks, it will wipe out the existing inventory. They can see that this PO is coming, and proactively work with their KeHE relationship manager to be prepared. Ultimately, this creates a win-win for Aura Bora and for buyers: “We’re both achieving the same end goal: product on the shelf that the consumer can buy,” Paul explains.

“With Crisp, we can go from reacting to seasonality to planning into seasonality.”

Paul Voge, Co-Founder and CEO

Paul can track the impact of these efforts, drilling down all the way to the store level to see the sales value of products successfully kept in stock. He estimates that Crisp has helped Aura Bora save tens of thousands of dollars in revenue by avoiding stock-outs – which more than pays for the cost of the platform.

As a company that prioritizes sustainability, Aura Bora is conscious of oversupply as well – and that also takes advanced planning. “Once the product is at the distributor’s warehouse, it’s out of your hands,” Paul explains. “So we need to think about oversupply management before products actually get onto the truck.”  His team works to anticipate just how much is needed, and find ways to use any extra product through additional sales channels. 

A global view of the business

Aura Bora’s team finds Crisp’s Harmonized Distributor Dashboard especially valuable, because it consolidates all of their distributor data in one place. This means standardizing units, like items versus cases, so that he can see across their distributor business easily. “Without a unified dashboard view in Crisp, you are constantly doing algebra of converting units and numbers,” Paul explains. “The Harmonized Distributor dashboards remove unnecessary steps; otherwise you just waste so much time in translation.” 

This comprehensive view of the business goes directly into Aura Bora’s business planning. In fact, they’re currently forecasting for the year ahead, using historical data from Crisp to chart the course of future growth and help all aspects of the business align accordingly. “We make smarter forward-facing assumptions based on the ability to put so many historic data points in conversation with each other,” Paul says. To keep up with their plans, the team has a weekly operations call every Tuesday, where they pull up Crisp to quickly run through the latest inventory numbers. 

“I don’t think we would be able to execute on such an aggressive DTC strategy as well as aggressive retail expansion if we weren’t figuring out how to harness greater efficiency in how we work. We’re trying to work smarter, not harder, and Crisp is a ‘work smarter’ solution.”

Paul Voge, Co-Founder and CEO

Working smarter, not harder

Using data as much as he does, Paul says Crisp saves him several hours per week, which is valuable time for a lean team moving at Aura Bora’s pace. “I don’t think we would be able to execute on such an aggressive DTC strategy as well as aggressive retail expansion if we weren’t figuring out how to harness greater efficiency in how we work,” Paul says. “Crisp helps us do this. We’re trying to work smarter, not harder, and Crisp is a ‘work smarter’ solution.”

There’s plenty of work left to do. Aura Bora will be launching at least two more limited edition flavors on their site this year, a favorite among their devoted DTC fanbase. Plus, there are a host of bold new flavors planned in 2023, and who knows, maybe another secret menu. Sign up for Aura Bora’s email or text alerts, or follow them on social, for a first taste! 

To learn how Crisp data can power your brand, contact us for a demo. For more inspiring stories and data best practices, subscribe to the blog.