Togather speaks to Alex Wright, co-founder and CEO of DASH Water

Alex is the CEO and Co-founder of DASH Water, a fruit infused water made with simple, natural ingredients. Togather and DASH have agreed a partnership to give Togather supplier's a discount on purchasing DASH Water.

Hi Alex, I hope you're really well. Firstly, how did the idea for Dash come about, and how did you guys go about starting it?

The reason that my co-founder and I first started the brand in 2017 is because we both come from farming backgrounds and we saw firsthand that in the UK and Western world, 40% of fruit and veg goes to waste.

We wanted to use this fruit and veg and to create a great tasting drink that didn't have any of the bad stuff, no sugar or sweetener in there there. So that's where the idea came from.

We initially tested out the products in parks around London, so we spent huge amounts of time popping up a little table, big vat of water, chopping up this wonky fruit and veg, resting the fruit and veg in the spring water, and carbonating it. Then we sampled it with passers by and asked 'Would you swap your usual sugary or artificially filled beverage with something like this?' and the overwhelming feedback was yes, we would.

That gave us the conviction the idea that we had wasn't that crazy and we then decided to take it to market.

So how did you get the product off the ground in the early days?

It took us a fair bit of time to develop the recipes and create the branding for the product, and once we had got to a point we were happy with, we spent the first year trying to get the product stocked in the coolest places that the early adopters for a product like this would pick up, and then hopefully buy more of. And from there on in, we looked to scale the brand into more retail outlets.

And do you have any tips for people trying to get their products into retailers?

I think the main thing that retailers really look for is firstly: what is the brand, or what are the brand's mission and values that they stand for?

So for a brand like DASH, sustainability, wonky, fruit and veg, and then there's also the health aspect as well. The fact that it didn't doesn't have any sugar or sweetener, has always gone down well.

Then the second thing is proof of concept that you've got in other retailers. Are there similar retailers that stop the products, and how well is it selling? And then the third aspect is the commercials, so making sure that the product not only sells well and fits in with the right values, but commercially, it fits and aligns with the retailer's PNL.

What effect has throwing events had for the business? Has it been a good marketing technique for DASH?

Throwing events has always been fantastic for direct impact, and lots of people learning about the product quickly. However it also the impacts further down the line as well, because it's great content visually that you're able to use over and over again.

So useful, both in the short term, but then the long term as well.

We'll keep throwing brand activation events because they're a great way for us to build the brand nationally. We're excited to keep on creating great events to continue building the business further.

And for any founders or marketers reading this, what tips would you give them to make sure they're throwing successful events?

I think the key thing is making sure you're throwing the event in a certain area that's going to be perfect for the type of people that you want to market to. So really think about that before you commit to it.

Then make sure that every touch point that you have at the event is as on brand as possible. We once threw a monkey picnic event that I think of as being a particularly good one. We all made sure we were on brand, dressed up in green dungarees, there was a coconut shy with DASH cans to knock down, and really tried hard to make sure absolutely every aspect of it was on brand.

What would be your dream event to have DASH at?

I'd absolutely love to see more DASH served at Glastonbury for sure. I absolutely love the idea of having a huge DASH branded tent - a wonky picnic tent all to ourselves would be pretty epic. I think also the byproduct of that is maybe I get a couple of tickets that I could go...

And what are the next steps for DASH?

We've recently launched a new orange flavour that tastes absolutely fantastic and we're launching into new international markets, so we've now got a team based in Australia, team based in France, and we're looking to build out our global distribution as well.

On top of that, we have a really fantastic campaign that goes live soon with food-waste charity The Felix Project that we support every year, and are super excited to continue to build that collaboration going forward.