As the brand’s footprint surpasses 100,000 doors across the U.S. and U.K., Liquid Death has named Stephen Ballard, a sales professional with over 25 years of experience in the alcohol space, as its first Chief Commercial Officer.
Ballard, who is starting in the role this week, comes to Liquid Death from Mark Anthony Brands, where he served as SVP of Sales since 2018, overseeing brands such as White Claw and helping to lead the company to more than $2 billion in sales. Prior to that, he held sales roles at Stoli Group USA, Russian Standard Vodka and Canandaigua Wine Company.
Ballard is charged with overseeing field sales, distribution, national accounts and international expansion. He will report directly to Liquid Death co-founder and CEO Mike Cessario.
Bringing in someone with experience in alcohol made sense for Liquid Death, which he said tends to “operate more like a beer company” than a non-alc brand in both distribution strategy and marketing, explained Cessario, likening the company’s focus on humor in its marketing and packaging as one key connector between the brand and the beer industry.
“We have a lot of the same networking strategies [as beer brands],” Cessario said. “We find folks who understand beer, in that world, just more instantly get what to do with our brand. And when you take someone who’s just purely non-alc who’s never thought that way, you kind of gotta bring them over to thinking like a beer company when they’ve not really done that.”
Ballard told BevNET his first priorities are to meet the team and begin work on developing the brand’s strategy for 2024. Liquid Death’s interplay between the non-alc and alcohol space, he added, is well within his comfort zone.
“It’s the same network that I was used to experiencing before,” Ballard said. “And it’s about growing it one distributor, one retailer at a time.”
The appointment comes as Liquid Death continues to grow its retail presence in the U.S. and the U.K. Its canned waters, sparkling waters and iced teas are now available in chains such as 7-Eleven, Albertsons, Kroger, Publix, Safeway, Sprouts, Target, Walmart and Whole Foods, among others.
Last year, Liquid Death announced a $700 million valuation following the close of a Series D funding round that brought the company to over $195 million in total investment to date. This summer, a report suggested that the business has now hired Goldman Sachs to explore a potential IPO next year.
This week, Cessario declined to comment on the report but said the company wants to keep its options open, with an IPO being just one future possibility.
“I’ve said this for a long time, we’re really just focused on building a huge business with really solid fundamentals and as long as we keep doing that we’ll have options for what we want to do,” Cessario said. “Whether that option is an IPO or whether that option is a strategic partnership, we always want to preserve optionality.”
Innovation and Scale
Earlier this year, Liquid Death completed its transition from European to domestic manufacturing, with all its products now made in the U.S. As part of the move, the brand switched its format from 16.9 oz. cans to taller 19.2 oz. cans. While that has meant reducing multipacks from 12 to 8 cans each, Cessario said the larger format has been well-received by consumers and the 8-packs are priced lower than the previous 12-pack format.
A pitch deck from last year put Liquid Death’s 2022 gross profit per can at 11%, with production costs inflated to 42% and ocean freight accounting for 47% of each can’s SRP. At the time, the company projected that the shift to U.S. manufacturing would increase gross profit to 47% by 2024 as all overseas shipping is phased out.
Although he did not share specific numbers, Cessario said the transition has already greatly reduced its shipping and input costs and the business has now achieved what he called “best in class” margins for the RTD beverage space, even as the company still “works out the kinks” that come with a supply chain overhaul.
Localized manufacturing is also now helping Liquid Death to innovate faster. Cessario credited the brand’s streamlined domestic manufacturing for helping make possible its first exclusive flavor in Walmart this summer, Slaughter Berry Iced Tea.
Retailer demand may spur additional flavor innovation. Cessario noted that other flavored sparkling water brands such as LaCroix and Bubly often tout dozens of different flavors, while Liquid Death only has four.
There also may be a more deliberate approach to how Liquid Death rolls out commercials and promotions. He pointed to YouTubers like MrBeast, who rather than a constant stream of low-effort content tends to release one big video each month, as a model for the brand to follow.
This year’s campaigns have included partnerships with celebrities like Travis Barker, Whitney Cummings and Steve-O, which Cessario said has helped to further accelerate brand awareness.
“Less is more, quality over quantity,” he said. “Especially in the digital space, people are just getting bombarded with hundreds of thousands of pieces of content constantly. So if you really want to stand out, the bar for how good something has to be is a lot higher than I think a lot of brands realize, and it’s not possible to do that every single day.”