Paul Voge is the founder and CEO of Aura Bora. The company deals with the production of sparkling waters made from flowers, herbs, and fruits.
He started several business journeys back in high school. Paul Voge used to indulge in any business activity involving money. Before attaining the age of 18, he participated in baseball card auctioneering with a neighboring friend. He was a risk-taker. Voge is an alumnus of UCL.
Immediately after graduation, he secured employment at Saturn Five, which deals with building and expanding startups. From the job, he gained a lot of marketing experience. Today, he inspires young people to set up their businesses. His wife is also the co-founder of Madeleine. They stay together in San Francisco.
Since I was a kid, I used to indulge in baseball cards. In college, I was selling shirts at a lower price. All my life has been full of business ideas. College was the best place to hawk various staff in the student’s hostel. It was easier to get clients. My mom would always laugh and congratulate me on that.
Over time, I wasn’t happy with what companies offered sparkling water. So throughout my life, I have been drinking extra sparkling water. My wife and I grew up in hard situations where drinking soda was like a lucky day. So we were both raised drinking sparkling water.
In all my job offices, we consumed all sorts of Kettle Potato Chips, Jeni’s Ice Cream, Sam Adams Beer, and Justin’s Peanut Butter. I felt like something we take daily is missing from the list of products. Products with natural ingredients were off the market. I tried telling one of my friends about it, and he shouted that we all are just mediocre. So we started drinking almost 6-10 cans daily.
Together with my wife in the kitchen, we could mix different flavors of sodas to come up with something tasty. So we took our samples to friends and family members. It went from terrible to editing, to better, to tasty flavors. For more than three months, we were still trying to mix ingredients to come up with something flavored. Finally, in early 2019, we were ready to get our product to the market. We had almost five recipes that could earn us something.
Certainly, many brands sell the same products like Jeni’s, Sam Adams, and Kettle. However, all of this is very innovative in the product. They have fixed different medium flavors to come up with a final product. We took that idea and thought about taking other flavors from natural foodstuffs. Some raw materials include prickly pear margarita, peppermint watermelon salad, and lavender tea. We blend all of these and prepare different flavors of sparkling water.
In the end, we had three different types of products. We accommodate everyone, from those looking for a soda flavor to a cocktail mix or mocktail. But whenever you are creating something, don’t add too much taste until it becomes intimidating. You can lose customers. That is what we try to avoid. One of the best examples is Ice-cream; you can try different samples if you go to their production shop. You will find some of the weird.
On most occasions, I heard people say, ‘I don’t like the sparkling water.’ Their main reason was the citric acid that tasted at the back of the mouth after drinking. A good sample is the La Crox with such taste. We were very keen on that. We aimed to carbonate the sparkling water and add a little taste. Furthermore, we used different products and excluded citric acid. Basil and lemongrass played a major role at this point.
Our vision is “Drink Weird Water,” which sounds funny. It’s very tempting, and we have found clients buying our water only because of that tagline. For sure, it originated from one client who had a negative view. Our first client said the water was very weird in the mouth. Later in the evening, I called him. “This is Paul Voge from Aura, how did you find our water weird, please?”. We took other samples to his home, and we were amazed because he grabbed all of them. In our talk, I noticed how his love for flowers was mutual.
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We sold the product to people who liked testing new commodities during our first months. Our marketing circle was very small. So the weird people made us shine. Some of the customers were having a new adventure.
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Most of our customers cherished the Lemongrass coconut product from the shelves. We communicated through emails and social media channels. Whenever we create a new flavor, we can email some clients. People who didn’t want adventure could go mad about those email popups.
Any entrepreneur must have the best way to communicate and interact with clients. I am privileged to say that my beautiful wife is a creative copywriter. Her jokey conversation can attract you. She writes a lot for my company. To add to that, people lie about being part of a certain community. We have set up a brand with a few members to form our online community.
Sometimes my wife will post frogs in a hat, which looks off target. But her skills are on another level. These different frogs portray how we mix different ingredients to develop quality products. I like her creativity. Our competitors follow and unfollow us, and we are proud of that.
For the first 16 months, there were just two of us. It has been two years since we sold the first bottle of water. In 2021, we started hiring employees. At that moment, we were very skilled, and we knew what we wanted. One is talented in marketing, while the other is an expert in sales. In addition, we share ideas concerning finance.
At first, we hired part-time board members. A good example is our director, who was also the sales manager at GT’s Kombucha. He had eight years of experience in the selling department. We learned a lot from their skills. In the group of employees, we had newbies who were very dedicated to learning how our company works. Some of them are now senior social media managers. I feel happy when a young man looks up to me.
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I can say it’s harder to teach someone about a simple thing like social media management. You might see it as a simple task, but it is tiresome from my experience with the new folk. We made sure every employer had communication skills to entice our customers. Whenever the team creates a new product, it has to pass through various tests before releasing it to the market.
Our company is still growing. We are looking forward to expanding its roots to about 2500 stores. Most of our sales get higher during the last two months of the year. Several retailers are always happy to give us feedback on sales. Every month, we experience robust sales, which motivates us to work even harder.
We yearn to set up stores in new regions around the world. I do attend a lot of commercial meetings to showcase my product. This method has earned me some clients and long-term friends. Furthermore, we have received some partnership calls from various companies. Such opportunities are a blessing to us.
During specific seasons, we offer different flavors to our retail shops. For example, we recently created Ginger Meyer Lemon. Next, we are thinking about ElderFlower or GrapeFruit. Some changes make it fun, and customers expect new products every three months.
In every store, we have pictures of people shopping for sparkling waters. Our advertisement manager tries to attract customers’ attention as creatively as possible. We ensure everything around our business is fun for the customers. As Jeff Bezos used to say, ‘Clients are the priority. Those small adverts have always won big money for us.
Balancing finance is sometimes hectic, especially when your company is heading towards million-dollar revenue. If you have early investors, it’s time to think about giving back their shares. On the other hand, if you don’t have a financial analyst, you might mess up on luxuries forgetting your core business.
Lastly, I want to thank my wife and myself for the great journey with Aura Bora. We started with the idea of wanting to make our sparkling water, then offering it to friends, finally to grocery stores. Currently, it’s a big business in America. That’s a minor achievement that needs to be cherished. We are still pushing harder.
To a younger Paul Voge, be consistent and passionate while performing a task. If life gives you a blow, you must wake up and try again. Everything was invented through trial and error. Widen your circle with legit friends chasing the same goal as you.
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