An eco-friendly canned water and soft drink brand beloved by Gen Z – thanks to its high profile social media marketing and brand ambassadors – is set to temporarily stop selling outside of the US over production concerns.
Liquid Death, founded by Mike Cessario in Los Angeles, hit the ground running in the States after its 2019 debut.
In March last year, the company was valued at $1.4 billion (£1.1 billion), double its worth in 2022, according to Forbes.
However, despite its successes in the US, the brand this week announced its decision to temporarily pause sales outside of its domestic market, including in the UK.
A spokeswoman for Liquid Death told The Grocer: ‘Despite strong demand and brand awareness growth in our limited international rollout, we are temporarily pausing international efforts since we no longer have production capabilities outside of the US.’
The spokesperson outlined future plans to meet international demands once their supply chain, which shifted production from the US to Austria last year, can support these efforts.
Liquid Death failed to find similar levels of success in the UK compared to America, with sales in Tesco, Iceland, Ocado, Nisa, and Co-op, amounting to £2 million in the 52 weeks ending in September last year, according to NIQ via The Grocer.
A source told The Grocer that ‘eye watering amounts of excess stock,’ are currently on offer to discount buyers across the UK and Europe.
The managing director added to the brand’s turbulence earlier this month when he announced his exit from the company.
Ben Dando wrote on LinkedIn at the time: ‘After a career highlight, my time at Liquid Death has come to an end.
‘Thank you to everyone involved these past three years. What a journey it has been and none of the successes and learnings were possible without you.’
MailOnline has contacted Liquid Death for comment.
Liquid Death, which retails at £5.50 for four at Tesco, has capitalised on sober consumers, and has collaborated with teetotal celebrities, such as Kourtney Kardashian’s husband Travis Barker.
The brand, also selling sparkling water and iced teas like ‘Mango Chainsaw’ and ‘Severed Lime’, now has 4.9 million followers on Instagram – outstripping Pepsi’s 2 million.
Liquid Death’s ‘natural minerals and electrolytes’ are ‘good for your body’, according to the makers.
However, what appeared to be driving its US success is the controversial marketing campaign masterminded by founder Mike Cessario, 41.
After working on promotions for Netflix shows, including Stranger Things, Cessario knew the power of social media, and launched the company with an advertisement on Facebook even before it had a product to sell.
The ad, which featured a man being waterboarded with a can of Liquid Death, was soon banned by Facebook – but not before it got three million views.
In another unusual video, a cartoon hiker was decapitated by an axe-wielding figure with a Liquid Death can for a head.
Blood then spurted everywhere as the same figure sliced an office worker in half, chopped the legs off a skateboarder and forced a chef’s head into a food blender.
‘We don’t want to make marketing, we want to make people laugh,’ Cessario told Forbes.
Whether the scenes qualify as humour is debatable, but what environmentalists certainly don’t find funny are claims that canned water helps the planet because aluminium packaging is easy to recycle.
One of Liquid Death’s slogans is ‘Death to Plastic’, and the firm makes much of the fact that its cans are made of more than 70 per cent recycled material.
However, environmental group Green Alliance points out that the other 30 per cent still has to be mined, creating a toxic by-product called red mud, which is stored in vast reservoirs.
In 2010, seven people died and 120 suffered burns after a leak from a red mud reservoir in Hungary.
Green Alliance recommended that anyone who cares about the environment should choose tap water. But that, of course, won’t help sales of Liquid Death.
‘Don’t be scared, it’s just water,’ says their slogan on a huge display in the window at the Whole Foods store in Kensington, west London, one of the few British places Liquid Death is currently available.
Green Alliance said that if half the UK’s plastic water bottles were replaced with cans, mining the aluminium could generate 162,000 tons of toxic waste: enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall six times over.
