PUR – All Natural Beverages – “the comeback“

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PUR was founded in 2009 out of necessity.  I became a full time single father of 4 kids after their mother unexpectedly passed away.  The children were aged 5-13 at the time.  I knew that he needed to find a way to be home with the children, but also needed to find a way to support the family.

The business that I owned at the time, was a consulting business whereby I was out of town roughly ten days per month visiting clients in their State.

This was obviously not going to be a good fit for a single full time father of four.

After discussing ideas with friends of mine, I took the money that I had saved and decided to take a gamble on becoming a producer of the beverage line you see here.

The idea behind the product line was derived from a very simple idea and concept…”we can send humans to the moon, but nobody has figured out how to make a great tasting beverage that is good for you”?

Believe it or not, that was the idea that was so overwhelmingly simplistic, that solving that simple equation became the driving force behind bringing PUR to the market.

After spending close to a year deciding on the taste, ingredients, vitamin blend and packaging, the first product was produced in 2011.  

We started with one flavor, PUR Acai Berry.  It was an instant hit, both for it’s amazing taste but also it’s ingredient blend and top notch packaging.

It was such a hit, that the nation’s largest distributor SuperValu picked up the item for distribution across nine states.  Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington and Oregon.

This led to the launch of our second flavor, PUR Pom.  Once produced, SuperValu took the new item as well.

This led to the items being picked up Nationally by Albertson’s Supermarkets in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.

This led to our third flavor being produced and placed in all of the same places.

However, PUR’s instant success and placement caused a disruption in the beverage world.  

Enter the world of “competition by litigation”.

Although we had already gotten our PUR trademark registered with the USPTO, this doesn’t stop competitors with large pocket books to bring meritless suits in an effort to run the competition out of money, and ultimately remove them from the market.

Although PUR was successful in both litigations against the large beverage brands, the funds to defend those suits are not insurable. (trademark litigation is a specific and named exclusion on all policies)  

Further, the large beverage brand (not sure we can name them, but you can certainly find the information by an internet search for PUR Beverages Trademark) sent cease and desist letters to the retailers that carried the product and the vendors that provided the ingredients, cans, boxes, etc.

This led to PUR’s attorneys recommending not reselling the product to those large channels because if the the large beverage companies prevailed, PUR would have to repay all of the profits in damages, as well, would have to pull all the product off the shelves and pay the retailers and distributors back.

Although the Large Beverage Brand did slow PUR’s progress, they didn’t kill PUR completely.  

PUR was able to sustain enough sales to stay afloat and sell through the remainder of the product to independent grocers in various parts of the Country.  (God Bless the independents… they are amazing people and business owners and are being swallowed up by the large Grocers)

In addition, the PUR Beverages trademark received “incontestable” status from the USPTO.  This was a huge win for PUR, as it now means that there isn’t a company in the world that can ever sue PUR for trademark infringement again.

With the threat of any lawsuits in our rear view mirror, we are now ready to get our amazing product line back in the market front and center, where it once was and where it belongs for good.

This is where we need you.  Quite honestly, we are unable to recover any of the funds that were used to pay for the defense of the meritless litigation.  

As a family owned business, $350,000 litigation costs that are unrecoverable regardless of the positive outcome of the suits was just not a hit that we were able to take.  They knew this, and this is the litigation tactic that big business uses to put competitors out of business.

We wrote this to be completely transparent.  

Most recognize our brand, therefore seeing the brand on a crowd funding site may be a bit confusing.  We wanted to tell the story, and ask for your help.

Lastly, despite all of the “stuff” we were put through, my kids are all happy, healthy and well adjusted adults that are chasing their own dreams and making their own families.

I’d love nothing more than to be able to build PUR back up so that this endeavor that took our entire savings, will not have been done in vain and PUR can be enjoyed by the millions that already tried it and the millions more that haven’t gotten their chance.

Thank you for your support.