Randal Ius co-founded Happy Planet in 1994. His business partner, now-mayor Gregor Robertson, left the company to pursue his political career, but Ius remains focused on building the local organic juice company.
While Happy Planet initially had success with one product — small bottles of organic juices — Ius said the company has steadily introduced new products. In 2004, the company began making larger, family-sized bottles of juice to compete with other premium juices that were coming onto the market.
"That really was a moment when we realized that we had to utilize innovation and speed [to compete]," Ius said.
A couple of years ago, the company took a larger risk when it introduced a line of fresh, organic soups sold in grocery stores as a healthy convenience food. That, too, was a success.
However, another product category Happy Planet tried to introduce around the same time didn't fare so well. Ius and his team thought fresh sauces would be a big hit.
"We were looking at a category and thinking about Happy Planetizing it," he said.
Even though the company did a lot of market research and the product did well in small customer trials, the sauces just didn't fly.
While issues like timing or perhaps the fact that sauces aren't quite as convenient as heat-and-eat soups were factors, Ius said, "a lot of the key signals were there" to predict product success.
That risk, said Ius, is just part of being in the food business: you can be certain the market is ready for a particular product, yet still see it flop. The important thing is not to be afraid to jump in there next time.
"We always have to be looking at … what categories can we bring innovation to," he said.
on focusing ON product lines: "Right now we're focusing on our core categories, soups and juices. [With the soup], we're into year five. We're getting national [grocery store] listings and a ton of interest, and we're seeing repeat sales … We've used the same principles with all our products: we use … ingredients you would have at home, and we do fresh, unique spins on a favourite recipe."
