Case Study
With Crisp, Aura Bora avoids stock-outs and keeps sales sparkling.
With Crisp’s Unified Distributor dashboard, sparkling water brand Aura Bora was able to save tens of thousands of dollars by avoiding stock-outs.
Situation
More portals, more problems
Aura Bora believes that water – and business – should be a little more flavorful. It started with husband and wife duo Paul and Maddie Voge, who were disappointed by the lack of imagination found in the beverages found in their office fridge. So they created Aura Bora: a sparkling water bursting with creative flavors derived from herbs, fruits, and flowers – with no added sweeteners or preservatives.
Aura Bora describes their distribution growth as “steep, but intentional,” allowing them to fully deliver on all of their retail partnerships. But after a successful appearance on Shark Tank in 2021, they were inundated with more DTC orders in a single day than the entire history of their website.
With so much going on, Aura Bora’s lean team couldn’t continue to spend time with their heads buried in vendor portals. “I always needed a second screen to have multiple portals up at the same time,” CEO Paul Voge recalls. “It was ‘death by portals.’” When he saw that Crisp could consolidate all of that information in one place, it was an easy choice.
Solution
Working smarter, not harder
With Crisp, Paul quickly had a picture of the company’s distributor business in one convenient location. As an in-demand brand with high seasonality, one of Aura Bora’s biggest priorities is managing inventory to keep Distribution Centers (DCs) and retailers in full supply. Paul knows that data is his most powerful tool here: “With Crisp, we can go from reacting to seasonality to planning into seasonality,” he explains.
Aura Bora’s sales team uses Crisp to check inventory by SKU and weeks of supply daily at key warehouse locations. Then, they overlay this inventory data with other retailer data sources and category data from SPINS, giving them a full picture of where sales are growing and which DCs those key accounts pull from. With this full-picture view, they can proactively work with their KeHE relationship manager to be prepared. Paul estimates that Crisp has helped Aura Bora save tens of thousands of dollars in revenue by avoiding stock-outs – which more than pays for the cost of the platform.
Aura Bora’s team finds Crisp’s Unified Distributor Dashboard especially valuable, because it harmonizes all of their distributor data in one place. “Without a unified dashboard view in Crisp, you are constantly wasting time translating units and numbers,” Paul explains. “Crisp dashboards remove those unnecessary steps.” Paul says Crisp saves him several hours per week, which enables the brand to work smarter and ultimately, achieve bigger and better things.
Benefits bubbled up:
• Saved tens of thousands in avoided stock-outs
• Saved hours per month on report pulling and unit conversion
• Leveraged data for forecasting and planning
• Measured lift from marketing and promotional spend
Favorite Insight:
Harmonized Distributor Dashboard:
A consolidation of harmonized sales and inventory data from distributors.
“I don’t think we would be able to execute on such an aggressive DTC strategy as well as aggressive retail expansion if we weren’t figuring out how to harness greater efficiency. Crisp is a ‘work smarter’ solution.”
Paul Voge
Founder & CEO
Always be Data Ready with Crisp
Crisp allows food brands and retailers to stay ahead of rapidly evolving consumer behavior, identify potential supply chain disruptions, track inventory and product performance. It’s easy and quick to get started so you can be Data Ready.