How Juicero Can Succeed

Juicero has received a lot of hate the past few months. People are calling it expensive, unnecessary, and representative of the Silicon Valley culture. While I agree that their current product misses the mark, I do think they have the potential to be a serious competitor in the juice industry if they reevaluate their approach to the market. As such, I’ve outlined exactly how they can redesign their product and business strategy for greater success.

Juicero’s current product offering is an expensive juice press that squeezes pre-packaged bags of Juicero brand juice. The bags, which are filled with chopped organic produce, get placed into the Juicero Press where they are cold pressed into fresh juice. This is a no-mess solution for consumers to enjoy fresh, cold pressed juice. The product itself is marketed as the juice equivalent of a Keurig coffee maker and their revenue comes from selling bags of juice just like Keurig sells coffee pods. This sounds like a solid business plan but there are two huge problems: the product is prohibitively expensive for most consumers and the press only accepts pre-packaged bags of juice so consumer have little customization of their drink.

I see nothing wrong with the underlying business strategy but their approach to attracting customers is way off. To truly be successful in their industry Juicero needs to lower their barrier of entry for consumers. Their product is not essential for most people and doesn’t solve a common problem, so widespread adoption will only occur if enough people are attracted to the Juicero brand and decide to splurge on their products. This is why I think they need to redesign their business strategy and product line to include three distinct product tiers: a low cost bottled juice, a mid cost juice bag presser, and a premium juice presser. This will allow more consumers to become intimate with the Juicero brand and lead to many people buying their more expensive juice press products.

The key to success is bottled juice. Currently, cold press consumer juicers sell for a few hundred dollars and that makes them too expensive for most buyers. It’s pretty optimistic on Juicero’s part to expect consumers to splurge on a cold press when most have never tried cold pressed juice before and there are cheaper juicing options available. To combat this problem, consumers need an opportunity to learn about the benefits of cold pressed juice and the best way to do that is by selling bottles of the stuff so they can taste the difference. Juicero already has connections with organic farms that supply produce for their juice bags so setting up infrastructure for a large-scale press and bottling operation shouldn’t be too difficult. Juicero also needs to launch an effective marketing and branding campaign so consumers form a connection with their bottled juice. Getting people excited about the bottled juice will likely turn them into loyal supporters of the Juicero brand and will then translate into more people opting for a Juicero Press if they decide to make the leap and buy a home juicer.

Once consumers gain brand awareness of Juicero and cold pressed juice in general, they’ll be more inclined to buy a home juicer. This is where the mid-tier product comes in. Juicero’s current product, a pre-packaged juice bag presser, makes sense for a mid-tier product but it’s currently selling at a premium price point. The key to success for this product is selling the presser at virtually no markup and then using the pre-packaged bags to generate revenue. To make it enticing to consumers the product will have to sell for around $100 to $200, which is significantly lower than the current price. The good news is that this price drop is feasible because their current product is over engineered. Based on videos of people squeezing Juicero juice bags by hand, it’s clear that the heavy-duty pressing mechanism inside their product is over engineered. And when you look at a teardown of the product it’s clear that redesigning the internal mechanisms to use fewer complex machined parts and more injection molded plastic parts can cut costs significantly. If costs can be reduced enough to make the Juicero Press more approachable for consumers, the product can definitely become the Keurig of juicers for homes and offices.

Though bottled and pre-packaged bags of juice will satisfy many consumers, there is still a market for a cold press that accepts freshly cut produce. This is where Juicero’s premium juice press comes in. It needs to be just as mess-free and easy to use as their mid-tier press but also needs to press fresh produce instead of pre-packaged bags. This is doable without much additional engineering and design work, but it will require a premium price tag to be economically viable. The pressing mechanism will need to be heavy duty but, because Juicero’s current mechanism is already over-engineered, they should be able to use their current design. The only additional design work is figuring out how to make the product mess-free. I think the best approach is to keep the bag idea of their mid-tier product but make them resealable so consumers can place their own produce inside. In essence you’d chop up your fruits and vegetable, place them in a Ziploc style bag, place that in the press, and out comes your freshly pressed juice. The only cleanup is washing your knife and cutting board and throwing away your spent bag of pressed produce. The only real challenge is designing a bag that’s both flexible enough to be resealable and durable enough to not explode inside the press. But because it’s a premium product, it’s reasonable to expect a moderate price tag for a set of these bags. As such, I’m confident an engineering solution can be found that is also economically viable. Given that this would be the only no-mess juice press on the market, it could very well become a top seller in the premium home juice pressing market. And because the bags offer Juicero a continuous source of revenue, their premium product is the only one that makes money after the initial sale.

So that is the three-tiered approach that I think Juicero needs to adopt if they want to succeed as a business. It educates consumers about cold pressed juice excites them about the Juicero brand, and makes the idea of buying a Juicero press much more approachable. If Juicero does decide to redesign their business strategy and product line, I’m sure they will see much greater success in the industry.