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Juicero
Introduction

Juicero was an American company that designed and manufactured the Juicero Press, a
juice dispenser falsely marketed as a juicer. The Juicero Press was a Wi-Fi connected
machine that used proprietary, single-serving packets of pre-juiced fruits and vegetables that
were sold exclusively by the company by subscription. From 2014 to 2017, the 
Francisco-based firm received $120 million in startup venture capital from investors
The company attracted significant negative media attention when consumers and journalists
discovered that its juice packets could be squeezed just as easily by hand as by the
company's
expensive machine. On September 1, 2017, the company announced that it was suspending
sales of the machine and the packets, repurchasing the machine from its customers and
searching for a buyer for the company and its intellectual property. After its demise, the
company was described in the press as a symbol of a dysfunctional Silicon
Valley culture. The
guardian  wrote that Juicero was an example of "the absurd Silicon Valley startup industry
that raises huge sums of money for solutions to non-problems”.
History

Juicero was founded in 2013 by Doug Evans, who served as CEO until October 2016, when

former president of Coca-Cola North America Jeff Dunn took over the position. The

company's juicing press was originally priced at $699 when launched in March 2016, but
was

reduced to $399 in January 2017, 12 to 18 months ahead of schedule, in response to slow

sales

of the device. Juicero filed a complaint in federal court in April 2017 against a competing

cold-press juicing device, the Froothie Juisir, for allegedly infringing its patent and copying

Juicero's trade dress. Produce packs for the press, containing blends of pulped fruits and

vegetables, cost between $5 and $7 and had a limited lifespan of about eight days.

 Each pack had a QR code which was scanned and verified by the Internet-connected
machine
before it could be used. CEO Jeff Dunn claimed this was to prevent packs from being used
past

their expiration date, and to facilitate food safety recalls, though critics felt that the feature
was

a form of digital rights management as it would prevent operation of the press with any
produce

pack not made by the company. Industrial design for the press was completed by Yves
Behar's

studio Fuseproject, based in San Francisco. On September 1, 2017, the company announced

that it was suspending sales of the juicer and the packets, repurchasing the juicer From its
customers and searching for a buyer for the company and its intellectual property

Controversies:-

In 2017, Juicero was the target of widespread criticism when Bloomberg News published a

story showing that the company's produce packs could be squeezed by hand easily and

effectively, and that hand-squeezing produced juice that was nearly indistinguishable in

quantity and quality from the output of the company's expensive Press device.

The company defended its product and its process, claiming that squeezing packs by hand
created undue mess and promoted a poor user experience, and later offered full refunds to any

customers dissatisfied with their Press device.

After taking apart the device, venture capitalist Ben Einstein considered the press to be "an

incredibly complicated piece of engineering", but that the complexity was unnecessary and

likely arose from a lack of cost constraints during the design process. A simpler and cheaper

implementation, suggested Einstein, would likely have produced much the same quality of

juice at a price several hundred US dollars cheaper.

Why did juicero fail and shutdown

Juicero failed to build a profitable business after raising a substantial amount of funds under

the claim of innovation and disruption. The company received funding from high profile

firms before users realized that the machines were useless.

The high initial price of $699 was already a barrier for many of its potential customers and
the fact that the machine only worked with Wi-Fi was an additional inconvenience. To add to
that, the company put a scannable QR code on each packet serving and the machine would
not function unless it detected the presence of said code. In other words, people could not
press home-made packets but had to order them from Juicero, each packet costed between $5
and $7. After months of slow sales, the company tried to sell its product at $400 and planned
to offer a cheaper version in the months to come.

The company received one last blow when Bloomberg News published a video proving that
simply by hand squeezing the packets you could obtain a full glass of juice and that the $700
machine was really useless. Few months after that, Juicero went bankrupt and has since been
classified as another absurd Silicon Valley startup product that raised huge funds but didn’t
really solve any real problem.

juicero is too expensive to solve real problems:-

for the last three years, juicer has been working in secret to build the future of juice.

Organic fruit and vegetable farmers ship their produce to Juicero's facilities. The company

takes care of all the washing, cutting and prep and puts the veggies into special single-serve

packets. The Juicero machine takes the single-serving packet and presses it automatically into

a glass of cold fresh juice - removing inconvenience bar of drinking freshly-pressed juice,like

a Keurig does for brewed coffee

It's an admirable goal, but with a $700 price tag (and that's not including the juice packets)
the

company has a long way to go.

The Juicero of today is a product for the 1%, not the 90% that truly need an affordable,
healthy,

and convenient source of fruits and vegetables.

Magic in the beginning

The sleek look and feel can be attributed to Doug Evans, the founder and CEO of Juicero

He had a lot of help though from some Silicon Valley greats who weighed in on the design,

including Apple's Jony Ive along and Yves Béhar. The years spent perfecting it have been

supported by venture capital that's approaching $100 million from top tier investors like Artis

Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Thrive Capital

and Campbell Soup Company, among others. The co-founder of smart thermostat Nest, Matt

Rogers, is a Juicero investor and board member.

It's an all-star roster and a war chest of cash for a company that wants to solve the produce
gap

and make sure people can eat healthy in a convenient way.

"Today over 90% of Americans fail to consume the recommended servings per day," founder

and CEO Doug Evans wrote in a Medium post to unveil Juicero. "We call this the Produce

Gap, and though there are many causes for it?-?from how food is marketed and subsidized to

where it's distributed?-?one of the primary reasons people don't eat enough fruits and

vegetables is that they see it as inconvenient.

"... And that's what Juicero is all about. We've made it our mission to help people attain
optimal health by making it easier for them to consume fresh raw foods in the most
convenient way possible."

Yet, its $700 price tag on the appliance will stop Juicero from really fulfilling its mission of
closing the "produce gap" - at least to start.

The real problem

Juicero reveals its target audience from its first advertisement.:

In what's a slightly tongue-and-cheek video, a young couple complains about going to the
farmer's market to spend $50 on local organic fruits and veggies. It's a pain to find the parts to

the juicer they already own and then they have to spend all that time cutting, prepping, and

cleaning the veggies. Once they've made the glass of juice, it's back to cleaning it all.

The Juicero saves the day and makes a fresh glass of juice with none of the clean up, hassle,
or waste. It's easy to see why people would love using it if it tastes better and is healthier than
the juice they normally buy at the store or make themselves. 

The problem is many people can't afford a juicer, let alone an arm's load of fresh vegetables
to make a cold pressed glass. As Juicero's targeting shows, the company is going after a user
base to start that already knows the inconvenience of making their own juices or one that's
been hesitant to own a juicer themselves. Not one that doesn't have a farmer's market down
the block.

Evans acknowledged that the high initial price point might limit its customer base initially,
but strongly believes it will trickle down from here. 

"Unlike sharing a MacBook or an iPhone, this device can actually be shared by many
people," Evans told Business Insider when we brought up the issue. "So you can imagine this
being in a community center or at a news stand or in an office or all sorts of places that don't
require the dedicated access to having it. So i think one of the things that we want to do is
kinda get it out there."

Evans compared Juicero's launch to Tesla's launch of the roadster. What used to be an
expensive car is now more affordable years later with the Tesla Model C.

"Somewhere innovation has to start," Evans said. "The initial market for us, a key driving
factor us, is to make it easy for people. That may be initially people of means." 
Somewhere innovation has to start

Evans does want to bring the price down, but a $200 version rides on the success and failure
of this one.  "We can't subsidize the product. We have to price product so we can exist," he
said.

Evans and his investors - one called it a magical experience equal to the iPhone - believe
strongly that once people taste it they'll be happy to trade their $5 latte for a $5 juice packet. 

Still, the biggest hurdle for Juicero will be sticking to its mission of making raw foods as
convenient as possible when it comes with a $700 price tag that is "convenient" for very few,

even if it is a community center buying one to share.

Evans and the Juicero team did hit on the fact that Silicon Valley should be pouring money
and assembling some of its best designers to work on solving the produce gap.

These are real problems that face an extraordinary amount of people not just in the US, but
abroad. Giving everyone access to fresh vegetables would change the world in a big way that
Silicon Valley is always preaching about.

Yet, this isn't a product that will be sold at the corner store in a neighborhood where fresh
food is hard to come by and people's definition of juice is a Capri-Sun. 

Juicero's team of elite designers and some of the top venture capital dollars, at least initially,
designed a product for themselves. They designed it from the top down instead of the bottom
up, hoping one day that an affordable version could exist. Now whether the high-priced
version is a success or not is the measure on whether it reaches those who may need easy
access to healthy food the most.
The Juicero is an at-home, cold-press juicer that works by squeezing preassembled packs of

fruit and vegetables using around four tons of force (according to the company’s founder,

enough force to lift two Tesla automobiles.) As a Silicon Valley startup, Juicero offered

investors a sophisticated mechanical product combined with a profitable subscription model

in

the popular health and wellness space.

Juicero’s pitch as a potential platform for food delivery was potent; its investors included
heavy

hitters from Mountain View and Menlo Park such as Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins

Caufield & Byers alongside niche venture funds focused on the organic foods space. Dubbed

the “Keurig for juice,” the juice press sold for approximately $700 to individual consumers

when it first came to the market (businesses paid as much as $1200 for the press). Juice packs

cost between five and eight dollars each.

Approximately a year after the product was first released, Bloomberg reported that the sealed

juice packs could be squeezed entirely by hand, without using the expensive “high-tech

machine” that formed the base of the Juicero platform (Huet & Zaleski, 2017).

The piece immediately went viral and the company was pilloried by virtually all major media

outlets for the next week. For example, an Op-Ed in The Washington Post called Juicero, “an

expensive solution to a non-existent cold-pressed juice shortage” and cast dispersions on the

“Silicon Valley mindset” that encouraged it to grow (Emba, 2017).

An article in Quartz drove the point home, writing that Juicero had received millions in
funding

to try to “disrupt” juice, only to be shown up by a human (Griswold, 2017). The day after the

Bloomberg article was published, Juicero CEO Jeff Dunn wrote a long and apologetic

explanation post on the longform social sharing site Medium in which he offered a full refund
to any customer who requested one—irrespective of that customer’s date of purchase.

Alongside his corporate crisis management and customer engagement, he subtly reframed

Juicero from a company focused on health and wellness via consumption of fruits and

vegetables to a company focused on health and wellness via a supply chain that supports food

safety (for example, by automatically alerting the customer to produce recalls).

We can follow the perception, formulation, execution model of SOFT to understand why and

how this frame shifting took place.

We begin with the threshold argument underpinning systems of framing: In the modern

economy, framing threats can arise as a form of nonmarket strategy and, because of the
ubiquity

of online social media networks, those threats can disseminate quickly across a network.

In the case, although the initial story came from a news report, ordinary people—
disconnected

from the organization—spread the story across their online social networks because they

believed that it typified a Silicon Valley mindset that was out-of-touch with their lives.

For the people that shared and commented on the articles, a $400 juicer was already
inherently

ridiculous because they could buy juice from a store and put it in a cup.

The fact that the device was entirely unnecessary to obtain the juice raised the issue to level
at

which they wanted it to be known how they felt about the issue, even though they weren’t

personally-aggrieved customers or financially-interested stakeholders (e.g., Bach & Blake,

2016).

Is it precisely because of these online mobs of opinionated non-customers that organizations

should monitor digital data streams of their operating environment.

Threat Perception

The perception level of a system of framing is designed to help organizations anticipate and

prepare for framing threats that may arise in the future.

While Juicero likely has some degree of monitoring capabilities to help it assess how risky its

positions are (particularly because it admits that it knew that the mechanical juicer was not

required to extract the juice from the packages, because this emerged out of a breaking news

story, it is not likely that the organization was able to engage in proactive frame alignment
prior

to its release.

Thus, for the purposes of our illustration of SOFT, we can assume that Juicero held a reactive

stance, rather than a proactive one. Although we have established that the firm was reacting
to

a framing threat, it is important to identify how Juicero’s strategic framing changed in Dunn’s
open letter so that we can understand precisely what kinds of framing threats Juicero was

facing.

We begin by identifying the organization’s original and new frame, with an eye toward the

understanding master frames that function above them.

The social movements framing literature describes frames as hierarchically nested within one
another.

Master frames, the outermost layer in this hierarchy, are those frames that subsume the

granular, more specific frames underneath them.

As a result, congruent master frames can serve to unite social movements with one another
but,

standing alone, they lack attributional power and mobilizing potency (Benford & Snow,
2000;

Snow & Benford, 1992). For example, “justice” or “civil rights” could be a master frame in

that it has the potential to unite activist groups, but it lacks specific attributional power and,
as

a result, struggles to inspire mobilization.In this case, we identify global public health as

Juicero’s master frame. Dunn, in an interview taken last year, stated that his life goal was to

improve human health after watching his parents suffer through illnesses. Like the master

frames “justice” or “civil rights,” Dunn’s goals lacked attribution and motivational power and

required lower level frames (what are known as frames of contention in the social movements
context).

For Juicero, this began as a call for more consumption of fruits and vegetables. Specifically,

the founder of the company noted that fewer than 20% of adults are meeting the US Health

Department’s recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables and that his product helps

to solve that problem (Kastrenakes, 2017). A summary of Juicero’s frames are presented in

Table.
 Illustrative juicer frames

Bloomberg’s reporting on the juice press presents a threat to the consumption centered
framing

of the company; the “worthless” nature of the $400 press prevents consistency problems with

the founder’s vision of the company, as articulated in its mission statement.

At worst, the Bloomberg report demonstrates a misalignment between the interpretative

orientations of the company and the stakeholders. Social movements theory suggests that
frame

alignment is a necessary condition for movement participation (Snow et al., 1986, p. 464),
and

the reaction to Bloomberg’s reporting suggests that such alignment is similarly essential to

corporate survival as well

Even if the report does not suggest misalignment, it likely causes a chilling effect for

enthusiasm and believability, decreasing frame resonance and, ultimately, the effectiveness of

the strategic framing endeavor.

Strategic Response and Execution :-

Because the information released in the Bloomberg article threatened the viability of the

healthy consumption frame, Dunn’s letter to American consumers took an alternative path:

Instead of focusing on the health benefits of fruit and vegetable consumption, Dunn presented

a technocratic vision of consumer health and safety.

Specifically, in his letter,10 he told potential customers that the closed-loop nature of the
juice

pouches allowed the firm to respond immediately to recall announcements and automatically

and remotely disable recalled pouches so that customers would not be able to use them.

Similarly, Dunn argues in the letter that the data harvested by the juice press is used to
optimize

the firm’s supply chain, which is particularly important given the short-term shelf-life of its

products. Ultimately, while the organizational frame deployed in the Dunn letter does

ultimately fit under the general “human health and wellness” master frame used by Juicero’s

founder, the path is now significantly more complicated than consumption of fruits and

vegetables.
SOFT suggests that there is a relationship between the organization’s monitoring abilities, its

ability to plan a response that is both swift and consistent with the organization’s goals, and
its

ability to execute that response effectively. In this case, the organization recognized that the

framing threat was severe and immediately put the CEO on damage control.

But of course, chief executives do not have the time to handle all the potential framing
threats

that an organization may face, particularly when those organizations are larger and less

hierarchical than a relatively small (albeit well-funded) startup. As a result, the governance

processes that form the foundation for the organizational response strategy are an essential
part

of a system of framing.

An organization’s social media managers must be given enough autonomy to respond

authentically and quickly when appropriate but also have a plan to mobilize top executives

should a severe threat arise. Finally, it is important to recognize that while Dunn chose to
subtly

reframe the product by highlighting alternative links to the health and wellness master frame,

this reframing was a strategic choice.

Dunn could have doubled down on individual consumption, amplifying the extant framing

from the organization’s mission statement. He could have abandoned the individual customer

and focused on his upscale corporate clients who were much less upset about the Bloomberg

report than his individual retail clients.

Or he could have focused on a new set of clients altogether—for example, instead of juice

enthusiasts, he could target farmers that grow their own fruits and vegetables.

No matter what type of frame alignment strategy Dunn chooses as his response to the
framing

threat, he needs to be aware of the organization’s macro-level strategies as well as the trends

uncovered by the digital data streams that monitor the various market and non-market
stakeholder groups in the external operating environment.

Dunn’s choice to maintain his original target group, but slightly expand the values and beliefs

is illustrated in Figure

Juicero frame alignment strategy

The frame alignment strategy map helps visualize who the organization is targeting with a

particular framing strategy. But in addition to answering the “who” question, Dunn and his

team would have had to make a number of additional decisions before finalizing their
strategy:

Why is Medium the best platform for publication? Should they do any A/B testing to validate

the effectiveness of their strategy? How does the organization’s knowledge (or lack thereof)
of

stakeholder attitudes in the external operating environment affect the choice? SOFT gives us
a

grammar to help predict and explain organizational framing decisions. As organizations—

particularly corporations and other commercial entities—become more and more “asset
light,”

their ability to sense, plan for, and respond to framing threats in their external environments

will become more essential over time

juicero’s demise

Juicero’s demise was not unexpected. Its collapse was the consequence of unsustainable
costs,

unflattering headlines and a bungled product launch. After attracting about $134 million in

funding from such illustrious investors as Google Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield &

Byers, Juicero was losing about $4 million a month.Four years after its founding, the startup

was unable to find new backers willing to fund its ambition of making fresh juice accessible
to

all.It wasn’t for a lack of trying. Over the summer, the board had discussed a generous
injection

of capital from existing investors. But it was too late, say about a half-dozen insiders
including

executives, investors and former employees. Weeks later, the board determined the
company’s

operations, which required shipping refrigerated pouches of fresh fruits and vegetables, were

too expensive for the startup. Juicero said it was seeking a buyer and would reimburse

consumers for the price of the device. “As we enter this new chapter, we also want to express

the deepest gratitude to our employees who have poured their hearts and souls into
developing,

launching and growing Juicero over the past 3 years,” the company said in a statement.
Months

before the end, a few of Juicero’s investors had lost faith in the press, touted by founder Doug

Evans as a powerful machine capable of squeezing bagged chunks of fruits and vegetables

into
fresh juice. In April, Bloomberg reported that at least two of Juicero’s backers were surprised

to discover that the startup’s proprietary bags didn’t require Evans’s press but could yield

almost a full glass of juice when squeezed by hand.The news hit the company hard.
A funding

negotiation worth about $55 million fell apart, say the insiders, who asked not to be identified

because many of them signed confidentiality agreements. And for a few days, the web lit up

with scornful Juicero commentary.  A chastened board offered to refund customers unhappy

with the press. The company says fewer than 5 percent of owners returned their machines

during a 30-day window. 

The directors, including Evans, declined to comment or didn’t

respond torequests. Evans, who is now 51, got into the juice business back in 2002, when
he co-

founded Organic Avenue, a New York-based chain of juice bars selling cold-press

concoctions

in glass jars. After working on the business for a decade, he sold a controlling stake to an

investor, who pushed him out. Organic Avenue would soon go under, but Evans was already

at work on his next project, Juicero, which he started in 2013. He debuted the press in 2016

after spending about three years building a dozen prototypes.Several investors praised Evans

for being a brilliant entrepreneur and said he was devoted to the company’s vision to bring

fresh juice to the home kitchen. But he was a scattered and frenetic CEO,  one of them says.

One day Evans pushed staff to focus on North American expansion; the next he’d say the
only

thing that mattered was getting celebrities to post aboutJuicero on their social media

accounts.Some employees say Evans’s passion for wellness was overwhelming. The founder

mostly ate raw and vegan foods, and would sometimes scold non-vegan employees who ate

yogurt or drank milk at team meetings, according to three former employees. He occasionally

referred to dairy products as “cow pus,” they say. For a time, he also refused to allow

employees to expense work meals at non-vegan restaurants, the ex-employees say.In 2016,
the

first iteration of the Juicero was ready to go to market, and Evans embarked on a national
media

tour to promote his invention. While speaking to reporters, Evans heralded his juice press as

an innovative triumph generating sufficient force to hoist a pair of Teslas. The media
campaign,

say two investors and one employee, turned Juicero into a symbol of founder braggadocio
and

Silicon Valley excessDespite the press’s lofty $699 price, Juicero was losing money, say two

people familiar with the startup’s financials. Initially, before operational expenses such as
rent

and employee salaries, each press cost Juicero $750 to manufacture, says one of the people.
After months of limited sales last year, Juicero’s board decided to drop the price to $399.By

October, the board had replaced Evans with a more polished operator jeff Dunn, a former
coco

colo president. The idea was that Dunn would manage daily operations, and Evans would
keep

his board seat and focus on fundraising and recruiting in collaboration with Dunn.Two former

employees say Dunn was capable and practical. Under Dunn, says a former executive, sales

picked up and Juicero began working on a cheaper press, called V2, that the company
planned

to release in 2018. The company considered using a bladder rather than a more expensive

gearbox to sell the new version of the machine for $199, an investor says.As Dunn worked to

cut costs, Evans focused on what he does best: selling. He persuaded Ticketmaster’s parent

company, Live Nation Entertainment Inc., to put Juicero presses in its offices and whole

foods to stock the products in 11 of its Los Angeles stores. Office managers appreciated the

ease with which Juicero’s internet connection helped automatically restock produce packs.

Since launch, Juicero sold more than a million packs, with the average machine owner
pressing

nine packs per week, two people familiar with Juicero’s business say.Evans also set about

finding new venture investors and hoped to collect about $100 million in fresh capital that

would value the startup at about $550 million. By March of this year, Evans had secured
about

$45 million in a financing round led by Artis Ventures. Double Bottom Line

and Campbell Soup Co. also invested. A group of Asian financiers—corralled in a syndicate

organized by the venture arm of UBS China—was also clamoring for a piece of the
remaining

$55 million in stock at the valuation Juicero wanted, say three people familiar with the

financing.By early April, when UBS was four months through its due diligence process, word

spread that Juicero’s pouches could be squeezed by hand. The would-be investors fled, two
insiders say. UBS China told the company it wanted to “revisit” the investment in a few
months

and never finalized a deal, says one of the people. The negative media cycle raised questions

about Evans, and several venture funds expressed concern that he had promised a smaller and

more capable press than what Juicero ultimately delivered. By May, most of Juicero’s
sources

of capital had drifted away.The loss of financing was a devastating blow to Evans, Dunn and

Juicero’s board, which included Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, and David
Krane,

a founding partner of Google’s venture fund, GV. In June, say two of the people, tensions

boiled over at a board meeting when Dunn criticized Evans for meddling in company

operations and being a disruptive influence on staff. By the end of the meeting, Evans had

offered to remove himself—entirely—from the company, though he would retain his board

vote.Money kept dwindling through mid-July, and Dunn announced plans to ax 25 percent of

his 232-person staff. The job cuts did little to stanch the losses, and Dunn asked the board for

an emergency influx of capital to carry the company until it could sell its cheaper press, say

three people familiar with the events. In August, the venture funds with directors on the

board—Artis Ventures, GV and Kleiner Perkins—considered buying up to $60 million worth

of Juicero shares at a 30 percent discount to the last valuation, says one of the people.The

proposal came with conditions. Juicero would need to cut its monthly losses to $1 million,
three

of the people say. On average, Juicero was losing about $4 million a month. Hungry for the

capital, Juicero’s executives and engineers set to work modeling different formulas to cut the

company's burn rate. They concluded a $1 million cap would render the company paralyzed,

say two of the people. Worse, Juicero wouldn’t be able to produce its Hail Mary product, the

Juicero V2.With few other options available, Juicero’s board convened on Aug. 23 and voted

to wind down the company’s operations. On Aug. 31, at Juicero’s final board meeting, they

decided to seek a buyer. The company sharedtheplan publicly the next day and said it would
give customers their money back. The board members felt obligated to offer refunds, two of

the people say; the machines became useless once the company stopped shipping its

proprietary juice packs. Investors say they believe the startup’s intellectual property and

logistics systems are valuable and will recoup some of their investment; one says the
company

has been approached multiple times since putting itself up for sale. Several investors also say

they felt Juicero was a victim of an anti-elitist political and media climate One vote was
missing

from that final board meeting: Evans’s. The founder had quietly resigned from the board the

week before. As Dunn prepared the statement and communicated with Juicero’s board and

executives about how to break the news to staff and the public, Evans was as far away as
some

directors had long wanted. He was in the Nevada desert enjoying Burning Man, an art festival

known for all-night parties and self-expression.Two insiders say Evans had no idea whether

the remaining board members would decide to sell the company or go bankrupt. He only

learned of the outcome while in the desert, after it was finalized. A few days

later,Evans posted a picture on Instagram of the wide and empty desert flats creased with

bicycle tracks. 

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.

Conclusion:

They should have developed A superior product that delivers benefit to its users but instead
they

created a product that no one needs and all the things that juicero does can be done just by bare hands

they should have planned well before developing a product like this and they should have analysed
the

market 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. And the price of the product

was way too high. I think Juicero needs to adopt if they want to succeed as a
business and educate consumers about cold pressed juice so it 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.but unfortunately

they had to shut everything down but,if they do something new in the future they

have to implement everything that they learnt from this failure and do things

differently