At Many a Trendy Spot, Perrier Has Been Replaced as the Water du Jour
In an underground New York nightclub called Rapp, where groups such as Old Skull play to a young crowd, the drink of the day is a bottled water imported from France.
But the customers are not holding those little green Perrier bottles. They’re drinking from clear plastic containers plastered with the Evian label.
“You even see the band swigging Evian,” said Irma Zandl, a marketing consultant who studies teen-age consumers. “Perrier is really in the domain of the older Yuppie. This Evian thing is really a young thing.”
From Manhattan dance clubs to West Los Angeles fitness centers, Perrier no longer reigns as the trend-setting thirst quencher. Even before the recent recall of Perrier because of a chemical contamination, products such as Evian, Ramlosa of Sweden and San Pellegrino from Italy had become the latest status symbols among bottled water fans.
“They were slowing down anyway,” Tom Pirko, a beverage industry consultant, said of Perrier. “They have lost some of their cachet.”
Beverage analysts say newcomers will gain even more ground against Perrier after traces of the chemical benzene were found in its product in North Carolina. Benzene in high doses has been linked to cancer in animals.
Perrier has since withdrawn its product from supermarkets and restaurants and expects to resume shipments to the United States in two to three weeks. The company said the benzene was most likely residue from a cleaning solution used in its bottling plant.
Perrier’s competitors “now have a clear field on which to get on the (supermarket) shelf,” said Michael Belas, president of Beverage Marketing Corp., a consulting firm.
Imported bottled water claims only a tiny portion--less than 3%--of the nearly 2 billion gallons sold in the United States. But it is the fastest-growing category, with annual consumption rising at a 10% clip, Belas said.
Perrier dominates the imported-water category, with 80% of sales. Furthermore, it also owns other well-known water companies--like Poland Springs, Calistoga and Arrowhead--that make it the largest seller of bottled waters in the United States.
In the late 1970s, Perrier launched a marketing campaign aimed at health- and status-conscious adults that whetted the American consumer’s appetite for bottled water. Since then, U.S. per-capita consumption of bottled water has jumped to 7.2 gallons in 1988 from 2.2 gallons in 1978.
“The timing was wonderful,” Belas said. “It coincided with the aging baby boomer. It was natural. It was healthy. It put bottled water on the map.”
An almost endless flow of bottled waters has challenged Perrier’s domination of the “designer water” market. Some restaurants even tout their own “house water.”
“Almost every country has sent us a bottled water,” said Pirko, president of Los Angeles-based BevMark. “They came and went so quickly.”
The most successful waters have come from exotic, natural springs, Pirko said. Perrier flows from a spring in Vergeze, France. A glacier is the source of Bourassa Canadian water. And Australia will soon weigh in with water from a health spa named Hepburn.
The most notable Perrier challenger of late has been Evian, a non-carbonated water. Evian, owned by Paris-based foods giant BSN, which also makes Dannon yogurt, has made its mark with a splashy marketing and advertising campaign that emphasizes health and youth.
In advertisements to the trade, Evian claims its U.S. sales zoomed 117% last year. In contrast, analysts estimate that Perrier’s sales, while still much larger, will increase only 5%.
“They learned from Perrier,” Pirko said. “They learned they could make water chic.”
TOP-SELLING WATERS
Market Brand share Parent company Arrowhead 7.7% Perrier Group Sparkletts 5.9 McKesson Perrier 5.7 Perrier Group Poland Spring 3.5 Perrier Group Hinckley-Schmitt 3.4 Anjou Int’l Calistoga 1.9 Perrier Group Great Bear 1.9 Perrier Group Deer Park/Deep Rock 1.9 Clorox Culligan 1.8 Culligan Sierra Spring 1.8 Anjou Int’l Kentwood 1.7 Suntory Int’l
