Beverage Startups
Students from Germany launches new drink
We are a young company founded in 2012. The share holders and founders are students and a vintner from the Mosel valley in Germany.
Our brand Mari with its slogan “Join the Lama” was established in spring 2013, our product, a natural invigorating vine cocktail was launched in April 2013. Mari only consists of three exclusive ingredients of high quality: semi-dry Riesling vine, Mate extracts and Elderflower syrup.
The initial idea arose in 2011 when the two founders, Jan Klein and Christian Goergen worked together in the vineyards at the Mosel. They wanted to create a new vine drink (R2D) in order to offer a substitute for beer on university parties. Today Mari is not only consumed by students but also in bars, beach clubs, event gastronomy and festivals.
The thoughest part was how to create the Corporate Design since the founders were no specialists. To find a suitable factory and supplier was not too difficult! In fact, it just takes time but the market is big enough to find all the necessary suppliers.
It is helpful not to take the first opportunity but also to compare between different suppliers. The development of the Corporate Design was a competition amongst the students of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria.
The winning team said that the llama is a social, curious animal which is also related to South America, the origin of our Mate extracts. Amongst 28 concepts it was outstanding so we chose it to be our future brand! Since the beverage market is dominated by few big corporate groups it is refreshing to see many small startups to come up with new ideas! We can imagine that individual, small drinks with a strong story will increase their market shares in the future.
