Summary
Overview
Bill Creelman, founder and chair of Spindrift, joins Guy Raz to advise three early-stage beverage and apparel entrepreneurs facing critical scaling decisions. The conversation explores maintaining product authenticity while managing costs, hiring strategically with limited resources, and knowing when to simplify business operations to unlock growth. Creelman shares hard-won wisdom from building Spindrift over 15 years, including the risky decision to cut half his revenue by dropping a sweetened product line to focus solely on unsweetened sparkling water.
Bill Creelman's Journey: The Power of Constraints
Bill Creelman reflects on his 30-year journey from selling smoked fish off Nantucket boats in the late 1990s to building Spindrift into a brand valued at $650-700 million. He shares the pivotal decision to cut half of Spindrift's revenue by dropping the sweetened soda version to focus exclusively on unsweetened sparkling water made with real squeezed fruit. Creelman emphasizes how stubbornness about ingredients—refusing to use natural flavors instead of real fruit—created years of supply chain challenges that ultimately became Spindrift's key competitive advantage and point of differentiation.
- Spindrift sold a majority stake to private equity firm Griffin in a deal reportedly valuing the brand around $650-700 million
- Before Spindrift, Creelman ran a cocktail mixer business that he sold to Diageo
- Spindrift originally had two products—one with sugar that outsold the unsweetened version—but Creelman cut the sweetened line
- The decision to use only real squeezed fruit instead of natural flavors created years of technical and supply chain challenges
- Trader Joe's was the first major retail breakthrough for Spindrift
" You just can't do it—it's hard enough to make one brand successful, but to have two brands succeed means something for the consumer. What we felt was that the sparkling water brand was eventually going to be recognized as being just as delicious as the soda. "
" We had no evidence. It wasn't like we did a consumer study. It just seemed a lot clearer on the sparkling water—the white hot center, that tiny group of really passionate people who were in love with it, buying it hand over fist. "
" Don't try to do everything. I took 30 years to get to where we are. Some of it was valuable but a lot could have been solved by not trying to wrap my arms around every problem. It's probably one or two problems holding the business back. "
Donna's Pickle Beer: Authenticity vs. Scalability
Josh Jankowitz, founder of Donna's Pickle Beer, faces a crossroads as his pandemic-born idea scales from 400 to 10,000 cases monthly. The brand mixes pickle brine with light lager in retro packaging, but Josh must decide whether to continue using fresh pickle brine with real dill and garlic or switch to a cheaper, more consistent flavor house version. Creelman draws directly from Spindrift's experience, urging Josh to view today's ingredient challenges as tomorrow's competitive moat, warning that shortcuts now will make the brand vulnerable to copycats later.
- Donna's Pickle Beer started as a pandemic idea while Josh was working as a mailman in West Hollywood
- Sales have grown from 400 cases two years ago to 5,000-10,000 cases per month, distributed in 16 states
- The brand is 90% on-premise sales, priced at approximately $39/case wholesale and $7-8 retail per can
- Josh approached 20-30 breweries before finding one willing to produce the concept
- The product pairs well with whiskey, in micheladas, and with hot dogs, creating multiple consumption occasions
" What is hard right now for you is going to be your point of difference later. Trying to figure out how to make this brine using all of the ingredients that are called out on the label will only bear fruit down the road. "
" Someone's going to come out with another similar product that's a real copycat category, and you need something that you can defend ultimately when bars or retailers are making a choice between your brand and something else. "
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