Cirkul: Waterbottle with Flavor!

A new type of flavored water hit the market this year! Cirkul’s mission is to “make drinking water convenient, delicious, and fun” and they are doing so through their innovative water bottle and lid attachment that houses a flavor pod. Flavor pods are sold separately so you can choose what flavors and benefits best suit you.

Let us review the 7 stages of New Product Development to demonstrate how Cirkul came to be.

1. New-Product Strategy Development- in the case of Cirkul, the company itself was started on the idea of the cirkul flavor pod bottle, so step one and step 2 are combined.
2. Idea Generation- this is simple. An inventor had the idea of creating a water bottle with a lid that contains the changeable flavor pods.
3. Screening and Evaluation- this stage can take years as the idea has to be narrowed down greatly to fully decide what the new product is going to be.
4. Business Analysis- does this product have a profitable space in the market? For Cirkul there is nothing like it on the market, but that doesn’t always mean profitability. There are quite a few flavored water products in stores, so marketing Cirkul to be unique is key!
5. Development- this stage can also take years and many trials as the bottle needs to be perfected.
6. Market Testing- this is the stage where the product is presented to potential customers under realistic purchase conditions to see if they would buy it. Some of Cirkul’s market testing was done on social media platforms like Tiktok!
7. Commercialization- this stage involves positioning and launching a new production and sales. Again, Cirkul went viral on Tiktok as they launched and marketed their innovative bottle. You can see one of their viral Tiktok videos here: https://www.tiktok.com/@drinkcirkul/video/7161404948218154286?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7164937320435893802