Aura Bora came to Shark Tank looking for an infusion of cash to help grow the company, but regardless of the result, the sparkling beverage maker appears to have already found some major growth in the last year.
The company is featured on the January 22 episode of the ABC reality series, hoping to win over the investors and score a major investment. As The Cinemaholic reported, Aura Bora was started by husband and wife Paul and Madeleine Voge, coming after a long series of ventures for him that failed to make it big.
It was Paul’s soda drinking habits that ultimately gave him the inspiration to start Aura Bora, the report noted.
“At work, he was in the habit of polishing down 8-10 cans of sparkling water per day. But his family had always been strictly against soda, which is how he started looking for alternatives,” the outlet noted. “Paul and his wife Madeleine began playing with their SodaStream machine and ran several experiments. They assembled a fresh yield of herbal extracts and mixed them up with sparkling water, which led to a wide variety of flavors appealing to the palate.”
Today, the company offers a number of flavors and uses non-GMO ingredients. Even before appearing on Shark Tank , the outfit was able to build up a dedicated base of customers, using its Instagram page to promote the products and gin up some interest.
The page has also chronicled Aura Bora’s very fast growth as it built its customer base and signed on with new retailers to sell the products. In one Instagram update late last year, the couple explained that there were a total of 1,000 cans of the beverage available just a year ago, but they saw some tremendous growth since then.
“Today, despite a painful year and strange time to start a business, you have given us much to be thankful for! Aura Bora is in over 700 stores and growing every day,” they wrote in the update, which can be seen here .
The post added some behind-the-scenes glimpses at the bottling process and shared the text message they sent in celebration when Whole Foods Pacific Northwest first agreed to carry their products.
Their social media presence has helped Aura Bora earn followers while sharing product updates and some fruit-themed art to promote the business.
While it was not clear ahead of the Shark Tank episode whether the Voges would score an investment for Aura Bora, they appear poised for growth either way.