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From home kitchen to multimillion dollar business: hint® achieves rapid growth on NetSuite

NetSuite Helps Pioneering Healthy Lifestyle Company Innovate and Scale in a Crowded Market

SUITEWORLD18—LAS VEGAS—April 24, 2018hint inc., a San Francisco-based provider of unsweetened, fruit flavored water, has grown from a family-run business to a multimillion-dollar company in just a decade with NetSuite. As its founder eyes growth targets of $1 billion, NetSuite will enable hint® to scale its critical business systems as it goes toe-to-toe with industry giants.

Started by Kara Goldin in the kitchen of her San Francisco Bay Area home in 2005, hint was inspired by Goldin’s personal health journey. To replace her 10-can-a-day Diet Coke habit and stay off the soda, Goldin wanted to make water more drinkable and started to experiment by adding fruit into pitchers of water. After rave reviews from her friends and family, and the failure to find a similar unsweetened flavored water in the market, Goldin pitched the idea to Whole Foods. An initial 10 cases sold out overnight and within six months, hint water was on the shelves of Whole Foods stores nationwide. To support this rapid growth, scale the business and ensure products are manufactured as close as possible to the point of distribution, hint selected NetSuite.

“I didn’t set out to launch a beverage company, but as I learned more about the options available to consumers, I realised that it was time to shake things up,” said Goldin, a former long-time AOL executive. “The market was ready, but it was still dominated by centuries-old stalwarts. To have our voice heard in such a crowded space, we needed to couple all of our startup energy and enthusiasm with business processes that allowed us to operate like a much larger firm. NetSuite has given us a platform to grow our business so that we can focus on delighting our customers.”

With NetSuite, hint has been able to avoid IT complexity as its business has grown by automating inventory and order management practices with financial and accounting processes from a very early stage. By adopting business process best practices of much larger organisations from the beginning, hint has been able to quickly capitalise on market opportunities. Building on this success, hint started selling direct to consumers in 2014 and B2C sales now make up a huge percentage of hint’s business.

“hint offers so many lessons on purposeful growth, from its very inception, to the way it continues to influence the industry,” said Jim McGeever, executive vice president Oracle NetSuite. “We are excited to partner with the hint team to help support its next stage of growth.”

About hint inc.
hint inc., the San Francisco-based company founded by entrepreneur Kara Goldin in 2005, is a healthy lifestyle brand known for its delicious unsweetened flavored water. hint® makes it easier and more enjoyable for consumers to live healthier lives. The company’s products have received numerous accolades, including Best Flavored Water (Health, Men’s Health, and SELF), Best New Product (Better Homes and Gardens) and the Silver Stevie Award for Best New Product. Since its launch, hint has been making water taste great without adding any sugar or diet sweeteners. hint’s brands include its flagship product, hint water, its sparkling product line, hint fizz®, and its lightly caffeinated line, hint kick®. hint recently expanded its product offerings into other health and wellness categories with the launch of hint sunscreen spray, a SPF 30 mist that is oxybenzone and paraben-free and scented with hint fruit essences. hint’s products are available nationwide in most major specialty and grocery stores and are available at drinkhint.com for delivery direct to your door. For more information, visit www.drinkhint.com.

About Oracle NetSuite
Oracle NetSuite pioneered the Cloud Computing revolution in 1998, establishing the world’s first company dedicated to delivering business applications over the internet. Today, it provides a suite of cloud-based financials / Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), HR and omnichannel commerce software that runs the business of companies in more than 100 countries.

For more information, please visit http://www.netsuite.co.uk.

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