Soda Jerk

摘要

It's astonishing how far peter van Stolk got by sucking on his own hot air. His Jones Soda—maker of such flavored drinks as Blue Bubble-gum, Green Apple, Bada Bing! (mainly cherry and loganberry juices) and D'Peach Mode—was a big hit with skateboarders, surfers and tattoo artists in the late 1990s. They loved, too, the fact that van Stolk slapped photos of his customers onto bottles. "If I think like our competitors," he told People magazine in 1998, "I'm dead." He nearly died anyway. That year the company lost $1.5 million on sales of $4.7 million—and it continued to lose money, on an operating basis, through 2002. Van Stolk had his eye on the buzz instead of the business, allowing suppliers and distributors to get the better of him and losing control of his costs.