Hello there, Investing Buddies,
Do you own everything from Goop that comes in rose gold? Do you say that “broad city” is you spirit animal but live in a Chelsea condo that your Wall Street finance owns? Then I’ve got the post-hipster wellness brand-that’s-actually-cheap-CPG startup for you!
DIRTY LEMON is the hottest beverage brand to be embraced by a cult of high-waisted shorts fashionistas throughout the tents of Cochella. By selling packs of six bottles for $65, Dirty Lemon is basically giving them away; you pay for the High Line street cred and get the drinks for free. Because each variety tastes like cat vomit that’s been sitting on the floor of a Sephora, you know it’s got to be, like, cray healthy for you. Anyway, things are just better because they’re more expansive; that’s plain science.
I like Dirty Lemon because they’ve got their branding down cold. According to CEO and totally rad guy Zak Normandin, each Dirty Lemon bottle is the perfect accessory for pacing yourself through a boozy brunch in SOHO. Its got a label so conspicuous that your frenemies know you paid $11 a bottle, but plain so you can feign modesty about it. Fueled by femininity empowered enough to read Plath by the pool in the Hamptons, but as long you show enough skin. They’ve def captured the kind of rebellious youth that private school teens in Westchester imagine living in the East Village is like.
But Dirty Lemon isn’t sold anywhere that it might be seen next to some sketch matcha tea from last year. You can only order bottles, in packages on six, through text message directly (exactly the same way you ordered Molly or Adderall from your Kappa Kappa Gamma sister’s older brother at Penn). They even opened a self-serve “experience” in TriBeCa. With no cashier or anything besides trust making you pay by text later for what you take, this storefront is the perfect embodiment of the young, wild, and carefree (but only as long as their parents are still paying for the apartment in Williamsburg) aesthetic of the brand.
Now, unfortunately, they discontinued their CBD-infused collaboration with Courtney Love’s tattoo artist, but they’re still going strong with their charcoal + collagen blends. But since Dirty Lemon has raised over $15 million in seed funding, I recommend investors get in on the ground floor now; there’s absolutely guaranteed returns for the next 8 months or until Taylor Swift is caught on camera throwing a bottle into the east river.
Good luck in the market out there,
– Warren