When co-founders Martin Chalk and Peter Maher began developing the vision for New York-based Balance, their goal wasn’t to create a beverage company.
“The aim was to educate consumers about the homeopathic benefits of Australian flower essences,” Chalk said.
“When we established the company, our objective was to [consumers] “We were actually looking for a way to make flower essences more accessible,” he says. “We didn’t start out in a different way. We didn’t say, ‘Let’s start a beverage company. What’s the biggest difference?’ We just went out in a different way and said, ‘Flower essences are really amazing. Let’s put them in spring water and make it easier for people to take them.'”
As a result of this idea, the team combined Maher’s beverage industry and distribution background with Chalk’s biochemistry expertise and founded Balance in 2006. Balance Water was first sold in Australia and expanded to the US in 2008. While all of the flower essences are Australian-made, the water source is local to the distribution region, allowing the water to be produced and packaged locally, minimising its carbon footprint, the company says.
Originally, the U.S. line consisted of four varieties: Balance Women’s, Balance Children’s, Balance Mind and Balance Travel. The company found it too difficult to explain to consumers the benefits of the women’s and children’s varieties and why it was targeting those age groups, so it decided to focus on features instead of target consumers, Chalk explains. So the company removed the women’s and children’s products from the line last year, introducing Relax, Refresh and Digest instead. Now, Balance Refresh is the company’s best-seller, close behind Relax and Mind, he says.
Balance Mind, Travel, Relax and Refresh are also available in Australia and Germany, but Digest, which contains pawpaw flower essence to aid digestion, wasn’t launched in those countries due to cultural differences, Chalk said. In the U.S., consumers often drink water with meals, while people in other countries turn to acidic drinks like wine to break down food, he explained. This difference means Digest may not be as well received by consumers as it is in the U.S., Chalk said.
“Mind” contains six flower essences that help consumers focus. “Travel” also contains six flower essences, which help relieve jet lag and stress associated with travel. “Relax” also contains six flower essences, which help consumers de-stress and regulate sleep patterns. “Refresh” contains one flower essence, Cloware, which helps consumers calm their mind, Chalk explains. Despite the flower essences used, the varieties are unflavoured, which he says is a key difference between Balance Water and other functional bottled waters on the market.
Balance Mind, Relax, Refresh and Digest are available at select retailers in the U.S., while Balance Travel is sold exclusively through the travel channel. Previously, to get a bottle of Balance Travel, consumers had to fly to Australia with Qantas or stay at an InterContinental or Four Seasons hotel in Australia. In April, the company announced a partnership with Wyndham Hotel Group that will allow U.S. Gold status members to get the water when they check into select Wyndham hotels and resorts.
In addition to making healthy, natural drinks, Balance is also committed to giving back to the world: Last year, the company reported that it donated funds from sales of its products to about 50 charities, including the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Authority and the Australian National Breast Cancer Centre.
Meaningful packaging
When Balance refreshed its range last year, it also updated the labels on its bottles. Each bottle features an embossed symbol, each with a different meaning. For example, the graphic on Balance Mind was inspired by the Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime, which is the time they believe the Earth was created, Chalk says.
“In the Dreamtime, it is believed that a seed was placed in the center of the Earth and vibrations spread out from the seed, influencing all living and non-living things,” he explains. “We adapted that symbolism by creating a flower placed in the center of a pool of water. [because] That’s what we do. You put flowers in water and that’s where the properties and vibrational energy of the flower comes from.”
Chalk says the new labels will help build meaning and personality for the brand, as well as clarify the benefits of each variety.
“Since we launched the new label, our sales have skyrocketed because people are starting to understand the product a little more,” Chalk says.
Additionally, Chalk said Balance recently introduced a 330ml bottle size for the foodservice channel across its entire product line, which also includes 500ml and 1-liter sizes.
From the Source
While some may imagine farm-like gardens with flowers to create Balance Water Essence, the flowers actually come from the most remote areas of Australia’s wilderness, says Martin Chalk, co-founder of Balance in New York. The plants aren’t cultivated, planted, watered or fertilized. Employees at Wandera Essence, a division of Balance, select a mix of new, mature and old flowers and use plant twigs to collect the flowers, so the company says the flowers are not contaminated by human hands.
To create the essences, the company says it lightly processes the flowers using a proprietary method that doesn’t involve alcohol, preservatives or heavy industrial equipment.
“We use the Sun Method, where we place the flowers in a beautiful glass bowl with spring water at the base of each plant and let the flowers soak in the water for four hours in bright sunlight. This is 90 percent of our flower essences,” Chalk explains.[For] The remaining 10 percent is actually boiling the flowers for about five minutes.”
To minimize its carbon footprint and reduce transportation costs, Balance sources its water from two different sources in the U.S.: one outside Lake Tahoe in California, and the other in the Catskill Mountains in New York, Chalk said. These sources were chosen for their high elevation, high pH and low total solids content, which gives the water a clean, crisp taste that Americans prefer, rather than the heavy mineral water taste that Europeans prefer, he added.
