O.N.E.’s story began in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2005 when MBA students Rodrigo Veloso and Eric Loudon developed a business plan to brand and launch a line of healthy, natural beverages (coconut water being the first) in the U.S. market.
After their business plan won 1st place at the largest Latin American Business Plan competition, Rodrigo and Eric decided to turn their idea into a real business.
As the co-founders of one World Enterprises, LLC, Rodrigo and Eric moved to Los Angeles to sell O.N.E. Coconut Water in the highly competitive U.S. beverage industry with the conviction that one day Coconut Water would be a $1 Billion beverage category in the US even though few Americans had ever heard of Coconut Water. To further support their passion the renowned Brazilian business magazine, Exame, (the Business Week of Brazil) named O.N.E. Coconut Water the Fourth Best Business Innovation of Brazil in 2005, ahead of products from Ford, Petrobras and Unilever.
One year later, O.N.E. Coconut Water hit shelves in Southern California. It debuted at Whole Foods Markets in the Summer of 2006 to rave reviews and quickly became the #1 selling alternative beverage in all Southern California Whole Foods Markets. In the office by day and at stores doing demos in the evenings and on weekends, O.N.E.’s CEO, Rodrigo Veloso, and his wife/ business partner, Emilie Fritz Veloso, quickly grew the business while passionately educating everyone they met about the health benefits and delicious taste of O.N.E. Coconut Water. In just one year, O.N.E. established national distribution with the top natural/specialty distributors, a national sales brokerage network and 4,000
points-of-sale in the U.S. and Canada.
In 2009, O.N.E. grew to more than 30 employees as a result of the company’s first round of institutional investment funding and signing a distribution agreement with The Pepsi Beverage Company.
An extension of its coconut water line was introduced with four new flavors called O.N.E. Coconut Water with a Splash, which immediately gained national distribution in Kroger stores and Whole Foods Market.
Distribution exploded in 2011, with grocery stores, convenience stores, drugstores and online retailers across the country now carrying O.N.E. Coconut Water. In 2012, O.N.E. Coconut Water is planning to expand internationally to Europe, Canada, and Southeast Asia.