Story Peter Switzer Photography Stephen Langdon 
 
Since leaving his career in IT to set up his own fruit juice company, Tim Pethick CA has been on a steep learning curve. The hard work went into building a brand called Nudie, so that one day he could be many things.  
 
Chartered accountants come in all shapes and sizes and can be found in all manner of businesses, but when you learn that a chartered accountant has created a business called Nudie, you know he is a radical kind of guy, let alone an ‘out there’ accountant.  
 
“Nudie was formed in about November 2002 but we went into our first outlet on the 8 January 2003 – so we’ve been operational for about 12 months,” said Nudie founder Tim Pethick.  
 
But before drilling down into the Nudie business story, let’s deal with the burning question everyone has to be asking: Why the name Nudie?  
 
“The juice industry is one where there has been no real work done to date to build equity into an attitudinal brand or any brand really,” he explained. “Most juice brands are what I would call functional - they focus on the attributes of the product and are largely indistinguishable from a positioning or personality perspective. I am trying to build a brand which has real personality and real attitude, and one which stands out from the crowd.”  
 
Tim revealed that the idea was not a unique creation for a bizarre kind of guy. He did admit to being a big juice drinker and experiencing brands with attitude in both the US and UK, where he had lived. He even conceded that his ad agency was the bright outfit which came up with the unforgettable and confronting name of “Nudie”.  
 
“Once you have heard the name Nudie you never forget it and our approach to developing the brand ensures it brings a smile to most people who encounter it.”  
 
And getting consumers to encounter Nudie is the main marketing game for Tim Pethick. The plan is based on giveaways to hit the market.  
 
“In the early days we gave away hundreds of bottles each week but now we give away thousands,” he said. “It’s very effective and is our primary marketing strategy - we lead with it.  
 
“I started off with another guy, Hank Kingman, cruising the streets in our Nudie van. We just gave the product away. If people tried it, we knew they would buy it.”  
 
They now employ 57, sell in five states, have offices in four capital cities and have 24 Nudie vans on the streets.  
 
So what is Nudie juice? For those who haven’t tried Nudie, it is bottled fruit juice with no preservatives, and because it is not based on the reconstituted concentrate, as most juices are nowadays, it tastes like juice.  
 
So why did a CA go to juice? “There are two reasons,” Tim confessed. “One emotive and selfish, the other rational. I love fruit and used to drink a homemade fruit concoction every day. I got sick of not being able to buy something here that was nothing but pure fruit. Since no-one else was doing it, I decided to do it myself.  
 
“The rational reason was that no-one had yet sought to develop a product such as ours in this market place yet the super-premium juice space is very large overseas. In the US, it is a US$500m plus a year market place. In the UK, it is probably around GBP100m a year. Here we are in a land where we have plenty of fresh fruit, a healthy attitude to life, plenty of sunshine and no bottled products that are nothing but fresh fruit!”  
 
 
Tim says the clear opportunity was to be first-to-market and innovate a new category. But was it easy to go from accountant to juice company boss?  
 
“I thought it was going to be easy compared to the reality,” he said. “I wanted to set up a virtual company where I would do the sales and marketing and others would do the manufacturing but in practice, while we could find a manufacturer we couldn’t find a distribution solution, so we did it ourselves.  
 
“The last 18 months has been an enormous learning curve and the Internet has helped us overcome many of the knowledge hurdles and it has helped me to become a de facto food technologist.”  
 
Tim said the safety aspect and the plethora of regulations adds to the cost of production because so many consultants and lawyers have to be brought into the play. With production issues nailed, the Nudie team took to the streets for distribution, cold calling food outlets and giving the product away.  
 
The success has seen the product gain access to Coles stores. “We’re in 24 Coles Express stores,” he said. “We’ve been doing it as a test and early next year we look likely to be taking up the supermarket challenge. We are also selling in Hong Kong.”  
 
But this is not just about juice – it’s a brand building exercise. “No-.one has done anything like what we are doing in the Australian marketplace,” Tim said. “In the context of this business, the interesting thing about me is that I have had no juice industry or food industry experience before.  
 
“Immediately prior to this I was the CEO of a joint venture which I pulled together between British Telecom and LookSmart.”  
 
Tim explained the big picture. “Potentially there are many Nudie-branded products.”  
 
Because of his background and training, Tim has taken the precaution to protect his intellectual property by taking out trademarks in most categories so that the Nudie brand name can ultimately travel.  
 
“We could be building another Virgin brand,” he dreamed out loud. “There might even be a Nudie airline!” Someone beat him to Nudie Jeans but that was not a space he was interested in anyway.  
 
On the future, Tim has no grandiose plans for an IPO, though he admits has had a few interesting offers from people who want to get involved. “We’ve only been around for 12 months and our success has outstripped our expectations,” he said. “There’s a lot to do before we look at things like brand extensions.”  
 
Tim believes his accounting background has been critical to the company’s success to date. “It’s important to understand the numbers in a business and to understand the language of bankers - it’s fundamentally important,” he said. “It gives you a great advantage and a solid platform to build things.”  
 
And when asked about the great influences in his life, Tim showed you can take the accountant out of accountancy but you can’t take accountancy out of the accountant - even Nudie ones. “There have been a number of influences and some have been accountants,” he recalled. “One, John Snelson, a partner at Ernst & Young, was a big inspiration.  
“He had three elements to his make-up that I always admired: first, his accounting background; second, he was very smart; and third, he was right off the edge - he was quirky and very individualistic in his thinking. He would always see things differently than others.”  
 
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions of the authors appearing in Charter are not necessarily those of the Institute of the Chartered Accountants and should be viewed as such.