It’s rare to come across a new product placed behind 7-Eleven and gas station refrigerator doors that’s also on trendy, natural grocer shelves like LA’s Erewhon. Mela watermelon water has managed to market itself to appeal to the entire spectrum of consumers. It’s almost like a sporting event entertaining Americans from all walks of life.
New York Knicks shooting guard, Josh Hart, could sense that vast appeal, telling me today that he has become an investor in the growing company. The exact terms of the deal are undisclosed, although Hart is an equity-only investor. While he will not take on a day-to-day role in the company, Mela also dubs him a Brand Ambassador, with an inevitable string of campaigns using his likeness on the horizon. The startup has already conquered the retail landscape, sitting on more than 10 thousand shelves across the US, so a primary point of its focus now is to get more eyeballs on the product–and in turn, liquid to lips. Mela rounds out its fifth year in business with $10 million in revenue and a $40 million valuation.
A Second Beverage Investment for Hart
Hart approached the company a few years ago while living and working in Portland, Oregon after spotting it at Zupan’s Market, a small, local gourmet grocery chain. At the time, he was paying more attention to his diet, starting to cut out sports drinks with excessive amounts of added sugar. But given his acute sweet tooth, “probably the biggest in the league,” as he puts it, plain H2O just wasn’t fulfilling.
Given watermelon’s natural hydrating properties and all of the natural sugar in the beverage, Mela became a go-to of Hart’s. “Sometimes as an athlete, you have to make that sacrifice of ‘I need to do what is nutritious for me’ and not just what’s delicious,” he says. “Fortunately enough for me, Mela is both.” He not only would drink it before games for a boost of energy, but he says it became part of his lifestyle.
Hart was already an investor in a different beverage brand, Lemon Perfect, a hydrating lemon water, so he understood the territory when he decided to reach out to Mela CEO Dominic Purpura. Although Purpura wasn’t quite ready to bring on a partner like him just yet, Hart remained a loyal customer.
Josh Hart for Mela
This summer, the moment felt right for Purpura to reach back out to Hart. “NFL, MLB, NBA…all these high-level athletes are drinking Mela with complete organic traction,” he says. In the past couple of years, as Hart’s career advanced, getting traded from the Portland Trail Blazers to the New York Knicks, Mela had simultaneous growth, with a heightened focus on the opportunistic New York City market, the new home of Hart.
To some extent, Purpura understands the life of an athlete. He’s a former pitcher for San Diego State University’s baseball team–although never intended to go pro; he knew the entrepreneur journey was in his cards. That connection of an athlete’s mentality helped build a strong foundation between the two. “For [Mela] to get to this level, it takes determination and sacrifice and commitment,” Hart says.
Prior to Hart’s investment in the company, Mela had raised upwards of $6 million primarily through private and seed rounds. Early next year, Mela expects to jumpstart its Series A funding round.
Hart, 29, feels that his professional basketball career is closer to its end than its beginning. “I think it will probably come in about five or six years,” he says. Working with his second beverage brand now is part of his intentional work to plant a seed for what he could see himself doing when that moment arrives. “I want to at least be a fly on the wall in some of these conversations Mela’s having with their distribution and product placement to learn more about them.” Purpura suggests Hart’s role with Mela could grow in the future.
The Growing Vietnamese Watermelon Industry
Mela, founded in Seattle and now based in Los Angeles, is a product that harnesses the power of the Vietnamese farming industry, which primarily operates through small family-run farms as opposed to government- or corporate-owned land. The company launched in 2019 and self-distributed until Purpura took notice of its potential and acquired it in 2021. Although a supply chain had already been established, it had very little infrastructure at the time to create a memorable brand.
Mela CEO Dominic Purpura at a Vietnamese watermelon farm
Across Southeast Asia–Vietnam specifically–watermelons grow year-round, resulting in vast amounts of supremely ripe watermelons, Purpura says. “[People in the region] drink fruit juices as nature’s Gatorade,” he adds. “The lands in Vietnam are very suitable for growing watermelon,” says Pham Duc Thuan, sales manager at Agrihub, a Vietnamese agriculture export business. “[That’s] due to fertile soil and sunny, windy, high-temperature areas.” Pham says that these watermelons are often about 4 pounds lighter than other types, making them more dense with nutritional content.
In 2023, the plant-based water market surpassed $8 billion, with the Asia-Pacific region dominating the global market. That’s likely due to coconut water as the leading type of beverage in the category. The same year, the global fruit juice market, the more legacy category, was valued at more than $153 billion. According to Pham, in the first 8 months of 2024, Vietnam exported more than $72 million worth of watermelons, about $15 million more than all of 2023.
The sweet watermelons grown in Vietnam–which are known for their oblong shape–is just the first step of the grassroots process of Mela’s proprietary formulation. “We bring the watermelons to our processing plant where we cut the rind off by hand,” Purpura says. “We use human labor because it’s faster than machines, more accurate, and then we just take the juicy red core of it.” The flesh is then juiced, canned, and shipped to American ports.
Some Vietnamese rice farms are beginning to convert into watermelon farms due the potential for more profits. “Watermelon is a short-term crop, helping alleviate hunger and reduce poverty,” Pham explains. “In some highland, mountainous, and difficult areas, conversion from low-value crops to new watermelon planting has been carried out to improve people’s lives.”
The ripe melons in Vietnam facilitate Mela’s business model, allowing it to create a sweet beverage with barely having to add any sugar. “Watermelons are like an avocado,” Purpura says. “You buy an avocado, it’s rock hard, sits in your kitchen for a day, it’s perfect the next day.” On occasion, a watermelon gets harvested slightly too early so a dash of cane sugar is added to mimic a perfectly ripe one. Each variety (Original, Passionfruit, Pineapple, and Ginger) contains 25 grams of sugar, only 3g of which is that optional added sugar.
The Organic Appeal Of A Hydrating Watermelon Beverage
Mela CEO Dominic Purpura
While Mela is simply watermelon juice, it’s unlikely that shoppers will find it in the juice aisle amid the cranberry, apple, grapefruit juices and the like. The juice industry has never promoted a watermelon juice market in a significant way that competes with these legacy beverages. While Mela is making a dent in the public perception of watermelon juice, it’s not necessarily pulling consumers away from the other juices, largely because it’s categorized differently. It’s not vesseled in a traditional large plastic container. Mela comes in a recyclable aluminum can typically shelved adjacent to refrigerated water bottles in the growing “plant water” category, which most prominently features coconut water. Labeling the drink “watermelon water,” instead of “watermelon juice” aligns the drink into this category. “Watermelons are 92% water,” Purpura says. “[Mela] has more of the consistency of water than a juice.”
Watermelon is generally considered a non-controversial, well-liked food. According to Purpura, it’s the third most-consumed fruit in the world. “83% of the population likes the taste profile,” he says. This organic fact gives them an automatic leg up compared to other plant water competitors. “Only 40% of the population likes coconut water.” This overall strategy stretches Mela’s mass appeal. While coconut water drinkers, often health-conscious, may swarm towards Mela for some simple, fruity hydration, consumers who like sweet beverages will also put it in their carts. Mela has also taken a customer base from sweet lemonades and iced teas.
What’s clever is that Mela has positioned itself as an accessible brand. Its 10 thousand nationwide retailers include big box stores like Target, hotels, gas stations, natural and conventional grocers, military bases, and even Disneyland. The company has ambitious plans as it prepares for its Series A funding round, aiming to double that retail presence within the next year.
Its largest account is 7-Eleven, which has worked to shift its public perception through its new street lifestyle-type messaging on its social media pages. This modern approach to branding aligns with Mela’s packaging design showcasing lively drawings of tattoos, including ones of those oblong watermelons (which were designed by an actual tattoo artist), along with the multiple fonts written vertically, adding visual length to the tall can, drawing consumers in. “Convenience [retailers are] starting to get more into that young, millennial, Gen Z-creative brand-healthier alternative,” Purpura says. “It’s shifting and we want to be one of the faces behind that change.”