The botched delivery

How Rauch messed up a delivery in the Czech Republic and created a surprise success.

PET bottles? What a foul-up! Irritation levels were high in 1999 when the team from Rauch Czech Republic saw a truck-load of "Rauch Multivit PET" pallets from Rankweil in the warehouse. They had ordered Bravo Multivitamin TetraPaks: that's what retailers and customers want!

Sending them back... quickly turned out to be complex and expensive. So the colleagues in Prague had a go at selling this mis-delivery anyway. Surprisingly, retail partners were immediately enthusiastic and were happy to put the practically packaged multivitamin drink on the shelves, which then quickly emptied again. Within a short time, this drink developed into a runaway hit in the country. Whole truckloads of Multivit regularly rolled to Prague from Rankweil.

Soon competitors got wind of it. And within a few months anyone who could fill PET bottles had launched something similar onto the market. Not at Rauch quality levels, but much cheaper. The boom was over.

Thanks to an incorrect delivery, Bravo Multivit became a huge success in the Czech Republic and Slovakia.