British startup Cano was the first company to put water in a can. Its founder admits to The Drum that it now has to work twice as hard to keep pace with those that follow. How Cano is planning to disrupt the bottled water market / Cano Cano was founded in 2015 by three 22-year-old friends who went on vacation together and got really riled up about the amount of plastic pollution.
It wasn’t until Liquid Death launched in 2017, however, that appetites for canned water were properly whetted (it has since been valued at $1.4bn). Cano co-founder Josh White is a confessed fan of Liquid Death and says the competition is better for business, with newcomers helping to grow the category.
“We needed all these brands, like Liquid Deaths and Evian, to offer water in a can because we were looked at as a bit of a joke for many years,” he says. White, though, does acknowledge being the first adopter came with its drawbacks. “It is the most depressing thing ever being the first to do something.
Other brands come in and that is when you end up getting taken more seriously, but you need to be thick-skinned. You’ve got to accept it happens and make sure you are still up there in people’s minds.” White, along with friends Perry Alexander and Ariel Booker, launched Cano at London Fashion Week and secured Selfridges as a stockist before even working out how to put water in a can.
“The plan was this to build this fake brand that didn’t exist and to drum up some interest to the poin.
