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Part
01
Jamba - Company Background
In just shy of 30 years, Jamba has grown from a single store with a unique value proposition to an international conglomerate of corporate and franchise-owned stores. While Jamba's concept was promising from the beginning, the growth story of the company is one that occurred over many years and through multiple strategic moves.
Current State
- Jamba is a multinational owner-operator and franchiser of its Jamba Juice smoothie and food product stores.
- As of 2018, Jamba operated in the US (802 locations), Indonesia (5 locations), the Middle East/UAE (8 locations), the Philippines (27 locations), South Korea (24 locations), Taiwan (5 locations) and Thailand (2 locations), for a total of 873 stores worldwide.
- Most recently in 2018, the company reported full-year revenue of $70,926,000, a net loss of $2.742 million and a decline in full-year same-store sales of 0.4%.
- Notably, Jamba's stock had fallen 23% during the twelve months preceding its most recent annual report in response to the retailer's more recent struggle with profitability.
- Meanwhile, Jamba engaged Zimmerman as its integrated agency partner in 2015 and Finn Partners as its PR and social media agency of record in 2014, with Zimmerman and Finn Partners continuing to promote these relationships through their respective websites.
- Additionally, Jamba also appears to be leveraging Praytell Agency for ad hoc press releases and similar media announcements.
Growth Story
- Jamba originated in San Luis Obispo, CA in 1990 as a small juice shop named Juice Club, with the premise of making it easier to eat healthy.
- The first location is credited to Kirk Perron, who founded the company alongside Joe Vergara, Kevin Peters and Linda Ozawa Olds.
- Notably, within just two years, Juice Club was already earning a profit, and began expanding through the franchising model due to a lack of funding opportunities.
- By 1994, Juice Club had 16 franchises, and began receiving attention from venture capital funds including Technology Venture Investors (TVI) and Benchmark Capital.
- Shortly thereafter, the company completed its initial $3 million round of funding, followed by a later $19 million funding round supported by seven venture groups.
- The next major milestone for Jamba was its renaming to Jamba Juice in 1995, alongside the relocation of its corporate headquarters to San Francisco and a significant expansion in corporate headcount.
- By the next year, in 1996, Jamba had grown to 30 stores, grew to almost 60 stores in 1997 and then further expanded through a partnership with Whole Foods Market.
- In 1999, Jamba saw its most significant growth yet, with the acquisition of its major competitor, Zuka Juice, alongside an expansion of the Jamba menu with its Souprimos soup line, among other additions.
- Since then, Jamba continued its steady expansion of stores and menu offerings and, most recently in 2019, Jamba changed its name from Jamba Juice to Jamba.
Research Strategy
Please note, for the purpose of this analysis, a press release from 2014 and an article from 2015 were included to highlight the events surrounding Jamba's appointment of its agencies of record. Although all other research in this review is from 2018 and 2019, it was deemed reasonable and appropriate to include media coverage and/or announcements from the time that Jamba's agencies of record were appointed in order to gather the full extent of Jamba's contracted relationship with these two providers. Please also note, more recent research was additionally included to validate that these organizations remain Jamba's agencies of record more currently.