"After you disappeared I looked into any beverage factories near New York I could buy. I found one factory near New Jersey with pretty new equipment but bad management. This led to the company not making any profits while simultaneously having high debts due to the new production equipment they bought.
I know some people at the bank they owned their debt to and they were a great help in acquiring this company very fast. I released all of the management stuff but kept some production employees and technicians.
I hired many people from Oxford and some of Alexander's old friends from Havard. This time we could invite many people with better backgrounds as Red Bull has a very large investment and many people learned about your success with Atari. Dennis and Tanja who are currently leading Atari and are about to receive some shares of the company are already very famous among the recent graduates of Harvard."
Caroline was quite excited about the steps she has taken in the last few weeks and Simon could feel just how proud and happy she was with her achievements so far.
It seems like it was the right step for her to leave the family law firm and find something completely new for her to become creative. Simon was more interested in how far the process of the first real product, Red Bull Energy, was.
"Great choice to place the production base farther away from New York. Red Bull is a more traditional industry and the price of a factory building and the employee costs would be significantly higher in New York. Atari is using Staten Island as the production base only because we need a lot of highly educated people in the future for development and research.
Did you already make some advancement with the product creation? Having a product ready for the market quickly is the most important right now. Else the factory building and the employees will continuously cost us a lot of money."
Caroline's happy mood decreased significantly upon hearing this question but she didn't get angry this time.
"We used the list of ingredients you provided in order to make the first test product. We achieved similar effects to the products from Thailand and even made it a carbonated drink, just like you wanted it to be.
But the taste is still a little off. Many of those ingredients aren't really used in nowadays soft drinks and need a lot of testing in order to be well received by the market. We even included the taste you described when you first mentioned Red Bull and tried to get as close as possible.
The experts we invited to the company are quite sure they can develop a suitable product within the next 1-2 months. But we still need to do substantial clinical tests with the new product. Because of the ingredients and the purpose of increasing bodily functions the blood pressure will increase as well after digesting the energy drink.
We will need to make professional clinical tests on our new product and make sure we are completely safe when it comes to any legal aspects. Mom already told me she would never let a single can of energy drink on the market until she gives us the legal approval.
Having a lawsuit because somebody died as a result of drinking or a new energy drink would be fatal. But the experts in the company are confident to finish the development and sufficient medical tests within the next 3-4 months."
This was actually expected by Simon when he thought about the new product. After being raised in a legal family all his life he understood just how insane some lawsuits in the United States can be and he was perfectly fine with closing any legal loophole before putting the Red Bull Energy cans on the market.
3-4 months wasn't that big of a deal and there are many more things to prepare before the official start. Simon continued to give some suggestions to his sister.
"Once you produced the final product and registered all the necessary patents you can already start looking for partners and spread news about a significant new product you are going to release. I am quite confident that there will be no problems with the clinical tests and we can use this time in order to find the necessary partners that can help the product release.
We probably need a few large investment banks that own shares in large supermarkets and malls across the United States and even Europe. Our plan is to use a lot of investment in marketing and production in order to spread the influence of Red Bull as far as possible.
But we still need the support of supermarket owners in order to get the best possible placement of our products in the market. This aspect will rely heavily on the partners we choose for Red Bull and you need to not only consider that, but also explain this during any negotiation. Anybody that can only provide money but no connections to sales channels will not be considered by us as a major partner for the future."
While Simon was talking about some important aspects for future negotiations Caroline started taking notes. Even though her brother knew nothing about how to manage a company he was always very good at providing creative suggestions and coming up with feasible solutions.
When her little brother finished she decided to talk about some private topics between siblings.
"Simon, I know you only meant the best for our family when you introduced us to this new project and I am very grateful you offered me to lead this new project. I really enjoy the whole process and I am sure to build something truly amazing together with you.
But I noticed that Alexander seems a little off in the last few weeks. He is not depressed or anything like that, but I didn't see him smile much and he talks significantly less lately. Do you think he has any problem on his mind?"