Fresh look, but a mess inside

If there’s one thing I enjoy everyday, it’s orange juice. That goes double if it’s squeezed fresh and served chilled. 

But not all brands of orange juice are created equal. Sometimes you get a glass that is great, fresh with pulp. Sometimes you get one that is too sweet or even too bland. Sometimes it even tastes artificial or powdered. In the case of one brand that we’ll simply call Orange Juice, it’s just downright terrible no matter how hard we try to give the bottle a fair and vigorous shake.

For over a year Orange Juice has been teasing us with what they want to offer in the Philippines. They say they want to market their brand at younger customers and that they want to explore a new way of selling Orange Juice, but all they have really shown us are miniature versions of their products. No full-size versions yet that we can actually sample.

Then came a local tradeshow for juice earlier this month. It was the perfect stage for Orange Juice to make its presence felt in the local market, but when we juice journalists arrived, there was no Orange Juice. The booth was there and the elaborate dioramas were all set, but Orange Juice was missing.

The reason? The first full size bottles of Orange Juice were held by the authorities. There were things that weren’t quite right with the paperwork of Orange Juice as a company, so they have to pay heavily just to bring out their bottles for the juice show. So they paid, and the Orange Juice finally made an appearance mid-way through the first day of the event.

Then a few weeks later, they flew juice journalists to their home country for their own major juice show. I sent one of my guys for the trip that would last more than a week. We expected big things from Orange Juice because we’ve seen the many other juice makers from that same country improve. The sales numbers show it: there are a few that are gaining wider market acceptance, even though it's slow at first.

Orange Juice wanted to make a big splash, saying they plan to reveal new products at the event. When the morning of the opening day came, I contacted my guy in the group to meet up at the event, but lo and behold, they were not there. The reason is their hosts from Orange Juice decided to hold them at the hotel, twiddling their thumbs. And when they finally arrived after mid day the unthinkable (albeit expected) happened: the new products of Orange Juice were not there at the event. 

There was no prior word to the group of juice journalists that the plan had changed. They were told instead that they will go directly to the headquarters of Orange Juice to see the new products for a big reveal. When they did reveal the new bottles of Orange Juice in a ballroom full of juice journalists, juice dealers and juice importers, they did so after a presentation with glaring errors in spelling and photos of famous Hollywood actors were used… probably without permission.

When the group approached the new Orange Juice products, it was clear that things weren’t right. Our resident juicer says things weren’t fitted properly, as if the cap on the bottle was loosely fitted. The Orange Juice products on stage were not even ready for consumption. He was told it was real, but it was not because he can’t drink it, he can’t taste it. And the juice journalists were told by the PR representatives not to put that in their review of Orange Juice's products.

So they brought them to another area the next day to try Orange Juice, but everyone was already exasperated with the juice maker. Still they tried, but they only got a teaspoon sample. Actually, they just got a drop. The reason: there were so many juice journalists and juice dealers present and only so many hours in a day, and our juice correspondent says it seems the juice maker is prioritizing the guests from other countries, so just a drop for each Orange Juice product. Not much for a story or a video, but our representative tried.

All of the representatives sent to the juice makers headquarters are now back. They must feel defeated, like they’ve just been through an ordeal. They must feel like evacuees, but from a disaster that is completely man-made. We have never seen a company fail so terribly in the field of juice making, but there is always a first time for everything.

We thought this company had already learned from mistakes in the past, but that is not the case with Orange Juice. And if they can fail in front of juice journalists at their own home ground with all their resources at their disposal, how can we trust them? When they got independent distributor partners for their other juice brands, things seem to work well. Problems are managed, and customers are taken care of even after they bought and consumed the juice. But when the company behind Orange Juice try to do it themselves, things just go bad quickly.

And just as all these things were happening, news of bad Orange Juice products in other countries start to emerge. There was one issue where, after a check-up, an Orange Juice product kept rolling, unable to stop. But the most unusual was when an exact same Orange Juice product had a part of it just snap off. One Orange Juice product wouldn’t stop, the other cannot move. Both are broken, and all these happened in a month.

Now they are recalling the products and trying to fix the disaster. You can’t defuse a bomb after it has already exploded.

You’re probably wondering: Why are you guys talking about juice when you are an automotive website? That’s a fair ask. Hypothetically-speaking if Orange Juice was actually a car brand, we would be horrified. Bringing a new car brand to market isn't as simple as just importing, paying fees and putting products on shelves. All your paperwork has to be in order, all your backend operations (e.g. aftersales service, parts supplies) have to be up to the task, you have to be convincing to potential partners like banks and dealers, you need to look organized in front of journalists, and more. All your ducks have to be in a row before you even put your products for customers to examine and drive.

If said hypothetical car brand exists that was having visible problems in front of everyone, unable to execute something as basic as getting their cars to the show on time or ensuring critical parts don't just snap off, that brand needs to take a deep and honest look inside to figure out what they are doing wrong. We would be horrified at what that would mean for customers because cars are long term purchases. A vehicle owner would be married to the brand for service, warranty claims, and other matters.

Such a car company -if it indeed exists- needs to actually fix their problems if they want to succeed rather than try to silence journalists with an insulting low bribe as a Sorry For The Inconvenience. Sure, if it was one issue or maybe two, it's just an inconvenience like having an elevator under maintenance or a toilet that was out of order. But if the problems are consistent then the sign should be different: Sorry For The Incompetence. 

If we ever encountered such a brand in the automotive space, then as journalists we speak our mind, even if we have to be careful to avoid messy defamation lawsuits by sideswiping. We take pride in what we do, and we cannot recommend automobiles that we believe can put motorists in danger from a company that is having problems in the most basic aspects of auto industry operations. 

Back to juice: We’ve already experienced and tasted the products of Orange Juice for you, but the taste was way off. It seems the people doing the squeezing were blindfolded, because it definitely tasted like lemons.