The Wildest Way To Make A Fortune

Hello! This is Deep Pockets #23.

In our last edition of Deep Pockets, I started out by listing some of the biggest perks that billionaires enjoy. To refresh your memory, those perks included:

• Mansions around the world

• A yacht the size of a skyscraper

• A private jet

• Collections of luxury cars, jewelry, and art

• Buying your favorite sports team

• Hiring your favorite musicians for private concerts

• The resources to get revenge on anyone who ever did you wrong.

In today’s Deep Pockets, we are going to start by talking about a yacht. A turquoise yacht that is owned by a billionaire. A German-born billionaire who owes his fortune to an absolutely delicious and refreshing invention…

DEEP DIVE: A WILD Way to Make a Fortune

“Go” is a 250-foot yacht that was custom-built in 2018.

Go can sleep 16 guests in eight suites And that doesn’t include the crew! There is additional sleeping capacity for up to 19 crew members.

Go has a steam room, spa, beauty parlor, elevator, underwater lights, air conditioning, nightclub, and a miniature second yacht to ferry people back and forth to shore.

Thanks to her twin 2,575 horsepower engines, Go cruises at around 15 knots and has a range of 5,500 nautical miles. With that range, Go can… go… from Los Angeles to Tokyo and arrive with a few hundred miles to spare.

It’s impossible to know exactly how much Go cost to build, but a safe bet based on comparable yachts is at least $100 million.

Here’s a photo of Go in Nice, France (note the mini yacht in the bottom left):

Unfortunately, Go made headlines around the world in February 2021 for all the wrong reasons.

On the morning of February 24, 2021, people eating breakfast at a yacht club on the Caribbean island of Saint Martin watched in utter shock and horror as Go crashed straight into the dock in front of them at a fairly high velocity.

TWICE.

Here is a video:

Here’s an angle from a distance that shows the whole ugly incident very clearly:

It turns out the accident was caused by a malfunctioning GPS system.

At the time of the crash, Go had more than 4,200 gallons of fuel in its hull. Had the captain dropped anchor, which is what many captains would have done, the hull very likely would have ripped apart as the boat sped forward. That would have dumped 4,200 gallons of fuel into the harbor.

That disaster was averted thanks to some quick thinking by the captain. Unable to control the back-and-forth velocity, the captain realized he still had directional control. In a split second, he aimed for the cement barrier of the yacht club and prayed the GPS malfunction would end as quickly as possible. That’s exactly what happened.

Everyone on board, including the owner, survived without a scratch. Go was badly damaged but not totaled. In fact, the photo of Go posted above was actually taken in June 2024!

So who owns “Go”? Well, it’s a…

WILD Story

Go is owned by a German billionaire named Hans-Peter Wild.

How did Hans-Peter earn his $3.5 billion net worth?

Hans-Peter Wild was born in Heidelberg, Germany, in June of 1941. A decade before he was born, his parents, Rudolf and Leonie Wild, founded a natural food company that they initially called “Zick-Zack Werk Rudolf Wild.” “Zick-Zack” is the way Germans say “Zig Zag,” and “Werk” is the German word for “Work.”

If you’re thinking “Zick-Zack Werk Rudolf Wild” is an awkward company name, so did Rudolf and Leonie. They eventually shortened the name to “WILD,” stylized in all capital letters. Their goal was to create a non-alcoholic drink made from all-natural ingredients that could be mass-produced and shipped around Europe. They started with lemonade.

As frequently happens in business, Rudolf and Leonie’s entrepreneurial journey took a detour. Early on, they actually found more success making the “essences” of juices - concentrated flavorings - that were used by other companies to make juices, ice cream, candies, etc. For example, a strawberry-flavored ice cream.

In the 1950s they did launch a beverage of their own, a fruit-flavored soft drink called Libella that came in glass bottles and was fairly successful in West Germany.

In the mid-1960s, WILD took yet another business detour.

Up until this point, filling glass bottles with liquid at a mass scale was a labor-intensive, messy, and error-prone process. Furthermore, at WILD, bottling was always outsourced, which added additional cost and led to a loss of quality control.

But it was another challenge with the bottling process that ultimately and inadvertently made WILD go… wild.

At the time, the West German version of the Food and Drug Administration restricted the use of color additives in food and drinks. That meant an “orange” flavored drink made by WILD actually appeared cloudy/clear when viewed by consumers through its glass bottle. Not ideal.

Rudolf Wild went far and wide searching for a solution to this problem. He found his answer in a very unexpected place: A French company called Thimonnier.

Did Thimonnier manufacture bottles? Cans? Cardboard boxes? Nope. Nope. And Nope. Thimonnier made…

Sewing machines?

Using its 100+ years of sewing experience, Thimonnier had recently patented a design and machine that produced fabric pouches. Rudolf wondered if that same process could be used to make seamless plastic pouches. Convinced it could, he bought the patent and the company’s machinery.

These pouches instantly solved the unappealing liquid problem because the pouches would be made of non-see-through plastic vs. opaque glass. Furthermore, the machine process injected the liquid directly into hermetically sealed pouches on the assembly line without human involvement. This made mass manufacturing, packaging, and shipping products exponentially easier, cleaner, and cheaper (because they were no longer outsourcing bottling).

Now, all WILD needed was an innovative new drink to inject into these innovative new pouches.

After two years of product research and testing, in 1969, Rudolf and Leonie were satisfied with a set of ingredients for their new fruity drink.

Now, all WILD needed was a catchy name.

One day, a brainstorm led Rudolf and Leonie to the image of sipping the drink on a sunny day while relaxing on an island.

Perhaps an Italian island.

A very popular Italian island for German tourists at the time was…

Capri.

What would be a good word to pair with “Capri?” How about “Sonne,” the German word for “sun?” Perfect. As you may have guessed, the drink they invented was…

.

.

.

.

Capri Sun

Think about the package Capri Sun comes in. It’s not an aluminum can or a glass bottle. It comes in a non-see-through, flat plastic pouch (with the world’s tiniest and most annoying straw hole):

Hans-Peter Joins The Business

While all this was going on, Hans-Peter Wild was racking up degrees. After earning a law degree, he got an MBA. He spent two years studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Cambridge before finally earning a PhD from the University of Mannheim. He then spent four years working as a managing director for a multinational mineral and oil company.

These international experiences gave Hans-Peter a clear idea and goal for when he eventually joined the family business. He wanted to transform WILD from a regional medium success story into a global empire. Capri Sun was his key to that plan.

Hans-Peter joined WILD in 1974. An early and crucial realization was that Capri Sun’s flavor had to be adjusted for local market tastes. What works in Germany may be disgusting to the Japanese consumer. WILD conducted taste tests in dozens of countries and used that data to make custom flavors for their target expansion countries.

By 1979, they were ready to launch a massive international marketing blitz. All they needed was a celebrity endorser.

Instead of hiring local celebrities for each new market, Hans-Peter wanted to hire ONE massive celebrity for the whole campaign. Someone with global appeal.

He hired Muhammed Ali. In the campaign, Muhammed tells the audience to…

“Go buy it because it is the greatest, like me, of all time.”

In addition to a lucrative paycheck, for his endorsement, Muhammad demanded one free crate of Capri Sun per week for four years. WILD happily obliged.

The campaign was a huge success. Just as Hans-Peter planned, Capri Sun became a global smash hit.

By 1982, Capri Sun was available in two dozen countries, including the United States.

By the time Rudolf Wild died in 1995 at the age of 91, Capri Sun was available in more than 50 countries and was the third most popular non-alcoholic, fruit-based drink in the world behind only Tropicana and Minute Maid. Today, Capri Sun is available in 110 countries, many of which have their own custom local flavor. Capri Sun sold 6 BILLION pouches in 2023.

Leonie Wild died in 2005 at the age of 97, having spent the last few decades of her life focused on philanthropy.

A decade later, Hans-Peter cashed out… kind of.

Liquid Fortune

In 2010, Hans-Peter sold 35% of WILD to American private equity firm KKR & Co for an undisclosed amount.

In 2014, Hans-Peter and KKR sold 100% of WILD to American food conglomerate Archer Daniels Midlands for $3 billion.

But there was a twist!

The sale did NOT include Capri Sun 😎 

A year before the KKR investment, Hans-Peter spun off Capri Sun into a separate company. Neither the 2010 investment nor the 2014 full acquisition of WILD included Capri Sun OR its pouch-making business!

Hans-Peter sold the pouch-making business in 2023.

Today, Hans-Peter privately owns 100% of Capri Sun. Though technically, the company is more of a licensing firm. For example, in North America, Capri Sun is exclusively produced and distributed by Kraft Heinz. In Europe, the drink is distributed by Coca-Cola. In Mexico, Mondelez. In Japan, the Ezaki Group. Etc.

In July 2024, Hans-Peter explored selling a minority stake in Capri Sun for $500 million. His apparent goal was to use the proceeds to buy back the North American license from Kraft Heinz. It’s not clear as of this writing if the minority stake sale went through.

When he’s not traversing the globe in his yacht or running Capri Sun, Hans-Peter is focused on philanthropy, primarily as President of his mother’s foundation. He has donated tens of millions of dollars to various charities, mostly in Germany and Switzerland.

In 2016, he donated $16.5 million to the US Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation in recognition of the United States military’s efforts during World War II to liberate Germany from the Nazi party. It was the largest donation in the Foundation’s history up to that point.

In addition to his yacht, he owns a private jet that he considers a second home/office and a professional rugby team.

Oh and btw, in case you were wondering, Hans-Peter WAS ON BOARD when his yacht crashed. In an interview after the accident, he said:

“Yes, I saw everything firsthand. The Captain reacted brilliantly. We were unable to maneuver for a short time, which could have ended badly for the people in the yacht club we were heading towards. Some didn’t recognize our situation and sat quietly. And if we had hit the harbor bridge, the harbor would not have been usable for a year because of the repairs. The jetty has now been restored, the insurance has paid, and the boat is also in full working order again.”

So there you have it! From a mom-and-pop German company trying to make lemonade, to a revolutionary pouch-manufacturing breakthrough, to a $3 billion sale (minus the crown jewel), the creation of Capri Sun is truly a WILD story.

Maybe someday you’ll be drinking a Capri Sun on your yacht in the Caribbean! Hopefully, you won’t have any GPS malfunctions 😃 

FINAL WORD

On the next edition of “Deep Pockets,” we are going to talk about an entrepreneur who made a huge fortune revolutionizing breakfast. He was literally a CEREAL entrepreneur. 😆 

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