When a challenger brand breaks through, the first question is usually whether consumers understand the product. The harder question comes later: can early excitement become a repeatable, mainstream behaviour?
The German scent-based hydration brand air up® has grown from a student idea into a global scale-up operating across 14 countries with their world’s first Scentaste™ drinking system. Since launching in Europe in 2019, the company has raised more than €60m across two funding rounds, built a customer base in the millions, expanded into markets including the U.S. and established itself as one of Europe’s most recognisable challenger hydration brands.
Now, the business is entering a more demanding phase and the task is no longer simply to prove that scent-based drinking can capture attention. But rather it is to turn that attention into habit, retail repeatability and long-term category creation. At the centre of this is the leadership change announced by air up®, with former PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz and Danone leader Cristina Kenz appointed Chief Executive Officer. Kenz, who previously served as Chairwoman of the Board, succeeds outgoing CEO Chris Hauth, who led the company through its initial growth phase and will remain connected to the business as an investor.
air up® enters next phase of global growth by appointing Cristina Kenz as CEO, and expands its c-Suite with Sina Neubrandt as CMO
Kenz’s appointment signals a natural evolution for the company: from founder-built scale-up to more mature omnichannel consumer business. Early-stage challenger brands often win because they feel different. They have a simple consumer proposition, a distinctive product experience and a strong reason to be talked about. But maintaining that originality while building the systems and operational discipline required for mainstream growth is a more complex test. For air up®, the original idea was deceptively simple: could water feel flavoured without adding sugar, sweeteners or artificial additives? Its Scentaste™ drinking system uses retronasal olfaction to deliver perceived taste through scent alone, without adding anything to the liquid itself. By separating flavour perception from ingredients, the brand has challenged traditional ideas of soft drinks, bottled water and flavoured hydration.
That product difference gave air up® its breakthrough moment. Kenz’s role is now to continue turning that breakthrough into a durable consumer behaviour. Her vision is expected to focus on the levers that define the next stage of scale: sharpening the omnichannel model, accelerating physical retail, strengthening DTC, building the product innovation pipeline and ensuring the brand’s cultural relevance keeps pace with its commercial growth.
As one of her first major strategic moves, Kenz has appointed Sina Neubrandt as Chief Marketing Officer. Neubrandt brings experience from Adidas and The Absolut Company, where brand storytelling, cultural relevance and global consumer engagement have sat at the centre of growth. Her appointment strengthens air up®’s focus on building a more emotionally resonant consumer brand around a highly technical product system. The pairing of Kenz and Neubrandt reflects an important strategic point where product innovation may create the initial reason to believe, but brand storytelling helps determine whether that innovation becomes part of everyday behaviour.
Under Kenz’s leadership, air up® will focus on using DTC and physical retail as compounding growth pillars rather than separate channels. Many challenger brands create early consumer excitement online, but the next phase of growth often depends on whether the proposition can live convincingly in more traditional commercial environments. She brings experience from some of the world’s largest FMCG businesses, where scale depends on repeat purchase, operational clarity, international execution and disciplined innovation. Her career has centred on commercial scaling, consumer-led transformation, international growth, innovation and ESG-led business change. At air up®, those lessons are now being applied to a business that has already proven its distinctiveness but must now build the infrastructure for the next stage.
Cristina Kenz, newly appointed CEO of air up®, said: “Having spent months guiding the business as Chairwoman, I have seen the incredible power of air up’s technology firsthand. Our next frontier is clear: we are going to build a true omnichannel powerhouse. By aggressively accelerating our physical retail footprint while matching it with the agility of our DTC ecosystem, we will make healthy hydration with taste by scent universally accessible.
“I am absolutely thrilled to appoint Sina to our C-suite. Her brilliant background in culture-shaping storytelling at Adidas and Absolut makes her the perfect leader to amplify our consumer reach as we scale new product models and pioneer new categories for the brand.”
With experience re-engineering large FMCG businesses for growth across operating models, commercial agendas, communications, innovation pipelines and international markets, Kenz will now lead air up® through a more unified omnichannel phase. As the brand enters its next stage of retail growth across multiple global markets, its challenge is also its opportunity: to use technology not as novelty, but as a route into better everyday wellness, healthier hydration habits and more enjoyable consumer routines. The next chapter is also about making scent-based hydration more embedded in daily life, turning one of Europe’s most distinctive challenger brand stories into a long-term global behaviour.
