Bottle Rocket has expanded its footprint to London, which will serve as the home to its third office next to Addison and New York.
London is the first international location the app developer is tapping out of a slew of other opportunities it’s considering including Germany, Amsterdam and Paris. The London team, based out of the office of WPP, the company that acquired Bottle Rocket in 2013, will spend some of their time determining what parts of Europe and Asia make sense for expansion. The office will start out with two employees. One is a London native who will help Bottle Rocket with its business development. The other is a senior mobile strategist from Addison. The goal is to grow it out once the need arises.
“Our plan is to have a combination of someone with local knowledge and someone with deep bottle rocket DNA … working together in London,” CEO Calvin Carter said. “We see it as a great market opportunity.”
The company opened a New York office about two years ago, which helps cater to some of its biggest healthcare clients. The majority of Bottle Rocket’s employee base will remain in Addison.
The decision to London came after Carter began visiting London about two years ago to see what business opportunities exist.
“We see demand growing increasing significantly,” Carter said. “We see phenomenal brands in London.”
London also is where many global brands base offices for world strategy, he added.
Bottle Rocket will focus primarily on consumer-focused brands, expecting about 20 percent of clients to be enterprise brands—a similar split to what the company already does in Addison. Carter expects to land two to three global brands headquartered in London by the end of the year. From there, it will analyze how the office is functioning to determine needs and future goals of the new market.
“I’m a big believer of go where people want you to go,” Carter said, adding that he expects more invitations to open international offices in the next couple of years. “Hopefully, by the end of this year we’ll get feedback of where will be the next great place.”
Bottle Rocket recently has seen an increase in demand in retail, food and beverage and healthcare mobile solutions. Its most recent healthcare solution was the Quitter’s Circle, a mobile app the company developed for Pfizer to help people stop smoking.
In the last two years, Bottle Rocket also has been working on building new campaigns and products via augmented and virtual reality. It teamed up with Jim Beam on promoting one of its latest product, Devil’s Cut. Bottle Rocket created a virtual reality experience that showed consumers how the whiskey is distilled. Jim Beam ran the promotion in markets across the nation.
BR Labs, the company’s innovation lab founded earlier this year, is working with the next-generation technology to determine how Bottle Rocket can explore new opportunities with additional brands.
Bottle Rocket, founded in 2008, has grown developed more than 200 applications for brands including Coca-Cola, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Mary Kay.
