Bottles saved, efficiency gained: air up® centralizes data for growth

“With Fivetran, we’re seeing a tremendous increase in both the quantity and quality of our data-driven decisions, particularly in areas like marketing strategy, customer experience and delivery process optimization.”
— Stefan Kühn, VP Data & AI at air up

‍

German startup air up® has revolutionized the beverage industry with its innovative hydration system, which adds flavor to water through scent Pods. Founded in 2018, the company is now available in 13 European countries and the U.S., serving over 10 million customers. By promoting tap water in reusable bottles as an alternative to sugary soft drinks, air up has saved more than 368 million single-use plastic bottles and over 7,360 tons of sugar in just 4 years.

However, rapid growth introduced a significant challenge: a fragmented data landscape with siloed information across multiple systems. Data analysts had to rely on various stakeholders to gather data from Excel, Sharepoint and external providers, creating a slow and complex data integration process. This inefficient approach delayed reporting and limited the team’s ability to make timely, data-driven decisions essential for scaling the business.  

Laying the foundation for data-driven growth

The company’s rapid growth, with the workforce tripling in one year, made addressing its data challenges even more urgent. The solution was to centralize data and enable self-service analytics. Stefan Kühn, air up’s VP Data & AI, identified the need for a data movement platform. The team was impressed by Fivetran’s robust automation capabilities and extensive library of 600+ fully managed connectors — particularly Shopify, as over 80% of air up’s data comes from its web shops. 

The data team carefully planned the integration to address key questions such as:

• What data is relevant and necessary, and how do we access it?
• Which business questions are most important?
• Which data sources should be prioritized?
• How should we approach data transformation?

Empowering 97% of employees with real-time, always-on analytics

Fivetran’s fully managed pipelines were up and running in a matter of hours. "With Fivetran delivering data in a structured format, we now have high-quality data from all the countries where we operate,” Kühn says. “The intuitive and easy-to-navigate UI further boosts our efficiency.”

As a result, 97% of the 250 “air uppies” can now conduct complex business analytics, including tracking customer behavior throughout the B2C funnel — from awareness and consideration through conversion and retention, customer engagement, product tracking, delivery and operational efficiency. 

“With Fivetran, we’re seeing a tremendous increase in both the quantity and quality of our data-driven decisions, particularly in areas like marketing strategy, customer experience and delivery process optimization.”
— Stefan Kühn, VP Data & AI at air up

Making data accessible to a growing team with varying levels of data understanding can be challenging. To address this, air up implemented Veezoo for self-service analytics. Veezoo’s AI-powered, intuitive platform allows users to ask business questions in plain language, such as, "How many orders from France with our Cola flavor did we have this week?" or "What is the average time between a customer's first and second orders?" 

"Veezoo makes it easy for all users to understand, interact and work with complex data,” Kühn adds. “This would not have been possible without Fivetran centralizing and interconnecting data in a structured format.”

Predictive analytics for smarter forecasting made possible with Fivetran

The modern data stack powered by Fivetran has enabled predictive analytics at air up. With comprehensive and integrated data access, the company has built several models to forecast sales and investigates any deviations to refine these models and gain deeper business insights.

air up plans to leverage Fivetran alongside dbt for more efficient job orchestration. Fivetran will trigger dbt jobs once data is extracted and loaded into the target database. "Fivetran provides seamless and timely integration of our data sources. Every integration starts with Fivetran,” Kühn says.

Download this IDC report to learn how Fivetran drives millions in financial impact and enables new business initiatives for enterprises.