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BACK IN '96, when Darius Bikoff created Glaceau Smartwater, based on personal taste and research that included visits to remote springs and an audience with an Indian spiritualist, few credited him with being anything more than an entrepreneur with a capitalism-meets-New-Age-crazy dream.
But shod in nifty packaging, courtesy of famous architect Philippe Starck, the electrolyte-laden Smartwater caught on in New York's natural-food stores and steadily spread nationwide. Bikoff repeated the trick by creating Vitamin Water-again with the cool bottles, but this time adding an array of flavors and suggested vitamin-based functionality: "Revive," '"Energy," "Endurance" and so on.
By '02 he had earned his beverage-biz stripes. Vitamin Water went mainstream fast and Ad Age acknowledged it had created a new category, '"enhanced waters." Months...