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Aaron Tsamasiros was a civil engineer and Stephanie Lacorcia a makeup artist, but neither had experience in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) before they decided to launch COCO HIT, a coconut water brand, while raising two young children.
Melbourne-based COCO HIT landed on shelves in September last year, and in the past eight months the couple have expanded the brand to more than 650 independent retail stockists across six states, locked in six distributor partners, and secured partnerships with cafe chain Greenstreat and wellness brand Matcha Maiden.
The story of how the couple have reached this point in their business says a lot about about what happens when two people who don't know the rules of an industry decide to ignore them entirely.
The spark, according to Lacorcia, was personal frustration.
A health-conscious creative entrepreneur working with some of Australia's leading influencers, Lacorcia was pregnant and craving something "genuinely refreshing".
"I spent months during pregnancy going through every coconut water and flavoured beverage on the market looking for something I actually wanted to drink," says Lacorcia, creative director of COCO HIT.
"But nothing came close; they were either plain and flat, or had unhealthy ingredients I didn't want."
That frustration became the brief.
"We spent 12 months sampling and refining before we even went near a retailer, because we knew the product had to be right before anything else mattered," she says.
"We're doing all of this with two kids under two, working around full time jobs and nap times, but honestly that's part of why we're so driven to make it work.
“We built COCO HIT because we needed it to exist. Turns out a lot of other people felt the same way."
The gap they identified sits inside a fast-growing category.
Australia's coconut water market was valued at US$274.8 million ($385 million) in 2025 and is forecast to reach US$912.9 million ($1.28 billion) by 2034, representing a compound annual growth rate of 14.27 per cent, according to research group IMARC.
But identifying a gap and filling it are two very different things, particularly for founders with no existing relationships in grocery distribution and no playbook for how brands actually get onto shelves.
Tsamasiros, who handles operations, approached the problem the way an engineer might - methodically, and with a stubborn refusal to take no for an answer.
"We knew we were onto something unique in the market, and our first distributor could see the vision from the start," says Tsamasiros.
"When we first reached out, we were told to circle back later as they were heading into the Easter period, one of their busiest times of the year.
"We stayed persistent, kept the conversation going, and shortly after Easter ended up securing an initial order of 56 pallets with that same distributor.”
Within the first week in Brisbane alone, COCO HIT added 72 accounts.
"That early momentum told us the product could sell itself if we could just break into the places we know we can be seen," says Tsamasiros.
"The challenge in this category is always the chicken and egg; you can't get the big retailers without the visibility, and you can't get the visibility without the big retailers.
"So we flipped it. We built the visibility through independent retail first, and now we're negotiating from a completely different position."
That independent-first approach has now delivered more than 650 stockists nationally and attracted attention from established brands looking for partners that match their own positioning.
The partnerships with Greenstreat and Macha Maiden represent the first co-branded product for both brands which COCO HIT says is a direct expression of its ambition to build the category through collaboration rather than competition.
Jackson McGrath, co-founder and CEO of Melbourne-based cafe chain Greenstreat, says the partnership came down to alignment and energy.
"We're seeing a major shift toward food and beverages that feel cleaner, more functional and better aligned with modern wellness-focused lifestyles," says McGrath.
"Consumers are becoming far more intentional about what they drink, looking for options that deliver both flavour and functionality without feeling artificial or overly sugary.
“COCO HIT fits perfectly into that shift. Greenstreat was built from the ground up as an independent Australian family business, and we naturally gravitate toward brands that feel authentic and quality-driven.
"That founder energy from Steph and Aaron is a big part of why we chose to work with them."
Dylan Nadelman, director of Matcha Maiden, points to a similar alignment, noting the brand's connection to the strawberry-matcha trend sweeping cafes and social media.
“When we first interacted with COCO HIT, straight away there was a clear synergy between our brand and theirs," says Nadelman.
"Both are loud, colourful and sit within this growing space of on-trend functional beverages.
“What stood out most though was seeing that the business was built by just Stephanie and Aaron; parents who came together to create something from scratch while raising a family.
"That resonated heavily with us, because Matcha Maiden has always been run on those same family values.
"Strawberry matcha has already become one of the most popular non-traditional matcha drinks globally. Fast forward now and you're seeing versions of it everywhere, which shows we were ahead of the curve.”
In addition to Greenstreat and Matcha Maiden, COCO HIT is stocked by independent stores such as IGA, APCO, Go Vita, FoodWorks, Market Organics, The Good Grocer, Friendly Grocer and Wholelife Pharmacy & Healthfoods.
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