Coaqua's deductions ran to thousands of line items each, a volume that would normally call for a dedicated $145–150K-a-year specialist. With Glimpse, Coaqua manages deductions across multiple distributors with the lean team it already has.
Coaqua is a premium coconut water brand co-founded by Anthony “Tony” Cadieux II and Justin Bruckel. The company is lean and scrappy: operating with a small team, it sells through multiple distributors, including national broadliners, as well as direct retail relationships. It is now expanding into Walmart. Coaqua donates 2% of their revenue to the Bikes for Kids Foundation and Kids Dreams Matter.
In 2024, Coaqua’s distribution footprint was simple enough that the team was able to handle deductions in-house. But as the brand grew, that approach quickly broke down. Coaqua began selling through broadline wholesale distributors, which enabled massive reach for Coaqua, but also led to a swift increase in deductions.
Broadliner deductions are dense, code-heavy line items that add up fast. A single deduction can run to a couple thousand line items, and brands must manually review each one to ensure they aren’t writing off recoverable revenue. Anthony speaks candidly about his experience with frequent broadliner deductions:
"Some of these broadliners, you almost got to think, if someone walks in the room and turns the lights on in their warehouse, they're charging a brand for it."
Anthony Cadieux II
Co-Founder & Co-CEO
In Anthony's view, legacy CPG systems are still hobbled by information gaps: distributors levying deductions know their own codes far better than the brands they charge — and brands without that expertise pay for it, often to the tune of millions of dollars a year.
Due to their growing deductions volume, Coaqua had been using Glimpse since 2024 to automate their deductions process and offload manual labor. Along the way, though, a competitor pitched Coaqua on doing everything Glimpse did at a lower price. Coaqua switched, but quickly found that the competitor’s platform required so much manual input from Coaqua's team that it defeated the purpose, and churned. Coaqua then tried to recruit a dedicated offshore deductions specialist, but those candidates didn't have the requisite knowledge to run Coaqua’s deductions. Money fell through the cracks, and more manual labor ended up on Coaqua’s plate.
With multiple distributors, direct retail relationships, and a national launch on the horizon, Coaqua needed their deductions handled accurately, without adding more headcount. So they re-engaged with Glimpse. As Anthony puts it,
“You guys are essentially saving us a full-time employee and all the associated HR stuff that goes along with it.”
Anthony Cadieux II
Co-Founder & Co-CEO
Glimpse now handles Coaqua's deductions end to end, from document retrieval to disputing. Glimpse AI agents pull backups from distributor portals, code each deduction, and file disputes. Glimpse's team handles the work. Coaqua is looped in only for exceptions, such as a document that can't be pulled online.
After briefly using another solution whose platform relied on Coaqua's own team to manually input data, Anthony sees the difference clearly. Glimpse's team understands how the CPG business actually works, and the software is built around what brands need. When Coaqua's team does need to log in, the platform is simple and easy to use.
What stood out most was implementation. Every onboarding call ended with a clear list of outstanding action items, and Glimpse stayed on each one until everything was in place. As Anthony said,
"You're pleasantly persistent to make sure that everything you can do for us gets implemented."
Anthony Cadieux II
Co-Founder & Co-CEO
Coaqua didn't need to grow its team to keep up with its deductions. With Glimpse, it gets more out of the team it already has. Glimpse automates their deductions operations, and Coaqua's Philippines-based accountants no longer have to sift through deductions line by line.
The other option would have been to add headcount. For context, one founder Anthony spoke with runs a beverage brand doing around $15 million a year, and that brand has two full-time people on deductions, one for each of its two main distributors. For Coaqua, Anthony says, the equivalent would have been a full-time specialist who knows every distributor code and does nothing but deductions. The salary alone would be around $100K. Health insurance and benefits bring it to $145–150K a year, plus the HR overhead that comes with any new hire. For a scrappy brand at Coaqua's stage, that simply wasn't an option.
"From a cash flow perspective, [we didn't] even have the option to pay someone like that. So Glimpse… [is] kind of a lifesaver to give a company of our size… the ability to have a professional deductions department, and really be more profitable than we would without one."
Anthony Cadieux II
Co-Founder & Co-CEO
Coaqua is entering its biggest growth phase yet. That includes a Walmart launch of roughly 550 coolers, with nine SKUs (stock keeping units) going into the ambient set. More doors and more distributors mean more deductions, and with Glimpse, Coaqua can take on that growth with the same lean team.
"You got to watch the pennies, and you guys really help us watch those pennies."
Anthony Cadieux II
Co-Founder & Co-CEO
Glimpse is an AI-native deduction management service built for CPG brands selling through distributors and major retailers. Glimpse automates the entire deductions process, from coding and validation to dispute resolution, using AI agents trained on distributor- and retailer-specific rules. It takes on the workflows overwhelming manual teams, disputing all the invalid deductions that manual teams can't address.
With Glimpse, over 200 brands have recovered invalid deductions, eliminated manual work, and improved bottom-line performance without adding headcount. Glimpse has processed over $1 billion in invoice volume. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Based in New York.
