AriZona's own sales team called 99-cent can a dumb idea. It now sells a billion of them.

One of Don Vultaggio's own sales managers told him that printing 99 cents on the can was the dumbest idea he had ever heard. AriZona sold fewer than 50 million big cans that year. This year, it expects to sell over a billion. Vultaggio, founder and chairman of Arizona Beverage Company, gives Ian Schwartzman the mechanics: how the printed price works, why the company carries no debt and spends nothing on advertising, and why the board is him and his two sons at lunch. Also: the aluminum supplier who colluded ...