Spotlight_ShadowBev_Health&Body BEAUTY 5/3/12 1:27 PM Page 3
The Shadow Beverages and Snacks team, ▲ founded by Sam Jones (top center) and George Martinez (front).
friends in Colorado. On the marketing side, Shadow has picked up some product endorsements from up-and-coming players in Major League Baseball. They are working with Arizona Diamondbacks’ Ryan Roberts to promote WheyUP, a brand they purchased last June. With Ryan Roberts quickly becoming a fan favorite in Phoenix, WheyUP has also attracted the endorsement of second-year Los Angeles Dodger shortstop Dee Gordon. Martinez and Jones could not be happier with the decision they made over five years ago in Martinez’ backyard. They control their own lives and feel good about bringing beverages to the market, which are functional. Health awareness seems to becoming more important each year and they are excited to play a role in that market, while helping young brands find a niche. ▲
“From a functional standpoint, it’s a drink that serves a functional purpose,” said Martinez. “You’re drinking that beverage with a purpose in mind … so it might be hydration, might be energy, it might be coconut, but it has a functional purpose. That is a space that we decided to plan and we took it a step further.” Shadow Beverages began to grow and Martinez and Jones started to focus on licensing companies that were already around. “We looked at a different strategy — licensing brands,” Martinez said about Shadow Beverages coming onto the market. “(We wanted) to take existing brands that had no entry into the beverage space and link them into that same consumer from a brand standpoint which can be likened to a brand like Nike that is everywhere.” Shadow Beverages now operates in 28 states. The company continues to grow and Martinez and Jones are enjoying watching a dream come true, while maintaining a close friendship that started through common
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becomes well known so the brand can then be sold. “There is a lot of history about brands that have incubated and they all have one big strategy and that was to sell for millions of dollars,” Martinez said. “With that strategy, you might as well go buy a lottery ticket. It can work — when it works — there are some great stories behind it, but there are all those stories of folks that didn’t succeed that you didn’t hear about and we didn’t want to be one of those.” They knew they needed an approach that would create a strong operating company if they were to succeed. “When we started to work in the confines of our (business) strategy we identified ... the functional beverage space and we knew that those were the categories that were growing,” Martinez said. Jones and Martinez created a business plan for the functional drink market, which would not put them head to head with the major soft drinks.
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