BODYARMOR’S SPORTING CHANCE
Premium product. It’s an argument that has worked for craft beer, high-pressure processed juices, vodka, bottled water and RTD teas. It’s worked for Starbucks over your corner coffee shop, for Cape Cod Potato Chips over Lay’s, and it’s starting to work for Shake Shack as an alternative to McDonald’s as well. Why can’t it work for sports drinks? That’s the argument that the renowned BodyArmor team – primarily Fuze founder Lance Collins and Vitaminwater cofounder Mike Repole – has begun making after nearly three years of detours through the back roads of the beverage cooler. Now, the company is urging consumers to use BodyArmor to “Upgrade Your Sports Drink,” according to its new tagline. “They upgrade all sports equipment,” says Collins. “Uniforms, equipment, sneakers, pads, bats. They upgrade compression shirts, gloves, all that stuff has changed, but sports drinks
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haven’t. We feel like isotonic consumers have been duped and they’re still drinking antiquated products at every turn.” In other words, Gatorade (and its long-beleaguered runner up, Powerade) has had its run over the past 40 years. The BodyArmor argument is that there are better ingredients and branding that will appeal to consumers and better (for retailers, anyway) pricing that can be brought to the table. Hence, after three years of fighting to be called something other than a sports drink, Collins and Repole are redefining their product – as, well, a sports drink, but a premium one. They are betting prodigious sums that athletes will look at BodyArmor as a better, more natural version, more functional version of Gatorade, and pay about $1.99 for a functional indulgence in the same way that
PHOTO BY MONTE ISOM