By Felix Thea
Introduction
Some successful entrepreneurs in the e-commerce field spent years working in their industry before they branched out and started their own businesses, using everything they learned.
In this episode of the Shopify Masters podcast, you will learn from an entrepreneur who spent years marketing for Redbull and Monster Energy Drink and has now started his own beverage company.
Vibey Desai launched HDX Hydration Mix in 2011, a brand selling a healthy hydration drink mix with a perfectly balanced blend of essential minerals and nutrients that your body needs to stay hydrated. In this episode, you will learn:
- How to convince customers to buy an online product that requires taste.
- Why you shouldn’t build a customer base from scratch and instead how to collaborate with complementary companies.
- How to get free samples for potential customers at a low cost.
- Why you should not focus on volume but instead on margin – this company has margins of 80%.
Listen to the Shopify Masters podcast below…
Show Notes:
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Full Transcript:
Felix: Today I’m with Vibey Desai from HDX at hdxmix.com. That’s hdxmix.com. HDX sells a healthy hydration drink mix with a perfectly balanced blend of essential minerals and nutrients that your body needs to stay hydrated. Founded in 2011, based in Huntington Beach, California. Hi, Vibey.
Vibey: Good morning, Felix. Thank you for having me.
Felix: Awesome, tell us a little about your store, and what is the most popular product you sell?
Vibey: Yes, as I mentioned, we launched in 2011. Our goal was to create a hydration mix. I had worked with many athletes in the past, and a lot of them talked about the importance of hydration. These athletes were traveling too, so I wanted to create something that would be useful for them, but also something they could take with them wherever they went. Of course, we didn’t invent the powder. Powdered drinks have been around for a long time, but what we did was pay attention to the ingredients within them. We wanted to create something that tastes good and is healthy for people, but they can carry it wherever they go. You can take a reusable water bottle on the plane, go through security, and stay hydrated wherever you go.
That was the original plan. We also wanted to build a brand, so we put a lot of time and effort into the design, logo, packaging, and the product itself when we started. After more than five years, we are still here. A lot of exciting things have happened along the way.
Felix: Awesome. Yes, tell us a little about your background, because it seems you mentioned you were working with athletes before. How were you working with them? Did you have experience creating these products, like beverage mixes, or any kind of other food products?
Vibey: Yes, yes. Wow, Felix, I don’t know if this podcast will be enough for my background, unfortunately. But let me give you a quick overview, I grew up in the action sports industry. I’ve been a continuous surfer my whole life. After I graduated from college, I got the opportunity to open a styling shop with some friends of mine. I had no retail experience, but I knew I didn’t want to work for someone else. I wanted to try something for myself. I had worked in styling shops when I was young, so I knew some things about the business. But it’s different when you start your own business and are responsible for all the daily operations.
I learned a lot about retail. This is where I started honing my skills in marketing and branding. I had a natural talent in this area, but my work in the styling shop helped me develop these skills. After that, I became burned out on marketing and branding, so I decided to start a marketing agency. One of our first clients was a small company from Austria called Red Bull. We were tasked with helping them launch their product here in the U.S. in 1998. This was my first time working in the beverage industry. It was an exciting time.
We worked
They had been with them for several years in marketing strategy and developing their relationships with athletes. We worked with many brands over the years. At the end of my time at the agency, I was looking for something a bit different. I got the opportunity to work at Monster Energy. I became the Global Marketing Director and managed all athletes, events, the digital platform, and everything related to marketing and branding at Monster Energy. This was my first job after graduation. It wasn’t the right fit for me. I didn’t really enjoy working for other people, so I decided to leave the brand and start my own company.
At that time, I had established many good relationships with athletes from around the world, in most sports and categories, so I had a good understanding of the people I could rely on to guide the development of HDX. That is what brought me here today, my experience in marketing, branding, retail, and consulting for brands across different categories.
Felix: That’s great. I think many listeners, or at least a large number of listeners, are also selling food or beverage products, or a brand. If you could pinpoint one key to success in marketing a food or beverage product, based on your experience at Red Bull, Monster Energy, and now HDX, what would you say is the key to successfully marketing a product like that?
Phoebe: Yes, that’s a fantastic question, Felix. I believe that food and beverage products are very challenging to market. Because it really depends on the taste. How can you have an e-commerce platform when people need to taste the product? Taste is a really important factor. When products are ready to drink and come in a can or bottle, or packaged food, you can go to events and offer samples of your product and hope that they like it. If they like it enough, they will find a place nearby where they can access it.
That costs a lot of money, Felix. I believe that is the barrier. That was one of the first things I understood when creating a beverage brand, that we know we can make the product taste good and that it is healthy for people, but how can we make it taste good for people who haven’t tasted it yet?
We tried many things to promote the product and get people to try it. One of the things we did was offer free samples on our website. If you wanted to try a sample, you could send three dollars, and we would send you some samples. This was a very inexpensive way for us, and we got a lot of people who were interested in it. Because we put a lot of information on our website to make people feel comfortable about the product. I think this is really important, the perception of the product and how it looks and tastes. You have to do that through photography and images and words too. I mean words in a good way. Not to be misleading or anything like that, but you must have a good story to make people want to immerse themselves in your brand.
The other thing is that we had to be creative. Because we weren’t targeting traditional retail later on, but we had to get the product out there. We started looking for other brands that we could collaborate with. One brand, for example, is a brand called Clean Bottle. They make a great sports bottle that can be opened from the bottom so you can clean the bottom with whatever you put in it. We reached out to them and said, “Hey, we love your bottle. Can we send you some samples and can you use those samples to put one in every online order with a postcard?” They loved the idea, as it was an added value for their customers. Immediately, we were able to distribute the samples at a very low cost to customers who were buying a product that our product could complement.
Felix:
Wow, that’s a lot of great information I’d like to delve into a bit. I love how you said that you should start with your values. You need to understand what you stand for and
Source: https://www.shopify.com/blog/71170693-how-hdx-hydration-mix-sells-someone-a-drink-before-they-know-what-it-tastes-like
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